Posted by nigel1 on April 27, 2002 at 15:25:18:
There was something disturbingly wrong with his coffee cup. It sizzled! Nowhere was there safety, was there freedom from the degrading anomaly. "It's like, everything is trying to embarrass me," the young hoodlum said. He shrugged his birdlike shoulders, a gesture almost invisible inside his enveloping leather jacket. "So I figured there was nothing to lose. I had this gun anyway, and I blew that dumb fuck away. Man it felt good, like you can't shit for a couple of days, and then you chew a little Feen-a-Mint, and it finally comes out." I'd like to know how anyone can have "bird-like shoulders". Birds don't even have shoulders, do they? Is this going too far? Some expressions, some descriptions, and the like are ready made and powerful enough despite being trite and nonsensical. It's legitimate to use such material, although it would be better for some expressions to be outlawed. But what is this... crap is the only word, this crap, about "bird-like" shoulders? And what is this "this, this, this..." business? At any rate, inspector Loglan (named in honor of A. E. Van Vogt, or someone whose name was spelled very much like that) knew what the kid meant by "dumb fuck". He was refering to the lovely young woman he'd murdered, the convenience store clerk, the coed he'd murdered. She had been shot to death with a Libery .25 caliber automatic, shot after being forced to strip down to bikini panties and bra, shot in the left breast, and then, after collapsing and stretching out on the floor on her belly, face down, shot several more times in the narrowest part of her back. It was an interesting choice of weapon. It was manufactured in 1933 by a now defunct company and it sold by mail order for $3.95, box of ammo included. Those were the days. Inspector Lancefree rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter, to record the confession. "What we want," Loglan said, "is for you to tell us exactly what happened, in great detail. Describe how you chose this victim, what attracted you to her. Describe the victim's clothing, face, eyes, hair, voice, gestures-- tell us what she said to you and what you said to her. Please linger over the moments just before you shot her, and try to describe her reactions when she realized that you really were going to kill her. And I want to know how she died. And I want to know how you felt. Were you aroused? What parts of her body pleased you the most? Why did you shoot her left breast? Why did you empty the clip into her bare back?" Inspector Loglan sighed and felt he might never get enough of these crime scene photos. He regreted the lack of anything resembling a perfectly logical and semantically, or "semen-antic-ally" unambiguous language. If there were such a thing, and if he were schooled in the uses of such a language, perhaps he would find no place for these morbid obsessions of his. "Tell us the good bits," Inspector Lancefree added helpfully. "Tell us all the juicy bits." "Wow," the murderer said, "you guys are allright!"