Hypothetical

Edmond is going to do something; Nel knows. Nel knows and, for whatever reason, cannot keep Edmond from this action. This action could be any action. But let us be dramatic; let us say it is murder.

The way out shall be the way in.

Edmond is going to commit murder. Nel knows that Edmond will commit murder, and in addition to this, he knows all the finer details of the act-to-be. He knows that Edmond will use a knife. He knows that Edmond will go during the day, when the door is left unlocked; but that on this particular day, the door will happen to be locked. He knows Edmond will regret bringing the knife; it was for cooking, really. A planned dinner will have gone wrong; Nel knows this. He knows Edmond is hesitant about the meeting. He knows Edmond will run home with cuts on his hands, leaving bloody prints on everything he touches as he stumbles in his grief. Nel knows the story of this murder; there is revenge caught up in it. He knows the dinner was supposed to fix it; but power is not so easily let alone. More often than not, it is traded, forced to either side, like a magnet. Perhaps the victim had wronged Edmond; Nel would know, Nel would know how serious a crime it had been, how he hadn't learned, how Edmond had sat down to dinner with a man who'd nearly murdered him.
But this does not justify the murder. Nel understands this, too. He sees Edmond, and he sees the law. He sees the victim become the criminal, the criminal pay his dues. Nel cannot keep Edmond from his crime, though more than anything, he would like to.
So he does the next worst thing to inaction; next bearable, that is. This is not a moral scale; this is Isaac's territory, all.
When Edmond asks what silverware is needed, Nel slips two wine glasses and a knife into his hands. When Edmond finds the locked door, Nel, who will have visited the victim-to-be a half hour earlier to talk about nothing in particular, will choose this particular moment to leave through the door in question, leaving it unlocked. Then he goes home to wait. In the hours before Edmond arrives, Nel imagines the dinner; how it will taste, how things will go awry. He has had too much wine himself, and his chest shudders when he begins to think of what Edmond will do in five minutes, three seconds. He demands everything of his imagination and presses each image against his senses like a branding iron; he thinks he smells the poor man's blood when he bites his tongue. He imagines himself in the place of Edmond, in the place of the victim, in the place of the wine spilling over the counter, in the place of the unused glasses in the cupboard; he fills his head with the treacherous crime and burns his blood with it. By the time Edmond stumbles in, twisting the knife awkwardly in his sticky fingers, Nel will have left the scene of the crime as well. He will be the first and last to see the criminal after the crime. He will take the knife from Edmond and listen as anger, regret, and fear pour from him. He will pour one glass of wine and leave the ruined carpet alone.
Do you see what has happened?
Edmond will not. He will continue to talk. He will not touch the drink--he has had enough of that color for the night, he says, and Nel believes him; Nel has had enough of it too. Nel has shared in his sin. Where his hands could not, would not go, his mind has. He has made it. His hands, next to Edmond's, are as clean as the counter tops. But pushed into his chest is that dark, shared stain. Edmond cannot see it; he will not. He will continue to talk. Nel cannot save Edmond from his crime; but neither can he commit the crime in Edmond's place (or desire to). So he presses his hands to Edmond's and takes the blood from it; as much as he can. He slips the knife into his hand; he leaves the door ajar. Edmond would not have forgotten the knife if Nel had not given it to him; if the door had not been opened, Edmond would have waited. Would have knocked. This murder would happen with or without Nel; but would Edmond have been caught?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. It does not matter, likely, because hiding Edmond from the law is another thing Nel cannot, will not, do.
Nel takes no pleasure in the blood on his hands, but he takes it, and he takes as much as he can bear to, because it is all he can do. If he had left matters alone, he would not be able to blame Edmond; but he would not be able to spare him from the law, either. Nel does, instead, just enough to put him on the line; there, magic hour, dusk, when all the other lines converge and he can think the thoughts on either side. There, Nel will believe that he himself committed the crime, not instead of Edmond, but as much as. He will have himself to blame instead of no one; cognitive dissonance resolved. Edmond will be tried for his crimes. Perhaps he will be acquitted given the circumstances; perhaps he will feel the brunt of the law. Either way, his chest is stained dark. And though free walking, Nel, just as guilty in the everhour of his mind, wears his chest stained, too, just as dark, fed by the thin, pulsing vein that runs up to his ever crafting mind.

It is strange, the things we will do to ease our minds.

This is the closest I have come to writing in a very good while.

자주색

That's what I find when I look up your name. But that's not your name--it's Bora. Purple. I think it must have been a purple flower, or something. But I'm pretty sure it was just purple.

[this is not a class related blog; if you're looking for parasites, go forward or backward. If you're looking for nonsense, stay here.)

I haven't had the time to paint lately. At all, really. The last thing I painted was a toy lizard I found out by Alpha, and that doesn't count, because I just painted it to look like a guilmon, which is silly, and therefore not real painting. I am still waiting for a chance to paint you. Purple, puce, lavender, magenta, rouge, indigo. In the treeline, something blue-green; no skyline. No sky. Your head in my knees; your fat belly stretched out to the side. I have never met a more comfortable creature. Or forgetful. Or cruel.

You know the way someone will come at you, slowly, if they're trying to do something they know you won't like, and they don't want you to find out until it's too late? I'm not going to do that.
I'm doing this to get over you.
Even though it's not something I can do. It still sounds good, though, doesn't it?

You're too tied up in what I was and who I am now for me to come to terms with anything. But what were you to me, really? A pillow. A damn good pillow. And that's it, I think. Really? Yeah--that's it, I think.

Or is that just what you'd say to me?
And hey--even good pillows are missed, right? But now I'm being the cruel one, I think. Don't worry. I don't mean it--I'm just looking for a way to hide the fact that I'm a sentimental twit.


I think I'll write something about you. A story, or several, that hold parts of you. This one won't go belly up like my nanowrimo one, so don't you fuss. It's the only pretty thing I have. Shut up. Don't wag your tongue like that--I'm trying to be serious here. You'll be the apprentice of a terrible, very stupid wizard. The reader will want to hate you as well, but they won't. You will be too sweet, even when you bite. You will go off on your own and have all sorts of adventures: two crows will tell you to run down the hill as fast as you can, but no, you should have turned around before you left--you would have seen a pair of bones leaning against the tree. You'll roll into a hole in the ground and find an old man with hooks for whiskers. What is he fishing for? Sense, he mumbles, tugging a hook. Good sense. A herring slips out of his mouth. You pick it up with your teeth. A mole bites your rubbery lip. You chase it through the narrow necking paths until you both break ground; you kill him dead. God, what have you done? You've learned something awful from that wizard. Now you've killed a child, dead. Mother mole collects her son. The funeral is held at the edge of the pond. You are present; you push your hands in the dirt and repent. On the other shore, the ducks are laughing. Screaming. making licentious advances on one another. At a funeral? You chase them away, and almost commit your second murder in a day. You would not have killed them, you say? I believe you. I believe you. But it is the reader you must convince.
The woods are full of mud and frogs and crawfish and grass. These are all things you grow to love. You eat the crawfish and play with the frogs. You love them, and they love you. But they are frogs, and so they also love playing tricks. They tell you to see what's on the other side of the mossy fence. So you go. It's very bright. You're very tall. You feel like you're in Oz, but you don't know what that means, do you? So you go back. But not to the frogs. There is tall, dry grass and birds hiding in the grass the way you go back. They spill nonsense as you walk by. You're short and fat again, but you still know it's nonsense.


But where shall I go from here? I am not good at writing my way through holes, as you know--only twisting threads until I've made rope. Will you return to the cruel wizard and...and then what? Is that the end? Will you fall asleep one day, and dream of frogs and mud and never wake up again? You can't destroy that wizard. No sword for you. No magic rock. It would be good for the plot, but it wouldn't be good for you.

And I've forgotten a whole chapter of your sins--what about the little urchin you brought to your master to be sacrificed? Yes, you threw the pepper under the table; and when he was out buying more, you sat and watched the birds with her. And then you pushed her out the window, so she could be one. And she was. Don't you grin like that now--you've still got plenty to be ashamed of. You were a veritable criminal. I do believe you stole from that urchin's plate not a week earlier. And it's not like you weren't well kept at home. No wonder you were so round you rolled down that hill, just like those birds told you to. You poked at the bellies of dead fish and what were you but cruel to everyone save your wizard?

Still. I want you to win. More than that, I want readers to want you to win. Can't you do something, anything before it's too late? Before your cruel wizard slips something foul into your meal that night and makes you sleep forever? I think you should cut him. Cut him good, for me and for you. If not in life, than in death. Take everything that you can from him. His things are broken. His bird is gone. His family is gone. His town is gone. But you are the only one that can make him alone. Do this. Please. Do this for me. It will show you to be warm and sweet in the eyes of the reader, warm and sweet as I've known you. It will make the writer look cruel, but haven't I been the cruel one all along?

Don't worry. You don't have to tell the story--you don't have to do a thing anymore. I'll make the bird tell it, so nobody has to get their hands messy. I don't like birds anyway. And I'll leave a soft, light, purple place at the end of it for you. You'll still be short and round, but you can put your head on my knees and rest for a bit. Just a bit.