[Fic] "The Gordian Solution" -- original
Mar. 29th, 2004 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingThis is the serial killer option. Well, the non-supernatural serial killer, I suppose I should say.
If you get queasy, blame![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
redwolfoz, who asked for this fic to see the light of day. (Not that I needed much encouragement, really; the icky side of my imagination can be quite insistent upon occasion.)
Title is a classical reference. Can you place it? *grin*
---------------------------------------------
The Gordian Solution
---------------------------------------------
I think I first knew when I was eleven, though there were signs even earlier. That was when I was playing capture tag with my friends, and to free Kathy I clasped my hands and smashed them down on Grace's arms where she held Kathy's elbow. The rush, the power, from that move -- the oddly pleasurable knowledge of how easily the human body breaks -- started to tip me off.
That and the fact that I felt guilty over my gleeful reaction instead of the way Grace fell to the ground clutching her broken wrist.
It isn't that I don't like people, that I don't empathize with others. It isn't that I think they aren't real. I'm not a sociopath, not really.
It's just that my frustration builds, and I can only diffuse and divert it for so long by smashing icicles, splitting logs, or hurling cheap glass tumblers against my basement walls. Eventually there's only one way to soothe the red-black rage.
I'm not wasteful, and I'm careful about it. Everyone in town knows that I take a road trip each year as soon as the high school lets out, heading to a different state each time. And when I come home, I'm happy to tell stories about the places I've gone, the things I've seen, and the people I've met. I even keep in touch with some of them; I have a long email list with friends in over twenty states now.
And at some point during my summer break, I add to my collection.
The first one was the year before I went to college, the year I took a month off to decide how to face the rest of my life. See, I like people. I want to help people. I teach high school, I give to charity, I cook at the local homeless shelter, and I sing in my church choir. And yet I have to quiet the rage or it ties into a twisted knot in my chest that grows and swells until I can't get anything done, let alone anything useful to others. So I went out to find a way to reconcile my needs.
I found him stopped by the side of a county road in Iowa one evening, bent over his car engine, and I offered him a ride into the nearest town. He was nineteen, a year older than I was, also taking a summer road trip. He had no cell phone. He had no hotel reservations. So I turned down a gravel road on the pretense of having to check my map, bashed in his head with the baseball bat I kept behind the seat for emergencies, and smothered him for good measure. Then I swung the bat, over and over, until my arms were screaming, until I could hardly tell that he'd been kind of handsome at the beginning.
And for the first time since the rage really started to grow, I felt free.
I had to remember him for that, for the gift he'd given me, but keeping his identification was too dangerous. Instead, I fished my pocket knife from the glove compartment and carefully peeled a strip of skin from his cheek. I didn't start there, of course; I didn't want to risk a sloppy cut and I'd never done this before. Instead I stripped off his pants and practiced on his inner thigh -- it wasn't too hairy for a guy, and his cheek had a little stubble anyway.
I've gotten a lot better at skinning since then, but it still gives me the same warm rush. It's a different rush from the violence, from the systematic breaking of a human body, but skinning has its own pleasures. The first incision, the way the knife kisses flesh and slips in and under, welcomed into the body... I wonder sometimes if that's what sex is like for a man. Penetration is power. And then I slice down, two parallel cuts, and then the knife vanishes between them, peeling back slowly, letting blood and the false remnants of life run freely from the cooling corpse.
It's beautiful, really.
I skinned a strip of his cheek, wrapped it in tissues, and stuffed it into my cooler. It dried slowly over the next few weeks, and I've kept it and the others supple enough over the years with a bit of hand lotion and leather polish. It's not the best way to preserve my memories, but I've never bothered to learn tanning. I think it might look a touch suspicious.
Don't think I'm cruel for what I do. I tried to get by only breaking inanimate things, or only hurting animals -- I really did -- but it didn't work. Either they were too unsatisfying, like fish (though bashing them over the head and scaling them is quite fun), or they just made me feel like a bitch for taking advantage of helpless creatures with puppy eyes. People, at least, are intelligent enough to have a chance. They sometimes realize there's something funny and leave before I can hurt them. They sometimes fight back, and that's an even wilder rush than if I come through unscathed.
And I think I make enough of a difference in the rest of my life that I can be allowed an occasional failing. As I said, I'm not wasteful. I only collect one person a year, when I really wouldn't mind taking three or five. I don't leave bizarre calling cards or dirty my own town with my handiwork, to call attention to myself and bring scandal upon my neighbors and friends and family.
But in the bottom of my jewelry box are twenty-four strips of leather, twenty-four memories, twenty-four unspoken words of thanks. On evenings when the rage is worst, I take them out and run them through my fingers, picturing the people who let me collect them, calling their names, and it soothes the rage enough for me to last until the next summer, the next gift, my next lover.
Yes, I call them lovers. Because I don't think I can possibly love anyone anymore than my collections, in the moment between seconds when they slice through the knot in my heart and drain the rage away.
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Inspired by the 28 March 2004![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15minuteficlets word: collection
And there we are. *shudder* Whoever she is, I don't like her. Particularly since I apparently understand her well enough that she can live in my head, which, frankly, I did NOT need to know about myself.
ETA: Her name is Amanda Gillespie. And yes, no matter what she says, she is a sociopath of sorts. Note the superiority complex apparent in her assumption that her charitable efforts, her work as a teacher, are enough to balance the deliberate murder of other human beings. Note also her unconscious assumption that she's better than other people, that they need her help in order to get along.
Okay, enough psychology for now.
If you get queasy, blame
redwolfoz, who asked for this fic to see the light of day. (Not that I needed much encouragement, really; the icky side of my imagination can be quite insistent upon occasion.)Title is a classical reference. Can you place it? *grin*
---------------------------------------------
The Gordian Solution
---------------------------------------------
I think I first knew when I was eleven, though there were signs even earlier. That was when I was playing capture tag with my friends, and to free Kathy I clasped my hands and smashed them down on Grace's arms where she held Kathy's elbow. The rush, the power, from that move -- the oddly pleasurable knowledge of how easily the human body breaks -- started to tip me off.
That and the fact that I felt guilty over my gleeful reaction instead of the way Grace fell to the ground clutching her broken wrist.
It isn't that I don't like people, that I don't empathize with others. It isn't that I think they aren't real. I'm not a sociopath, not really.
It's just that my frustration builds, and I can only diffuse and divert it for so long by smashing icicles, splitting logs, or hurling cheap glass tumblers against my basement walls. Eventually there's only one way to soothe the red-black rage.
I'm not wasteful, and I'm careful about it. Everyone in town knows that I take a road trip each year as soon as the high school lets out, heading to a different state each time. And when I come home, I'm happy to tell stories about the places I've gone, the things I've seen, and the people I've met. I even keep in touch with some of them; I have a long email list with friends in over twenty states now.
And at some point during my summer break, I add to my collection.
The first one was the year before I went to college, the year I took a month off to decide how to face the rest of my life. See, I like people. I want to help people. I teach high school, I give to charity, I cook at the local homeless shelter, and I sing in my church choir. And yet I have to quiet the rage or it ties into a twisted knot in my chest that grows and swells until I can't get anything done, let alone anything useful to others. So I went out to find a way to reconcile my needs.
I found him stopped by the side of a county road in Iowa one evening, bent over his car engine, and I offered him a ride into the nearest town. He was nineteen, a year older than I was, also taking a summer road trip. He had no cell phone. He had no hotel reservations. So I turned down a gravel road on the pretense of having to check my map, bashed in his head with the baseball bat I kept behind the seat for emergencies, and smothered him for good measure. Then I swung the bat, over and over, until my arms were screaming, until I could hardly tell that he'd been kind of handsome at the beginning.
And for the first time since the rage really started to grow, I felt free.
I had to remember him for that, for the gift he'd given me, but keeping his identification was too dangerous. Instead, I fished my pocket knife from the glove compartment and carefully peeled a strip of skin from his cheek. I didn't start there, of course; I didn't want to risk a sloppy cut and I'd never done this before. Instead I stripped off his pants and practiced on his inner thigh -- it wasn't too hairy for a guy, and his cheek had a little stubble anyway.
I've gotten a lot better at skinning since then, but it still gives me the same warm rush. It's a different rush from the violence, from the systematic breaking of a human body, but skinning has its own pleasures. The first incision, the way the knife kisses flesh and slips in and under, welcomed into the body... I wonder sometimes if that's what sex is like for a man. Penetration is power. And then I slice down, two parallel cuts, and then the knife vanishes between them, peeling back slowly, letting blood and the false remnants of life run freely from the cooling corpse.
It's beautiful, really.
I skinned a strip of his cheek, wrapped it in tissues, and stuffed it into my cooler. It dried slowly over the next few weeks, and I've kept it and the others supple enough over the years with a bit of hand lotion and leather polish. It's not the best way to preserve my memories, but I've never bothered to learn tanning. I think it might look a touch suspicious.
Don't think I'm cruel for what I do. I tried to get by only breaking inanimate things, or only hurting animals -- I really did -- but it didn't work. Either they were too unsatisfying, like fish (though bashing them over the head and scaling them is quite fun), or they just made me feel like a bitch for taking advantage of helpless creatures with puppy eyes. People, at least, are intelligent enough to have a chance. They sometimes realize there's something funny and leave before I can hurt them. They sometimes fight back, and that's an even wilder rush than if I come through unscathed.
And I think I make enough of a difference in the rest of my life that I can be allowed an occasional failing. As I said, I'm not wasteful. I only collect one person a year, when I really wouldn't mind taking three or five. I don't leave bizarre calling cards or dirty my own town with my handiwork, to call attention to myself and bring scandal upon my neighbors and friends and family.
But in the bottom of my jewelry box are twenty-four strips of leather, twenty-four memories, twenty-four unspoken words of thanks. On evenings when the rage is worst, I take them out and run them through my fingers, picturing the people who let me collect them, calling their names, and it soothes the rage enough for me to last until the next summer, the next gift, my next lover.
Yes, I call them lovers. Because I don't think I can possibly love anyone anymore than my collections, in the moment between seconds when they slice through the knot in my heart and drain the rage away.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 28 March 2004
15minuteficlets word: collectionAnd there we are. *shudder* Whoever she is, I don't like her. Particularly since I apparently understand her well enough that she can live in my head, which, frankly, I did NOT need to know about myself.
ETA: Her name is Amanda Gillespie. And yes, no matter what she says, she is a sociopath of sorts. Note the superiority complex apparent in her assumption that her charitable efforts, her work as a teacher, are enough to balance the deliberate murder of other human beings. Note also her unconscious assumption that she's better than other people, that they need her help in order to get along.
Okay, enough psychology for now.