busy"The Fear of Truth"
When Ti-Joane's sister Ti-Claire
came home from her honeymoon
with two black eyes and a broken jaw,
courtesy of her new husband Virgil,
Ti-Joane decided to do something.
First she tried to get Virgil
to take classes on how
not to be such a hothead,
but he wouldn't listen --
claimed it wasn't true what
Ti-Claire said about him.
Then she talked to the cops,
but they just asked what
Ti-Claire had done to deserve it.
So Ti-Joane bought a beef heart
and put a steak knife through it,
then asked Erzulie D'en Tort
how to put the fear of truth
into that fool man.
Erzulie told her to write out
the works of Sigmund Freud
with the blood of a black pig
and glue all the pages together
to make a baseball bat.
It took Ti-Joane a month of
cramped hands and cricked neck
to make enough pages to build a bat.
Then she hunted down Virgil at the bar.
When he left, she followed him,
but that bat went ghost when she swung it,
sliding through his thick head with nary a crack.
Virgil staggered as if she'd broke his skull.
Ti-Joane did it again and again
until he went down and didn't get up.
Let him be as scared of what was
as Ti-Claire was now.
Virgil just lay there in the parking lot,
moaning, while T-Joane leaned on her bat
and looked down at him.
Then she spit on him and walked away.
When Virgil got out of the hospital,
he quit contesting the divorce
that Ti-Claire wanted,
and he told the cops what he'd done
(though they still didn't care)
and he signed up for the classes
that Ti-Joane suggested.
"What just happened?"
Ti-Claire mumbled, still unable
to speak clearly yet.
"I guess somebody must've
hit him with a cluebat,"
said Ti-Joane.
* * *
Notes:
Ti- is a name prefix derived from "petite" that means "little."
Erzulie belongs to the Afro-Caribbean pantheon.
This bat, made from the works of Sigmund Freud, is part of an exhibit. Baseball bats are usually made from solid wood, but may be laminated.
June 4 2015, 12:42:38 UTC 6 years ago
And, in general, the idea that you do not MESS with people who know people.
Thank you!
June 4 2015, 18:26:43 UTC 6 years ago
Yay, I'm glad it worked!
>>And, in general, the idea that you do not MESS with people who know people.<<
Sooth. I like writing stories where the victim has ulterior resources or connections. You just never know, when you decide to pick on someone.
Re: Thank you!
June 8 2015, 04:11:17 UTC 6 years ago
I do not know if I wished I had a clue-bat like that or not. I might be tempted to use it a bit much.
You know more about this stuff than I do... is that gonna net Ti-Joane positive karma? *thinks* nooooo, if there are no bruises and *he* confesses to stuff... yeah. I still wouldn't do that as a non-WASP unless I was REAL SURE I was gonna get away with it in the mundane world, because whooping up on somebody with a baseball bat and malice aforethought...
'sfunny, though. I was thinking about the story "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" the other night.... it's a very odd form of male privilege that no one ever considered that Little Sister could've done it... Brother was there, he had motive, weapon, opportunity, and the trooper heard a shot.. reminds me in a sideways way of Shawshank.
Re: Thank you!
June 8 2015, 16:28:21 UTC 6 years ago
What establishes justification for something like this is an orderly progression from legal, rational methods to more direct ones as the recommended options fail repeatedly. So Ti-Joane is safe. Voudoun is designed precisely for situations like this where the deck is stacked against you and the official courses of action are ineffective.
>> 'sfunny, though. I was thinking about the story "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" the other night.... it's a very odd form of male privilege that no one ever considered that Little Sister could've done it... Brother was there, he had motive, weapon, opportunity, and the trooper heard a shot.. reminds me in a sideways way of Shawshank. <<
That's true. People often overlook possibilities because they see only what they expect to see.
Re: Thank you!
June 8 2015, 19:02:19 UTC 6 years ago
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I think I need to see a colleague. Further deponent sayeth not.
That's true. People often overlook possibilities because they see only what they expect to see.
FSVO "often", i.e. "the vast majority of the time" for folks who rarely encounter the unexpected. A backwoods cop just doesn't *see* the kind of stuff that tends to lurk in dark corners. It's a question of both population density and the fact that given more space, the things that would trip one's weird-shit-o-meter regularly in a city of a few million have more places (and time) to HIDE... o/~ That's one body that'll never be found o/~
Re: Thank you!
June 8 2015, 19:09:13 UTC 6 years ago
Okay. In addition to sequence of response, also consider spectrum of force. Use the least possible force effective to solve the problem. If the first thing you try doesn't work, try something else.
>> FSVO "often", i.e. "the vast majority of the time" for folks who rarely encounter the unexpected. <<
Often true.
>> A backwoods cop just doesn't *see* the kind of stuff that tends to lurk in dark corners. It's a question of both population density and the fact that given more space, the things that would trip one's weird-shit-o-meter regularly in a city of a few million have more places (and time) to HIDE... o/~ That's one body that'll never be found o/~ <<
Well, it depends. Some things are a function of population density. Others are based on local culture. There's probably more voudoun in the bayous than in the cities.
Re: Thank you!
June 9 2015, 03:29:48 UTC 6 years ago
Or get *themselves* clue-batted.
Re: Thank you!
June 9 2015, 03:43:05 UTC 6 years ago