Body of Proof
1/20/2011
“There are two kinds of people who sit around thinking up ways to kill people, psychopaths and mystery writers. I’m the kind that pays better.”
Nathan Fillian as Richard Castle in Castle A book is a dead body. It is a pound of paper, ink and cardboard that can be burned, torn apart, buried and desecrated by any number of critics. Once a book it is written its life is over. Everything that the writer knows about the characters and their struggle dies when the book is printed. At that point it is open for the public to speculate and guess and rationalize it. As much as a mystery writer may want to think that he is the detective discovering the crime and following the clues to the final result, he is not. The mystery writer is the murderer. He laid out the victim on the ground of whatever back alley his imagination created. He laid out the clues, He committed the crime. The crimes which he comes up with are not simply found they are placed thought the workings of the killer, a killer with that wonderful insanity known as imagination. There are some who would say that is it the killers insanity that makes him write and that we cannot hope to understand the font from which his murderous desires flow. These people are wrong. The insanity may spur him to action but it is the action which caused the corpse to be there not the insanity. We all have a bit of insanity in us; it makes us do what we do. It is why some become detectives reading mystery after mystery trying to piece together the facts so that the truth will emerge. Others become killers and supply the masses of detectives with the corpses they desire. The murder before you was a rush job its perpetrator simply went to the writing desk opened his laptop (his weapon of choice) and started killing. Like any murderer he sat for some time before the act thinking, waiting, stalling. He stalls as thoughts go through his head. Is this the right thing to do? What if I can’t go through with it? He sat and wondered but ultimately decided that he couldn’t stop, not then it was too late to turn back. So he finds his victim and stalks it. In order to write he must find his target and understand why it has to be done. “Look Rick as much trouble as we go through with these novels there’s only three reasons to commit a murder, love, money and to cover up a crime.” –Steven J. Cannell as Himself in Castle. Why does he do this, why does he kill? What does he hope to gain? Did he do it for love? Some attempt at achieving fame and making others love and recognize him. Does he do it for himself out of love for the medium? What about money? That root of all evil from which all things vile and disgusting come. Personal gain is quite a motivator. It doesn’t have to be money per say but something valuable. A grade is quite a good motivation at the college level. It both promises recognition of achievement and a future of monetary gain. And lastly has he committed this murder so that some other offence will go unnoticed. Some lesser work something an attempt that went poorly perhaps. Making people for get is not always so easy for a writer and any writer who tries to do this should be careful that they don’t accidentally bring more attention to their previous failures with this act. Eventually it became time for the murder to happen. The killer sits before his desk. He starts writing and the paper bleeds on the screen in front of him. Each keystroke is the slash of his knife each paragraph a stab to the ribs. Each and every slash puts the victim one step closer to death’s door. As the typing becomes faster the victim tries to resist and fight. It won’t go as easily as the killer hoped. The victim fights back making it seem impossible for the killer to land more strikes. The page’s resistance taunts it’s killer making him take his time. As the page holds on to its last moments of life its only hope is to delay its death so long that the killer must rest and risk forgetting his intend. At some point the killer lost track of his thoughts and couldn’t seem to make them fit just right. His purpose became blurry. This happens from time to time when the killer leaves the project for a good length of time. A long torture session may end up being brief if the killer can’t agree with his thoughts from the past few hours. Now desperate to finish, the murderer becomes impatient he starts cutting in a frenzy. He put no care into each cut but simply cut and cut away at his victim until there was nothing left and the body laid disemboweled on the floor. Guts hanging out, vulnerable to any means of attack on the dead man and blood pools all around the victim. This is now the scene though the author may have wanted to compose his murder differently his haste turns his well thought out murder into a killing spree powered by his verbal spew. He throws the words haphazardly hoping to kill as much as possible. It is possible for a murder to be elegant or brutish, detailed or simple. Murder can be moving or jarring. It can be well thought through and prepared or it can simply be a quick thoughtless endeavor made in haste. Murderers can be successful or penniless but the one thing no murder is perfect. There will always be flaws and errors and ultimately He can fix it though. The criminal always returns to the seat of the crime though and after a while he can let go back and work to make sure that the mistakes he made are covered up. The murder is still their will simply look different in the end. |
Mind of Chaos
02/04/11
“There are two kinds of people who sit around thinking up ways to kill people, psychopaths and mystery writers. I’m the kind that pays better.”
Nathan Fillian as Richard Castle in Castle Every mystery writer fancies themselves a detective. They imagine themselves finding the body examining the evidence combing through the victims email and phone records to find someone who meant them harm. They want to believe that they are the ones who solve the case, but they’re not. They are the killer. They are the ones who killed the victim and laid his body out to be found. They left him in some dark alley, a message painted in blood on the walls. Come and find me. They leave the clues for the reader to find. Only a certain type of mind can create such acts of horror and savagery, the mind of a killer. Frued says that every person is born of pure Id. We start with only want. I want food. I want sleep. As we grow so do our wants. I want money. I want a sex. The Id however doesn’t care what it has to do to get these things. The Id just wants and it wants it now. If everyone stayed as a being of Id the world would be in utter chaos. This is why we develop a Super-Ego. The Super-Ego controls the Id. It says No. and That’s wrong. Many people take careful balance of their Id and Super-Ego. They may indulge themselves but they will do it within reason. They may buy or even steal a candy bar when they are on a diet but they won’t knock over a liquor store just so they can have Snickers. A psychopath on the other hand outright ignores his Super-Ego. He will kill for whatever he needs and won’t waste his time with emotions like regret. If he wants something you have, God help you, because he will certainly kill you for it. This is a person completely controlled by his Id, to the point where there isn’t even a conscience anymore just a hulking blood-red monster, I call the Madness. We all have that monster in us but we lock it up. We keep it hidden in a small cramped room we never want to open. It is the original monster in the closet. It taunts you, it growls at you and you cower in fear away from it. You don’t want to open that door but something in you says, It’s ok. Remember there aren’t any monsters in your closet. You can open that door and there won’t be anything in there waiting to hurt you. And now you’re even more afraid because you know that you don’t want to open that door but the Madness can influence you from the other side. This is how most people interact with their Madness; the chaotic whisperings through the door beg them to indulge. Sometimes they crack the door and through it a little snack, a little indulgence. But a psychopath is different he indulges his Madness so much that it grows strong in the dark. It feeds on his will making each indulgence easier. Eventually they escalate and before the poor creature knows it the Madness escapes his prison. When the man cracks the door to feed the beast the monster pushes through. It can no longer be contained within the confines of the subconscious and comes screaming into the front of the mind, where once the man could go about his business and let Madness stay behind the dark forbidden door, now the man is banished to that dark hole. Now the Madness takes control. A mystery writer is different. A mystery writer can allow the Madness to occupy their conscious mind without it taking over. He does this because he doesn’t view the Madness as an enemy. He feeds the Madness in effigy through his writing he lets it dine on stories of murder and torture. The Madness can feast on this indulgence without growing. It learns to like the taste of chaos through another’s experience. Eventually it ceases to strive for dominance and can join the writer in the forefront of his mind. The writer can sit with it and talk with it without fear that at any moment the Madness will seize him by the throat. He can understand it and feel it and use it to make characters as lifelike and flawed as those the Madness with in everyone makes them. He may not succumb to the Madness, but the Madness is still there. The only difference is that the writer is not dominated by the Madness. The writer can harness it and use it but it still is in his consciousness and everyone can see it. The writer may know that the Madness is harmless but the rest of the world fears it. It can be seen in every look the writer receives when he talks about a mundane tool which he would like to see someone killed with. He knows he only means to see it in film or on the page but those around him are shocked when he describes the possibilities of murder by spork. It would have to be a metal one because a plastic one can’t take the pressure necessary to break the skin let alone sink into the muscle. Also the plastic ones aren’t sharp enough to do the deed. They make metal sporks, it wouldn’t be hard to get one. Normal people curse their own Madness and try to avoid thinking about it. They will go to see a violent gore-fest to indulge the Madness but they would never actually create the medium that fills them with those sick pleasures that make them feel good and bad at the same time. The writer can harness his Madness, keep him calm and contained or he can set him lose on the paper and create acts of violence only the insane can dream up. Mystery writers know what it is like to have the Madness run rampant. But they confine their actions to the page and the imagination. They can go on a rampage and tear up half the city without ever leaving the confines and safety of their writing desk. They can understand the mind of a psychotic killer better than any layperson, because they continually exercise the part of their brain that thinks in violence and vice. They can do horrible things in their mind and on the page without ever worrying that one day it won’t stay on the page. They will never wake up covered in blood thinking, Not again. The mystery writer is special because he embraces his Madness he doesn’t succumb to it or try to ignore it, he uses it. And the reason he is rewarded for it, the reason he can exist in polite society and make a living with his Madness is because Madness is in everyone and whenever you read a mystery novel you feed your Madness. So feed it and feed it well. |