Thread: Chemical Composition of Murder

Chemical Composition of Murder

Wrote this some time ago for an unusual writing prompt with some restrictions such as no dialogue.

The chemicals for the perfect formula.

1. The snap is the beginning, the first calculation of the formula – an initial inducement to chase the rabbit down the hole. Like in any chemical interaction, the conditions must be set properly; it’s not some intangible that can be enticed or called upon when the urge is felt.

• has to be the right time. At night, late when the shadows are wrestling for realty unafraid of starlight blocked by crumbling apartment complexes with hazing smog at their roofs.
  

• has to be the right setting. On a cracked sidewalk lined by tiny alley ways. An occasional car passes: always old and paint chipped but with chromed rims seemingly vibrating with the blaring hip-hop. A glance in the direction - could be a white boy. It’s all they listened to nowadays.
  

• most importantly, has to be right inside - that feeling that you’re alone in the world and doing well. A future is bright, more potential that could be fathomed. It’s a feeling that is contingent on something not self-produced. On a young beautiful stunning woman that had finally agreed to a date. She’d been dropped off at home. Everything had gone perfect: great movie, meaningful conversation, a little kiss here and there. There’d been no rough patches, only a deep sense of satisfaction, purpose fulfilled - that's the inside, circling around and round like on some endless NASCAR track releasing a high at every pass of the finish line.
  

And then – with all ingredients properly mixed – comes the challenge, groping for all that is, an envious wolf attempting to usurp a pack of dreams, of all that’s right. In different forms it comes: a glance, look, stare as footsteps’ echoes bypass, the twist of the neck and the glare which follows. Footsteps stop, reverse their course, the heavy thuds accompanied by Tommy gun staccatos from lips. Encompassing is the listless night, the cold concrete watching as reality slows, dissolves, fumes to ignite the realization that the perfection, with its addictive highs, have been lost – groped, sullied, taken, stolen.
The culprit is there, an arm length away. Inside, deep within the catacombs of a soul, something snaps, and reality is lost.

2. Crackle: to make slight, sudden, sharp noises, rapidly repeat. A formula has its exhilaration moment when the reaction occurs, the compounds meld or retract consuming the supplies. With the rabbit, it’s the pure ecstasy of the chase. Though, for many, the crackle is short lived and unfulfillable like fireworks hurled high for all to see but alas – no explosion, no jar of sound, no awe. Only the mute of silence. For the select few, the crackle is a satisfying exercise of longevity, the trickery of prolonging with escalation.

A hint of a slow jab or slouching jaw. Pudgy legs shoveling laboriously or the ruinous tell of fear. Played upon these hints, the crackle could be maintained a matter of minutes: a solid punch to the gut where knuckles can feel the warm innards, quick shot to the spleen so that pain radiates along the left side, weakening the shoulder. A deft counter from the right with a double tap below the temple. Everything is sluggish, uncontrolled, unprotected.

Patience, then a full spring of the right, and the crumpled spasm of a disabled mass fallen. Inside is still, a burned unmoving fire that continues, catapulting each nerve into motion as a leg swings beyond the weakness of the flesh, ripping into the strips of soft tissue to where the repetitious sound of crunching issue forth. It’s a rapturous noise capable of brushing away the remnant-rubbish of reality from the mind.

From this clarity, raw unadulterated emotion – justification – is felt balancing the scales. No crackling anymore. A few more futile swings and the nerves pulse into numbness. In a ceaseless existence, everything is caught, stopped, frozen in the frigid cold of humanity. What once was is lost forever. And what had been had is lied away. And the last crack is in catacombs where nothing can be heard.

The losing is what causes the fear, the last bubbles of the formula rising. Fear, unstrung from being afraid, weighs down as if gravity were bricks on a shoulder, plunging into the depths of despair, onto the hard concrete, wet and slippery. History is the despairing truth feared for its patient lurks, awaiting repetition - waiting for a dark night and lone sidewalks, for an unseen sky and fragile heart. To stand in the sickly yellow streetlight as a soul hunted, preyed upon by inevitability.

3. The pop is subtle. A nimble brilliance of tendons slicing their own, separating the dark despair that is unreality from the light of the world. The past and present nevermore as it slips from unconsciousness into death. A smile. A chuckle of history broken. The combustion inside the soul is dampened to unstirred ashes, bare and unscarred. A laugh reverberates amongst the crumbling facades and city streets; all is equaled, empty, waiting for the joy to fill once again.

And one walks away, past the ally ways, leaving the moment where the other lies.

This strikes me as very rich raw material, writer's notes that promise to come together into a riveting story one day - You prove quite adept at description of scene and also of evoking tension and suspense - I got a bit lost amid the gory passages, but lifted out of this structure and shaped into a true narrative, the entire piece can shine from beginning to end.
---todd