Brachylogia (brach-y-lo’-gi-a): The absence of conjunctions between single words. Compare asyndeton. The effect of brachylogia is a broken, hurried delivery.
Roy Orbison is whining about crying on the Sirius XM 60s channel. I’m driving like a bat out of hell to Phoenix, Arizona from Elizabeth, New Jersey. The sky keeps flashing with heat lightening and I’m driving with the windows down. When I first put them down, everything on the seat and dashboard blew out the windows and disappeared. I thought about stopping and retrieving the worthwhile stuff, like my lotto ticket, but a voice in my head was yelling in a high-pitched whine, “Drive. Go. Move. Speed. You sorry bastard. You broken man. You asshole.”
I didn’t know why I was out here on the road, but I didn’t stop and turn around to see if I could find my stuff. I listened to the voice, and I kept going—driving, driving, driving, driving, night and day, day and night, west.
The sun set in my face and I kept going. Then it was dark, and the full moon made the green and white road signs cast shadows: “Phoenix 500 miles.” 500 miles!? WTF? Why not 5,000, 500,000, 5,000,000, 5 billion!?
I looked in the rear view mirror and saw something moving around on the rear deck behind the back seats—between the speakers.
It was a goddamn coiled up snake! I didn’t know shit about snakes. So, I couldn’t tell what kind of snake it was, but it was big and striped, and looking at the back of my neck. I had driven over 2,000 miles with a damn snake in my car! This is ‘snakes in a car’ I thought, as I tried to figure out what to do.
Any normal person would’ve stopped, jumped out of the car, and called 911. But I’m not normal—I kept driving 100 mph toward Phoenix. Now, 40 miles to go. I had an address in a GPS. In a few minutes I’d find out why $600,000 had been deposited in my checking account, why I had been summoned to the address in my GPS, and why there was a huge snake in my car, and that, by the way, had disappeared from the rear deck between the rear seats.
“Your destination is on right” said the GPS. There it was—a five star hotel. Up I went. I banged on the room’s door. I heard somebody say “Jesus Christ it’s him—as usual he’s friggin’ early.” It sounded like Joey Ice, a hitter for the Elizabeth crew.
The door flew open and there was Joey holding a Glock and smiling. He lowered the gun. “Welcome to Phoenix shitbird.” “What the Hell is going on!?” I shouted. Joey smiled again and said “Welcome to Phoenix shitbird.” “What’s the money for?” I asked. Joey looked out the window and quietly said “Welcome to Phoenix shitbird.” No more questions.
I didn’t know whether I was in deep shit or Nirvana and Joey wasn’t going to tell me.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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