Synonymia

Synonymia (si-no-ni’-mi-a): In general, the use of several synonyms together to amplify or explain a given subject or term. A kind of repetition that adds emotional force or intellectual clarity. Synonymia often occurs in parallel fashion. The Latin synonym, interpretatio, suggests the expository and rational nature of this figure, while another Greek synonym, congeries, suggests the emotive possibilities of this figure.

Life: slippery, slick, silky. No, I am not talking about a skating rink. Like I already said, I’m talking about life with a capital “L.” Life. Living. Not a corpse in a morgue. Not a homeless man frozen to a city sidewalk. Not a squished squirrel flattened in the fast late. Not a spider under your shoe. None of the above, I am talking about heartbeat thumping. Body warm. Brain firing thoughts. Eyes seeing whatever is there. Nose pulling in odors, some pleasant. Tongue tasting, teeth chomping, hands gripping, bowels dumping, bladder sloshing, legs moving, and feet walking along a quiet beach on a warm moonless night, dragging your nameless victim out on the jetty to dispose of with a swift kick. Splash! Now it’s really finally over.

You can go home and take two or three showers and try to wash away the death feeling, the death smelling, the blood and the disquiet. The soap is slippery like life itself. It washes away the traces of what you’ve done.

A perfect stranger. Without knowing her, there can be no remorse, just vivid memories of the killing: the begging, the silence of the blade sliding into her heart. And before that, the seduction, the mounting friendship, the outstretched hand. The invitation to a walk on the beach. The unwarranted trust. The sweet talk. My memories of her corpse stretched out on the sand. Bleeding profusely, twitching toward the end, with a final inrush of breath—the sigh of death—a sad sound made all the sadder by being final.

I am a psychopath. I could be any number of other things: President of the United States, Father Brown, Mr. Clean—ha ha that’s a joke. Actually, I’m the boy next store. Nondescript. Nice. Helpful. Never swear. Live a secret life. Peeps though neighbor Molly’s window when she gets ready for bed. Steals things from his neighbor’s homes when they’re on vacation. Likes to stick his face in his mother’s underwear drawer. Likes to kick the cat Binker when nobody’s looking. One day I was going to run Binker over with the rotary lawnmower. But I wisely determined there would be too much evidence and I didn’t want to make up a story of how Binker ran in front the mower causing a horrible accident. Besides, I enjoyed kicking Binker, and that would be impossible if Binker was dead.

His parents had detected his madness when he came home covered in blood and said he had been hit by a car. He was prescribed medication after a visit to Dr. Wedge. He dutifully flushed his pills down the toilet every morning to maintain what he considered his “clarity” of thought.

Sexily dressed policewomen were dispatched undercover to the bars along the beach where he operated, clustered about a mile from the jetty. He walked into “Bob’s Big Mullet Bar.” There was a gorgeous woman sitting at the bar (she was a policewoman). He started with his usual patter, and asked her to take a walk on the beach. She agreed. After about 100 yards, he turned and attacked her. She Tasered him into oblivion and held him at gunpoint until her backup arrived.

He was arrested, booked, jailed, tried, convicted and sentenced to death for all the women he had killed. He was beheaded by special court order. His head was mounted on a pike and installed on the killing beach as a deterrent. At first, people complained, but eventually they got used to it and the “head on a pike” was employed by other beach communities. There was always a shortage of heads, but people took it in stride.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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