Anastrophe

Anastrophe (an-as’-tro-phee): Departure from normal word order for the sake of emphasis. Anastrophe is most often a synonym for hyperbaton, but is occasionally referred to as a more specific instance of hyperbaton: the changing of the position of only a single word.

In went the knife. My heart’s strings went zing. I was peeling a peach with an Army surplus bayonet. Like blood its juice smelled, making a little pool on the cutting board. I put in my fingertip for a taste. It was sweet and warm.

Peeling a peach is hard work—not physically but mentally. It has all the hallmarks of surgery, but you “eat” the patient in the end. I used to eat people. I gave it up without ever being caught. I ate six people before I quit—3 adults, 2 teenagers and 1 children. I always regretted that I didn’t eat more children. I guess I wasn’t evil enough—I liked the “Cowsills” and “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.”

The first human I ate was the crossing guard at my Middle School. He would slap me on the butt with his stop & go paddle. Then, he’d stand there looking at me and licking his lips. That’s where I got the idea to eat him—from his lip-licking. I told him I wanted to learn how to direct traffic. He salivated heavily and told me we could practice in his driveway. I didn’t want to put him on guard, so I didn’t mention the fact that there was no traffic in his driveway. I played along. When we got there he gave me the paddle and pretended he was a car. He came running at me and tried to knock me down. I hit him hard over the head and knocked him out. Then, I stabbed him once in the heart with my trusty bayonet and dragged his dead body inside through the garage. He had a chainsaw hanging in the garage—I was jubilant. When we got to the kitchen I fired up the chainsaw & cut him into pieces. I sliced his buttocks into thick bacon and fried it up with some scrambled eggs. I made some toast soaked with butter and slathered with blackberry jam. I found some maple syrup in the refrigerator and poured some on the ham. I finished up and cleaned up except for the crossing guard. I left him on the kitchen floor and took off. I noticed the next day that we had a new crossing guard—a man—the crossing guard’s wife’s man-toy Mr. Ballzinger. His wife suspected nothing, but I had carved Mr. Ballzinger’s name with hearts around it on her husband’s forehead. It worked. The crossing guard’s wife was convicted of “death by dismemberment” and sentenced to 200 years in Mount Venus Women’s Prison.

Well, there you go—one example of my depravity. I had to give up eating people when I developed a liver problem. Now, I work as a crossing guard and follow a strict vegetarian diet.

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

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