Acervatio (ak-er-va’-ti-o): Latin term Quintilian employs for both asyndeton (acervatio dissoluta: a loose heap) and polysyndeton (acervatio iuncta:a conjoined heap).
Time, lawyers, karma, dead bluebirds, and rain, and revenge, and treble clefs, and fake Botox. I was out on a ledge holding on with my fingernails, ready to plunge to the end. The end, fini, smoosh. I had so many problems, this was probably the best thing that could happen to me. It seemed wherever I went bad things followed me—beyond my control and beyond my dreams. In fact, I didn’t have dreams, either as waking hopes, or nighttime hallucinations. When I slept it was like I was dead, and during the day, my hopes and dreams had been trampled. It was over a decade ago that they were flattened like a cheese pizza. I never recovered. I still love her. They call my continuing interest “harassment”—if love is harassment, so be it. I disguise myself with Halloween costumes so she won’t recognize me when I follow her—what I call “Taking a walk together.”
Yesterday I dressed up as John Wayne, the famous movie actor. We ended up at a restaurant where she was having lunch with her lawyer. If all goes well, he’ll mysteriously disappear like the last four. I invite them to meet me for a consultation down by the river. Then, I shoot them and roll them in. It’s a wonder that nobody suspects me, especially since their bodies have surfaced downriver and they were working with my former girlfriend to have me jailed for leaving dead bluebirds on her porch, sawing up her piano with a chainsaw, and sabotaging her Botox treatment with maple syrup.
But, related to the disguise, I follow the rules of “Stealth Interdiction” that I learned in CIA school advanced coursework in preparation for a clandestine mission in Mexico. My job was the destruction of piñata factories throughout the country. I was the leader of a group of malcontents of German ancestry who wanted to “Rip the heart out of Hispanic traditions” and make Mexico great again. They believed that piñatas are the most effective instruments for the advancement of Hispanic culture, eclipsing Teutonic culture—cancelling out lederhosen, oompah bands, precision marching, etc.
We burned down four piñata factories before I was extracted on a bus to Tijuana, where I crossed the border back into the United States. I had hidden a captured piñata modeled after Donald Trump in my luggage. It was discovered by customs. They reported me and I was fired for “Possessing an effigy insulting to the shining light of our revered leader.” I was sentenced to one month in prison. That’s where I met my girlfriend. She was a volunteer with the “Conjugal Visit Corps” an organization providing “relief” to nonviolent prisoners. We bonded in the trailer for our one-hour together. We stayed in touch.
When I got out of prison, everything went wrong. We moved in together. She wouldn’t cook, clean house, wash the car, change lightbulbs, do the laundry, or mow the lawn. She was a loser, and her refusal to treat me like a man stoked my ire to an inferno. I left her and started harassing her, pursuing a path of righteous retribution for the sake of my broken soul and wrongly wronged men everywhere.
My next harassment gambit will be stealing tomatoes from her stupid little garden.
POSTSCRIT
He let go of the ledge. It was a five foot drop to the ground. He sprained his ankle. He called her and begged her to help him while he recovered. She agreed on one condition that she could beat him over the head with a baseball bat. He agreed on the condition that she use a whiffle ball bat. She shot him five times instead.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.
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