Asteismus (as-te-is’-mus): Polite or genteel mockery. More specifically, a figure of reply in which the answerer catches a certain word and throws it back to the first speaker with an unexpected twist. Less frequently, a witty use of allegory or comparison, such as when a literal and an allegorical meaning are both implied.
He: What time is it?
She: I don’t know but I use it a lot in my cooking. Thyme and time.
He: You’re so damn witty, but I get tired of not getting straight answers to almost all of my questions.
She: I’ll try and curtail my crooked answers. Do you still want to go rock climbing? I found a new place to go out by the old coal mine.
He agreed. They got their equipment, threw it in the back of his truck and took off. It was a two-hour drive so they decided to stop for lunch. They saw a place and pulled over. It was called “Clacky’s Lunch.” It was pretty run down, but they didn’t care. Inside, it was decorated in a coal mining motif—pick axes and the walls, minecarts with plywood boards on top for tables, and miner’s lamps on the tables along with miner’s hard hats holding napkins and salt and pepper shakers.
A woman with coal dust her face poured our water and gave them their menus. She said, “Today’s special is the Mine Shafter sandwich —baloney and mustard on white, with chips and an iced tea for $12.00.”
He: We’re in a bit of a hurry, so, even though it seems a little expensive, we’ll take two of the specials.
They heard laughter in the kitchen.
When the waitress returned to the table she was carrying two plates of coal. She said: “Santa doesn’t like you. That’ll be $24.00. .”
He: What the hell is this bullshit?”
Five men came out of the kitchen carrying pickaxes. They looked ready to kill.
She: What did we do to make you so mad? Please don’t hurt us.
Man: Sorry, but this is what we do. We kill a customer every ten days and grind them up for burgers, meat sauce, meatballs, meatloaf and more. We’ll take you down to the mine and kill you and bring your bodies back up here for grinding. Come on, let’s go.
They were dragged fighting and kicking to the mine where they each took a pickaxe to the head. They were carried back up to the restaurant where they were dismembered, filleted and run through the meat grinder. Then, one of the men looked at the calendar hanging on the wall: “Jeez we’re one day off—today is only 9 days.”
The five of them laughed and continued taking turns washing their pickaxes off in the kitchen sink. They had been working as a team since high school when they killed their friends’ pets for fun. They really lucked out finding their waitress, a psycho killer they met at the bus station who was returning to town after 15 years in prison for “mutilating” her next door neighbor. Eating customers was her idea. It had increased their profit margin, and improved the quality of their lives. She could hardly wait for the next ten days to pass.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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