Category Archives: auxesis

Auxesis (ok-see’-sis): (1) Arranging words or clauses in a sequence of increasing force. In this sense, auxesis is comparable to climax and has sometimes been called incrementum. (2) A figure of speech in which something is referred to in terms disproportionately large (a kind of exaggeration or hyperbole). (3) Amplification in general.

I had a boil on my butt as big as a house, as big as Nebraska, as big as Donald Trump’s ego: the size of half a basketball, and that’s no exaggeration, buddy. That’s the stark blobbed-up truth. I was layin’ in bed and my wife said she felt some thin’ funny like a water balloon sloshin’ around on my rear end. When she squeezed it I about jumped through the ceiling with pain. It had sprouted during the night. It probably would’ve blown if I had slept on my back or tossed and turned. It would’ve blown and maybe drowned my wife. The thought disgusted me, but this was real life and I had to deal with it.

We had to go to the doctor, but I was afraid if I sat down in the car the boil would blow and soak the car seats with some kind of vile-smelling body fluid. So we walked. I put my butt in my wheelbarrow and my wife pushed me along. I had on a T-shirt with my underpants down around my knees. I made a little sign I held so people we passed would know what was going on: “Giant Boil on Hind-end. In transit.” It more or less worked, but the children we passed were still puzzled. When we went by a neighbor’s house, she was in the driveway and couldn’t miss us. She yelled “Bernie” and covered her eyes. Bernie came out with a baseball bat, but nothing happened. I yelled sarcastically, “Thank for understanding!” and we kept going. I was afraid I would blow at any minute.

When got to the doctor’s I hopped out of the wheelbarrow, went through the door and told the receptionist I had an appointment to be drained and pointed at my bulging butt. She gagged and told me to go wait in the corner by the examining room. Almost immediately, Dr. Dringle called me into the examining room. My pants were already down, so we went straight to the examination. “Holy shit! That’s the mother of all boils,” said an awe struck Dr. Dringle, “My office equipment can’t handle it. We’ll have to drain at the sewage treatment facility by the mall. You’ll lay on your stomach in the back of my pickup truck, and we’ll drive you there. We’ll have to stop and get a permit at Town Hall, but that’ll only take a few minutes.” I got in the back of the truck, and off we went. The person issuing permits came outside to measure my butt to make sure it met specifications for draining at the sewage treatment plant. My butt passed inspection and we headed for the plant. When we got there we were taken to a room with a giant bowl. It was filled with poop and it was being stirred by a giant mechanical spatula. “Brownies?” I quipped. The foreman gave me a dirty look and pointed at a contraption bolted to the side of the bowl. It looked like a child’s potty with an extra large hole in it and a ladder on the side. Dr. Dringle, now wearing an orange haz-mat suit and respirator, climbed down the ladder with a sharped knitting needle in his hand. He stabbed my boil with the knitting needle. The pus flooded out, and my butt deflated in under one minute.

It took two weeks for my butt to heal. I still have the loose skin on my butt where the boil used to be. It makes a slapping sound when I wiggle my hips naked. The boil changed my life. I have joined the Boilites. We meet every week and eat yogurt and make our skin slap to techno music.

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

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