The Daily Trope

Eutrepismus (eu-tre-pis’-mus): Numbering and ordering the parts under consideration. A figure of division, and of ordering.

I had reached the bottom. I had gone crazy for dividing things—wholes and parts. I was sitting in bed trying to no avail to tear pieces of paper into tree equal parts. I couldn’t do it. My parts were not equal. Then, I realized that parts didn’t need to be equal! You just need three of them. Further, I discovered that making wholes into parts could have utility—it wasn’t just a game. For example, I could use them to “narrow down” options. That is, I have a stack of three slices of baloney. Which slice should I eat? First, not the one on the bottom. It is probably dirty from being on the bottom. Second, not the one in the middle because it made direct contact with the one on the bottom—the dirty one. So, what’s left? Third, the top slice. Now, you made a choice by numbering the slices. You have “sliced” through the thicket of uncertainty. Get the bread and mustard! You’ve got a sandwich on the way—with three parts—want to add a slice of American cheese? Woo hoo! Now you have four parts. Lettuce? Five parts! You’re on a roll. Now, take a bite!

I first became acquainted with parts and wholes when I tore the arms, legs, and head off my sister’s Shirley Temple doll, leaving the trunk as just this flesh colored thing with a belly button. My sister was upset and angry, beating me over the head with one of Shirley’s arms. When I put Shirley’s arms and legs back on, I put them on backwards. My sister went berserk and beat me over the head with Shirley and then put her back together correctly. By the way, my sister become a chiropractor. I think the Shirley incident was her inspiration. Shirley is displayed in a glass showcase in her office.

I know it influenced my career path. I started cutting things in half. Like peaches, or calves liver. There was something about the feel of the blade as it moved through victims—what I called the meat and fruit and vegetables I sliced apart. My high school guidance counselor advised me to get a job in a slaughter house. It was a perfect job for me. Every time a made a whole into parts, I heard my destiny calling me. I loved dismembering cows. They reminded me of Shirley—and I did not have put them back together again. I transformed cow carcasses into cuts of meat that people would enjoy eating for dinner, or a family gathering.

Soon, I started seeing people as cuts of meat. I couldn’t help it. They were everywhere—in the streets, on the subway, at the grocery store, everywhere. They needed to be made into parts if they were to achieve their end. If they stayed whole they would thwart the “Divine Plan: to go gently at the joints—find your natural divisions.”

I made this up to justify becoming a serial killer specializing in dismemberment. I would dress up in my butcher coat and prowl the back streets for victims. I was called the “Midnight Butcher.” I killed my victims at midnight because it was halfway through the night. I used a captive bolt stunning gun—the kind we used to kill cows—to kill my victims. I would wheel them to my home in the shopping cart I stole from Hannaford’s. I would pose them in the cart so they looked like they were having fun as I wheeled them along the sidewalk.

When I got home, I dragged them down the basement stairs to help them reach their destiny. I got caught when my sister came for a surprise visit. We were having baloney sandwiches and orange juice for lunch in the kitchen. She notice a blood trail across the kitchen floor leading to the basement door. She jumped out of her chair and ran down into the basement where she screamed and called the police on her cellphone.

After that, everything happened really fast—I was arrested, tried and convicted of 11 murders. I am incarcerated in the “Nelson Rockefeller Home for the Criminally Insane.” I continue to work on my part-whole theory and hope, at some point, to be vindicated. I have been provided with a Shirley Temple Doll. My psychologist believes that dismembering it every day is therapeutic. I would rather dismember her.

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

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