From: jmbay at leland.Stanford.EDU (Joseph Michael Bay)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
Subject: Re: Beable (was Re: Infomercials (was Re: Beable.))
Date: 27 May 1998 17:58:52 -0700
Message-ID: <6kicsc$fhc@amy4.Stanford.EDU>

kibo at world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) writes:

Also, a couple days ago at The Sharper Image I turned on all their "soothing" sound-effect generators -- you know, the ones that play the badly-synthesized heartbeat or white noise -- how is a heartbeat supposed to calm you down?

Dear Life In These United States:

I am a student at a large midwestern state college. After hearing that if your roommate commits suicide, you receive a 4.0 grade for the semester, I decided that this was the only way I could do well, or even pass! So I endeavored to slay the wretch in his sleep.

As he lay there in the darkness, I stood staring at him for what seemed like an eternity. He stared back with a single unseeing eye, the eye that had so disturbed and infuriated me for months. Soon, I thought, that clouded, unblinking eye would be shut forever. I crept closer to him, closer, a coil of strong rope in my hands, planning to throttle him with it, hang him from the ceiling, and leave a scrawled "suicide" note which I would "discover" later upon my "return".

As I approached, going over the plan in my mind, I was aware of his heartbeat in the nearly silenced room. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. It seemed to be mocking me, flaunting his vitality, his unwholesome beer-swilling filth-covered miasmal vigor. It annoyed me, then frightened me, then enraged me, and I focused my will on the single hideous act I was about to perform. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

I was nearly upon him, and so intense was my concentration on his vile, vulnerable throat that I did not notice that his good eye, moments ago closed in sleep, was open, shining in the light from the street, and looking directly at me!

"What do you want?" he asked. He was barely awake, and probably more than half drunk. Even from here I could smell his foul breath, reeking with cheap beer and buffalo wings. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

"I was just checking on you," I replied. "You seemed kind of sick, I thought".

He seemed to accept this explanation, but I did then perceive the faintest quickening in his heartbeat. Or perhaps I imagined it. Tha- thump, tha-thump, tha-thump. Did he know? Would he cry out? It was too late to be concerned with such things, though; the die had been cast. Even as he looked at the rope in my hands, I was on him like a madman, forcing the rope around his throat. I pressed his pillow over his face, not so much to muffle his cries of fear and rage as to protect myself from his reeking breath. Despite his dissolute lifestyle and current state, he fought like a demon, thrashing and clawing for his life. THA-THUMP THA-THUMP THA-THUMP THA-THUMP THA-THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP.

Silence.

I had done it. He was no more. But in the struggle, we had both been covered in deep, violent gashes, bruises, and similar signs of violence. My plan of faking his suicide had failed, utterly, and my only hope of escaping castigation was to hide the evidence, that is, the lifeless corpse of what had been my roommate. To this end, I rummaged through his collection of ill-gotten gains, his drug laboratory cobbled together from stolen chemistry lab equipment. In time I found the object of my search: lime, the strong caustic liquor which would erase the evidence of my failure. I would simply fill the bathtub, which was in need of cleaning, with lime, and then place his body into it. By the time his absence was noticed (not from class, of course, but possibly from the bars and drunken fraternity revels where he was so much in evidence) there would be nothing left of him at all.

Immediately I set about dragging the body into the bathroom, no easy task as this man who had been so indolent in life had become, in death, a greater burden upon me. As I dragged him by his shoulders across his bedroom, I was aware of a sound which at first seemed strange, then terrified me. It was the sound of a beating heart, very faint. tha-thump. tha-thump. tha-thump.

I knew him for dead, yet could not explain the source of that horrid sound. Quickly I checked my own pulse; it was racing with exertion and fear, but it was not the sound I heard. It was not from outside our squalid dormitory, either -- in fact, I knew it to be the same accursed beating I had heard in my deceased roommate's final minutes. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

Ignoring this as best I could, not knowing what to make of it, I continued dragging the corpse to the bathroom, that single clouded eye still staring at me, full of hate and accusation. Finally reaching my goal, I discovered to my dismay that the bathing-tub was not big enough to fit a human figure.

A whole human figure, in any case.

I had already committed that most atrocious of acts, and was now, will I or nill I, fully committed to concealing the evidence. My plan to receive perfect grades had failed, but I would not allow myself to be consigned to a damned gaol for the rest of my days. So it was with great revulsion that I searched once more through the closets, finally finding a hacksaw. I disrobed and donned a disposable lab jacket which hung in the closet, as I knew the job ahead of me was a bloody one.

Long I worked at my gruesome task, and on several occasions, overcome with nausea, I nearly emptied my stomach in the toilet. But finally it was over, and the lime treatment could be performed. And yet, though I could now with mine own eyes see that the terrible heart of the heap of offal in my bathtub was stilled, still I could hear that awful, accusing heartbeat. Tha-thump. Tha-Thump. Tha-THUMP. Louder, ever louder, until it filled my hearing, my entire awareness, so that I could hear nothing else.

I staggered back to the closet, managing to retrieve what I thought a sufficient quantity of lime. My eyes stung and my nostrils burned as I dumped the caustic substance onto my grisly project, and yet all my senses were overwhelmed by the insistent, horrid beat of that malevolent heart: THA THUMP THA THUMP THA THUMP. It was all I could hear, not the sound of flesh dissolving, nor of hands pounding against tile, nor of my own crazed screams, the heart! the heart! the heart! murderer! THA THUMP THA THUMPTHATHUMPTHATHUMPTHATHUMP!

Then I realized it was his "soothing sound effect generator" from The Sharper Image. I turned it off and while the quicklime did its ghastly task, I went back to reading Ways of Seeing. After all, I had to work for my grades this semester!

Needless to say, I got an "A" in Exposition and Argument!

-- 
Joe Bay                 Leland Stanford Junior University
Forensic Botany Laboratory, Stanford Department of Biology
Putting the "harm" in "Molecular Pharmacology" since 1998
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."