Twisted

            Cheese. God knows why they say that when you’re going to take a picture of someone, God knows who managed to find a connection between smiling and cheese. Ah, because when you say ‘cheese’ your mouth widens into what could be called a smile. Basically, your teeth are showing. Chuck Palahnuik said in his novel, Invisible Monsters, “You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.” A smile is not real unless your eyes are smiling along. That is actually a very overdone cheesy statement, and yet the eyes say it all. When Dick is smiling with his distorted face and all, Perry tells him, "The eye doesn't matter. Because you have a wonderful smile. One of those smiles really work."  It’s kind of a romantic phrase, beautiful in its sentiment and yet false in its meaning. The eye does matter. The eye is everything. And maybe it’s just that Dick is somewhat lacking the insight, the neutral and rational perspective that comes with eyes. He’s acting because it has become a mechanism, a smile that shines for the camera, a smile with no meaning. It works. But it’s not real. I wonder if he even knows what his motives are, if they are real at all.

            Said lack of eyes, as you might call it, result in the murder of the Clutter family. I feel pity for the mom and the son and daughter. For some reason though, I can’t bring myself to feel that much pity for Mr. Clutter. Mrs. Ashida spoke with him once, and the narrator’s analysis resonated with me. “ ‘ Just nothing scares you,’ she said, commenting upon a generally recognized quality of Mr. Clutter's: a fearless self-assurance that set him apart, and while it created respect, also limited the affections of others a little. “ That’s exactly how I feel. There’s respect in there, it’s just that the cold and austere aura makes people withhold their curiosity and touch from fear of getting scalded by the burning ice. Who knows? Maybe he’s the finest man ever to grace the pages of a paperback novel and I don’t know it. Maybe he’s actually the epitome of Ghandi in Holcomb, Kansas. But, Ghandi or not, even when the descriptions of their deaths are said, I don’t feel anything.

            While Mr. Clutter sparks neutrality in me, Perry and Dick fascinate me. Everything they do is so quirky and unexpected. I think of how they do those things to murder people and think that everything they do is also pretty messed up. But in a very interesting way. What can I say? Murder is interesting. Humans actually have a morbid side of them that gets off on watching the twisted things in life. Sinister and horrible, it’s true. But that is what makes it fascinating and interesting. So here are my favorite characters (yes, the killers):

            “Dick had surrendered. While Perry waited in the car, he had gone into the hospital to try and buy a pair of black stockings   from a nun. This rather unorthodox method of obtaining them had been Perry's inspiration; nuns, he had argued, were certain to have a supply.  The notion presented one drawback, of course: nuns, and anything pertaining to them, were bad luck, and Perry was most respectful of his superstitions. (Some others were the number 15, red hair, white flowers, priests crossing a road, snakes appearing in a dream.)”

            Maybe just the fact that they are talking about nun’s, out of all people, stockings is what reverberates inside me. I fail to see why it is exactly that they have to get nun stockings and not the nearest Walmart stockings. In a way, it’s kind of blasphemous, using something from people so devoted to God to do something that is totally against God. Wearing nun’s stockings as masks to murder an entire family is just, wrong. Murdering an entire family is wrong, period, but they had to bring the nuns into this? How much profanity do these guys want to breathe into the atmosphere? And get this, nuns, as knowledgeable every person knows, are bad luck. Where they get this from is beyond me. If they had put other examples such as spilled salt and walking under a ladder, I might have understood. But they are so random that they plague me in wonderment. Just why, exactly, are they bad luck? Where do said superstitions come from, from other people or from their own experiences? That is what I want to know. I want to know so I can pave a way to understanding this people so much more.