Consequences and Their Representations

I like how this passage builds the crescendo of exaggeration.


Fat Charlie was thirsty.

Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt.

Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurts to try and think, and his eyse were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails, and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of the air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead.


from Neil Gaiman Anansi Boys

Chapter Five In Which We Examine The Many Consequences of The Morning After

And so for day 603
07.08.2008