To kick things off again, here’s a piece of spam from ‘Pomainville Rebholz’ entitled ‘Bronzer’:
I turned it into a dialogue between a woman named Rebecca Holz and the narrator. Rebecca’s brother has recently been killed in a siege near a tribal village where he was doing missionary work. Rebecca receives a posthumous letter from him.
The Siege of Areaaaepdapl
“We may have come from different wombs,” Rebecca said. “Yet my half-brother and I had all the same portions,”
“Is that the letter he sent you from Pomainville before he died?” I asked, gesturing to the sheet of paper she was reading.
“Yes,” she said, a little sadly. “I wish he were still here. He was sent to the regions of Yama, by me. It was me who sent him!”
“Why?” I asked.
“He had knowledge,” Rebecca said. “And he was about to give it to them, according to the statement of his old schoolmate who was with him,”
“What else was in the statement?” I pressed.
Rebecca lowered her eyes. “He wrote that my brother’s Indiana friends disliked him,”
“Don’t take it to heart,” I said. “Many people speak of me as a bad man. But you will do me the honour of noticing my high standard of living,”
“Of course,” Rebecca conceded. “But conditions in Yama during the dull season were worse,”
“For the Bioemoaenojs tribe, yes,” I said, feeling terrible for Rebecca. She would live her life to the very end and never forgive herself for what had happened. I tried to make her understand, but she clung to the same point, and usually to the same words.
“But do not believe that you cannot succeed as consequence of unforeseen circumstances,” I told her. “You cannot control the courses of the world,”
“Indeed,” Rebecca sighed, folding her brother’s letter and slipping it back into the envelope. “All I have seen at each meal is his face,”
“Reb, please-“ I touched her arm but she pulled it away. Then, as if to soften her rebuke, she smiled at me.
“I like English people very much,” she said, and finally raised her eyes.
“The siege of Areaaaepdapl was an unfortunate tragedy,” I reminded her.
“A considerable tragedy!” she cried. “Which has all the elements of nature’s forces,”
“If his death had been about money, there would be a motive,” I said. “But the fact remains that it wasn’t,”
As I watched, Rebecca’s face changed. It looked as if she was conserving something. I began to wonder if, possibly, she was not, in fact, so unhappy.
