Descriptive - Blog Posts

Creative writing inspired by this painting ^^ __________________________________

The creature was beautiful. The way it flew around the mountain tops was more majestic than anything the explorer had ever seen It’s pearl white scales seemed to shimmer in the moon light, and the stars were reflected clearly in its violet eyes, a feat that was visible even from the ground. The sight was mesmerising. The creature flew around the mountain tops looking like it hadn’t a care in the world, so unlike the people back at his home village. If it wasn’t for those people, the traveller wouldn’t have found this marvellous thing. Before, there had been no knowledge of this beast, but then one day, when the traveller was about ten years of age, a rumour spread about this beast with sapphire eyes, massive claws that could rip you to shreds in one blow, and a beast that could breathe blue fire. Those rumours spread quickly, but the traveller knew that the description was false, and so he set his life to find this creature, and now that he had, he knew that the rumours were false, and that this beast was one of cruelty and not one of cruelty. Oh, how he wished to go back and tell them how wrong they had been. But now, as he stood at the bottom of one of the mountains, the beast clashed eyes with him, and he knew he was ready to go to the next life. Maybe there will be more adventures awaiting me there, he thought as he laid down and floated into oblivion, content with how his life had turned out.

The body was torn apart.

When someone says, “The body was torn apart”, I think of an animal. A wild animal, maybe a wolf or even a bear, biting, using its fangs, clawing at a body until it is unrecognisable. Until there is nothing left but a bloody mess, an open chest, flesh hanging loosely from bones. Fingers, or entire hands or arms missing and later found in a bush, half-buried, half-eaten.

When someone says, “The body was torn apart”, I think of a grenade. A pulled trigger, maybe from an enemy across the border, hitting the ground in a trench, and blowing the entire thing up. And there is nothing left but a few bloody remains of the uniform, or just about the last parts of the body if the person was standing enough far away.

When someone says, “The body was torn apart”, I think of a maniac. A knife, maybe from the house’s kitchen, maybe from the nearest butcher, stabbing a person until their breathing fails. Until the ribs are broken, the chest covered in cuts and bruises, sometimes even entire fingers or ears cut off and thrown across the room, creating small puddles of blood.

When someone says, “The body was torn apart”, I do not think of this.

But this is so much crueller, so much more horrifying than anything I listed above.

There are no scraps of skin or flesh lying around, no pool of blood around the body. There is nothing to indicate anything remotely close to an explosion, no reason why there should be. There is no knife, no brutal mess around the person.

I have a reason to believe, though, that we will find a severed arm later.

The body was torn apart in clean, fresh cuts. And in several ways, this is better than the cruel methods listed above.

But whatever—whoever—tore this person apart was no animal, no hand grenade, no maniac. Whoever tore this person apart was thinking clearly. They knew what they were doing when setting clean cuts into the skin, slowly pulling it off the muscle fibre. They knew what they were doing when cutting open the ribcage with bone scissors, twisting the ribs around to face the outside of the body. They knew what they were doing when emptying the chest, taking out one organ after the other, cleaning it, and setting it back inside.

And in so many ways, that is a lot more unsettling than an animal or a grenade or a maniac.