Deborah
ENGL 3850-02N
Supernatural Lit
Dr. Coats
26 March, 1998
"Slip-Slidin' Away"
Do I have a knack for Addams-esque titles, or what? I fear that my creativity will be drained after this class. At any rate- To Battle! This poor sweet, hypochondriac only wants to be helped and what does hi doctor do? He chases him off with indifference. As we all know, if a character is met with indifference time and again, he will either grow up to be Lord Mayor of London or meet with a grisly end at the hands of the first person who gives him some attention. Unfortunately, this is a case of the latter. Nasty business.
This guy has come to a form of enlightenment- we are two entities sharing the same piece of space. We must learn to coexist, skeleton and flesh, if we are to remain sane. Kind of like that microorganism inside the termite... you know, the one that actually digests the cellulose of the wood for the termite? Anyway, Mr. Harris can't quite face his two halves to become whole for very long. He can do it in small amounts, but sooner or later, they are at odds again. The one scene I found particularly hysterical was when the skeleton and flesh fought and Mr. Harris' car ran off the road into the desert. Can you hear it? "If you two don't knock it off in there, I'm pulling the car over and coming back there!" The flesh and bone are like two pugilistic siblings! They cause nothing but trouble- the bones are always trying to stick out of the flesh, and the flesh is always trying to reassert control by covering the bones.
Harris is at his wit's end. He has to choose which side to placate. Unfortunately, he sides with the flesh. He goes to the bone man (odd visions worthy of Tim Burton float through my head at this point) to have it dealt with, once and for all. Odd thing about bones. You rarely notice them when you have them, but miss them an awful lot when they're gone.