5 Things You Wished You Said To the Police

1) “Have you read any Marcel Proust? I’ve only read halfway through In Search of Lost Time, so I feel like that’s a really big gap in my literary knowledge—Oh you wanted to know if I killed that guy? Yeah I did.”

2) “I don’t understand, are these handcuffs for the literature reference or because I was cutting a guy’s hea—Oh, it was cutting the guy’s head off thing? Sure. No. No. That makes more sense.”

3) “And are you putting me in jail because I put him on a jet ski and a Hawaiian shirt after I cut off his head, or because I was trying to ask you about Proust—No, again, you’re absolutely right. the whole desecrating his corpse sounds a lot worse in retrospect. Silly me.”

4) “And so, the reason you’re sentencing me to death, Your Honor… Is this kind of a culture war-type thing, where you really don’t think discussing high culture outside of academic contexts is appropriate, or is it the whole bringing the dead body into work for my boss’s birthday, planting him in a giant cake dressed as a stripper with pasties and a glittery bra, and then using an elaborate timed-spring mechanism to project him out through the cake onto my boss’s—Nope. Says right here it was the horrifying disrespect for a man’s remains. Absolutely. I completely agree with you. Now that I think about it that seems like the natural choice. Ah, putting the old handcuffs on me now. Sure. Sure. Absolutely deserve this. Horrific what I did. (laughs)”

5) “Just so we’re clear here, Mr. Executioner—Jerry, if you don’t mind me calling you that—are you not a fan of Proust’s modernist techniques? I mean, is that what this is all about? This whole electric chair bit. Because I understand if you aren’t. It’s like, we get it, Marcel. You have a lot of memories. Great. Do something with them. You don’t see Mark Twain getting his panties in a bunch for a hundred pages every time Tom Sawyer remembers how he painted the fence white. Ah, well. Not going to respond are you? Just going to stand there over by the switch asking me repeatedly if I have any final remarks.”

6) (A Bonus) “And the reason I’m not getting through those pearly gates…I’m guessing this is the murder thing, eh God—No? Proust you say? Son of a—!”