He lunges at me. Without thinking, I grab it–the knife Bron gave me. I pull it from my pocket. His hands are around my throat, and he is saying something, his hot, stinking breath in my ear. Then his hand moves, reaching for my head, to grab it and twist it and end my life.
I plunge the knife in one, two, three, four times. I fall to the floor. He is on top of me, his hands pressing harder, harder. I am blacking out. I push against him, flailing like a fish, impotent, slippery.
I’m free.
I flop away. And I breathe, just breathe. Again and again. I soak in the pain of my esophagus, savoring the spike of life. And I breathe. Forever.
The candles are low when I am conscious again of my surroundings. I sit up. My hands are sticky with blood. In the deep shadows I see him, faceless, a disfigured form. I crawl to him. I place my fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing.
I begin to breathe yet again.
The knife is still in his chest. The knife I held.
I turn away and retch.
I try to stand, but I am too weak. I close my eyes and breathe. It is coming quicker, quicker, like water pressuring its way through a crack. I force myself to inhale deeply, to exhale purposefully. I control myself.
I stand. I waver, but I stand. I unlock the door and open it. The stairwell is dark. Voices drift up from below.
I step out and shut the door behind me. Grasping the handrail tight, I descend.
I reach the ground and join the night.
* * *
Lanterns hang in windows. Crowds gather around bars and eateries. I move away from the light, from the people. I am driven into the darkness that lies outside this section of town, into a wasteland of rubble and wreckage. The smell is rot and decay. Featureless forms scurry in the distance like mice.
I keep walking, keep pushing, thoughtlessly, an animal driven by fear and self-preservation.
In a barren square, where dogs cross looking for food, I stop. I choose the building across the way. It is short and old-fashioned, a relic from some year past. It reminds me of my Section.
I am blind in the dark. I stumble, searching for a corner. I bang my shin and curse. I kick the object with my artificial leg again and again before I move forward. I find the back wall, follow it to the corner. There is carpet. I lie down.
Slowly, my thoughts bubble up from the depths.
I have killed a man. That comes first, and with it, relief. Deep, cool, sweet relief.
Next: I have killed a man.
It was my right. It was just and good. (I am using religious words; it is necessary, at the moment, to do so.)
Then, third: I have killed a man. And I took pleasure in it.
With my hand and my strength, I overcame. I can still feel the resistance as the knife entered flesh. I remember it more strongly now than when it happened. My muscles seem to retain the memory and I let my arm extend and pull back, slowly, two, three, four times. I slow as the knife enters, let it linger there in the flesh. It hurts my own chest, somehow; I imagine the knife entering between my ribs, delicately.
I tremble, the convulsion running through my entire body.
And, finally, to the beginning again: I have killed a man. I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
…and…?
I cling to the memory of the struggle, to that instinctive desire to survive. I walk myself back through the night, arm in arm with Malik, balancing on the razor’s edge. I sink my teeth into the pulp of that experience, trying to suck out that meaning I found in the simple desire to be.
Reliving the memory is full of shadow and pain and the heavy hand of Death. Still, I try, how I try, sick to my stomach with the effort. the memory is corpulent and rancid and throbbing, like a bloated heart in a box, spewing the black bile of someone else’s life. If I am to live, I cannot begin with his murder. That is not rebirth. It is merely a temporary escape, a few minutes reprieve, a second-hand pulse.
And if I cannot begin again, if I cannot be reborn, I cannot forget–Nyasha’s voice beneath the rubble. The empty well, staring at me. Bron, in the depth of night, claiming me as his own to watch and keep. My arm, my leg, eaten.
Bit by bit, I am being whittled away.
I begin to cry. I feel the tears on my cheeks before I feel the emotion. The drops of salt water slide down my skin, stop, gather strength, and continue. And once I notice them, once I realize that the pain is escaping, the emotion is fully realized. Tears stream down my cheeks. I weep. My chest hurts as it heaves, unable to put into words the deep agony within. I weep and I weep, and I groan, hoping somehow to relieve the pressure in my soul. But it keeps growing. My fingers grasp the threads of the carpet. I am giving birth–that is what it must be. But I have nothing to birth, no life to give, just a virgin womb and a shriveled soul. Just emptiness rising up out of me, forcing its way out, freezing my veins and choking my spirit. I curl into myself, trying to stop it, trying to keep myself from drifting away, but it doesn’t help. The carpet is soaked beneath my face, and I will drown, I will drown, unable to catch my breath, unable even to control my own body.
I weep and I weep and I weep.
I don’t try to understand. I don’t want to understand. I just want to feel happy again.
* * *
It ends. It passes away. And I am nothing but a body. And a wound.
I lie there as if dead. I feel the wound closing. It isn’t healing, but it is closing.
It’s my heart, and bit by bit, I let it turn to stone.
* * *
The night passes. Morning comes. The dim world catches fire and light streams in the broken building.
I have not slept. I refuse to wake. I exist. The light shifts and changes. Scuffling and half-heard voices and barks and distant booms hover uncertainly around me.
There is still a whisper within that urges me to stand and look around, to explore, to move forward, and another, fearful, whisper that hesitantly suggests I return to the Library to find Bron. The last is easily quieted and the first puts up only a little resistance.
The stomach rumbles quietly, like the cars that once traveled the streets of Jalseion. I let it rumble until it fails. With great heaviness, I rise to relieve myself, and return to my previous position.
The light shifts and changes. It grows old, falls ill, and passes away. Darkness.
I avoid the old story trope of drawing my mark on the wall, but I record it all the same, in my head.
One day down.
One day of a lifetime sentence.
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