(Source: The Natural Trajectory of Human Consciousness)
After pushing the knife into the man’s chest, she stood back to watch. Blood had started to flow out, but it did so slowly. It looked like blood, but the texture was suspect. It was as though it was not a fluid but a piece of red cloth rolling out of his bare chest.
She was surprised by how quickly the man had wilted. He was only a middle-aged man. Maybe thirty-five, forty. Physically able. So she had expected a fight. She had thought that her only advantage was stealth. But it turned out to be a lot easier. It seemed as soon as the blade entered his flesh, all his strength simply left him. Was it a shock that did him in? He was like a balloon after a pinprick, reduced to little more than a pile of crumpled skin. He didn’t even push back at her much. His eyes … she did not see his eyes because she did not want to.
* *
She stared at the blood stain without comprehension. It seemed to have grown from no more than the size of a coin to covering now nearly all of the left side of her shirt. She had thought that the blood was his at first. She could see a small bruise just under her left nipple as she ran a finger over it. There was no break in the skin. No, she said to herself, the blood was not hers either. So why did the stain keep getting bigger? She peeled the shirt off and tried to wash it off in the bathroom sink. Then, she washed her hands and arms and did not stop until her head was immersed in the water.
* *
The man was not particularly loathsome. She hadn’t wanted him to be that, at any rate. It would have made it right, maybe even logical if he was, and she wouldn’t want that. She was at war with reason, so being logical would not do.
Reason was the cause of most of her troubles—of that, she had little doubt. To her, it was no more elegant than a stack of drawers.
Yes, drawers.
Reason was what people have built to hide their fears. But what poor drawers they were. They could never quite put their fears completely away. There were always unsightly pieces sticking out from the edges. But they would have to do. They were all that people had to work with.
And was it not by way of reason that the others had come to judge her and deprive her of what was hers? It was their weapon of choice, which they had never been shy to wield around her.
Fear was the mother of reason, not love of knowledge, curiosity, or any of those fine things.
Even as a young woman, she knew that our ability to reason paled against our appetites. Desires drove everyone. Reason was just a front, window dressing.
There was, of course, nothing wrong with fears per se. Fearful people were not loathsome to her; only reasonable people were.
And by being inoffensive and pleasant, was the john not playing a mind game with her? Was he not trying to involve her in some sort of reciprocity? (As in, “I am nice to you, so you be nice to me.” Or “Here is a little something for your trouble.”) And was that not at the heart of all poisons, this reciprocity? Was it not well deserving of punishment?
Standing outside the washroom, her soaked clothes sticking to her like a second skin, she held her breath and listened.
It had gone quiet.
The cacophony of their voices in her head—all of their voices—had finally stopped.
But for how long?
Her story was not uncommon. A broken family. No real parents to speak of. A neglected girl who acted out. But more so than most, she had been further cursed by intelligence. And against the council of her aunts, she had courted trouble, couched her rebellion in terms she had been too young to comprehend fully. She fell easily into prostitution. First with the neighborhood boys, then with older men. Was there ever a correct path to begin a downward spiral?
They apologized to her when they took her baby away. It was something that she still could not forgive them for. She would have much preferred they’d said nothing to her. What was the point of their pity? “But you are only seventeen,” they had said. Was it her age then? Were they sorry for her for being a certain age? What was so pitiful about being seventeen? But you are only seventeen …
Those five little words were like five little cancers, five little tombstones.
Did it all change when she slipped that blade into him?
All was quiet as though none of the people had ever existed, as though all human speech had been gathered up and burned.
She felt warmed by the moonlight filtering in through the blinds.
There were two drops of blood sitting serenely on the steel.
* *
She did not know how it had come about. She was staring at the blood one second, then the next, she was outside of herself. And it was nothing less than revelatory, given her new vantage point, having been elevated to a corner of the room five or six feet off the floor.
She realized she had become the observer as she floated by the bed. Not only was she watching herself, but she was also reading her thoughts. If the elevated self was the real Suen, then who was the woman looking intently at the two drops of blood?
She looked over her shoulder to see if she was being observed in turn. Could a sort of infinite regress be in play here? A chain of Suens, as it were, each watching the woman in front of her in her line of vision?
It was while she was musing about this that she saw the rabbit.
How was it possible that there was now a man-size furry rabbit in the room where there had been none previously? Was it a real rabbit or someone dressed up as one?
After the initial shock, she quickly settled back into her reverie. The truth was, she wasn’t too bothered by the furry rabbit. It was there, but it was not. Not really. It was just someone dreaming about being a rabbit—an entity from outside the usual time and space. And it wasn’t really watching her. It was just a dream that someone was having. Unlike in wakefulness, there was little or no judgment. There was nothing of lasting value here unless you listened to what it was saying.
The rabbit said, “You can’t kill him. He is an egoless man.”
The rabbit's voice sounded like he was speaking from inside a tunnel.
“He got out of a collapsed mine once. Walked away from a nine-car pileup. Not likely that your little act of killing is going to put an end to him.”
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