The Knife

One minute, an action of exquisite tenderness that he can see reduces her to essence. And in that reduction, he realises that he has taken a step too far. He has crossed a boundary, taken ground to which he has no right. So the next minute (it really is that fast), he withdraws and enjoys the confusion; the exquisite pain he sees her feel. Ecstasy of either kind is beautiful to witness. Pain is the thing he likes best, though. There’s something about it. The way it flashes in the eyes, across the face. The wince, the frown, ever so slight as the brain tries to understand.

Filling her head with nonsense; Lewis Carroll inventing Alice for Alice’s own amusement. He sends this Alice down another rabbit hole. He doesn’t want her the way she thinks she likes. Not now. Perhaps not ever. And yet, it seems that he can’t quite leave this scene. There are things about it that draw him, even after the regret of involvement. There are things about it that he likes. Good things. Not just watching the effects, the almost sadistic pleasure of witnessing how a word can be taken the wrong way. How withdrawal into the banal minutiae of life can flummox and even cause anger.

She floats above it, unable to stop herself. She regrets and wishes she had never – Never what, though? Beguiled herself with the sense of falling? She has been here before and knows how the play unfolds, how each scene leads into the next. A different director, but the sense of the story, the nonsense of its plot, remains the same. She regrets and wishes, and at the same time she is glad. Glad to have felt. Not the things she felt for him. Gauche infatuation is her most comfortable role, the one she believes the most. She is glad to have felt the reflection of what he seemed to feel, against her skin, upon her face; the errant thud of its arrival inside her mind. A novelty. She knows. She understands the machinations of it. The trick of disguising disinterest as acceptance. And now the point where the flood of need and neglect makes disinterest put down its mask; too bored with the predictability to carry on the charade. Never accepted, merely tolerated, for a purpose she cannot hope to understand. Still. The novelty of that feeling of being interesting, of being accepted. She is glad that she experienced that, however false its source.

When still caught in the crucible of obsession; when still dancing with the notion of loving and being loved; when all that her head knew was wrong was suddenly revealed, she had thought that her heart was breaking. Silly child, wrapped up in the notions of romance, and girls cast out of towers ending blindness with their tears. No rational being feels gratitude for such a feeling. No sane person wants to be smothered by the self-indulgent reveal. “What’s my line?” Miming her essence for him to guess, and he is fascinated briefly by the pantomime.

Words that sound right in the moment, in the role he is performing. Words that have consequences; action and reaction. And maybe there is some feeling there, some sense that this game might hurt and isn’t just entertainment.

Maybe she hopes for too much, in thinking that his withdrawal is out of concern for her and the damage his play might be causing. No maybe about it. She hopes for too much. This retreat, this arms’ length farewell is self-interest in action. No desire to feel bad about the results of his actions. No wish to play any more. So he stops, and she sees. Every word that he said was simply what he thought was appropriate at the time. A lie, then? Or just a string of pearls without lustre? Fakes, when examined closely. Synthetic.

She feels ashamed that she let herself believe her own lies again. That she listened to that schoolgirl voice again. And all the while she was telling herself that this was no different to the last time. That here was another one who didn’t engage, but who feigned engagement through a flattery of questions and ambiguities that she felt free to interpret to her own enchantment.

The spell is hers, the ingredients brought by him. The breaking of the spell is hers also. She knows what she must do.

And so she takes the knife and plunges it deep into the chest, into the heart. She pushes the blade as far and as deep as it will go. The seep of life from all of this will become a fatal flow, a death rattle, the moment she removes the blade.

His hand is over hers, on the handle of the knife, helping her to push it in. They both smile in the grimace of death, mirrors of each other as always.

Remove the knife. Let blackness follow.

There are colours that inspire her; colours that frighten. She feels the press of his hand over hers and all the colours that bloom in her mind are like a thousand thousand pin pricks of hope and fear. His hand has given tenderness, has gripped her own in a different way to this. It could again, if it weren’t gripping now in the moment of death.

Remove the knife. Hear the gurgle of life leaving what this has become.

She is transported in the moments that follow; carried away to a place where all her thoughts are of how it could have been. They say that your life flashes before your eyes in the fractions of time it takes to die. All those electrical impulses charging simultaneously over synapses long neglected. All those infinite recordings of the minutes and seconds that make up a life. The imperceptible unfolding of a bud on a tree. The million beats of a fly’s wings in each second it is airborne. The size of your dad’s hand holding yours when you are small. The size of your beloved’s hand over yours, promising safety, promising freedom from all harm. The downy blonde hairs at the tops of your arms, bleached by the summer sun. The structure of a snowflake the first time you see it.

Things locked in memory that die at the moment you die.

He removes the knife. Her hand goes with his. No more moments to record. The passage of time has ended.

© J R Hargreaves May 2006