explain. …”
She lunged at me, swinging the cutting board like a shield. I tried to sidestep her, but she knocked me to the floor and held me down with her knee on my neck. “Make another move and I’ll slit your goddamn throat,” she said.
“Luce,” I pleaded. “Please, Luce, I’m so fucking sorry, Luce, please don’t!”
She gripped my wrist and grabbed the knife. I turned my head so that I didn’t have to watch what she was about to do. I knew it had to be done, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to hurt like hell.
The agony was almost euphoric. She stroked the blade down my flesh like she was peeling an apple. There was a scream that wasn’t my own, an unbearable heat, and then a warm wetness. I opened my eyes to see her tearing strips from her blue striped oxford, the one she bought while we were out together. “Thank you,” I murmured as blackness closed in around the edge of my vision.
“Shut up,” she said. “Keep your arm elevated. I’ll call an ambulance.”
I was surprised to see Luce waiting by my bed when I woke up in the hospital. The first words out of my mouth were another apology, then five more just in case the morphine muddled up the first one. She didn’t say anything, just turned over my bandaged wrist, her fingers in my palm, almost like we were holding hands. “Told the docs you got a bad batch of pills,” she said. “Said you thought you were possessed, tried to carve the demon out of your skin. Figured it was as close to the truth as they were able to handle without locking you up in the padded cell next to Steve.”
She had wrapped a scarf around her neck, but I could still see the edges of the bruises my hands left on her throat. “Did it work?” I said. “Did you get it out?”
She slid two fingers up under my bandage. It hurt, but nothing changed. “Guess so,” she said. “Sorry it had to be so violent. You’ll have a pretty nasty scar. They had to do synthetic skin grafts, like the kind of skin they put on the sex-bots to make them feel real. You lost a lot of blood.”
So they were real. “Maybe I’ll get a tattoo to cover it,” I joked, suddenly fully aware of just how thick and wonderful the morphine haze was. “Maybe a kanji that says ‘Dragon.’ For real this time.”
She let me have a little smile that felt like déjà vu. I fell asleep again. Doctors came and went and I woke to someone changing my bandages. Where my tattoo had been, Luce had drawn a little rabbit in sharpie marker. I grinned. “That’s my next tattoo,” I said to the nurse. “My friend drew it for me. I’m going to get it inked as soon as I get out of here.”
“It’s very nice,” she said.
I held it up to get a closer look, touching the fake skin that almost felt real. The rabbit was crudely drawn, one eye bigger than the other, one ear slightly crooked. But there was something so fucking sweet about the clumsiness of the doodle, like something scrawled in a yearbook, a passed note, the cover of a mix CD.
Then the little bastard winked at me.
The Japanese know the right way to do everything.
That’s what they say, anyway, “they” being the Japanese. So take whatever “they” say with a pinch of wasabi.
Still, you’d struggle to find another people more dedicated to writing the manual of life. There are rules for preparing tea, slurping noodles, disciplining your kids and ignoring your elderly relatives. You look hard enough, you’ll soon know how to breathe, shit, think, and even—when your tolerance for ironclad “advice” has hit critical mass—how to end it all. Because there’s no whiff of brimstone here, no familial shame—as long as you do it the correct way, the Japanese are all about you killing yourself.
So what is the correct way? Survey says seppuku ? Nuh-uh. Ritual disembowelment, as pretty as it is to see the steam rising from your newly emancipated guts in the morning air, is too nineteenth century for modern Japan, unless you
She lunged at me, swinging the cutting board like a shield. I tried to sidestep her, but she knocked me to the floor and held me down with her knee on my neck. “Make another move and I’ll slit your goddamn throat,” she said.
“Luce,” I pleaded. “Please, Luce, I’m so fucking sorry, Luce, please don’t!”
She gripped my wrist and grabbed the knife. I turned my head so that I didn’t have to watch what she was about to do. I knew it had to be done, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to hurt like hell.
The agony was almost euphoric. She stroked the blade down my flesh like she was peeling an apple. There was a scream that wasn’t my own, an unbearable heat, and then a warm wetness. I opened my eyes to see her tearing strips from her blue striped oxford, the one she bought while we were out together. “Thank you,” I murmured as blackness closed in around the edge of my vision.
“Shut up,” she said. “Keep your arm elevated. I’ll call an ambulance.”
I was surprised to see Luce waiting by my bed when I woke up in the hospital. The first words out of my mouth were another apology, then five more just in case the morphine muddled up the first one. She didn’t say anything, just turned over my bandaged wrist, her fingers in my palm, almost like we were holding hands. “Told the docs you got a bad batch of pills,” she said. “Said you thought you were possessed, tried to carve the demon out of your skin. Figured it was as close to the truth as they were able to handle without locking you up in the padded cell next to Steve.”
She had wrapped a scarf around her neck, but I could still see the edges of the bruises my hands left on her throat. “Did it work?” I said. “Did you get it out?”
She slid two fingers up under my bandage. It hurt, but nothing changed. “Guess so,” she said. “Sorry it had to be so violent. You’ll have a pretty nasty scar. They had to do synthetic skin grafts, like the kind of skin they put on the sex-bots to make them feel real. You lost a lot of blood.”
So they were real. “Maybe I’ll get a tattoo to cover it,” I joked, suddenly fully aware of just how thick and wonderful the morphine haze was. “Maybe a kanji that says ‘Dragon.’ For real this time.”
She let me have a little smile that felt like déjà vu. I fell asleep again. Doctors came and went and I woke to someone changing my bandages. Where my tattoo had been, Luce had drawn a little rabbit in sharpie marker. I grinned. “That’s my next tattoo,” I said to the nurse. “My friend drew it for me. I’m going to get it inked as soon as I get out of here.”
“It’s very nice,” she said.
I held it up to get a closer look, touching the fake skin that almost felt real. The rabbit was crudely drawn, one eye bigger than the other, one ear slightly crooked. But there was something so fucking sweet about the clumsiness of the doodle, like something scrawled in a yearbook, a passed note, the cover of a mix CD.
Then the little bastard winked at me.
The Japanese know the right way to do everything.
That’s what they say, anyway, “they” being the Japanese. So take whatever “they” say with a pinch of wasabi.
Still, you’d struggle to find another people more dedicated to writing the manual of life. There are rules for preparing tea, slurping noodles, disciplining your kids and ignoring your elderly relatives. You look hard enough, you’ll soon know how to breathe, shit, think, and even—when your tolerance for ironclad “advice” has hit critical mass—how to end it all. Because there’s no whiff of brimstone here, no familial shame—as long as you do it the correct way, the Japanese are all about you killing yourself.
So what is the correct way? Survey says seppuku ? Nuh-uh. Ritual disembowelment, as pretty as it is to see the steam rising from your newly emancipated guts in the morning air, is too nineteenth century for modern Japan, unless you
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