Chapter Seven
I had it in my bedroom. Another person. Though it had been quite the challenge bringing it in. We had been marching back to our rooms, along the corridor. When we passed my room, I didn’t enter; instead, I followed it until it was outside its room. I approached from behind, an arm around its neck and another around its torso. It seemed calm at first, almost apathetic, but as soon as I began to drag it away from its apartment, it began struggling. First, it tried to rip my arm from its neck, clawing at my fingers and trying to dig its free hand in between my hand and its face, but I held firm. I could feel the breath coming out its nostrils, and it was growing in intensity and regularity. It was scared. Then it began flailing its legs and arms, its heels hitting my shins and its hand periodically catching the top of my head and my cheeks. I kept struggling it along, and had managed to pull it about three steps closer to my apartment. Then one particular swing of its leg hit my shin hard, and my grip loosened from the pain. It burst out of my grasp and sprung toward its apartment. I quickly recovered, launched myself forward and gave it a push just as it had a hand on the doorknob. The combined force of its own momentum and my push knocked it straight into the door, its head swinging back then forth, smashing hard against the metal. It crumpled onto the floor; I dragged it, unconscious, into my room. My hand was covered with sweat and my legs were marked in patches of red. It had fared a lot worse, blood flowing freely from its head. I secured my subject with some improvised constraints, made from my bedsheet. Then I showered, clearing my head in the process. As I began showering, I noticed the water was a delightful shade of pink, swirling on the ground around my feet and being pulled into drain. By the time I was there for five minutes, the water had returned to its normal clarity, and I was clean. I returned to my captive.
It was awake again, a pile of coiled blankets lying uselessly to one side of it, and it was working to free its other hand. No! I lunged forward, and as it noticed me, it shielded itself from me with an arm while desperately trying to tug its other free. I pushed back the arm held in front of me, and swung my fist in a slap to the face. There was sudden rush of fire into my hand. Its skull was hard, and I must have hurt something in my hand. It was burning with pain. I fell to the ground, my whole-body tensing, clutching my hand, trying to force away this torture while desperately hoping that I had hurt it enough that it couldn’t leave. The pain did not leave, but eventually, the heat subsided to a tolerable level. I blinked away the tears, got up and examined my captive. It was unconscious, blood oozing in and out of its mouth with a fresh gash on its cheek where I had struck it. I dragged my captive onto the bed face down. It was complex process, as I was only using one hand and had to be careful that it did not get blood on the sheets. When this was completed, I reached under a pillow and pulled out a scalpel of plastic I had carved from a brush over the course of a few days spent in preparation. I examined its neck, and found a streak in a crescent shape that was darker than the surrounding skin. This had to be where the BCM was implanted. Resting a forearm on its head in order to stabilise it, I stabbed, penetrating the skin. It was not as deep as I wished. I stabbed again and again in short controlled bursts, penetrating deeper and deeper, ripping into skin and flesh. It took time, a long time, and my improvised knife often blunted, requiring me to sharpen it against the wall. Through the night, I worked at it until I finally hit something hard. This was it. I pushed my smallest digit into the incision and attempted to dig it out. I didn’t have enough room. I swirled my instrument in the hole, expanding the incision to an adequate size and then I was able to pinch the small metal contraption. I tried to lever my hand to pull it out, but it was stuck fast. I hacked around it, pinched it again, and then jerked my arm back. I felt it detach and then it was out. Blood went everywhere, dripping onto the white sheets. I had been so careful about it before, but now I didn’t care. This was a great moment. I had liberated another human being. I examined the ugly metal and then threw it hard against the wall. It skittled along the ground and disappeared under the bed. Good riddance. Then I untied it and turned it over. It was still unconscious. I slapped it a few times, and only then did I realise something was wrong. Its body was too cold and it wasn’t breathing. The stark reality of the situation forced the conclusion that I was desperate to avoid. It was dead, and I had killed it. I must have been too caught up in the excitement of it all.
In the proceeding weeks after the misadventure, I was burdened with fixing everything up, burdened with the evil consequences of the mistake. Every night during the allocated showering time, I brought the clothes and bedsheets tainted with blood and cleaned it under the shower. Each time we left the Education Centre to do practical work I would be totally inept, my hand fat and stiff. After a few days of struggling, I stopped going out, spending my days in my apartment; the lack of consequences surrounding my other transgressions had emboldened me to continue in my subversion without fear. Anyway, going out was menial and boring. I was above it now. There was also the problem of what to do with the body. For the first few weeks, I left it there, lying under the bed. It turned green, then black, shrivelling up into a jumbled mass of wrinkled flesh, hair and liquid. It was disgusting and it stank. One night, its smell particularly bad, I resolved to do what I had been putting off. I wiped up the liquid with a piece of bedsheet and squeezed this out over the drain. The remaining bits I ripped apart, pulling through skin, organ and muscle. It was slippery and wet and disgusting. I dropped the pieces bit by bit into the toilet, flushing regularly to prevent blockage. I cut its face off. I emptied its skull. The smell was intolerable, and the work was hard; I had only my hands and that plastic implement after all. It took days, since sometimes the toilet would stop working for some periods of time. By the time I was finished, I was mentally and physically exhausted. Eventually, all that was left was a pile of bones, which I pushed under my bed. My failure was hard to take. I had tried my best and somehow it all fell apart. I just wanted to forget about the whole affair, but I was reminded of it every time I sat in the classroom or in the dining room, and saw the gap that used to be 124993 two rows in from of me and three spots to the right. All of this affected me and it took time for me to remember the righteousness of my intentions and the necessity of trying again and succeeding. It was only a small setback and I myself was certainly fine to continue.