Suddenly I am viewing the scene from very far away, on the coruscating surface of a star millions of light-years away. It now seems all very vague. I’m watching something transpire that should be significant to me but I can’t quite parse it out. I see a very large shadow-person set upon a very small shadow-person. The large one wraps a massive arm around the neck of the small one. From the small one comes a sound like water spuming through a clogged drain. A helpless noise. Then something shiny and curved appears in the hand of the large one. This all plays out very slowly. Irrelevantly. Nothing has any meaning. I can hardly see it. Now I’m nearly gone. I’m drifting, quasar-bright, quasar-distant.

Hatred brings me back.

My eyes refocus, my brain reboots, and I see Charlie struggling uselessly against Herkimer. He is behind her, his legs wrapped around her torso, pinioning her, and as one enormous hand grips a wad of hair from her brow another one advances the knife toward her forehead. Charlie fights against Herkimer’s knife hand—she is pushing desperately against the wrist as if to bench-press it—but it’s a losing battle. She is not strong enough. The blade of the knife lowers inexorably toward her scalp. Tears wash her face. Her eyes lock on mine. Her mouth opens to pronounce words that do not come.

Time stops. When it starts again I am holding the Nakamura sword. It is weightless. The blade tints red. The hair braided around the hilt, sharp and taut as fishing line, cuts into the skin of my palm. I vibrate with the ghosts of the forty-four lives it has taken.

I give it another one.

The Unreachable

The Unreachable

I stab Herk in the back. I plunge the sword into the ponderous meat of his trapezius and drive it downward until only the hilt protrudes from his shoulder, awkward and wavering, quiver-like. At first he doesn’t respond; his exertion with the knife is unabated. He is still trying to take off her hat. The blade encroaches Charlie’s scalp; it contacts Charlie’s scalp. A curved red line appears on her skin. His veins engorged, his fist white with grisly effort, Herkimer starts to saw. It all happens so fast that I can only blink in amazement, paralyzed with shock, but then, very slowly, as if finally comprehending a complicated theorem, Herkimer gives in to it. He goes soft and full of understanding. The knife slides to the ground. His hand opens and closes hungrily, reaching vaguely backward as if searching for an elusive itch. His mouth expels a few red balloons, a few red streamers, and then he slumps forward onto his face. His hand keeps contracting like a beating heart, questing over his shoulder, trying to reach the unreachable.

I watch him until his hand quits moving.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity