Finally, her high-pitched screeching subsided into low sobs. But my wife merely gazed at the sobbing woman as though she were a complete stranger, and eventually, as if having decided that this performance had gone on quite long enough, got back up onto the bed. She pulled the blanket up to her chest and closed her eyes. Only then did I raise the IV bag, now half full of crimson blood.

—

I don’t know why that woman is crying. I don’t know why she keeps staring at my face, either, as though she wants to swallow it. Or why she strokes the bandage on my wrist with her trembling hands.

My wrist is okay. It doesn’t bother me. The thing that hurts is my chest. Something is stuck in my solar plexus. I don’t know what it might be. It’s lodged there permanently these days. Even though I’ve stopped wearing a bra, I can feel this lump all the time. No matter how deeply I inhale, it doesn’t go away.

Yells and howls, threaded together layer upon layer, are enmeshed to form that lump. Because of meat. I ate too much meat. The lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there. Blood and flesh, all those butchered bodies are scattered in every nook and cranny, and though the physical remnants were excreted, their lives still stick stubbornly to my insides.

One time, just one more time, I want to shout. I want to throw myself through the pitch-black window. Maybe that would finally get this lump out of my body. Yes, perhaps that might work.

Nobody can help me. Nobody can save me. Nobody can make me breathe.

—

I packed my mother-in-law off in a taxi and when I got back the ward was dark. The schoolgirl and her mother, presumably fed up with all the commotion, had turned off the television and lights a little ahead of time, and drawn their curtain. My wife was sleeping. I lay down awkwardly on the cramped side bed and tried to fall asleep. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to sort this mess out. Only one thing was clear, and that was that this whole affair was bound to cause me no end of trouble.

When I eventually succeeded in falling asleep, I had a dream. In the dream, I was killing someone. I thrust a knife into their stomach with all my strength, then reached into the wound and wrenched out the long, coiled-up intestines. Like eating fish, I peeled off all the squishy flesh and muscle and left only the bones. But in the very instant I woke up, I ceased to remember who it was that I had killed.