I pull away and the teeth only graze the tip of the nail, no pain nor any pleasure. Her lips curl into
snarl, and she growls at me, the person who tied her up. Blindfolded, the woman is blind, yet
even without the piece of black cloth covering her eyes, the woman would still not see. Her eyes
are gray and clouded with cataracts, the only flaw on this perfect woman. She lives alone in her
large house but she is not lonely; she has her radio shows to keep her company; her weekly tea
with her china dolls; and herself, her best and only true friend. Alone when I tied her up and alone
before then also, this blind woman lives in her home, widowed and childless.
I caress her cheek now. She becomes flushed as the blood rushes to that spot. “You are lovely,
every part of you…all but your eyes” Does this woman know who I am? Have I watched her
before, spoke with her so I know what she does and when she does it? Does she know my name?
It matters not. I touch the bottom of her chin once more; she cringes away from it.
Does fear and revulsion grip at this woman’s heart like a child’s fist on the mother’s finger? Her
breaths become quicker, shallower, nearer, and her body is starting to shake. Is it fear what she
feels?
I flip a coin through the air and delight in the light reflecting off its silvery surface. Every
time I see this, I smile and think of a star sparkling in mid-shine. It lands on my palm, tail-side up.
I look at the coin and toss it in the air once more. After I catch it in mid-flip, I drop the coin in my
pocket and pull out a die. This excites me more than the coin for I knew that the time was drawing
nearer, the time when I found out whether she passes or if she fails.
“Some say a coin toss is the ultimate test of luck but they lie. An honest mistake if they truly believe
it’s true. How pure is a coin flip? How valid, how true is that test? A trained tosser can flip a coin
to whichever side he wishes. If heads is desired, then heads shall be up. If tails, then heads; it will
be one, then the other.” With her hands tied behind her back, her arms taped to a chair, and her
legs bound by rope, the woman has no choice but to listen to my rant.
While I take a breath, she asks the basic question. “Who are you?”
I laugh and then begin. “I…I
am a Lover of Luck and a Kin of Chaos. An anarchist to the nth degree, I believe in rebelling against
not only laws of man and society, but also the laws of nature, those very laws men find as absolute.
When I truly believe, when my faith fills my mind and body and soul, I will become greater than the
greatest himself; I will become greater than God, for God, in all of his glory and light, is nothing more
than what he threw out of heaven. He is a Morning Star, a rebel against physics, an enemy of the
plausible, the credible, the possible.”
I walk over to the large radio, as much of a showpiece as it is an entertainment necessity, and I think
of my job. I think of all those people I sent away for what I am about to do. But then I remember that
nothing happened to those people and I calm down once more. A potted flower, an orange marigold,
sits in a terra cotta vase on top of the radio; its leaves are curling, turning brown and hard.
“Your flowers are dead, you know. They thought of death as a absolute, as an inevitability. If they
had believed dying is unreal, if they had believed dying is unnatural, they would have been immortal.
That piece of surreality is the way of true reality.”
Does she think I am crazy? My voice is calm though. It looks like it frightens her, so I will try to
soothe her.
I pull up a chair from against the wall and sit in front of the woman. “Do you believe in luck?”
The woman, looking like she is lying, says yes.
“Hmm…So, was it a matter of good luck or bad luck that I found you? If you believe in what I say,
it would be good. You would then become my disciple and travel the world, telling people the way of
luck, the way of chaos. But if you truly find me to be fibbing, the luck of saints was not with you.
“This morning, as I read the New Yorker, I rolled my die. A five came up so I knew today would be the
day. When I rolled the die again, two pips showed their faces. A lucky day was brewing for you, I felt.”
I placed the die in my left palm and stood. I pick the die up between the middle and pointer fingers of my
right hand. I uncurl the woman’s unwilling hands and place the die in her fist. Whispering in her ear now,
I say, “Roll the die and let luck choose your fate. If three pips line in a row, you will assuredly live to
breathe tomorrow’s air.
“Now, roll them bones.” The die rolls on the hardwood floor, making a hard, high-pitched knock
with each separate bounce. It slows and shows a single pip but then it turns over once more. I look
at the still die and smile, my sweetly sick grin, that same grin I used when I was a child to show love.
My, how it scared my parents and the staff. I reach down and pick up the small wooden cube.
The grain of the wood feels smooth and marble-like on my palm.
After I place the die in a pocket, I pull out a knife, neither as large as a cleaver nor as solid as a
butcher’s. The knife is long and thin bladed, able to be bent and folded. The knife is a fillet, my
favorite tool, in and out of the kitchen.
This woman cannot see the way the light gleams off the sharp
and mirrored blade, the way the knife sends patches of light to the wall. She cannot see me moving
closer toward her, the knife in my right hand, calmly still and unerringly perfect in its movements. Can
she only hear the creaking of the floorboards; can she only hear her labored breather and her captor’s
stark silence? Can she only smell the stench of her own urine-soaked clothes? Can she only taste that
metallic, that copper penny flavor of her own fear, of her own blood rushing to her head? Can she only
feel the beads of sweat on her brow and the knife flaying her flesh, like a fisherman cutting a tuna,
quickly and precisely, yet still carefully and planned?
With her head rolled to the side, her body seems distant from her mind. Does the feeling of the knife
darting in and out of her feel muffled, diluted, as if it is happening light years away? I do not know
and I digress. I peel a filet of skin off her left arm. A small fiber of muscle hangs off the filet and drops
of blood drip off it, staining the dull floorboards. I drop the flesh and cut into the forehead of the woman
until there is a slit two inches across. After making the incision, I cut a slit down the front of the woman’s
dress and rip it open. The filet knife cuts her breasts and they bleed, oozing, not spurting. Do I want to
taste her blood, that red fluid bustling out of her? No, I only drink water and wine and I cook steaks
well done. Blood sickens me, the sight of it gags me, but I do not look as I cut her. I have done this
enough to know what to do, even if I was blindfolded, or cataract-eyed.
I pull out the die and push it into the slit in her forehead. I push it there until it stays, even though the
blood oozes out and down the skin of my hand. Three pips, all in a row, show forward. I wipe my
fingers clean of all blood and flesh on the woman’s dress. I turn away and with a wave of a hand
and two short sentences, I leave. “ “Was luck with him today?” ”
“ “No, for the law was.” ”
I am positive now that she knows who her captor was. The lines I spoke are the final lines spoken
at the end of everyone’s favorite show, the one on which I am a star. Judge Katherine Allen,
upholder of law, speaks them, but today, I lied. Luck, all that was good and not law, was with that
blind woman today.
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