Part 2

Shamelessly Gratuitous Violence

The cashier says that if I don’t calm down the manager will be called and he will request that security escort me off the premises. Then something inside me breaks. Some wiring has been shaken loose. A circuit has overheated and my left eye begins to ache, the eyelid is twitching and twitching and twitching. Someone; or something is attempting to puncture my skull with a screwdriver. Pressure builds and a blinding solar flare explodes behind my eyes. All I see is hot white light.

My eye is momentarily caught by the reflection of harsh fluorescent light reflecting on the surface of glass. A hand that looks like mine jerks involuntarily. I can but watch in detached ambivalence as someone who looks likes me smashes the glass bottle into the face of the cashier and grinds the ragged shards deeper into the shredded meat now painted slick with red. I look down at the red on the hand and then I look at the spurting chaos that once resembled a face.

This face no longer has a face. It has been replaced with a contorted, masquerade mask of abject terror and agony. On tonight’s evening news ‘The Cashier’ will be referred to as ‘The Victim’. The CCTV footage will come with a warning for individuals of a ‘Nervous disposition who may find the following scenes disturbing’. The bottle has broken the front teeth of the victim and blood begins to flow freely over split lips which are torn into the sardonic smile of a deathly clown. There is no sound in the room and the people forming the two-dimensional scenery remain frozen in a microcosmic photograph of horror and confusion.

Off set, I watch this depraved scene unfold and shake my head in disgust at such a mindless act of unprovoked violence.

Then, a face that looks like mine collapses and implodes. Eyebrows crash and once again dark eyes look incredulously at synthetic blood that slithers down a familiar looking hand. A hand which has its very own deep lacerations from the sharp fragments of glass embedded in the pale latex skin. My consciousness seems to be a few seconds behind the reality of this abhorrent, carnivalesque sitcom. Gradually, ever so gradually, my senses awaken and I begin to realise the hand covered in cloying red is in fact my own, and it is in fact attached to the rest of my body, along with my pancreas, my gall bladder and my spinal cord. The blood of the cashier is slowly mixing with my own as though we are forming a singular, symbiotic organism. And I can hear our heartbeat.

I seem to have just perpetrated an inhuman act, so I guess that makes me inhuman. I can feel every individual electronic impulse firing and sparkling in the synapses of my brain which begins the unbearable and achingly slow process of moving my hand away from what was the cashier. I have no immediate emotional reaction to this situation and this puzzles me, immensely. I have no psychological response to this situation.

I should be shocked. I should be horrified. But I’m not. I don’t feel anything, I’m just empty. I’m a machine. I am an exo-skeletal shell full of nothing.

At least now she will know how it feels.

She will now know what real pain feels like. And after the reconstructive surgery she may even have a semblance of a normal life, but she will always remember this day. This moment of pure suffering will be etched on her psyche until she is put in the cold ground and her remaining relatives stand around and cry and then go and eat stale sausage rolls in the back of a dusty local pub, next to the hypnotically flashing puggy machine. This is the day when her life was irrevocably and inconceivably altered for the worse. The day when she lived a waking nightmare and was forced to endure unimaginable pain. This is where you should feel sympathy. This is where I do not.

Maybe one day she will find someone who will marry her, someone who can look past the scars and love her and see the beauty on the inside, which we have all heard so much about. She will be forced to look back at her wedding photos and remember that looking radiant in white wasn’t the only reason people were looking so intently at her. She might even have children one day. But she will always be defined by her injuries and the resulting skin grafts that didn’t quite take.

She will wear her new skin mask for the rest of her life and years from now she will still wake up screaming. Her awkward and unpopular children will have to live through their classmates staring and asking questions and the inevitable hurtful insults and half-truth rumours. They will have to make excuses for why they don’t want their mother to pick them up after school and why they don’t have friends over more often and why they would rather she wasn’t a chaperone at the humiliating pre-pubescent discos they will attend, although this assumes that the chaperones are necessary at all, since typically the girls and boys will be standing on opposite sides of the hall casting furtive, giggling glances at each other. The children will carry the scars of their mother’s injuries and the circle of resentment and fear and hatred will be perpetuated for yet another generation.

At this point, time seems to catch up with me and I am a coward, I am no longer a callous, calculated monster. I am panicked and I run. I run for the door, smashing through the crowds of humanoid machines, breaking a rusty old clockwork hip as I go. I narrowly avoid a security guard who dives at me from my left side. I can see anger and resentment flashing in his eyes and he is desperate to stop me. He wants to hurt me. I can see it carved in the curl of his upper lip. He is the cliché of a good man and he wants to make me pay for what I have done.

His metal name badge says ‘Sean’ and his shoes are implausibly polished. He is a family man with two nice cherubic kids and he likes to watch the football with his son on a Saturday afternoon, while taking deep contented breaths of sharply fresh air and he likes to barbeque thick slabs of dead bleeding meat on sunny days wearing a humorous novelty apron. I manage to narrowly evade his fevered attack and reach the automatic doors. I have reached the portal to my salvation. I am free from the repercussions of my actions. I am no longer responsible for what I have done and I can escape once more into relative obscurity.

The bright light outside startles me and for the first time I feel the jagged pain in my arm, but this is nothing compared to the pain I have left behind. I sprint through the car park and more witnesses memorise my bloodshot eyes, my unshaven features and erratic behaviour. With revulsion they will notice the blood running down my arm. Some of these ordinary people will be interviewed tonight and they will be inarticulate and bumbling. A man barks at me, but I am gone.

I continue to run through the car park and towards the exit of the industrial estate. I vault over a metal barrier and scramble down a grass embankment still wet from the morning dew. I reach a path and jump down a small set of concrete steps, at the bottom there are dirty cigarette ends and a used condom. These are clearly the hedonistic relics of a jubilant, alcohol-drenched Friday night. I am unaware of the cars on the roundabout as I blindly stagger across it. My t-shirt is glued to me with sweat and my thighs are leaden with lactic acid.

I hear angry sirens in the distance, fear constricts my chest and I am unable to breathe. I will not be caught. I will not be judged for what I have done. I refuse to put on a floral polyester tie and stand in a courtroom with glares of detestation drilling into me. I see a bus coming and I frantically get on it. I don’t even bother to check where it is going or what number it is. I don’t even care. I throw an indiscriminate handful of metal at the driver and manage to drag myself up the aisle. I am conscious of a peeling yellow and black sign that says ‘For the comfort and safety of passengers and employees CCTV images will be recorded’.

This will provide further irrefutable evidence for the character assassination and prosecution massacre of the trial. My fellow passengers barely bat an eyelid as I labour into my seat over the stained newspapers, discarded cans and assorted public transport detritus, including the patrons. Apparently the sight of a bleeding, frenzied reprobate is a common and tiresome occurrence on a City Bus. Either that or they have the forced graciousness and fearful dignity to pretend I don’t exist.

The screams echo inside my head as I relive every second of the unfortunate incident I have just watched occur. I feel no guilt and no shame. I feel exhilaration and at last adrenaline has made me live again. My heart races and my muscles sing and effervesce with pure energy and static electricity. The lacerations on my hand have started to coagulate and the edges of the deep cuts are slowly turning black. Blood seeps through my T-shirt and it is dripping onto the floor. I leave behind yet more traces of undeniable genetic evidence for the witch-hunt abomination of a trial.

The bus moves off and it starts fvcking raining.

Again.