- Vol. 02
- Chapter 07
An Impulse To Kill
I stand motionless, hovering in my scrubs. So many layers cover my body; pants, shirt, gown, cap, mask, gloves, tied up and fastened, imprisoned into my surgeon's straightjacket for my own protection. Who is this woman lying on the table? I have the power of life and death over her. We've met before, several times, in that ridiculously cheerful room with the brightly painted balloons on the ceiling. Sometimes, when I lean back in my chair, I see those balloons and wish I could prick them with a pin. Prick, prick, prick. So easy, with barely any effort.
That woman now lies inert and I stand above her, scalpel in hand. The crew is silent and eager, almost not breathing, hanging in limbo for their instructions. This is the moment, just before the first slice of soft doughy flesh, when the cheery blood bursts to the surface. It is timeless. I have a desire to prick, prick, prick. So easy, any place in that body that breathes louder than the people hovering around me. A sudden rage surges through me. Lungs, heart, stomach, where first? The liver perhaps, the most vulnerable, where the lightest touch wreaks havoc. Such is the viscera of the human body. And the devil that sleeps beneath rises to the surface, smirking, smiling, willing to sway my mind. I feel his heartbeat, throbbing, thrashing, wanting the thrill of destroying a life. One turn of the knife and then take the plunge. Plunge, plunge, plunge. Easy as diving into a pool of clear, sharp water. His time will come.
An Impulse To Kill
The years I've spent studying charts and diagrams, dead bodies even. None of it prepares you for the encounter with your first live body. Between consciousness and the unconscious, there's no person. Life is floating in the black void until I decide to bring them back. The moment hangs, hangs, hangs, like a noose around the neck of a criminal. In this body, it is Cancer, the perpetrator I am charged with killing, removing from the scene of the crime. She wants to take the power I bask in away from me.
In the house, the knives are in the kitchen. Lily moves about gathering vegetables, peeling, slicing, dicing. She leaves it on the chopping board, in the open, and instinctively, he rises to the surface, the devil with whom I am intimate. I yearn to grip its handle and prick, prick, prick. She thinks she owns me strutting around in her tight, sexy dress. When she undresses, I watch her. The slow, deliberate, movements of her fingers caressing her breasts and thighs, then lures up the gracilis to her pubis. Does she do that for her lover, I wonder? That same routine of automatic ticks and traces across her skin. Lily is more dead that this woman lying on the table, whose chest lifts in expectant rhythm, crying to me for life. I will save her. This one deserves to live.