On Heisenberg Island, it was morning, an arbitrary time imposed on him by the lights. He hated the arbitrariness, the lack of control, but he had no real windows to look out at the actual world, or at least a part of it; he could imagine it – icy stars, The island itself with its mundane buildings, an enormous rock at the far end like some sort of head, not anthropomorphic, maybe some sort of fish. He had seen it once as he had been transported to his cell, the small tracked vehicle meant to prevent his seeing anything, but there had been a tear in the fabric; he had seen enough to fuel dreams of escape for all these years. But escape to what? The airless ugliness of the asteroid? The hideous buildings? Yet he fantasized escaping, getting into the dormitories, slicing whomever he found there to piles of raw meat. Blood. Women especially.
He wondered about his hatred – no contempt, some feeling worse than that – for women. He had hated his mother, her false cheeriness, the underlying gloom close to madness. He had been disgusted by her smell, always that smell, fishy, chemical, as if she were always menstruating. Blood, yes; she had smelled of blood. Killing her had been such a pleasure. He recognized the sexual component. He had no regrets about his murders: he always acted for his own need, pleasure, impulse. Why had he waited until late adolescence? He had known what he wanted to do when he was nine, stole a knife, sharpened it until it was as good as a razor. He had used it when he had started to shave, watched himself stroking his own skin. He had cut himself doing that once, smiled at the blood. She had tried to give him hell about it, cheery, unstable hell. She had tried to smack him and he had twisted her arm behind her back and said if she ever touched him again he’d really hurt her. She had screamed – the Home Guard, the neighbors, Juvenile Improvement. He had laughed, and she had started drinking earlier than usual.
He thought of all these things as he worked at the loom, thinking he was weaving the patterns into the wool that would be made into a dress for some woman to wear in the reenactment, sashaying down “Fifth Avenue” with her tits swinging, wearing his crimes and his memories and not knowing it.
He had to get there.
Leave a Reply