‘Yuck. I guess I will take a bandage. Would you like to do the honors?’ She held her hand toward Charles.
‘Sure,’ he said. Trembling, he stripped the wrapper off the adhesive strip. He moved closer to Lynn, halting when the wet end of her finger was inches from his chest. He stared down at the slit -a crescent across the finger’s pad, rather like the gills of a tiny fish, pink under a thin white flap. The edge of the flap was away from him.
‘Do you think I’ll live?’
‘Sure.’ His voice came out husky. He felt terribly tight and hard.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. Cuts make me nervous.’
‘You aren’t gonna faint or anything, are you?’
‘Hope not.’ He fumbled with the bandage, peeling the shiny papers away from its sides. He let them fall. They drifted down like petals plucked from a flower, and settled on her shirt.
Pinching the sticky ends of the bandage, he lowered the gauze center toward Lynn’s cut.
He wanted to hurt her.
No! Don’t!
He wanted to grab her finger and rub his thumb back, flipping up the little edge of skin, making her jerk and cry out.
Not Lynn! Don’t!
As fast as he could, he pressed the bandage to her cut and flipped the adhesive ends around her finger. He whirled away and rushed for the office.
‘Charles?’ she called. ‘Charles, are you all right?’
He didn’t answer. He dropped onto his swivel chair, hunched over and grabbed his knees.
It’s over, he told himself. You didn’t do it. Lynn can’t even suspect…
He heard her quiet footsteps behind him. She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Just… cuts. They upset me.’
Her hand squeezed him through the corduroy. ‘If I’d known… What is it, a phobia or something?’
‘I guess so. Maybe.’
In a lighter tone, she said, ‘That probably explains why you carry bandages around, huh?’
‘Yeah.’
She patted his shoulder. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better if you get some fresh air,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go ahead and take off? I’ll close up the library.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
He waited until she was gone, then carried his briefcase outside. The night was dank and misty.
Feverish with memories of Lynn’s cut, he lingered near the library entrance. Soon, the upper windows went dark. He pictured her up there, alone in the stacks, lowering her bandaged finger from the switch panel, starting down the stairwell.
His Swiss Army knife was a heavy lump against his thigh. He slipped his hand down into his pants pocket. He caressed the smooth plastic handle.
And savored thoughts of slitting her.
Just wait for her to come out…
No!
He turned from the library and walked quickly away.
In his apartment three blocks from campus, Charles went to bed. But he didn’t sleep. His mind swirled with images of Lynn.
Don’t think about her, he told himself.
You can’t do her.
But it would be so nice.
But you can’t.
Lynn was a graduate student. Like Charles, she earned a small stipend by working part-time at the Whitmore Library. Everyone knew they worked the same hours. Too much suspicion would be focused on him.
Besides, he really liked her.
But damn it…!
Forget about her.
He tried to forget about her. He tried to think only about the others. How they yelped or screamed. How their faces looked. How their skin split apart. How blood spilled out like scarlet creeks overflowing banks of ripped flesh, spreading and running, forming new streams that slid along velvety fields, that setded to create shimmering pools in the hollows of the body, that flowed down slopes.
So many faces. So many bodies flinching with surprise or thrashing in agony. So many flooding slits.
All belonged to strangers.
Except for the face and body and cut of his mother. Struggling to stop the confusing flood of images, fighting to keep his mind off Lynn, he concentrated on his mother. Her voice through the door. Honey, would you be a dear and get me a Bandaid? He saw himself enter the steamy bathroom, reach high into the medicine cabinet for the tin of bandages, take out one and step to the tub where she reclined. The water was murky. Patches of white suds floated on its surface. From her chest rose shiny wet islands, wonderfully round and smooth, each topped by a ruddier kind of skin that jutted up in the center. Looking at the islands made Charles feel strange and squirmy.
His mother held a razor in one hand. Her left leg was out of the water, its foot propped on the rim of the tub under one of the faucet handles. The cut was midway between her knee and the place where the water rippled around the wider part of her leg. I’m afraid I nicked myself shaving, she said.
Charles nodded. He gazed at the wound. He watched the strands of red slide down her gleaming skin. They made the bath water pink between her legs. She had a hairy place down there. He couldn’t see her dingus. He stared, trying to find it even though he knew he shouldn’t be looking at that place. But he couldn’t help himself. He felt sick and tight.
You didn’t cut if off, did you?
Cut off what, honey?
You know, your dingus.
She laughed softly. Oh, darling, mommys don’t have dinguses. Here. And then she took gentle hold of his hand and guided it down into the pink, hot water. She slid it against her body. Against a cut - no, not just a cut - a huge, open gash with slippery edges. He tried to jerk his hand away, but she tightened her grip and kept it there. Go on, feel it, she said.
But doesn’t it hurt? he asked.
Not at all.
It was almost as long as his hand. Warm and slick inside. And very deep. She squirmed a little as his fingers explored.
Her voice had a funny sound to it when she said, I’m made this way. All mommys are. She released his hand, but he kept it there. That’s enough, now, honey. You'd better put that Bandaid on my leg before I bleed to death.
Then Charles had the bandage ready. As he lowered it toward the small bleeding cut on her leg, she said, You aren’t gonna faint or anything, are you? But it wasn’t his mother’s voice. He turned his head. The woman sprawled in the tub was Lynn.
At dawn, groggy and restless, Charles climbed out of bed. He didn’t know whether he had slept at all. Maybe a little. If so, his sleep had been a turmoil of dreams so vivid that they might have been memories or hallucinations.
He felt better after a long shower. Returning to his bedroom, he sat down and stared at the alarm clock. A quarter till six. That gave him just more than ten hours before returning to work at the library. And seeing Lynn again.
He saw her naked beneath him, writhing as he slit into her creamy skin.
‘No!’ he blurted, and stomped his foot on the floor.
There were ways to prevent it. Tricks. He’d worked out lots of tricks over the years to feed his urges - to ease the needs, to keep some control.