Is language erased, Vulture? Are quotations and word pyramids the last toys of literacy to go? You, who had a word-dozens, puns, similes-for everything, are you now struck dumb, Zachary Tanaka? Is this why you didn't warn me? Is this I heard only my own echoes? My key was in room 404 when I noticed, down the corridor, the PRIVATE door was ajar. Gone midnight. An invitation? You'll understand, I was jubilant with the promise of wealth. As you had been. Yukio Mishima's knife, in this flute case, under my arm, had sought me out, cutting me free of dependency on Nightingale, on orthodoxy. Come now, I assured myself, where's the harm in it little entertainment? One last time before a fling becomes adultery? Remembering the jealousy in Wei's face as Grace had led me to Nozomu's, I knocked on Wei's door. No answer, so I half peered in. Spray from a just-cut lime scented the air. Her room was identical to 404, even down to the print of the ukulele-strumming hula girl. "Wei?" Was she sulking? Putter patter patter a poodle ran by, lead trailing from its collar. Rumors might scamper to Uncle if I dithered on the threshold, so in I slipped and closed the door. "Wei? It's me." A spine-cracked Chinese-English dictionary lay splayed. Clothes lay slumped on the armchair. Look. Wei's braided hairband. I picked it up and ran it between my nose and lip. "What do you think you're doing?" asked Wei. Jesus Cardiac Christ! The clothes on the chair were Wei, who now sat up like a big cat. "It says `Private' on my door." Sex, or anything like it, was not going to happen. "Um, just making sure you're okay, Wei. You seemed upset earlier. But you're okay now. So. Off to bed. Early flight tomorrow. Ciao."
But the door was no longer there. You heard correctly. See for yourself. No door. Just wall. Where I came in. No door. No tricks. No fucking door. When I turned to Wei, unable to believe what my eyes and fingers swore was true, I knew my physical superiority counted for nothing. I got out the words, "How did you do that?" Wei watched me like a lecher in a strip bar. Fear choked me so I had to shout, What did you do to the door? Louder. What did you do to the door? Wei ran my seppuku knife between her nose and lip. But I was gripping the flute case. No. It lay open on Wei's lap. "How did you do that?" Wei pricked her tongue with the point. Testing. Give it back! Give it back! Wei proffered the ivory handle and my legs-mine yet no longer mine-walked me to her like an inexpertly deployed marionette. A muffled shout reached me from a nearby room: "Who are you? Are you okay?" but no reply was permitted. The It inside Wei is coo strong for any battle of wills. You learned that, Vulture, when It made you scrawl on the mirror; cut the chain on the roof hatch; teeter on the lip; take one little step. It now made my fingers unbutton my shirt, buckled my knees, made my hand grip the ivory handle and aim the steel tip at my navel. Now I knew I knew what I feared most. Not this way! Not this way! It stilled my tongue. "Your hoax call from Immigration was entertaining." Wei's voice, not Wei's speech. "Did you find much in Uncle's room? Did you see Aunt? She still busies herself around Hotel Aloha." Wei leaned close enough to kiss me. "You're thinking, `Why me?' Did those black moths you and Zachary used to dismember ever complain, 'Why me?' No, they blundered into the wrong room, at the wrong hour, lured by the wrong candle. That's all. you want? Cause? Effect? Logic? Meaning? This is the meaning, here…" My right arm spasmed and the razor-sharp metal bored through my stomach wall. Left to right, rip. Severing cartilage, intestines, notching my spinal cord. Pain firecrackered, but the It in Wei kept my backbone erect and stopped the blackness swallowing the lights. It was feeding. My hand plucked the blade out and a jet of blood spattered like piss on the wall, I heard it, before the knife plunged back into my groin. My second juddering groan took a long time, hours, days, to burn out. Groin to sternum, rip. It arched me so my innards slithered out like a never-ending placenta, shittily, mushily. Now I was dead enough to glimpse you, Vulture. Wei's lips moved. "This is what you did not know you want."