Richard House: The Kills

12.3

Rike wakes to the smallest slice of light coming through the doorframe, and then the door opens with a blinding wall of light. She shields her eyes with her arms, attempts to stand but finds this impossible. He strikes once: hits the side of her head and her raised right forearm. He is on her immediately. Rike, stunned, lies immobile. Plastic is pulled over her head, and tape binds the bag about her throat. He does this three times, then drops her and leaves.

In the darkness Rike struggles to upright herself. She bites and struggles with the plastic, pokes a hole so she can breathe, then loses herself to panic until she is weak and breathless.

This isn’t happening.

She wants to understand how this started, to unthread a sequence and understand the origin, because everything has a start, a place where what is happening is set in motion. She can take it back to Parson at the trackside, running, hectic, perhaps hopeful in those last moments of escape, steps ahead of the train, perhaps in panic with the knowledge that he cannot possibly outrun what is coming. Or earlier, to Henning and Parson in Istanbul with no notion of what lies ahead. Earlier still, to Sutler in his multiple guises, proto-Sutler, the first Sutler arriving in Iraq as a contractor. Is this the start? A man eager for a contract to work in the desert, or does she need to go back further to the company who hired the man, accepted his bid, or further still, should she consider the military who required that company for operational support, food, weapons, shelter, because without them they cannot function? Is this the proper start, here with these men, these boys, who have trained specifically for this kind of endeavour, but who would otherwise never have left their country if it wasn’t for a year or so of threats, of provocations, of governments shouldering into each other? Does she take it back to here? Or further? Back to those buildings? Back to those planes? Back to that city and that early workday morning? Does she need to retreat this far? If this far then why not further, because what she is finding is that there is no single starting point, only multiple threads which appear to bind because of distance, but only ever run parallel?

At every point, how clear this seems to her, there appears to have been a choice, and most often the choice that has been exercised is a choice to do harm.

She knows this is too simple. As she understands that what is happening isn’t history. Not in any way which matters.

Either: one of us, or both of us.

He will come back. She is certain. The door closes fast by itself. She will wait by the door, and when he returns he will come into the room and she will shut the door, even if she has to remain inside, because there needs to be an end.

With gratitude to:

Kris Doyle, Paul Baggaley, Tony Peake, Lynne Tillman, Anne Bentley, Jeff Black, Travis Garth, Chris Rose, Nathalie de Sant Phalle, Eva Orner, Luke Kennard, Cristiana Ligouri.

Video & audio:

Elsa Braekkan Payne, Drew Conrad, Sugi Ganeshananthan, Bill Goldstein, Nam Le, Oliver Mason, Mary Medlin, Adam Sims, Sian Thomas.

These books were generously supported by fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, and The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, and with grants from the Arts Council, England, and the Arts & Humanities Research Council, UK.

RICHARD HOUSE is a writer, artist, filmmaker, and teacher. He is the author of two short dark novels, Bruiser and Uninvited, published by Ira Silverberg in the Serpent’s Tail High Risk series. He is a member of the Chicago-based collaborative Haha, whose work has appeared at the New Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Venice Biennale. He teaches at the University of Birmingham, and is the editor of Fatboy Review, a digital literary magazine.