David Mitchell: What You Do Not Know You Want

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.”