The brutality and rapaciousness of the murderer, preying on vulnerable, desperate bodies? The social sickness that we must have embodied within us for such crimes to surface, for such injury to be enacted on others? The awareness of the countless other crimes that must take place at this very moment under different guises? 

 

I am in the position of the houseworker, trapped in my captor’s home. My hands and spine sore from the duties of the house, my thighs bruised from the recent punches of his drunken outrage. I cannot escape, for my documents are well hidden, my routes blocked; my debt is my chain. For years I have endured, for I know this life succeeds that which I will have back home, where I face only starvation, fear, war. I am in the kitchen, preparing dinner, knife in one hand, board held by down the other. A gorged, bloody piece of stake awaits my blade. I dance with my blade on the board, teasing, scraping, puncturing the lifeless flesh-heap. The smooth shave of the blade cuts, I imagine it ringing across the skin of my his arm, his ankles, his throat; only then I shall be free. The sound of the washing machine fires and pulses, it spins as fast as my heart pumps, it chokes the air with its machinic ring. 400 Rounds-a-minute, a low rumble, the acids of my being stir, I want to vomit, I hold the blade handle tightly in anticipation. 600 Rounds-a-minute, a sonorous hum, my head is light, I am nauseated, I swirl the silvery edge in the air in circles. 1000 Rounds-a-minute, a screeching wail, my soul spins, my organs shake, and I feel the piercing sound in my throat, I stab wildly, I see his blood squirt from all my incisions. 1200 Rounds-a-minute, I choke, I cannot breath, my jaw clenches so tightly the vessels in my eyes burst. I stab the board fiercely, marking on it, a deep recess, the blade holds upright, it sways, vibrates from the force of my act.