Survival

Nothing happened that made me do it. Nothing triggered it. I wasn’t even having a particularly difficult day. I was just sitting, watching a man and a woman with seven teeth between them argue about dodgy texts one of them found on the other’s phone. The presenter said, “Find out the lie detector results after the break,” and I realized I didn’t give a fuck. Not only did I not give a fuck about who was lying, but it also dawned on me that I didn’t give a fuck about anything. I’d had the idea at the back of my head for months now—years even. Constantly looming over everything I did. Always on the horizon. So I thought, Why not now?

I walked through the hallway towards the kitchen. On the way, I thought to myself how it was a shame that I’d never get around to putting up some wallpaper or any pictures. At least I’d made things easier for whoever was assigned this flat after me. I have terrible taste in wallpaper anyway. This flat always deserved better.

I lingered a moment in the kitchen, looking at the sink. The ever-present tower of unwashed dishes caught the light in a way that made it oddly beautiful. Something about it, next to the nearly empty, two-year-old bottle of supermarket-brand washing-up liquid, filled me with such sadness I had to look away, and I headed through the utility room door.

Switching the light on, I looked around the utility room. The bitter smell of varnish lingered in the air. Piles of random bits of whatever-the-fuck lay everywhere. It’s amazing when you think about it—how much stuff just accumulates. I didn’t know if it was just me, but I felt all I had done in my life was accumulate stuff.

There was no doctor at the camp. There had been a delay before, stupefied, he thought to let them know he had been bit. And then—more agony; agony piled upon agony.

Not concealing their doubts as to their chances of saving his arm or him, they had slapped the rough tourniquet upon his arm, and had twisted down upon the stick until he moaned, unwillingly, in pain. Then they had dipped one of the big hunting knives into boiling water, and had cut his arm at the bite marks—gashing it across, with great, free-handed strokes, then back again at right angles; squeezing the cuts to make him lose the poisoned blood.

Then they had cauterized the wound. Sick, half afaint, to Coulter it seemed that they were deliberately thinking up additional tortures. The white-hot iron that seared his flesh, tormenting the agonized ends of nerves that already had borne past the breaking point, was the final, exquisite touch of agony.

Coulter was one of those men who bear pain—even a slight pain—with difficulty. Even the sight of blood made him faint. This was horrible beyond anything he had ever dreamed. The physical racking; the feel of the steel blade cutting through his own flesh and sinew, down to the bone, made him bite his lips till they spurted blood, in the effort to keep from screaming aloud.