fifty-two

But Jack’s face: instead of mending the asymmetry, I had smashed it even further, shattered his identity into pieces of bone. I had done what he, in his painting, had already done to Justine. But at least it was an asymmetry that I had created. Its design was mine. And my identity remained intact while Jack’s lay in pieces on the floor.

The blood sprouted from him in spirals and pretty curls like ivy growing across the floor, where there is no sun for it to grow upwards. His flowing blood was the only sign of life or movement. The blood was spiralling across my carpet. Watching it decorate the floor in scarlet lines it suddenly occurred to me that if I wanted I could bend down and dip my finger into its stream. Before I was conscious of what I was doing the tip of my finger was hovering over the surface tension of the blood, then breaking down through it to the soft hot liquid beneath. I lifted the red-stained fingertip to my lips. The blood tasted salty, warm and meaty, the blood tasted of life.

I went into the kitchen and fetched a knife. Kneeling down beside the body, I carefully carved out the skin around the area above his heart. I wanted to find out if the heart, the temple of love, went on beating just a little while after death, if the heart, like the blood, carried on the momentum of life. I lifted up, like a heart-shaped hinged lid, the serrated flesh of Jack’s chest. But there was no heart beneath. In the place where the heart should have been there was just an empty space.