Hurt
* * *
"I want to hurt someone the way I've been hurt," I hear myself say.
"Is that so wrong?" Someone answers.
I don't know whether it's wrong or right, it's just what I'm feeling at this moment. I imagine myself stopping a random stranger on the street, offering them $20 for the permission to punch them square in the face. "I'm presenting you with a unique and lucrative opportunity," I'd say. "to gain financially through the allowance of violence to be done about your person."
I want to ruin someone's day the way mine has been ruined. But, after all, who is that someone that ruined mine? If it's a someone at all, it's myself. Why is it so easy for me to cast the blame elsewhere? I should be going about punching my own self in the face. There is no phantom lurking out in the darkness, cackling with the pleasure of knowing that my day has been ruined.
Nope, there's no phantom, only my bare ego, stripped of its dignity, lying on its back in a ditch. "I want to hurt myself the way I've hurt others," I say, finally, yet still thinking that it's not what I meant to say either.
I take a long, hot drag on my cigarette and its glows bright orange in the dark. My lungs ache from the smoke but my heads feels light as a feather. I get up from the cold bus bench, cross the empty street, and cross the lawn of the first house I come to. I take three paces up the brick patio in front of the house and knock on the door. Cigarette clenched between my lips, hands in pockets, deliberate scowl on my face.
No one answers. I lean in, press my ear to the door, listening for some confirmation that someone is there. I pull back, take my right hand out of my pocket, retrieve the cigarette from my lips and rap three more times on the door with back of the same hand. In exactly the same rhythm that I knocked, I hear the deadbolt click, slide out of the chamber and the door swing open.
A relatively broad-chested man is standing erect in the dark doorway in a thin t-shirt and boxers. His eyes squint, less at me than at the general direction of whoever it is has interrupted his beauty rest. "I want to hit him right in the ribs," I think. "maybe collapse a lung, that'd be fair."
The man doesn't say a word, just stares at me lazily, and for a second I worry that I've spoken my thoughts aloud. I go through a pantomime of realizing that I've knocked on the wrong door at two in morning and turn to leave, but a feeling stops me. I look back and the man at the door is still standing there, unmoving, uncaring. It's as if I didn't knock on his door at all and he's simply opened it in coincidence and is now looking out over his lawn and his patio and the nothing or no one that isn't standing there.
"You could at least say something," I start. "hello, maybe."
The man sneers. "You could have said hello."
I concede, knowing he's right, and knowing that now I have no choice but to finish what I'd come there to do. I wrap the fingers of my right hand into a tight fist and gather my strength. The man is smiling now, still staring at me, it's as if he knows what's coming and can't wait for it anymore. I swing my arm and plant a solid punch into his chest.
The man barely moves. It's as if I've punched the trunk of tree, expecting it to topple. "Is that the best you can do?" The man asks.
I think about this very seriously. Is that the best I can do? I'm not sure, but I figure I have another chance to find out. I punch the man again, just below the ribs. He doesn't move. I punch him again, right fist to sternum, then again, left fist dead in the ribs. Nothing. Now I'm quickening my punches, right, left, right-right, rapid succession, building speed, hitting him harder with each blow. Still, nothing- he barely moves with the force and his face stays plastered with the same smug smile.
I stop and try to catch my breath, the cold air pushing in and out of my hot lungs. I out my hands on my knees and gasp for air, then double over, collapsing on the ground in pain. The pain isn't just my lungs, it's my chest- it's shooting up my spine into my brain and before I know it I'm curled up on the stranger's patio holding my chest.
For a few brief seconds I manage to open one eye and look up at the man, who has now knelt down to me. His face is now bathed in the pale puddle of light from the patio flood lamp above both of us, he's still smiling. Now I can see his features better, away from the darkness of the doorway, and I realize that the man standing over me, watching me writhe in the pain I've intended to inflict upon him, is me.
The man laughs, or I guess the other me laughs- or better, yet, lets out something like a cold chuckle. I, the real me, laugh too, because I don't know what else to do at this point. I turn over, spit blood onto the brick, and pick up the cigarette I'd dropped when I went down. I take one more drag and stare up at the night sky. I hear the man go back into his home and the door close behind him, the same smooth, lock cylinder slide and deadbolt click in reverse.
I lay there for what seems like a long time, nursing what's left of my cigarette and wincing, waiting for the pain to subside. When the cigarette burns out, I flick it at the door and crawl back onto my feet. The street is still empty, the bus bench is still cold,I slump back down on it. "When they find me," I say aloud. "if they find me, will it be the right me?"
I nod off and quickly fall into a deep sleep, the kind that can only come with total exhaustion.