A dagger of the mind

Her greasy brown hair was tightly screwed into a ponytail, making her head look like a bristly coconut. The beige chiffon hung from her shoulders and glided on her skin until it puckered, kissing the brunette trouser onto her petite body. The dark-pecan leather jacket looked a little comical but she couldn’t let go of it.

It is never safe to pick things off the street unless they’re screaming to be worn. Jane had left 15 bucks on the bench where the jacket was left by its previous owner. It had been a chilly morning and she couldn’t have been luckier.

She was unpacking her bag, and despite the running joke in the class, she felt Tim’s lingering gaze on herself and not an invisible fly on his nose.

“You are very lucky, you know. Like, your parents let you do this,” Tim’s far-apart eyes fell on the pages she had handed him. He smiled at the “Catch crime, or catch crime” and started tapping a blue pencil on his lap as he read the rest of her introduction.

“Well, as long as your dad is right out in the hall, you’re the lucky one.”

Tim’s dad was a police officer. His hand had jumped onto the pommel as soon as Jane had entered the schoolyard that morning, not to be lifted again. The genial man whom she once knew as a glee-sachet distilled in a brawny human mold was unrecognizable without his wide smile. What used to be just a funny belt had transformed into a holster, and for the first time, she could picture him shooting a person.

“He thinks of all the students as his children, so... I mean, he knows that his job is getting more dangerous by the day, not just because the Victims are imp… I mean hard to rescue but because the Surrogates are very random, and, you know what happened when that surgeon Switched. Just imagine someone with a gun and...” The dense thought clumped in his throat.

“It is courageous of him,” Jane said sincerely; she too thought it was better to be a Victim than a Surrogate.

“But don’t you have younger siblings? Will they be fine at home?”

She couldn’t forgive herself if something happened to the Jonas family because of her. She had been one of the organizers of today’s conference and had asked Tim to attend partly because of the extra security they’d get with his father.

“He doesn’t have good taste when it comes to his kids.”

“I know.” Jane smiled.

She was erasing the board when it first heaved her down. She could feel a pulsating pain in her left pocket as if it was a part of her. Or it itched. Maybe it spasmed. It wanted to be touched, to be opened, to be seen. It felt cold and hot, dense with a strange gravity.

Something heavy hit the floor and knocked her out of the haze. The earlier craving left her, leaving a heightened throbbing in her neck. She turned around faster than necessary.

“You were really concentrating there, weren’t you? Sorry.” Tim gave an apologetic smile, shoving the spiky brass knuckles in his belt not as subtly as he’d preferred to.

“You have those,” she pointed out with a flat voice.

“And you don’t,” he looked at her the marker clutched in her hand like a knife, not surprised at her survival instincts.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He smiled and walked gingerly toward the stage like she was a frightened cat he wanted to pet.

“Thanks for not screaming, by the way, Dad would’ve freaked out!” He hoped his niceties could scrape her attention off the knuckles.

She didn’t know what she was feeling, but it was closer to impatience than fear.

“Listen, so dad gave me this today, you can keep it and bring it back as soon as you have something for yourself. I mean, I know this is scary and all but we should do our best to protect ourselves right?”

Tim gave her a slick silver fountain pen. Ticking its clip thrice in a row made a 1-inch lancet appear on the cap.

“But…” She fisted her hands and took deep breaths.

“But what if I…”

“You’ll use it when necessary, and you’ll use it well. I know.”

As she took the pen the urgency came back. She checked all her pockets but it was gone, the thing was gone. She couldn’t feel anything. As if it was the only stiff joint she hadn’t cracked, she felt a lump somewhere inside her, limiting her. She was impatient for the moment to be right, the position to be right. It would crack and she’d be relieved.

* * *

“To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus” Jane quoted, nailing her hazel eyes on an empty seat on the first row.

“ ‘Adam Whit, 35, was murdered in his apartment two days ago. The bachelor was found dead by the police at 6 pm after one of his neighbors complained of loud music all afternoon. Primary reports indicate that Adam died of a severe hemorrhage after his arms and legs were battered under the legs of his foyer table, at least 4 hours before the arrival of the police. All the evidence incriminates the Victim’s friend of 19 years, Matthew Collins, who was found sitting next to Adam’s body, muttering unintelligibly. Matthew has not shown any sign of further mental disturbance, remaining indifferent about his deed.’

“This, along with 16 other cases of gut-churning murders, have been known with the collective name: the Surge. The culprit, the Umbra, the cases, the Episodes, the murderers, the Surrogates.”

Tim smiled at the pun, easing her nerves. She wondered if she should tell him about what’s in her pocket.

“In the last month, we have been served crime in different flavors and forms, ranging from murders with the banal choking and stabbing to ones that could have been used as commercials for household objects back when people still watched TV.

“The Surrogates have been the Victims’ friends, family members, loved ones, physicians, drivers, customers, and coworkers; none of whom could be imagined to have been capable of such evil on a normal day. But the day you Switch is not a normal day, and no one knows that better than Carl Jung:

“ ‘Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself.’

“The works of Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, have been the source of the terminologies at the rage. In the span of days, the media was quick to label the mysterious other-self the Surrogates switched to as the Umbra, referring to the infamous shadow in Jung’s work.

“ ‘All those qualities, capacities and tendencies which do not harmonize with the collective values- everything that shuns the light of public opinion, in fact - now come together to form the shadow, that dark region of the personality which is unknown and unrecognized by the ego [...] nothing could explode in us if it hadn’t been there before’

“The shadow is all that we have condemned in ourselves and apparently thew into an abyss. It can be a collection of our sexuality, ambitions, aggression, intuitions, and instincts, hostility or cowardice, carelessness and spontaneity, passion and enthusiasm, greed and gluttony.

“Eventually, the bubbles of repressed desires and traits will burst, transforming ‘gentle and reasonable beings into a maniac or a savage beast’ they themselves don’t recognize.

“But are we really one straw away from becoming homicidal maniacs? Are we all equally likely to Switch at a given moment? What can trigger the Umbra and what can be done to keep it under control? What should be done about the surrogates? Can they be blamed? Can there be another explanation for the serial murder we are experiencing? Is an inner demon the only thing that can push someone to the edge of their sanity?”

She paused, letting the questions sink in. Humps of curiosity had raised her eyebrows. She relaxed and cleared her throat away from the mic.

“While our government is trying to find a way forward, psychologists and activists have been carrying out their studies and voicing their opinions.

“As anyone who has ever thought that the world would be a better place without a certain individual can tell, there can be other incentives for murder and crime other than an outburst of our subconscious. If the government treats the Surrogates with leniency, it won’t be long before everyone will be attempting to right wrongs before breakfast every morning. This concern has led some to lobby for bringing back capital punishment, hailing the deterrence effect as the only standing barrier between us and the commencing siren of The Purge.

“On the other hand, some people argue that the links between the cases cannot be ignored. If the absence of capital punishment is to be blamed, a large number of countries would have been devoured by crime in the decades following its prohibition; which is not the case.

“There IS a shadow within every human being, and serving the death penalty to every Surrogate might lead to human extinction faster way than the Umbra itself. We must instead study the cases, upgrade our security systems and find a more prolific solution. Europe survived the Dancing Plague, and we will survive the Surge.”

She finally looked at the few audiences she had; why had she expect people to show up? Tim’s hands were an inch apart, ready to start clapping. Mr. Jonas paused to nod at her before getting back to flaying the attendees with his eyes.

“Have we been convinced too easily? Can there be other ways our minds can be manipulated into doing things we wouldn’t normally do? What role does the subjectivity of morality play in the Surge and how can moral debates help settle the conundrum our country faces?

“Here to speak about the importance of a philosophical perspective on our country’s ailment is our first speaker the professor of Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Doctor Malte Savio.”

* * *

The introduction wasn’t too bad, considering it was written under a blanket with a torchlight in under an hour; she had her parents to thank for that.

It hit her. How had she forgotten? She’d folded the jacket and zipped it in her bag. What if someone had taken it? What if it had called for her again? She longed to see what it was, like a child curious to see their injured knee. She knew she wouldn’t like it. She knew it wouldn’t end well. She knew she had to take it out.

Professor Savio was talking about the subjectivity of reality and it can justify actions to the doers and not the observers. But she couldn’t wait for Professor to finish; she needed the jacket. Swinging the bag on her shoulder she left the auditorium without minding her gait.

She had heavy cramps in her bag, so being period wasn’t a very far-fetched excuse to get out. She sat in the hall, unzipped the bag with shaky hands. Her cold fingers traced the corners of a diary she could swear hadn’t been there before.

She opened it.

“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak unto me then”

It was from Macbeth.

“I can’t take it anymore, I have to put it somewhere.” Jane thought she might be reading something personal, but the diary was hers now.

“Oh god, o god, o god. Okay so I’m putting this here because I want this to be over with, maybe I can just pour it out and have it go away from me. I want to throw this away. I don’t like what I’m feeling. shiiiiiiiit

“So, I was sitting on the toilet when it happened.

mmmmmmmmmmmm

Okay.

I don’t know what I was thinking about when someone entered. I was in the last room from the beginning so why would I mind them right?

A girl kept blabbing about her mom and classmates, at first I thought it was a phone call. I don’t like cheesy but that caught my heart. Fuck. Okay, so, she kept talking and talking, and I was keeping my pee in because I didn’t want her to stop, fuck me and my curiosity.

Then she asked if someone’s eyes wasn’t tired of staring and then a guy, a fucking guy, replied like you ARE a sight for sore eyes aren’t you or some other pink shit. And so right then a little gasp came in. I wish I would’ve just darted out, but I was too scared, and so I stayed.

There were sounds of kissing, this is a high school after all until she started to refuse him. She could have been 15 or something.

But he continued.

And then

She defended more seriously. And a little bang. She started screaming, begging the Vincent guy to stop. I opened the door to pee and oh god, there were veins popping in her neck, thicker than the ones on his hand. He had smashed her onto the mirror and she was trying to scream but couldn’t, all her voice was suffocating inside. Curling her swollen lips was the only thing she could fucking do.

With her other hand he was undressing her as her life was draining out. oh god.

A fucking psycho is killing a girl right in front of me, there is unheard scream everywhere and I’m panicking hard. I don’t know what to do. I HAD nothing to do. I kept breathing, and my head was bursting like I was the one being fucking choked to death there. I can’t just stand there and watch. She is like every girl I know, she is like me. And she’s a human. She was suffering and he was a monster. There is no doubt. I know I have to stop him, to help her in any way possible.

I watch again from the door and he’s raping her and she’s breathing raspily, her blood trailing down in the sink and on the tiles. Oh god how I wish I could wash my eyes.

I can’t though now can I?

Fuck

So I take the first object in my sight, the bin at the side of the bidet and smash it on the back of his head as hard as possible. My hands hurt, but I can’t give up. He’s strong and she’s defenseless, I need to do what I have to.

He turns around in anger, he feels insulted, that misogynist bastard. Of course I panic cuz I’m outta ideas. He attacks me again and I suddenly see something sharp in the sink and I grab it and put it into the base of his head. His eyes start to roll back and his grasp loosens. My heart is beating out. I never knew I could ever, ever do this. Oh god, but I did it. I did it. Maybe I could do it again, I take it out and smash it in before he can fall down, but he’s strong and that makes him stumble backward still on his feet. I look at the bleeding girl there, her scrawny body and the bruises and marks of teeth and I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong. He wasn’t a human he was a wild animal. I go wild, he falls down. I keep stabbing him. There’s blood on my face. I stab again, and again. His intestines are showing.

Someone’s screaming Vincent, I laugh. I scream Vincent too.

I keep on. I hear screams, maybe the girl’s, but I don’t care. I want to keep this going. I stab, and lick blood off my lips and blink it off my eyes, and keep at it. Vincent!

I stand back and drop the weapon. Is it a dagger? I don’t care.

I saved her. I saved her and many like her from a monster.

I saved them all.

* * *

BREAKING NEWS

Commencing at the siren; are we at the purge?

Jane Smith, a 17-year-old high-schooler put the silver lining in the Umbra cloud by taking the life of 5-year-old Vincent Jonas in a toilet in Milton High School with a silver pen and a steel dustbin.

Vincent had been brought to the school by his father, Andrew; who had thought he could protect both his biological and chosen family in these troubled times.

The Surrogate had been an otherwise healthy-of-mind teenager with high ambitions and ordinary life. Her parents had learned about the conference she was hosting through a note they found on an empty bed.

The murder weapon belonged to Tim Jonas, Vincent’s older brother, and the Surrogate’s classmate, and had been acquired for self-defense this same day.

Andrew and Tim Jonas have both joined the protestors calling for the prosecution of the “Surrogates”, after having found a muttering Jane with their beloved’s blood all over her body.

The Surge passed the 18-episodes-threshold and set the record for its youngest victim with this brutal murder. Will the unfortunate developments change the view of the people in power regarding our country’s turmoil?

Doctor Malte Savio, who had been invited to Milton High for a speech, was asked to comment on the Episode:

“The attempt and not the deed confounds us.”