And then, at three am, I made myself a cup of tea.
It was a loose leaf, Indian style Chai tea that a friend had purchased in Spain in a cylindrical plastic wrap, and carried home worried that it would be mistaken for drugs. In the end customs didn't care, they were more worried that the chocolate bars in his bag were plastic explosives, stacked in a row. Makes perfect sense.
The tea practically made itself, the kettle was already on the stove, with enough water standing in it for a cup and then some, and I used the dregs sitting already in my favorite hand-thrown mug. The second cup on the same leaves always tastes better somehow, if the tea is good.
I sat, shuddering, in the gray armchair in which I had been nursed, ten miles and a life time away. I sipped the liquid and the scalding calmed me, and I scraped the palm of my right hand raw.
My body relaxed and unfolded to its, not inconsiderable, length as the brown water cooled and the coiling steam stopped its leering. I began to appreciate the flavors, and found it worth while, at last, to turn on a light.
Eventually I brought my right hand to the mug, holding the still-warm ceramic tightly between my palms, crossing my thumbs through the handle, and allowing my fingers to steeple pointing away from me. When I finished the cup the dregs looked like blood.
They didn't spread, like some cheap studio special effect, and there was less of them than I thought that there would be. Just a pale smear to the hilt of a knife, and the vain hope that it wasn't so bad after all. No one dies of a gut wound.
But there is a reason I staggered up thirteen stairs and into the kitchen this morning, and there is a reason I did my business in the dark. There is a reason I did it all with my left hand, my weak hand, and there is a reason I have to write this before I will be able to sleep.
That reason met me in the dark of an unseasonably warm November evening, over a year ago now, on a stretch of bike path between to well-lit roads. I saw it coming, two blocks away, but I dismissed it as paranoia and continued along my customary way. I passed it by as it paused, resolved in the form of two young men off the side of the path, one of them taking a piss on a streetlight. I thought I had dodged it, yet again.
The next two minutes carry great psychic weight, charged with purpose, freighted with secret meaning. Or so I believe in my best moments, when I think that I can grow from them or use the experience for good. In the dark hours of the morning though I think I know better, and I still flinch when I hear footsteps running behind me.
I didn't run, when I heard the rapid footfalls closing with me, I had nothing anyone would want to take, but he never asked for money. A few meaningless words established that I was afraid, and the fist swung at my stomach proved that he had not seen the knife that I had always intended to brandish as a threat, the knife that my friends thought was pretty for how it glinted in the light.
I knew, somehow that a gut punch would prove my undoing so I ducked, and deflected, and took the blow across my nose. I spun then, throwing up my hands, into the waiting arms of another figure cloaked in shadow and a black hoody several sizes to large.
I would like to say that the knife struck him on the left side of his abdomen, or even that he was stabbed, but to do so would be disingenuous, and I don't have time to lie. I stabbed him, and behind the strike I threw all of my weight and all of my adrenalin fueled strength. He fell back and I ran, knife in hand, to the median of the well lit street.
I swear, though I looked back and they were chasing me, I couldn't hear any of our footfalls.
I called the cops, they called it self defense.
I still can't help but remember that Lady Macbeth got hers in the end, and she couldn't get rid of that damned spot either.
It's four seventeen in the morning and maybe now I can let myself sleep.
You know what I'd do and say.
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