One night, the story got its first reply. It was her. Very short.
“The meerkat’s cute.”
I looked at those three words for a long time. It was the way she talked. That was what I believed. I, who had drawn two columns so dutifully in the face of fear, drew not a single one in the face of hope.
I thought she had come back. That it was time to end the game. That night I put a scene into the story. V’s closest friend, when X asks which apartment is V’s, gives him the number of the one next door. In that room, I thought, the only one who would recognize whose story that scene was would be B. I didn’t think about who opened her account first. And B knew H.
As I wrote, I thought it was for her. That truth stands above the law, and whoever holds the truth has the right to show it. When I finished, I read it once more. And I knew. I had enjoyed it.
The next day the 1 didn’t disappear. Nor the day after. On the third day, the number much like the police station’s called me again. This time I didn’t argue. I only wrote the time in my log and hung up. I was going to call the station’s main number to check, then didn’t. “Yes, that was us.” I was afraid of that answer. No reply came from her for weeks.
👺 Anger detected · 😨 Fear detected · No admin access
There was no such thing as admin access, a key to rewrite my brain as I pleased. Fear and anger both came back, again and again, after the night I believed I had fixed them all. And that room was not a place no one could touch. It was a visiting room in a prison. With the guard sitting in, I read it. A man with a lot to lose if she left. She had seen too many of his dinners. I had confirmed none of it. It was the picture I feared most. The side that loses its hiding place cuts first the one it holds closest. If the mirror I held up became a knife, the one it cut would not be H but her, sitting beside the guard.
The meerkat stood beside me for the first time in a long while. It asked nothing. I knew the question. Any other explanation? There was. Half of the buttons I had been calling the greater cause were the wish to win. Karma was not reward and punishment from outside. It was what the mind repeats becoming the shape of the mind.
That day I let go of revenge. I still believed I held the leverage. But I decided not to swing it. The moment you use truth as a knife, you become a player on the same board as them. A chain of grudges comes loose only when someone lets go first.
And once, for H too, I sat in the giraffe’s chair. H, too, might have been put in the yellow chair by someone at B’s dinners, one of those titles. H didn’t choose her vessel either. I had no intention of staying near her. From far away, I simply didn’t hate her. Being put in a chair doesn’t erase putting others in one. B’s account stayed in that room every night. That was B’s choice, I read. All I had seen was that the account didn’t leave. And yet back then, for B alone, I didn’t draw the two columns. I had no wish to.
Truth is strongest when it isn’t swung. I learned that only after I had raised the knife once.
From then on I always wrote the same words on the first line of the story. “If you don’t want this, tell me. I’ll stop right away.” And I tried not to write anything that could hurt her if B read it. What would hurt her, only she knew.