intent to harm

On the subway home from work she is stared at by a man who she feels wishes to harm her. There is a murderous grin stretched over-wide on his face, and he stares only, directly, at her. He is clad all in black and his face is inhumanly pale and she feels violence in his knuckly hands which reach out as though taking hold of her throat. Strangely he seems invisible to the others on the subway except one man with headphones who gradually notices this man of threat, follows the gaze of the man blankly to her, registers her, looks back at the man of threat and his gaunt fingertips clutching at the air, and returns his gaze to a spot on the floor, the better to listen to whatever it was he was listening to, moving his lips a bit - perhaps to show anyone who might be watching (her) that he is thoroughly absorbed, possibly memorizing a language or learning business principles.

The man with intent to harm though continues to grin and stare, a spot of saliva spilling past the corner of his mouth. His teeth are like sharpened slats of a white picket fence, only downward (all downward), set in black gums, and his eyes are rimmed with black.Yet the woman is surprised to find that she feels no threat. She has a difficult time registering this man as a threat, that is; the man clearly desires her harm; the saliva is now drooling into the whisker-fields of his unshaven cheek, his corroded nails are sharp, and automatically she thinks "i need to consider my escape options." It is difficult however to act on this thought, to feel any urgency about it, because she simply cannot feel the threat. Perhaps she is optimistic, she thinks, innately expecting the best of people, of life - it may also be her own lack of imagination, she considers - but simply put, despite his appearance, no picture comes to mind to suggest what he could in fact do to her; a frightening figure, but what could he do? she pauses for thought, yet nothing arises in her mind, pause as she might; she is in the subway as always, her heels hurt even in her new running shoes, the man next to her smells improbably of pine cones; she is safe, she is at a loss as to how someone could hurt her. In fact she has a knife in her pocket, a large bowie knife with which she is fairly handy, having gutted animals with it before, but the knife doesn't really factor, for it is impossible to imagine the use of it on this man - pulling it from its sheath, brandishing it, swinging it smoothly up under his ribcage which with his current hand position he has left quite vulnerable - the man, by the way, is constantly elbowing his way past people who do not seem to see him yet unconsciously move aside to let him pass, as a river parts for a fish's swim...though somehow he still manages to be no closer than he was a moment ago, unless her sense of distance deceives her. It is as impossible to imagine herself defending herself as it is to imagine him harming her, of there having any other posture with each other than what they form right now. Again she recognizes the distinct possibility that there may be a deficit in her imagination, that this blankness of vision could indeed be a character flaw that might cause her to misstep someday, if not now; but after all one must listen to instinct, and for the moment she feels simply unengaged, sure that the greater danger is that this man, whose skin is as doughy and deeply wrinkled as an elephant's, might turn out merely to be a bore in the end.

At any rate, there is such a long way for the man to travel before he reaches her, especially given his current progress (though it may be that he is closer than he appears); he still has to come all the way across the subway car, and then even when she has disembarked she will still be a long way from home yet, a great distance that he must traverse with her, negotiating one more subway change and then a walk around the corner and up the street, jagging over across a median (negotiating traffic) to a grocery store – each of these things would seem to set him back severely – and then once in the store there are the cans of sweet corn and pimientos she must buy (she doesn’t even know where the pimientos are, though she assumes with the canned vegetables), also buying fruit, of what kind she is not sure but a large quantity indeed for she has promised she will begin making healthier meals for herself and will start simply, with fruit, a fruit salad perhaps with honey and coconut shavings, not because she likes coconut but because she has a friend experienced in dieting matters who incorporates coconut shavings into almost everything she makes, this salad being a recipe borrowed from her, though she can't remember what is in the salad besides coconut and, of course, fruit; not the corn and pimientos of course, which are bought by sheer instinct, she has no purpose for them yet but trusts that it will come. Lord only knows though how long it will take to pick out the fruit, weigh it, bag it, it feels endless to contemplate ahead of time, and she isn’t sure how the man of threat could recover from this delay. In fact it is difficult to believe that she will ever get home, possibly even leave this subway car; but if she does, even after the grocer it is still quite a distance to her apartment, two blocks eastward to the intersection where she must turn north before turning east again to her own street, where she must walk north again a half block to reach her apartment building. It is also reassuring to think that even if her life were scheduled to end now - which she must objectively acknowledge it might be, given the drooling eagerness of the man edging his way nearer to her all the time, hands twitching, palms white and dry - there is still also enough scheduled for her that there is much richness to look forward to, this walk that it seems likely could never end...if she wants to defeat death himself, she thinks, even if this man were to stab her in the neck (or whatever, she really can't imagine how he might kill her here, on the subway), all that would be required would be for her to begin this walk toward her house, toward the groceries, a mission of such detail and realness that its very richness would render death itself invisible as sun erases a shadow.

The man, by the way, to keep current, though somehow no closer than before, is nevertheless by now at her throat, he stands by her hands silent and immobile raised inches from her neck, fluttering with desire like deathly butterflies. There is something dry and dusty about him, she wants to bush off his shoulder though she is pretending for manners sake that he is not there, noticing despite herself that he is strangely odorless, his eyes dark-socketed under his top hat from which two tufts of strawlike hair jut down and outward to either side of his thumblike head. His hands, though now gloved, to keep up-to-date, still reach for her throat, continue to reach. There is much to say about the reaching, but more than anything it is important to notice that while apparently static they continue to reach and reach, consumed with reaching, every instant half as close to her naked throat as they were the instant before, while she looks politely down at her book, finds she is reading the same page over and over, looks out the window at concrete walls speeding by, she reads posters, notices and immediately forgets the station names, while (eyes ridiculously ribboned with tiny red veins around the corners) he reaches toward her beautiful throat which under his hands’ shadow is white, elegant, the musculature developed but fine, the curve under the chin immaculate, dusted with a fine layer of soot from the commute, as if representing a spiritual residue from a discouraging day at work that she at length will soak off in a leisurely bath (if she ever reaches home) - a fine, aristocratic throat, a throat to emulate. (Her clothing style too it must be said is attractive: simple, elegant, dark with a slight severity offset by the cashmere of the sweater under the long coat which warms her appearance just properly, gives her a touch of the fields.)

And then she is off the subway and jockeying happily through the mob of people fighting to get on the subway car, there is now the station to navigate and she dives into it joyously, only half-conscious in her purpose of the man making after her single-mindedly, if in fact there is a mind rather than a simple center of hate…