The Tale of the Razor Blade

Gypsy Lou spoke:

"It was a Saturday evening in Barcelona, city of the night and I was getting ready to go out and meet a young man for dinner. If he was lucky I would pour olive oil and oregano over his naked body and devour him, forgoing the first course.

But when he arrived I noticed he had a strange air about him that hinted of an untold story. I cannot stand to sit close to an unrevealed secret and so I demanded he tell me the whole tale. With a certain relish in his eyes - that was not only due to my low-cut blouse - he told me about the previous hour which he had spent in his hotel room (for my men are rarely poor), grooming himself to meet me.

The bathroom of his chambers was long and expensive, thick carpet beneath his bare feet and a huge mirror above the enamel sink. He had stood around in his shorts, trying to hear himself think above the deafening silence of the empty room. Before him were tubes and bottles and packets of bathroom stuff but it all seemed strange to him somehow. It took some effort not to wipe toothpaste under his armpits and after-shave on his gums.

He faced the mirror with the old feeling of 'Well, let's see now: the face is familiar but I can't quite remember my name'. There seemed to be a lag of time in each of his movements and a revolving sense of dread coagulated in his stomach. Something bad was about to happen. A thousand film plots called for his attention but he was willing to be a victim of anything but melodrama and so he laughed aloud at his own strange mood. His voice fell dead on his own tongue and he swallowed hard.

At once, he understood the cause of his unease - Someone had to be watching him. He spun on his feet to catch a movie camera in the act or perhaps a trespassing cat that had let itself in through an open window. But he was alone. Trying to be clear-headed about it, he walked over to the windows that looked down over the street outside, lit by neon. They were as closed and locked as they ought to have been and he found no consolation in the scene outside. The night was asleep with not a cruising car nor a leaf blowing along the gutter in the breeze. Everything hung in an unfathomable limbo that left him feeling more alone than ever. Not even the world wanted to act as his witness.

He picked up his watch from a side shelf and tried to shake himself out of it. He would be meeting me in 45 minutes and then we could laugh about it, squeezing each other tight with the reassurance of warm skin. Probably he was just hung over from the grass he'd smoked the previous evening and just needed a drink to get back on a roll. He ambled back over to the sink and brushed his teeth with an impatience that caused his gums to bleed. He had to swill out his mouth three or four times before his spit lost its redness and he shook his head.

He told me that he was just about to slip on the shirt and trousers that he’d bought the previous day, when his hand glanced against his chin and he felt the rub of bristle. He knew I hated that and refused to kiss him when he didn't shave. A beard would be okay but his pathetic attempts at growing one left him looking like fucking Abraham Lincoln - with a bushy under-chin and baby faced patches of smooth skin on his cheeks. Reluctantly, he set down the clothes on the rail to the side and took out the barber's razor he'd bought from a market stall the week before. He hated those little plastic things that clog up after just a couple of strokes. Better to have the real thing at hand, unfailingly sharp.

He lathered up with shaving foam and was almost feeling better again. The sound of running water from the taps felt reassuring but then another sound made his stomach go tight. It sounded like someone clearing their throat and it came again with a muffled cough from the cupboard in the corner of the room by the window. He gripped the razor in his hand and took ten stealthy strides up to the closet door, his heart beating so loud that his eyeballs shook in their sockets. He threw open the door and swung his elbow back, ready to strike - it took him a few moments to see that the intruder was just the hot water pipes, gurgling from the taps he'd set running.

Stupid as it was, he couldn't find the heart to laugh, though he knew I’d enjoy teasing him about it later. He went back to the sink and met his own eyes in the mirror and it was like they scorned him for his clueless cowardice.

“Shut up.” he told himself and tilted his head back so he could lather up. Foam spilled into his eyes from a careless stroke with the brush and, in the moment he had to reach for a towel, he saw something strange that fragmented before he could focus on it. He scrubbed his eyes and broke into a sweat in the moment it took to get his vision clear. But everything was normal and he decided to make an appointment with the doctor the next day. How had his nerves got to be so on edge?

He pulled the skin on his cheek tight and the razor slid down so lightly that it could have been a feather. He was hacking a path through the undergrowth and the momentum of gliding steel was entrancing in its poetry. Though as his face was cleared of hair, strip by strip, the whole process seemed to slow down. The nearer he came to the end, the longer it took to come. But there was no turning back now and he was committed to the full operation, the decision out of his hands. This knowledge even allowed him to relax and let down some inner safeguard as he settled in for the ride.

He saw in his mirror image that now soap remained only on his throat and the razor rested on the bottom of his neck, ready for the upward cut. He was almost there - In a moment he'd be out of the bathroom and down the street, into a taxi and through the swinging doors of the taverna where I'd be waiting with an ashtray full of cigarette ends.

And then his eyes opened. He saw himself poised with the razor half-way through its motion, frozen in its tracks. He met the eyes in the mirror and could not avoid the terrible gaze that made him want to crawl back inside of himself. He’d never looked so cruel or ruthless. He watched with horror as a microscopic transfer of time took place. He felt the balance of power shift. He saw his hand in the mirror raise to tilt back his head and expose the throat. His own followed the movement without any choice. He now danced to the tune of a new master. He even copied the sinister smile that his double gave him from behind his domain of reflective glass.

His hand was urged inwards and the razor entered his skin like light passes through a window. Blood poured down his neck and all he could do was watch. His face grinned back at him in the mirror. He stood until a dizziness floated before his eyes and he lost sense of contact with the ground. He slumped forwards onto the sink, breaking a few teeth in the fall and his vision became a swirl of white enamel stained with jugular blood, splashing, swirling and draining away with the running tap water.

His mirror image stepped closer, reached through the glass and dragged his dying body through the mirror and left it to ebb out on the carpet. Then he stepped through, over the sink and over to the rail where his clothes hung in readiness. He wiped off the soap and bristles, slipped on the shirt, trousers and footwear and combed his hair without looking in the mirror where a man on the carpet choked his last.

He did at least have the good manners to turn out the light as he left the room to come and meet me, allowing the other guy the comfort of dying in the anonymous dark."

Chapter 4