The Kill

The shape stands past the lower lamp. It looks at the dead arm, the arm that no longer hinges. Then it looks at Lu Di, and it looks down, at the bound one, and back. That is the whole message.

Finish it.

That is the set. The final act, and the last of the room’s noise goes out. The bound one is quiet now. The breath in it is thin and fading. Lu Di does not argue. There are no reasons left that he has not already used, and not one is worth the air. He does not decide. It is already decided, the way the cut on the hinge was decided the moment he brought the head down.

He kneels beside the bound one. It lies on its side, the arm hanging off the boards, the eyes on him. The throat is long and pale above the collar, open to him. He turns the flat of the head against the skin and marks the spot with his thumb.

He draws a breath and releases it. The axe comes down.

One stroke. It goes through in a single exact line, and the bound one is finished before the body knows it. There is a sound, wet and small, then nothing. The body goes loose all at once, the head settling onto the wood, and the dead arm does not move at all. It is done. The room holds the whole of it, and nothing in it shifts. He looks at the edge. The line in the steel is bright and true. He made it so. He pulls the edge clear, and the sound of it is a scrape, then nothing.

He stands.

He is not listening for the fear. It is a long way off. What is under his ribs is low and full, and it is better than the thrill was. His hands do not tremble. He is breathing hard. He is still. Nothing in him wants it to stop. His shoulders are down. He is light.

The arm is slack. The face is empty, the eyes gone still. He is not sorry. Something else is in him, and it is not fear, and it is warm.

He raises the blade, and the light runs down the edge, and he checks the reflection in the bright steel. The face there is the one he has caught in dark windows and the black of a dead screen, and it looks like the thing in the treeline. The same flat set. The same pale quiet that has never had a name. He grins. It is not a wince. The grin comes up before he knows he is doing it, and it holds, and the face in the steel holds it back at him, and he is not afraid of it. He has been waiting to look like that.

He looks toward the door. The shape is not where it was. It is closer. Still not a man, still a weight, at the edge of the lamp, and the light goes out around it. It is not going to attack him. It is coming into the frame to see it finished, and still never a face, and it is watching him grin.

The camp is silent now, with nothing left to hide. The eleven, the bound one, the room, the lamp — the last proof that there was ever a camp full of people is gone. The only sound is his own breathing, and it is fast. He can no longer tell it from joy.