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Fiction

Freedom

©1995 John Tynes



I turned left and stepped through the wall. It was the easiest thing in the world; the only wonder it held for me was the wonder that I hadn't done it ages ago. But then again, things had been simpler for me since I cut off my left hand.

That was a hard one to explain. Insurance companies don't look kindly on self-inflicted injury, if they think it wasn't an accident. And it wasn't, after all. I ended up having to foot most of the medical bills myself. The hospital couldn't re-attach the hand, since I hadn't stopped after chopping it off but instead kept hacking at the thing until it was in pieces.

Everyone wanted to know how it happened, of course. I made up some story--they couldn't know that I'd subsequently chopped it up and hence that it wasn't an accident--and most of them nodded in sympathy. After all, they mostly wanted to experience the freak value of talking to me in this altered condition. It was like they were driving by a car wreck; they didn't so much want to hear about what had happened as they wanted an excuse to stand in my presence, in the presence of a guy transformed through a terrible experience into some new kind of man.

Matthew saw the truth. He always had, which is why I usually despised him. But a few months after I'd cut off my hand, he got me to meet him at his flat on some pretext. There he came right out and said it: "You cut it off on purpose. It wasn't an accident at all." I feigned shock and outrage, but he could see right through me. Finally I succumbed and admitted that yes, it was on purpose. Why did I admit this seemingly awful truth? Because Matthew understood. After all, as he told me and then showed me, he'd cut off half of his left foot years ago. Revealed, his foot was a sort of flat nub that reminded me of a vacuum cleaner. It was, in fact, something of a relief; when he started describing what he'd done I thought he was going to say that he'd cut off his genitals.

"It's all about changing the parameters of your life, Jacob." Matthew was pontificating for my benefit. "There's an old bit of advice for actors: 'Have a secret from the audience.' It works the same in daily living. The secret isn't that you're missing a hand or half a foot or whatever--everyone knows that, because it's a big new part of their definition of who you are. The secret is that you did it on purpose. That's everyone's guilty suspicion, but never what they'd believe or even accept as belief, most likely. It's too monstrous. The knowledge that you have committed a monstrous act and gotten away with it is powerful. That's what drives serial killers, I would guess, or at least some of them. It's potent stuff."

Matthew introduced me to a whole circle of his acquaintances whom he'd kept secret for all the years I'd known him. Every one had been through some form of self-alteration. There was Jodie, who had gouged out one of her eyes...Angel, who had poured carbolic acid through a funnel into one ear...Rich, who was a special case because once a year he tore out all his fingernails with pliers...and others who I barely met or have forgotten. These people, these self-altering people, all had one thing in common. They were at peace. They had gotten in touch with themselves or however you want to describe it. They no longer went through cycles of depression and elation. All their days were a constant, a linear stream of comfort and stability. They were happy, successful, and in some way better than their fellow humans. They had transcended their beings and become something more than human. They were like minor gods of some amputee pantheon, and the joy that permeated their lives was contagious.

They held no regular meetings, and they espoused no particular philosophy. They didn't recommend to others that they should mutilate themselves in some way; they simply existed as examples to what had happened in their particular case with no guarantee that the same thing would work for anyone else. However, they all kept in touch about each other's lives. It was as if each considered themselves the control group in some hideous experiment, and only wanted to know how the ones really being tested were doing; they did not consider their own life to be particularly interesting. All studied each other, and lived their own lives without troubling about it much.

My experience differed from most of theirs, but not at first. At first it was the same thing they always expected: a few weeks of giddy joy at having had the power and self-control to perform the act and to be among people every day who had no idea of the truth, followed by a slow, mellow happiness that was always present from then forward. This is how it was for me. I had become well and truly happy, for the first time in my life, and from all the experiences that the others of Matthew's troupe had shared it seemed that this would never leave me. I was content.

But eventually, things changed. I became aware of a certain gnawing sensation, a feeling that what I'd done wasn't enough. It was as if there were uncharged duties yet left me but I was not sure what they were. I hoped they didn't involve more dismemberment; if truth be told, it was the single most unpleasant and difficult thing I ever did and despite my resulting happiness I was in no way interested in repeating that action.

This feeling, this low-level hum of static in my happiness, came to concern me more and more. Eventually I confronted Matthew about it and demanded to know if anyone else had ever experienced such a sensation.

"Of course. Not many, to be sure. None of the ones you've met have experienced this."

"Why not?"

"Because the only ones I've known who have described what you're describing went away and never came back."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean they're gone, Jacob. Vamoosed. Amscrayed. I imagine you'll be the same way, fairly soon."

"So where are they? Where did they go?"

"I have no idea. But I do know how they got there."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Think about it: what have you done, Jacob? What have any of us done? Easy: we've changed our reality. People perceive us differently, we perceive them differently, we perceive ourselves differently. It's all reflexive, it's all interconnected. What is reality but what we perceive it to be? If you can change your reality that simply, in what other ways might you change it? That's the question all those missing people have asked, and once they'd answered it I never saw them again."

So that was all there was to it, really. I thought about it, and kept thinking about it for days on end. It was like I was convincing myself of my true power: if I could affect my reality through this brute physical act, what else was I capable of?

This thought worked itself further and further into my brain. I thought of the alchemists of old, who wrote about transmuting lead into gold as an allegory for the transmuting of their being into a higher being. They thought they could do it; maybe some did. I thought I could do it, and according to Matthew some had.

Then I was at the library. I was reading an article in a medical journal about prosthetic hands, though it was only a momentary diversion; I had no intention of being around long enough to make use of such a device, if what Matthew said was true.

I got up and went into the elevator to go to the floor where the bathroom was. In the elevator, I got to thinking about that thought, about how I could change my own reality if I had the willpower to do so. I'd already had enough willpower to cut my own hand off and hey--that's a start. So I walked out of the elevator and without thinking about it I turned left and walked through the wall.

For perhaps a split second I was aware of my molecules being somehow inside the molecules of the wall. For that split second I realized that I had done something impossible, and that I could now do it whenever I wanted. For that split second I saw rapid-fire previews of what I might do with this new-found power.

And then it was all gone.

For in the next split second I realized that I really could shape my own reality.

And in the next split second I realized that I could do absolutely everything I wanted to.

And in the next split second...

...I did.




-END-


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