Changes| Liam Davies
She wipes sweat from her eyes with her knuckles and gets back into the rental car, flinching as the skin of her exposed parts make contact with the hot fabric of the car seats. She ignores the silent child on the back seat. Instead, she sets the carrier bag on the passenger side and fishes out two bottles of Sprite. After a few seconds of consideration, she finally decides to hand one to the effeminate boy behind her. He makes no attempt to take it. She drops into his lap but he just lets it roll off his coltish thighs to drop sadly into the foot-well. He resumes gazing out of the window, to daydream and to swirl his hands in circles on his stalk-like wrists as if they were sparklers.
“It’ll fizz all over the place now,” she says, without any real conviction. The boy looks disinterested. “Look, you have to eat or drink something – how you’re not thirsty in this heat, I don’t know.”
The boy fixes her with a look and then grins a grin that turns the skin on her arms to gooseflesh, despite the sub-tropical heat. Outside the car, the sun bakes the scorched orange earth and visually ignites the roadside dust covered palms that recede into the far distance. She conceals her unease as best she can with a shrug and opens the other Sprite for herself, taking a mouthful. She hears the seat creak behind her as the boy shifts his weight forwards; she knots inside when he gently whispers into her ear.
“What else is in the bag?” His voice is soft like steam. She turns to look at him and he’s staring, smiling. His eyes widen like two muddy ponds in the monsoon season. “Well?” he says.
Without breaking her gaze from his she reaches into the bag to check that the ornate dagger is well covered with the other touristy paraphernalia she’d purchased: the toilet rolls, UV treated drinking water and the two packets of salted cashews.
“Just a souvenir,” she mutters.
The boy closes his eyes and smiles with just one side of his mouth, as if he knows, as if he’s divining her intentions. When he opens them again he turns and smiles flippantly at an Indian man riding an elephant alongside the car as part of the Diwali procession she’d hoped to set off before. The air-con is jittery enough and she’d spent as much time as she’d care to in the vehicle. All she can do is gulp more Sprite and nervously wipe the sweat from the top of her boobs. As she does, she can just about trace the firm edge of the silicone implants she’d got several months prior. It’s about the only distraction she can muster and she tells herself that the kid doesn’t understand as much as her paranoia has credited him with. She ignites the engine, shifts the car into first gear with a crunch and navigates her way into the traffic of tuk-tuks and taxi vans, honking the horn as rams her way onto Calangute High Street.
It wasn’t the strange boy’s questions that bothered her, nor was it his somewhat supernatural awareness of the knife with which she intended to kill him. It was more the fact that he’d been so compliant in his kidnapping. Ever since she’d followed her bizarre impulsion to snatch him a few weeks earlier on the streets of Mumbai, she’d been chilled by his unflinching apathy. Whereas initially she’d felt sickened by her actions, they were so unlike her, the boy had just sat quietly and had done what he was told. She worried constantly about what his parents must be going through; she even thought about giving him back or dropping him off somewhere safe where he could alert the authorities, but she couldn’t be sure the kid would do anything to help himself and now she was trapped in a terrified state between fear of her own possible incarceration and fear about making her problem go away in the most certain way possible. She froze at the sight of an armed policeman on a street corner in his stiff taupe livery. He waved the procession of celebrants through the streets, down towards Baga. Why would he suspect anything? Why would he when her victim smiles and flounces his limp wrists without a care in the bloody world?
She drives him north, along the jasmine scented back roads, through Anjuna, then Vagator, then beyond to Chapora where she’s rented a room in a shabby guesthouse built in the shade of a clutch of coconut palms and lush vegetation. En route she can just about see beyond the surrounding trees and out over the sea where the sun melts like butter onto the horizon. When they arrive, she gets out and opens the back door for the boy, avoiding the confused gaze of the guest house owner, Raju, who peers at them from beneath his copy of the Hindi Times, folded so it masquerades as a dapper sun hat. She presses her viscose pashmina against her breast implants and hurries the boy on. Raju removes the newspaper from his head and watches them approach.
“Hi,” she sputters in a facile apology for herself and her crime, and perhaps for all of British imperial rule, ‘just taken my son for a spot of shopping in Calangute.”
Raju laughs and shakes his head, bemused. Her mind races again. Does he suspect something? Is the boy’s picture splashed all over the interior of his makeshift sun hat accompanied by the blazing headline: “Missing”? To her side the boy kicks up clouds of tangerine coloured dust from the scorched earth. She takes his arm and walks him through the ramshackle reception and out the other side where a small courtyard is sandwiched by the blocks of rooms. Hers is right at the end, thankfully out of sight of Raju who has seemingly resumed dozing. She fumbles the key into the padlock; half expects a sudden surprise apprehension by the Indian constabulary who she imagines are hiding in the bushes to her right amongst the creaking cicadas. But without incident, they both slip inside where it’s slightly cooler. She slips the bolt across and throws a pack of salted cashews at the boy who sits on his single bed in the corner.
“Eat,” she says. She walks into the bathroom and locks the door, strips and turns the shower on. Once beneath the refreshing cool water she runs her hands over her imperfect body: The V of her wider than average chest, her thick waist, thin hips and small buttocks. The boy infiltrates her thoughts again and suddenly she feels cold. It’ll have to be a quick shower. She grabs the ayuravedic soap and soaps her bits and pits quickly so that she can get dressed and try to gain some authority over the situation. When she leaves the bathroom he’s asleep on his bed, the packet of cashews discarded on the floor, unopened, untouched. Drool bungee-drops from his bottom lip, bouncing on its thread before snapping to add to that which has pooled on the rough cotton sheet below his face. She creeps across the tiles and climbs into her flip-flops. Then, taking care as to not to rustle the carrier bag, she plunges her hand beyond the other bag of cashews and the bottled water, so that she can retrieve the dagger. It glistens in the tinted light from the sunset that massages its way into the room through slatted window. She turns the blade so she can see her reflection in it. Her muddy brown eyes stare back at her blankly. She could do it now, she thinks. It might be better while the boy is sleeping so that he wouldn’t feel afraid or feel too much pain. But she’s kidding herself. She’d only be doing it out of fear of him, not for him, to avoid his chilling eyes, his cool defiance. She takes a step toward where he sleeps and then all of a sudden she can’t remember why she’s about to murder; she can summon no reason that justifies this bizarre impulse, one that has taken her on such a fugitive journey all over India. Surely self-preservation is too wicked a thing to prompt such an act. Compelled, she looks again to the blade for answers. Nothing, it merely demands to nestle deep inside the effete boy’s sternum. She glances at the boy again. He hasn’t moved. But his eyes are open. He stares right at her.
The dagger trembles in her hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says. Her throat is dry and the words barely form.
The boy grins and his brown eyes sparkle.
“You’re the one who’s afraid,” he says.
She backs off. Her heart hammers against her ribcage. She fights for breath. He sits up on the bed and unbuttons his trousers, an act that sickens her somehow in its lewdness. “What’s the matter? Can’t you do it?” he mutters. He’s naked from the waist down now and begins peeling off his T-shirt.
“Stop it.”
Naked, he stands on the bed and giggles, his white putty skin turning orange in the sunlight.
"I said stop it!” she says, taking more steps backwards as the boy tucks his genitals between his legs and presses his thighs together, gyrates his hips in a figure of eight.
“Aren’t I fabulous? Don’t you like me?”
She puts the dagger in her shoulder bag and fumbles with the bar lock on the door.
“I - I need to go out. Don’t you dare make any noise.”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” he says.
She slides the bolt across and staggers outside into the warm evening, slamming the door behind her and padlocking it shut again. She tries to look self-possessed as she leaves the complex, but her panic betrays her and she half-walks-half-runs past Raju, who chuckles at her now familiar eccentricities. No matter, she thinks, because all that matters is she has to get away from the weird brat for a while to calm down and maybe get a drink. She gets in the car and tears off towards Vagator, plumes of dust ghosting in her wake. She races past travellers on scooters, taking a right and racing down towards the village’s large beach. She takes a slip road and parks outside the Mahalaxmi café bar on the sea-front. Inside, she orders a bottle of Kingfisher beer from a passing waiter. Then she takes a seat on the balcony overlooking the Arabian Sea. The sun’s nearly disappeared. Holidaymakers from Mumbai splash in the waves and the kaleidoscope of saris and the joyous whoops from the swimmers makes her head eddy. The beer arrives and the waiter takes an eternity to pour half of the large bottle into her glass. Once finally done, she watches him leave before taking a large gulp. It takes several minutes before she calms down. With the glass drained and the rest of the bottle poured, she feels in a fit state to try and rationalise her situation. The boy frightens her, sure enough, but nowhere near as much as the prospect of what she'd nearly just done to him.
She thought back to the surgery. It might take a while for her to come to terms with things, in spite of it being what she’d coveted for so long, that’s what the surgeon and the aftercare team had said, that there would be some psychological repercussions and that despite all that they’d done for her the truth would dawn that due to her decision, she’d never biologically bear a child. That had been obvious to her initially but now she begins to think it might partially explain her impulsion to snatch the boy… maybe even for her growing compulsion to extinguish him. She mentally retraces the journey they’d taken since Mumbai. They’d gone north to Aurangabad on the train, the boy in complete compliance, then on through Delhi, Agra, Varanassi, then down the east coast to Chennai, then around the southern tip of the country and up to Cochin and now Goa: a massive clockwise journey that’s ended just five hundred miles to the south of where she’d originally snatched him. All the while he's stayed quiet; did exactly what he was told; most of all he’d just stared. A flimsy windmill of a boy who’d caused people to laugh at her every time she acknowledged his presence in public. She remembered a detour to take him to see the Taj-Mahal when they were in Agra, a bizarre attempt to atone for the kidnapping perhaps. The little old man in the ticket booth refused to acknowledge his existence, refused to accept full payment, only wanted her to pay for herself. When she’d insisted he just shook his head and said she was crazy.
She drains the last of her beer and is about to find the waiter and ask for another when she sees something that makes her freeze: below her on the sand, the boy waves and smiles at her, still naked with his little bits between his legs. Bizarrely this time he’s wearing thick red lipstick and heavily applied mascara. The little androgynous clown, elfin and exposing himself to the whole beach. Yet all around him the Indian tourists don’t notice a thing. The cry of surprise and mortification she wishes to release lodges in her throat. All she can do is wipe away the tears that roll down her face. Sweat sticks her blouse to her back as she sits paralysed, meeting the amused gaze of the boy with a terrified one of her own. Something about his look seemingly knows everything about her: Her past, her childhood, her operations, her trauma. In a panic she grabs her bag and stumbles back into the bar, shoving a hundred rupees into the hand of the waiter who’d served her. She hurries out of an exit that takes her directly down some concrete steps to the beach, weaving around panting dogs lying prostrate in the shade of the Mahalaxmi until she reaches the sand and turns the corner to reach the place on the beach directly below where she'd just been sitting. The boy’s gone and the Indian tourists all around her continue to enjoy themselves.
She fights for breath. How did he escape? How did he know where she was? How did he walk three miles, naked and in such a short time without being stopped? Why hadn’t the Indian tourists taken offence? Her eyes fill up with tears. It’d only be a matter of time before someone noticed him and asked some questions. In a panic she races back to the car at the rear of the Mahalaxmi and flees the scene, back to her room in Chapora. Shadows from the palm trees stretch like hot tar as India darkens into a fugue state of sleepy perfumed dusk. She flicks on the headlights and by the time she pulls up at the guesthouse complex the world’s gone pitch black.
Her mind is scrambled as she heads for her room: she’d have to pack her things and make a run for it. The boy would probably be telling the police everything by now and how would it look for her when they found him like that? Indian law would crucify her for such apparent perversity. She reaches the door to her room, twists the key in the padlock and springs it open. The room is dark and the sound of her feet echoes against the tiled floor. She slaps the light switch, a buzz of electricity and then suddenly the bulb blinks on to reveal the boy kneeling on the bed. She clasps her hand to her mouth and stares in disbelief at the naked child. After what seems like an eternity she puts her hand in her shoulder bag and fishes out the dagger, holds it out before her like a crucifix and kicks the door closed behind her.
“Who – who are you?” she says.
The boy’s eyes flash in the strained light and he giggles.
“You know who I am, silly,” he says, with an extravagant gesture of his right hand, his voice fey and feathered. And suddenly she understands. The answer hits her all at once but she can barely credit it. She shakes her head and sobs as the boy advances.
“No!” she weeps, taking a step towards him. She swings the dagger at him limply but she’s too far away to connect. The boy claps his hands together with glee.
“Yes, that’s good. You’re ready to say good-bye to me now. Do it. Let me go.”
She takes a step, sobbing. The child arches his back, thrusting his ribs at her. “Do it!” he yelps over and over. The room spins, she shudders, takes another step. It feels as if both their hearts are jackhammering in unison. It’s more than she can take and she plunges the blade into the boy’s chest, knocking him backwards onto the bed. She pushes the dagger in again, so much so that half of the handle is buried inside him. The tip of the blade exits his back and pins him to the bed but there’s no blood. He lies limp and still before somehow he becomes unsewn from the fabric of the universe and gradually disappears, growing transparent, gaseous even. She steps back in horror and stares dumbfounded at the dagger’s blade becoming visible as the boy dissolves around it, dissipating upwards like steam and dispersing into the whirring blades of the ceiling fan.
Seconds later, she’s alone staring at a dagger stabbed ridiculously into the centre of a mattress. The room seemingly steadies around her and for a moment or two she feels a strange levity: for the first time since her gender realignment surgery she feels free.
She wipes sweat from her eyes with her knuckles and gets back into the rental car, flinching as the skin of her exposed parts make contact with the hot fabric of the car seats. She ignores the silent child on the back seat. Instead, she sets the carrier bag on the passenger side and fishes out two bottles of Sprite. After a few seconds of consideration, she finally decides to hand one to the effeminate boy behind her. He makes no attempt to take it. She drops into his lap but he just lets it roll off his coltish thighs to drop sadly into the foot-well. He resumes gazing out of the window, to daydream and to swirl his hands in circles on his stalk-like wrists as if they were sparklers.
“It’ll fizz all over the place now,” she says, without any real conviction. The boy looks disinterested. “Look, you have to eat or drink something – how you’re not thirsty in this heat, I don’t know.”
The boy fixes her with a look and then grins a grin that turns the skin on her arms to gooseflesh, despite the sub-tropical heat. Outside the car, the sun bakes the scorched orange earth and visually ignites the roadside dust covered palms that recede into the far distance. She conceals her unease as best she can with a shrug and opens the other Sprite for herself, taking a mouthful. She hears the seat creak behind her as the boy shifts his weight forwards; she knots inside when he gently whispers into her ear.
“What else is in the bag?” His voice is soft like steam. She turns to look at him and he’s staring, smiling. His eyes widen like two muddy ponds in the monsoon season. “Well?” he says.
Without breaking her gaze from his she reaches into the bag to check that the ornate dagger is well covered with the other touristy paraphernalia she’d purchased: the toilet rolls, UV treated drinking water and the two packets of salted cashews.
“Just a souvenir,” she mutters.
The boy closes his eyes and smiles with just one side of his mouth, as if he knows, as if he’s divining her intentions. When he opens them again he turns and smiles flippantly at an Indian man riding an elephant alongside the car as part of the Diwali procession she’d hoped to set off before. The air-con is jittery enough and she’d spent as much time as she’d care to in the vehicle. All she can do is gulp more Sprite and nervously wipe the sweat from the top of her boobs. As she does, she can just about trace the firm edge of the silicone implants she’d got several months prior. It’s about the only distraction she can muster and she tells herself that the kid doesn’t understand as much as her paranoia has credited him with. She ignites the engine, shifts the car into first gear with a crunch and navigates her way into the traffic of tuk-tuks and taxi vans, honking the horn as rams her way onto Calangute High Street.
It wasn’t the strange boy’s questions that bothered her, nor was it his somewhat supernatural awareness of the knife with which she intended to kill him. It was more the fact that he’d been so compliant in his kidnapping. Ever since she’d followed her bizarre impulsion to snatch him a few weeks earlier on the streets of Mumbai, she’d been chilled by his unflinching apathy. Whereas initially she’d felt sickened by her actions, they were so unlike her, the boy had just sat quietly and had done what he was told. She worried constantly about what his parents must be going through; she even thought about giving him back or dropping him off somewhere safe where he could alert the authorities, but she couldn’t be sure the kid would do anything to help himself and now she was trapped in a terrified state between fear of her own possible incarceration and fear about making her problem go away in the most certain way possible. She froze at the sight of an armed policeman on a street corner in his stiff taupe livery. He waved the procession of celebrants through the streets, down towards Baga. Why would he suspect anything? Why would he when her victim smiles and flounces his limp wrists without a care in the bloody world?
She drives him north, along the jasmine scented back roads, through Anjuna, then Vagator, then beyond to Chapora where she’s rented a room in a shabby guesthouse built in the shade of a clutch of coconut palms and lush vegetation. En route she can just about see beyond the surrounding trees and out over the sea where the sun melts like butter onto the horizon. When they arrive, she gets out and opens the back door for the boy, avoiding the confused gaze of the guest house owner, Raju, who peers at them from beneath his copy of the Hindi Times, folded so it masquerades as a dapper sun hat. She presses her viscose pashmina against her breast implants and hurries the boy on. Raju removes the newspaper from his head and watches them approach.
“Hi,” she sputters in a facile apology for herself and her crime, and perhaps for all of British imperial rule, ‘just taken my son for a spot of shopping in Calangute.”
Raju laughs and shakes his head, bemused. Her mind races again. Does he suspect something? Is the boy’s picture splashed all over the interior of his makeshift sun hat accompanied by the blazing headline: “Missing”? To her side the boy kicks up clouds of tangerine coloured dust from the scorched earth. She takes his arm and walks him through the ramshackle reception and out the other side where a small courtyard is sandwiched by the blocks of rooms. Hers is right at the end, thankfully out of sight of Raju who has seemingly resumed dozing. She fumbles the key into the padlock; half expects a sudden surprise apprehension by the Indian constabulary who she imagines are hiding in the bushes to her right amongst the creaking cicadas. But without incident, they both slip inside where it’s slightly cooler. She slips the bolt across and throws a pack of salted cashews at the boy who sits on his single bed in the corner.
“Eat,” she says. She walks into the bathroom and locks the door, strips and turns the shower on. Once beneath the refreshing cool water she runs her hands over her imperfect body: The V of her wider than average chest, her thick waist, thin hips and small buttocks. The boy infiltrates her thoughts again and suddenly she feels cold. It’ll have to be a quick shower. She grabs the ayuravedic soap and soaps her bits and pits quickly so that she can get dressed and try to gain some authority over the situation. When she leaves the bathroom he’s asleep on his bed, the packet of cashews discarded on the floor, unopened, untouched. Drool bungee-drops from his bottom lip, bouncing on its thread before snapping to add to that which has pooled on the rough cotton sheet below his face. She creeps across the tiles and climbs into her flip-flops. Then, taking care as to not to rustle the carrier bag, she plunges her hand beyond the other bag of cashews and the bottled water, so that she can retrieve the dagger. It glistens in the tinted light from the sunset that massages its way into the room through slatted window. She turns the blade so she can see her reflection in it. Her muddy brown eyes stare back at her blankly. She could do it now, she thinks. It might be better while the boy is sleeping so that he wouldn’t feel afraid or feel too much pain. But she’s kidding herself. She’d only be doing it out of fear of him, not for him, to avoid his chilling eyes, his cool defiance. She takes a step toward where he sleeps and then all of a sudden she can’t remember why she’s about to murder; she can summon no reason that justifies this bizarre impulse, one that has taken her on such a fugitive journey all over India. Surely self-preservation is too wicked a thing to prompt such an act. Compelled, she looks again to the blade for answers. Nothing, it merely demands to nestle deep inside the effete boy’s sternum. She glances at the boy again. He hasn’t moved. But his eyes are open. He stares right at her.
The dagger trembles in her hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says. Her throat is dry and the words barely form.
The boy grins and his brown eyes sparkle.
“You’re the one who’s afraid,” he says.
She backs off. Her heart hammers against her ribcage. She fights for breath. He sits up on the bed and unbuttons his trousers, an act that sickens her somehow in its lewdness. “What’s the matter? Can’t you do it?” he mutters. He’s naked from the waist down now and begins peeling off his T-shirt.
“Stop it.”
Naked, he stands on the bed and giggles, his white putty skin turning orange in the sunlight.
"I said stop it!” she says, taking more steps backwards as the boy tucks his genitals between his legs and presses his thighs together, gyrates his hips in a figure of eight.
“Aren’t I fabulous? Don’t you like me?”
She puts the dagger in her shoulder bag and fumbles with the bar lock on the door.
“I - I need to go out. Don’t you dare make any noise.”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” he says.
She slides the bolt across and staggers outside into the warm evening, slamming the door behind her and padlocking it shut again. She tries to look self-possessed as she leaves the complex, but her panic betrays her and she half-walks-half-runs past Raju, who chuckles at her now familiar eccentricities. No matter, she thinks, because all that matters is she has to get away from the weird brat for a while to calm down and maybe get a drink. She gets in the car and tears off towards Vagator, plumes of dust ghosting in her wake. She races past travellers on scooters, taking a right and racing down towards the village’s large beach. She takes a slip road and parks outside the Mahalaxmi café bar on the sea-front. Inside, she orders a bottle of Kingfisher beer from a passing waiter. Then she takes a seat on the balcony overlooking the Arabian Sea. The sun’s nearly disappeared. Holidaymakers from Mumbai splash in the waves and the kaleidoscope of saris and the joyous whoops from the swimmers makes her head eddy. The beer arrives and the waiter takes an eternity to pour half of the large bottle into her glass. Once finally done, she watches him leave before taking a large gulp. It takes several minutes before she calms down. With the glass drained and the rest of the bottle poured, she feels in a fit state to try and rationalise her situation. The boy frightens her, sure enough, but nowhere near as much as the prospect of what she'd nearly just done to him.
She thought back to the surgery. It might take a while for her to come to terms with things, in spite of it being what she’d coveted for so long, that’s what the surgeon and the aftercare team had said, that there would be some psychological repercussions and that despite all that they’d done for her the truth would dawn that due to her decision, she’d never biologically bear a child. That had been obvious to her initially but now she begins to think it might partially explain her impulsion to snatch the boy… maybe even for her growing compulsion to extinguish him. She mentally retraces the journey they’d taken since Mumbai. They’d gone north to Aurangabad on the train, the boy in complete compliance, then on through Delhi, Agra, Varanassi, then down the east coast to Chennai, then around the southern tip of the country and up to Cochin and now Goa: a massive clockwise journey that’s ended just five hundred miles to the south of where she’d originally snatched him. All the while he's stayed quiet; did exactly what he was told; most of all he’d just stared. A flimsy windmill of a boy who’d caused people to laugh at her every time she acknowledged his presence in public. She remembered a detour to take him to see the Taj-Mahal when they were in Agra, a bizarre attempt to atone for the kidnapping perhaps. The little old man in the ticket booth refused to acknowledge his existence, refused to accept full payment, only wanted her to pay for herself. When she’d insisted he just shook his head and said she was crazy.
She drains the last of her beer and is about to find the waiter and ask for another when she sees something that makes her freeze: below her on the sand, the boy waves and smiles at her, still naked with his little bits between his legs. Bizarrely this time he’s wearing thick red lipstick and heavily applied mascara. The little androgynous clown, elfin and exposing himself to the whole beach. Yet all around him the Indian tourists don’t notice a thing. The cry of surprise and mortification she wishes to release lodges in her throat. All she can do is wipe away the tears that roll down her face. Sweat sticks her blouse to her back as she sits paralysed, meeting the amused gaze of the boy with a terrified one of her own. Something about his look seemingly knows everything about her: Her past, her childhood, her operations, her trauma. In a panic she grabs her bag and stumbles back into the bar, shoving a hundred rupees into the hand of the waiter who’d served her. She hurries out of an exit that takes her directly down some concrete steps to the beach, weaving around panting dogs lying prostrate in the shade of the Mahalaxmi until she reaches the sand and turns the corner to reach the place on the beach directly below where she'd just been sitting. The boy’s gone and the Indian tourists all around her continue to enjoy themselves.
She fights for breath. How did he escape? How did he know where she was? How did he walk three miles, naked and in such a short time without being stopped? Why hadn’t the Indian tourists taken offence? Her eyes fill up with tears. It’d only be a matter of time before someone noticed him and asked some questions. In a panic she races back to the car at the rear of the Mahalaxmi and flees the scene, back to her room in Chapora. Shadows from the palm trees stretch like hot tar as India darkens into a fugue state of sleepy perfumed dusk. She flicks on the headlights and by the time she pulls up at the guesthouse complex the world’s gone pitch black.
Her mind is scrambled as she heads for her room: she’d have to pack her things and make a run for it. The boy would probably be telling the police everything by now and how would it look for her when they found him like that? Indian law would crucify her for such apparent perversity. She reaches the door to her room, twists the key in the padlock and springs it open. The room is dark and the sound of her feet echoes against the tiled floor. She slaps the light switch, a buzz of electricity and then suddenly the bulb blinks on to reveal the boy kneeling on the bed. She clasps her hand to her mouth and stares in disbelief at the naked child. After what seems like an eternity she puts her hand in her shoulder bag and fishes out the dagger, holds it out before her like a crucifix and kicks the door closed behind her.
“Who – who are you?” she says.
The boy’s eyes flash in the strained light and he giggles.
“You know who I am, silly,” he says, with an extravagant gesture of his right hand, his voice fey and feathered. And suddenly she understands. The answer hits her all at once but she can barely credit it. She shakes her head and sobs as the boy advances.
“No!” she weeps, taking a step towards him. She swings the dagger at him limply but she’s too far away to connect. The boy claps his hands together with glee.
“Yes, that’s good. You’re ready to say good-bye to me now. Do it. Let me go.”
She takes a step, sobbing. The child arches his back, thrusting his ribs at her. “Do it!” he yelps over and over. The room spins, she shudders, takes another step. It feels as if both their hearts are jackhammering in unison. It’s more than she can take and she plunges the blade into the boy’s chest, knocking him backwards onto the bed. She pushes the dagger in again, so much so that half of the handle is buried inside him. The tip of the blade exits his back and pins him to the bed but there’s no blood. He lies limp and still before somehow he becomes unsewn from the fabric of the universe and gradually disappears, growing transparent, gaseous even. She steps back in horror and stares dumbfounded at the dagger’s blade becoming visible as the boy dissolves around it, dissipating upwards like steam and dispersing into the whirring blades of the ceiling fan.
Seconds later, she’s alone staring at a dagger stabbed ridiculously into the centre of a mattress. The room seemingly steadies around her and for a moment or two she feels a strange levity: for the first time since her gender realignment surgery she feels free.