Cut

Zero

The clock on the wall shows 12:01. Twelve hours left to live, minus one minute. No drama. We all are going to die, and I'm overdue anyway. An exhale of relief will rumble through my village when they find me tomorrow morning. Maybe Zula will miss me a little. I hope he does. A few tears shed would be nice, just so I know I wasn't a total waste of space. But then, I'll never know.

Actually, I'm surprised I'm still here. One could say I'm a coward who doesn't dare press the blade deep enough. But that's not the entire truth. If hope didn't bug me, life would be simpler. And shorter. In my case, shorter is better. But I'm naïve enough to hope the last day of school might magically turn my dismal grades into excellent ones, so that the city council forgets my wrong gender and wrong past, and allows me to be the new turbinehouse keeper. I would have a future. But even the best grades won't convince them to allow another generation of Capras to soil this honourable occupation, excellent skills or not.

I'm thinking of my knife's tip wedged in the hollow between bone and tendon of my wrist. I'm thinking of opening an artery, of life draining from me, and I'm growing calmer. People around me fade. I've already cut off most of myself. But I forget when.

I catch myself hoping to meet my brother and my grandfather tonight. My heart flutters. Of course it's all nonsense. When you're dead, you're dead. Depending on how your body is processed, you either end up as ash, or as worm poop.

If Grandfather were still alive, he'd call what happened to my life after my brother died "hell," earning him a public whipping for using a banned word. He was a rebellious guy, always talking about the Great Pandemic and how he kicked ass, then, how he stopped kicking ass when Grandmother died and he raised Mother all by himself.

When I was little and sat on his lap and no one else was listening, he dared talk about God — an old guy who made the first two humans from clay. Since then, the word "God" tastes of clay, although the sound of it is more round and fruity, like an overripe tomato, maybe. Grandfather also talked about his parents a lot, my great-grandparents, who believed our souls are all going to this place called "hell," where we are eternally burned, or put on a stake, or gutted, or whatever.

I have no idea why people back then thought this stuff would make any sense. Maybe that's why religions are illegal now? But there's still tons of stuff around today that doesn't make sense to me at all, and yet everyone thinks it's cool.

Grandfather believed in God. He didn't really care much about rules, and that's why I loved him. Neither of us fit in.

For me, the fitting-in begins with the stupidest things; for example, the ability to stand with a group of giggly girls who talk about boys. It's considered the coolest activity since we turned twelve or thirteen and the game always has the same outcome: the more men you can attract, the better. No one seems to notice how embarrassing it is to climb the social ladder simply by being the most fuckable female. Maybe I'm thinking this because I'm at the very bottom rung, but I can't imagine that the whole circus looks any more logical from a higher vantage point.

I know I'm not good with people. But I'm not sure if it's because I don't like them or why I don't like them.

The one thing I'm good at is fixing machines, especially turbines. The word "turbine" has the taste of hot pancakes with melting butter and treacle. Turbines always do what I want them to do. Maybe they like my hands. Being up at the reservoir or inside a turbine duct makes me insanely happy. The smell of grease makes me happy, too. I tasted it once, but it wasn't good. Its sting didn't leave my mouth for days.

Maybe turbines are my main reason to pull the plug: once I finish school, I won't be allowed to play with machines anymore. I'd be assigned a real job. Every time people call what I'm doing "playing," I could scream. The word "play" tastes of burned oak; ash. Although it sounds almost liquid in my ears. Like a sudden splash on a still surface.