Dr. Grind accepted this comment with a slight nod; he thought for a brief moment that Ellen was going to kiss him, but then Harris put his hands on her shoulders and Ellen smiled. “I won’t do it again,” she said, and Dr. Grind was certain that she meant it. She had needed this transgression, perhaps, to test the limits, and would make a greater effort to fall in line with the structure of the complex. Or not, Dr. Grind also allowed. Perhaps she would simply be the leader of a revolt that would burn the complex to the ground. All he could do now was squeeze her hand in sympathy and watch as she and Harris disappeared from view.
Dr. Grind looked through the window of the sleep room and nodded toward the other parents, who had been watching from a distance. He flashed a thumbs-up gesture and immediately felt ridiculous, as if he thought he was a navy SEAL who had just defused a bomb. He walked into his own apartment, shut the door, and stood there for a minute, breathing deeply, arranging his emotions. And then, with great sadness, overwhelming sadness, he walked to his bedroom and took off his clothes until he was only wearing a pair of underwear. He then opened the bottom drawer of his nightstand and removed a small, black, leather pouch with a zippered closure.
He sat cross-legged on the floor and opened the pouch to reveal a plastic box of Wilkinson Sword razor blades, a dozen or so alcohol wipes, a travel-size box of tissues, a tube of Neosporin, and a box of butterfly closure Band-Aid bandages. He took one of the razors and unwrapped it from its thin protective paper. He stretched out one of his legs and examined the skin of his thigh. He took the razor and, as he took a deep inhalation of breath, he drew the blade across his skin, a steady pressure, and watched a thin line of blood slowly appear, like a conjured-up ghost. He exhaled and felt the toxins, entirely imagined but nonetheless tangible to him, seep from somewhere deep inside him.
He placed the razor blade in the slot on the back of the razor blade box, for used blades, and then removed a single tissue. He laid it on the wound and watched as it absorbed the blood, the deep red spreading across the pristine white tissue. He closed his eyes and remembered what Ellen had said to him, her breath hot on his face. The bleeding, after less than a minute or two, had begun to subside; he had been careful not to cut too deeply. And, soon enough, he found that Ellen’s words had turned into a foreign language, a lost language that would never be translated. The words meant nothing to him, and he felt calm and silent and assured of his place in the world. He cleaned the wound with an alcohol wipe, placed a bandage on the wound, and then put the supplies back in the leather pouch. He returned the pouch to the nightstand drawer and, as he closed it, he promised himself, once more, that he would never again use it.
It had started when he was nine years old, the memory faded and tinged with a dreamlike quality that made it feel both more and less real to him. With the Constant Friction Method, his parents trained him by creating moments of disaster and conditioned him to handle it with a minimal amount of emotion. He was good at it; they were so proud of him, the way he continually proved their methods to be sound. But there were times when a few days had passed without a manufactured incident, everything calm and happy, and, to Preston, it was altogether terrifying and unbearable. He lived in a state of expectation, always wondering when the next test would come. His parents would sometimes stretch out the spaces between events, forcing him to be ever vigilant, to control himself even in moments of peace. Every interaction seemed a possibility for ruination, and, finally, Preston could handle it no longer. On a particularly lazy Sunday, his mother and father reading in the library, leaving him to his own devices, he could not ignore the strange rhythm of his heartbeat, as if his own internals were waiting for something to happen. He finally walked into the bathroom, took a razor blade from his father’s drawer, a Wilkinson Sword, and awkwardly slashed at his arm. He walked into the library, blood trickling from his fingertips, and he then offered his arm to his mother and father. “Can this be it?” he asked. “For today?” He had never seen the look on his parents’ faces, a curiosity mixed with admiration at his ability to surprise them. A complication had entered into their study, and they slowly knelt before their son, holding him, kissing him, and told him that this was not his fault but their own. “We’re sorry, Preston,” his mother said, and he relaxed in her embrace, knowing that, for a few minutes at least, he was truly safe.