The Steel Window
I saw your eyes frozen in the looking-glass, in the staring-glass, really, for so long were they open that the glass dried and cracked before the shut in the dust. For centuries, this ice has chilled the blade of my knife and cast frozen ruin against my enemies. And to think that you hoped to destroy me! Your hatred, if I may call such a deadly attack hatred from one so bound to utter goodness as you, as been the whetting-stone of the steel that steals life from the quenching-barrel for each new splint to my splintered life. To think that you control me? You were a fool to try to wrest myself from me, and a killer to fail. Every blade is yours, every cup of blood I spill or fill from the lesser. I remember when you stormed my mind with a glass cage with a steel window. You caught me, once, but now I control you; you are trapped in my mind behind your steel window. So come with me, as you always have, to see my power-your power- at work.
It is a noon turned midnight, the solar meridian on a street of crushed jet. So poorly made, this path, that its surface melts the air into darkness. It took me- you, for it is your power I wield- no more than a second and a thought to send the sun masquerading as the moon and the sky as jet ash. And it will take no longer, no more, for my victim- yours, for you could not keep from me the fool’s name- to vanish.
Thirty-two blocks, gone before we knew. The house is gold in the noon night. The door was steel; now it is air. Thank you, my gift.
The flight of stairs is an obstacle- did you churn once against me? – and the target we both seek flies from a window. It is nothing. The wall clock says 12:02, so it shall be 12:04 when we finish. I slash the glass, you shred the fragments. The outer balcony is ours.
How quickly your target runs! This was your fault, then. I would have killed any…
Nine stairs to the third level. A railing connects it to next door’s dome. Our target hides behind it. The railing carries us. The dome surrenders to us. Your knife flashes, my arm rusts in the red of warming blood. I toll the clock 12:04. You turn us back through the city, too fast to hide your mind from me, and I snag a building. Your speed pulls at the concrete, and it splinters like white woods. How many more shall you let us kill? The top splashes light against the jet air as it smashes to dust.
Midnight again, but this time an hour past noon. Who to walk against? it is always your choice.
How cold the knife! It should have been blood-warmed a while yet! Your target. Now.
Is that the dust of the looking-glass? Water now, a looking-glass again?
You could not! I beat you! You are not any but fear!
And yet how steadily you turn your knife towards my skin.