兔Tù · The Rabbit

(inspired by the Hello Kitty case)

Hi, my name is Man-yee. I am twenty-four years old, and I am a prostitute.

I am a Purple and an SS. Let me explain: Purples are women who “love” being beaten; SS is short for Soulless. Put simply, we turn ourselves into an object—an object with more dignity than a woman—human ashtrays, punching bags, or latrines. It depends on the client, on the fantasy, and above all on whatever damage they have inside their heads.

I do not earn much. Just enough for a few manicures, a few dresses, and lots of—fuck—lots of cigarettes. I love smoking.

The other girls at Kitty-Kitty think I am stupid. They say I should look after my lungs, my skin, my ovaries. I am only waiting for every part of me to shrivel like a prune. Besides, I like my life. I like the purple of the bruises on my skin.

I can imagine that colour sliding through me like ink, along the pleura around my lungs and thick through my gastric juices, turning them into black, viscous tar. “You were not made to live,” Mum used to say, hoping I would die on the streets of Hong Kong, in the cold, in some desolate house.

Instead, I am dying now, Mum. I stole the wrong person’s wallet. Chan Man-Lok’s. And he punished me. A punishment that lasted forty-eight days. Days of torture, rape, slaps and beatings; days of “imaginative” penetrations and cuts and blood and… cold.

Today is the forty-ninth day.

My legs are boiling in the ramen pot. I am sorry I did not shave before being put in the water. Meanwhile Chan is skinning my arms: you know, cooked skin slips from the bone like sticky tape, clings to your fingers like sticky tape, and crackles just like the glue on sticky tape. A sticky situation, in short.

When he is finished, he lights a cigarette and comes closer. His polished shoes, their Armani logo faded now, slide over the sheet made lumpy by that liquid cocktail. Blood, faeces, urine, bodily fluids—yet every smell melts beneath the smoky aroma of the Xiangyang.

Chan rests the knife against my throat. The blade is dirty, sensual, crude—just like him. He tightens his fist and begins to rock it gently back and forth. My gaze is fixed on the cigarette. I can hear the tobacco crackle, red and aroused. It cuts through flesh, nerves, bone, and the head… clack, and it slides away.

The perspective changes. Now before me there is a stuffed toy, as large as a child, with long white ears. A rabbit, its smile hidden by a bow tie. Chan picks me up. Blood streams from my neck, writing Morse characters across the floor all the way to the kitchen. He sets me on the chopping board and wipes the knife blade against the wood. He gets rid of my eyes, ears, and nose—practically everything that did not interest him during sex—and throws them into the ramen pot, empty now. My legs must be cooling somewhere. He yanks open a kitchen drawer and takes out needle and thread, gripping me by the hair, but without desire. I swing, knocking against his leg. We settle behind the toy, me resting on his knees. A black line runs down the rabbit’s spine. Chan pushes in two fingers, widens the opening, and I slide into the fabric, into a damp, warm darkness. Beyond the darkness is the kitchen. I can see it through two small, shining circles while behind me, at regular intervals, the needle brushes the nape of my neck.

I can sense more of myself inside the toy. I feel my arms close by, sewn into its fabric flesh, and my legs too, crushed inside those white-and-pink paws. And the heart, not beating somewhere in the stuffing.

I watch him walk away. He did not kiss me. He never looked at me, but he kissed me.

Chan? Chan?

Will you at least sleep with me tonight?