兔Tù - The Rabbit

(inspired by the Hello Kitty case)

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

I’m a Purple and an SS. Let me explain. Purples are women who “like” to be beaten. SS is short for Soulless. In short, we turn ourselves into objects. Objects with more dignity than a woman: human ashtrays, punching bags, even toilets. It depends on the client, it depends on their fantasies and, above all, it depends on the damage inside their heads.

I don’t make much money. Just enough to pay for a few manicures, a few dresses and a lot, fuck, a lot of cigarettes. I love smoking.

The other girls at Kitty-Kitty think I’m stupid. According to them I should take care of my lungs, my skin, my ovaries. I’m just waiting for everything inside me to shrivel like dried plums. And anyway, I like my life. I like the purple color of bruises on my skin.

I can imagine that color sliding inside me like ink, along the pleura that wraps my lungs, thickening inside my gastric juices until they turn into a black, sticky tar.

“You’re not meant to live,” my mother used to say. She hoped I would die somewhere in the streets of Hong Kong, in the cold, inside some abandoned house.

But I’m dying now, Mom.

I stole a wallet from the wrong person.

Chan Man-Lok.

And he punished me.

A punishment that lasted forty-eight days.

Days of torture, rape, slaps and beatings. Days of “creative” penetrations. Cuts and blood and… cold.

Today is the forty-ninth day.

My legs are boiling in the ramen pot. I regret not shaving before being dropped into the water. Meanwhile Chan is skinning my arms. You know, cooked skin slides off the bone like tape. It sticks to your fingers like tape and crackles just like the adhesive of tape.

A sticky situation, in short.

When he finishes, he lights a cigarette and walks toward me. His polished shoes, the Armani logo now faded, slide over the clotted sheet of that liquid cocktail.

Blood. Feces. Urine. Fluids.

But every smell dissolves beneath the smoky aroma of Xiangyang cigarettes.

Chan presses the knife against my throat. The blade is dirty, sensual, crude, just like him. He tightens his fist and begins to sway slowly, back and forth.

My gaze is fixed on the cigarette. I can hear the tobacco crackling, red and excited.

The blade cuts through flesh, nerves, bone…

…clack.

And my head slips away.

Perspective changes.

Now in front of me there is a plush toy, as large as a child. Long white ears. A rabbit. Its smile hidden behind a bow tie.

Chan picks me up. My neck pours blood, tracing Morse-like characters across the floor all the way to the kitchen.

He places me on the cutting board and wipes the knife clean against the wood. He removes my eyes, ears and nose. Everything he never cared about during sex. He throws it all into the ramen pot, now empty.

My legs must be cooling somewhere.

He yanks open a kitchen drawer and pulls out needle and thread. He grabs me by the hair, but without desire.

I swing against his leg.

We settle behind the stuffed rabbit. I rest on his knees.

A black seam runs along the rabbit’s spine.

Chan slips two fingers inside, opens the gap, and I slide into the fabric. Into a warm, damp darkness.

After the darkness comes the kitchen again.

I can see it through two small shining circles while behind me, at regular intervals, the needle brushes against the back of my neck.

I can feel other parts of me inside the toy.

My arms are there somewhere, sewn into the stuffed flesh.

My legs too, crushed inside those white and pink paws.

And my heart.

Somewhere in the cotton.

Not beating.

I watch him walk away.

He never kissed me.

He never looked at me.

But he kissed me.

Chan?

Chan?

Will you at least sleep with me tonight?