Suicide Club

by Rachel Heng

  He told her about coming back. Not knowing, at first, what he was really looking for. Thinking, now that his life was coming to an end, that he wanted to make a point. To punctuate his brief existence on this earth with something. To prove, if only to himself, that it was all for something.

  He told her about today. He described the sun and the sea as if she hadn’t been there herself. He told her about how the seller at the market said he didn’t have any sea dinosaurs, only land ones. About how he made him check again. About the boat they had been on, how easily it steered, how small and light it had felt as it skimmed the waves. How it felt like they had been flying.

  He told her about his daughter. About how she was smart and strong and different, how she thought there was something wrong with her because she sought the messy, sprawling innards of life, the flesh beneath the skin, the breakages. That she felt, deep within her, the violence of what it meant to live forever. He told her that she was not wrong; no, she was right. She had been right all along.

  * * *

  When they reached the spot on the beach with the placard driven into the sand, they stopped. Kaito shed his clothes quickly, keeping only his shirt and underwear. He gave Lea the key to his apartment, told her she could do whatever she liked with it. He touched her cheek with his finger.

  “Thank you, Lea,” he said.

  Then he turned away from her and walked into the sea.

  THIRTY-SIX

  In the weeks that followed, Lea did her best. She got out of bed each morning and dressed herself as if she were going to work. Some days she even left the apartment, joining the rush-hour pedestrian traffic, sometimes even letting herself be carried all the way to her office, where she was no longer welcome. Those days she stood outside the glass-encased lobby, watching people arrive with their shiny shoes, snakeskin briefcases, and tailored jackets. Other days she stayed at home, sitting on the sofa that she had picked out long before her father had come back into her life. She sat there all day, and then at night she got up, changed into her pajamas, and went back to bed.

  Lea stopped going to WeCovery; she ignored the Suicide Club’s phone calls. The calls came from Manuel and Mrs. Jackman now, never Anja. She wished Anja would call her.

  Perhaps she would have gone on like this for longer. But after she’d missed a month of WeCovery, George put in a call to the Observers.

  * * *

  It was GK who showed up, and for a strange moment, Lea was almost glad to see him. Then she realized that her father, the problem she associated the Observers with, was no longer a problem. She realized that she no longer had anything to hide. So she told him. Before GK could start speaking, she told him everything. From that first day she saw her father across the road, to finding out what he was planning to do with the Suicide Club, to deciding she wanted to help the Ministry shut them down. But when she reached Ambrose, she stopped.

  GK was silent. His eyes, Lea observed, were curiously bright, and she realized with a flush of embarrassment that he was close to tears. Suddenly she regretted telling him anything. It had felt good to talk, yes, but she felt the hollowness of the comfort, the distance between her and the stranger sitting next to her. She was very tired now and wanted to be alone.

  So she stood up, went to the bedroom, came back with the memory card that contained the recording of Ambrose’s death. The last piece of the puzzle, all the Ministry would need in their case against the Suicide Club.

  GK pocketed it eagerly. It would mean rapid promotion for him, no doubt, likely Tier 3 benefits. But when he thanked her, he didn’t talk about himself. Instead, he said it was time. He would recommend that she be taken off the List, that no further Observation take place, that she no longer report for WeCovery sessions. Her workplace would be notified, her clinic instructed to lift the hold on new extension treatments.

  Given her stats, and her cooperation with the Ministry to shut down the Club, this would mean the Third Wave, almost undoubtedly, GK said with great excitement.

  She would be an immortal.

  He stood up to leave. Wanted to get the process started right away. He would make the recommendation as soon as he got back to the office; she should hear from the Ministry by tomorrow. He grabbed her hand between both of his and shook it vigorously. “Thank you, Lea,” he said. “And congratulations.”

  It was only when he was halfway out the front door that he realized Lea had never finished her story. Surely, he remarked, she was glad that her father would be saved now. Perhaps, yes, there would be significant prison time for the antisanct act that made him leave in the first place, and for the attempted identity fraud that he’d undertaken to get treatments while he’d been away. Perhaps some extension restrictions. But, most important, he would be saved. He would not be able to end his life. Surely that was cause for celebration.

  At that moment, Lea wanted nothing more than to be alone. So with one hand on the cold edge of the door frame, she smiled at GK and said yes. It was certainly cause for celebration.

  When GK had left, Lea stood frozen with her hand on the doorknob for a long time. The apartment was silent, but her head was filled with the sound of crashing waves, the overhead cry of birds swooping and dipping. Suddenly she felt the wind on her cheeks, smelled the sharp salt, saw the distant, glimmering horizon.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Anja drew the blade over the base of the mug, again and again. She aimed for the thin circle of rough, unglazed ceramic, knowing she’d aimed right when she heard the drag, when it ended in a point. Funny, how the sound itself was sharp. She imagined the atoms in the knife’s blade taking their positions, getting in one straight line.

  She’d come close now, several times. But each time she couldn’t do it. Either her hands were shaking too much, or she couldn’t see through the tears, or she just couldn’t. Just found herself taking the step backward again, going back to the kitchen counter where the ceramic mug lay.

  At least if she was sharpening the knife, if the cruel slick of it was echoing through the room filling her ears and her mind, she could pretend she was getting closer.

  * * *

  When the knock came, she thought again that they’d finally come for her. Either the guys from the market, or the officers, or George—someone.

  A great, lifting relief swept over Anja when she saw Lea standing there, even before she knew what Lea was going to ask.

  “Hi,” Lea said, dropping her gaze.

  “Lea,” Anja said. “Come in.”

  Lea walked into the room. This time she didn’t seem to notice Anja’s mother. She went over to the far end of the room and stared out of the dusty window.

  “How have you been?” Anja asked.

  Lea turned and looked up. There was something different about her. Anja squinted, struggled to put her finger on it. Something about the way she held her neck, the way that focusing her gaze seemed to bring a pained look into her eyes.

  “Fine,” Lea said. And without looking at her, Anja would have believed her. But her mouth seemed to turn the other way, the skin under her nose wrinkling just a notch. “What are you doing?” Lea asked.

  “Oh,” Anja held the mug up, flipping it over to show Lea its underside. “See this rough bit of ceramic here? Makes a good sharpener. Works well, since you can’t buy them, sharpeners, not without a special permit.”

  Lea nodded. It seemed to make perfect sense to her. She didn’t ask why Anja needed to sharpen a knife.

  As Anja gripped the handle of the knife more tightly in her hand, she looked at Lea. Lea would give her courage, she thought, perhaps Lea would watch.

  But Lea wasn’t looking at her. She had crossed the room and was pushing the window open, sending small showers of dust and wood fragments cascading down its aged sides. The noise and cold of the city streamed into the room, whipping around them and filling their ears with life and sound and thoughts of winter. Lea was still pushing; she pushed the window high up above where Anja had ever managed. She realized Lea h
ad broken the top of the window frame now. It was old wood, but still, Anja stared at Lea’s hands and wondered at their strength.

  Lea perched on the window ledge. She didn’t seem to be holding on, but it was only when she started to swing one leg out into the cold that Anja realized something was wrong.

  “What are you doing?” she said, thoughts racing. Should she rush toward her, grab her arm?

  Lea turned toward Anja. Her face was dry, but her eyes crinkled as if crying invisible tears.

  “Remember when you came to my apartment? You tried to open the window,” she said. “And I told you it wouldn’t. Directive 7077A.”

  Anja nodded.

  “What a pity, you said. You’d get such a great breeze up here.” Lea turned out to face the city. Across the street was a gleaming office building, people shifting behind the shadowy glass. She closed her eyes, lifted her face to the wind rushing in. “You were right,” she said.

  Anja took a step toward the window, but she saw Lea stiffen, her knuckles white where she gripped the ledge. She stared at Lea’s hands, unusually large for a woman’s, wired with veins and knobbed with joints. She stared at the lines her tendons made between knuckle and wrist, the solid heft of a thumb hooked around the wooden frame. Anja looked up at where Lea had pushed the window up along the crumbling brick and wood.

  Anja held up the knife and turned it gently in the light. She saw how clean the blade was, how fine and efficient and perfectly formed it now was for its purpose. She wondered if Lea could see it too, from where she was sitting.

  “I realized my mother would want me to do it myself,” Anja said. Her hand began to shake. “No Club, no pills, no farms. So I’ve—I’ve been trying. More than once. But I just can’t do it.”

  Lea was watching her now. The edge of her skirt flapped in the wind, a tiny parachute, and Anja worried for a second she might be blown off the ledge.

  She flipped the knife in her hand so that the handle faced out, and held it out to Lea.

  “It’s sharp now, as sharp as it can be. But still. With the synthetic skin. I know it will be messy. I know I’ll have to use force, to stab and hack and twist. I could have slit her veins, I think that I could have done. But this—I don’t have the strength to do this.”

  Lea stared at her with dark eyes. Anja couldn’t tell what she was thinking, whether she was thinking of anything at all. When she leaned back, Anja’s heart almost stopped, but then she swung one leg over the window ledge back into the room and stood up again.

  It was only when Lea was close enough to grab the knife handle that Anja saw the emotion in her eyes. Lea stared at it for a moment, then touched her index finger to the tip of the blade. When she drew it away, a small pinprick of blood formed.

  “It’s not about strength,” she said. Her voice was suddenly clear and full. “It’s easy enough to draw blood. But you have to do it fast enough, rip it fully open, so that the skin can’t grow back. You did a good job with the blade.”

  She took three heavy steps toward where Anja’s mother lay. Standing by her side, Lea reached out and touched the base of her neck.

  “Here,” she said. “But the windpipe is reinforced, so that will need a bit of effort.”

  Her voice was cold and hot at the same time. She seemed detached, but Anja sensed a simmering fascination under the surface, an old desire.

  Suddenly she wanted to wrestle the knife out of Lea’s hands. But she was paralyzed, her arms heavy, her legs rooted to the floor. She could only watch as Lea examined her mother’s neck carefully, the knife that Anja had given her shiny in her hand.

  No, she wanted to shout, no. Not like this. But still she couldn’t open her mouth.

  Lea turned to Anja. Her eyes were black as coals. Gone was the look of resignation that she had entered the room with. Something seemed to burn within her.

  Then Lea reached out to take Anja’s hand. The moment she felt Lea’s fingers wrap around hers, a switch seemed to flip. Anja grabbed her hand tightly, and then with both hands, grabbed her arm. She felt the wiry muscles under Lea’s skin, a hundred years of good nutrition and maintenance and exercise and technology. She felt how she wouldn’t be strong enough to stop her, and the familiar frustration, the helplessness, washed over her.

  Lea looked down at her arm where Anja was holding it, then raised her eyes to meet Anja’s. Still they burned, cold and hungry, with a violence that Anja couldn’t understand. But then, suddenly, they cleared, giving way to a brightness. Perhaps it was the way Anja’s fingers trembled as she dug into the flesh of Lea’s forearm, or perhaps it was the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes. Either way, Lea seemed to understand.

  “Here,” she said. Her voice was soft now. Anja could tell she wasn’t thinking of her anymore, nor of her mother. Lea handed the knife back to Anja. Its handle was still warm from the heat of Lea’s grip, and as Anja held it now, she felt that something was different.

  Anja stepped around Lea and sat down in the chair, the same chair that she had sat in so many times, watching, waiting, helpless. But this time when she brought the blade to her mother’s neck, there was no trembling or hesitation. This time, the cold metal touching her sticky skin didn’t seem cruel or unnatural. It wasn’t even her skin, Anja reminded herself. Her mother wasn’t even there. Not anymore.

  So she ripped into the flesh in the spot that Lea had pointed to, using her other hand to pull the skin apart more quickly. It was slippery and wet, and she seemed to feel it growing back already, back over her hands as they dug in her mother’s neck. But then, under the inky thick blood, there it was, the windpipe. She could see it pulsing with her mother’s breath, alien and purple and shiny.

  You have to do it fast enough, Lea had said. Anja felt her standing behind her, watching and waiting.

  The dark blood was trickling down the side of her mother’s neck. It moved slowly, like lava out of a crater. When the blood touched the starchy white sheets, it didn’t sink in right away, instead sitting for a moment on the surface like thick jelly. But the liquid kept coming, and in an instant something gave. The sheets turned deep violet.

  Her mother’s face was serene and motionless, the same as always. But Anja could still see her windpipe moving under all that wetness, could still hear the thump of her heart.

  “What if she’s still alive after I do it?” Anja asked in desperation. “What if her heart just keeps going?”

  “It won’t,” Lea said.

  She stared at her mother. The windpipe, the heart, the blood. It was never her mother at all. Suddenly she saw them for what they were—alien and cruel. They weren’t saving her mother any more than Anja was killing her. Anja dropped the knife.

  She went at it with both hands, plunging her fingers into wetness, wrapping them around the warm, rigid windpipe. The blood seemed stickier now, seemed to already be congealing. It would heal over in minutes if she allowed it to. So she didn’t. She felt strength in her fingers, the kind of strength she felt when playing the violin. The windpipe between her hands was like the neck of a violin, the cold metal ridges like strings cutting into her fingers. She squeezed, tighter and tighter, beginning to rotate her hands in opposite directions.

  The windpipe was strong, the reinforcing wires rigid, but slowly she began to feel it give under her hands. She thought of the windpipe her mother used to have, a soft, natural thing that would bring such beautiful sound from her depths of lungs and heart out into the world. This was no such thing. This windpipe only wheezed and crackled, only kept her music trapped inside her.

  She twisted harder, feeling her fingers start to lose strength. But then there was a quiet pop and a soft whoosh of air. There was a terrible gurgling noise as the blood seeped into the open channel. Slowly, the wheezing stopped. Her mother was no longer breathing.

  Anja dropped her hands to her side, feeling the sticky blood beginning to harden in the webs of her fingers.

  The heart was still beating, its valves whirring and clicking,
the liquid spurting out of her mother’s throat.

  Anja felt a slow dread creep over her. It would never end. She would try and try again, but it would never end, they would never let her mother die.

  But then, before she could blink, the floral comforter was being drawn back and the knife was sinking into the flesh of her mother’s chest. Lea wielded the knife with a precision and strength that Anja could never have imagined. She angled the blade between the ribs, wriggling and maneuvering until its tip was perfectly positioned at some invisible spot that only she could see.

  She turned to Anja. Anja nodded.

  Lea gripped the handle of the knife in the heel of her right hand. With one heavy motion, she slammed the heel of her left hand into it, and the knife sank deep and fast.

  The heart beat once, twice, then a third time, weakly. Then it stopped, and there was silence.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The sky in this part of the world was darker and brighter than it ever was in the city. Eddies of color swirled at night, giving way to a calm, pale blankness when morning fell.

  It wasn’t just the sky. They caught glimpses of the ocean as they wound up and down between forests and cliffs, and it was large and alive and even more terrifying. Eventually they found themselves on an ocean road that stretched on for hundreds of miles, teetering on the edge of mossy cliffs. They thought the road might lead to where the green disappeared and ice took over. They thought perhaps they would get there someday.