me! Help me! There, the door shut. I'm alone now, so this must be my room after all. But I still don't know who I am. When I'm lost, I'm so far from Being and from Here, that it feels as though I could never get back. It was fun to not Be when I could come back as I willed, but this being taken, snatched out of Being! But already this lost me is beginning to accumulate memories. That's why I'll have to go to someone-if I can ever get both of me together. I must talk. I must. I heard them talking, then I heard her talking. Or her eyes talked. Or the turn of her head. 'Murder is easy,' she said, 'When you've got someone who needs killing. Oh, nothing in all of life will become her so as the way she leaves it. And when you have access to lots of little bottles and boxes and pills and powders-so much the easier.' I heard it, I tell you, but I daren't go to anyone. I don't know who said it, or thought it, or conveyed it-only that it's one of us five. One has murder in her hands-one must hold her hands out for it. And I might be either one. I must be the Planner-else how could I have heard what she said? Who would speak of murder to another? But who am I going to kill? I don't hate anyone bad enough to kill. I don't hate anyone-except-except everyone! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! You're tearing me loose from my safeness! You're pushing me to death! Oh, God, give me something to hang onto if it's only a blood-stained knife or-a-crumpled-pillow. I'm-so-tired-I'm-so-tired-let-me- sleep- Have you seen those Christmas bells made of honeycombed paper? You open them out and they're big and solid and lovely. Then you fold them and all of Christmas is compressed wafer thin. That's how my Not Being times unfold, big and endless and frightful, but after they're gone, there's only a thin, frightened ache left. But now there's a thread of memory that runs through Being and Not Being. This murderous red thread stains both ways. Now that I'm here and know myself, I've been watching- watching to see in whose eyes murder is waiting-or in whose eyes death is waiting. Whom did I hear talking? Was it my own voice that said Murder was easy? I couldn't murder. It's wrong. I'd be afraid to. It's too untidy and all the endless aimless uproar before it's finished. It'd wear you out physically before it was half-over. And yet, when I'm Not Being, I'm not the same person, so maybe that un-person could kill. Maybe it isn't wrong for her- But I might be the victim! I might find my breath stopped in mid-scream. I might feel the knife go in and life run out! We all went to the cafeteria together. With my eyes shut I could have told you just what we would choose. I wish, oh, I wish I hadn't learned everyone so well. Now instead of trying to ignore one life-which is me-I have the burden of five lives. Well, we all chose from the drearily familiar food-the invalid diet, the calorie counter, the What-does-it-matter, the Did-you-ever-see-such-food and the What-if-there's-botulism-in-the-beans. We all sat at a table together, Dorothea snatching the trays away and stacking them neatly, Kit carefully arranging herself so she could see everyone who came into the cafeteria, Cleo cautiously pushing the beans to one side, wondering if botulism could be carried in their watery juice, Allison keeping up a running fire of comment-derogatory-and Greta, sighing wearily over the lumpy mashed potatoes as she deftly devoured them. I held on-I held on as long as I could. I almost laughed out loud, wondering what they'd think if they knew I was holding on to me by the strength of one withered looking string bean! I clung to it with my eyes, fiercely, telling myself to stay, stay, stay! But I'm gone again and I'm in death. Death is all around me like a miasma. I'm groping through an endless haze and way down there, a million miles from me, I see it-oh, cautiously concealed-oh, adroitly palmed-oh, deftly dropped. Close your eyes quick! Close your eyes quick! Death is glancing up! Your cup. Tip it up. Drink deep. Eyes closed above cooling coffee can't see death-falling-dissolving-dissolving me and the world and the hand that held death. I'm restless tonight. Ever since we got back from the cafeteria. I've held a book-unread-before my eyes for ten minutes. I've straightened the top dresser drawer frantically. I've sewed two buttons on two wrong blouses. I can't give it up. Let's go over it again. Memory tells me someone spoke about murder. Memory-or imagination-saw someone putting something in someone's food or drink. My lost self is the one who cries murder, but I can't peek into that thin wedge of Not Being and see what's there. I can't even see if I'm the one who dropped death, or if it was into my coffee that death was dropped. I've worried myself into indigestion-indigestion? Oh, does it matter? Does it really matter if I drop dead! I'm so tired. Life is too complicated. Let me see no more the raised eyebrows, or the slanted glance or the trembling mouth or clenched fist. I wish I were just eyes feeding figures to fingers that hardly need a brain to produce the right response on the right keys. It's coming! It's coming! The dark whirlwind down the hall! The cold roar of eternity! The sudden staccato of hurried feet! Listen! Listen! Like a storm breaking! Like n wave crashing against the rocks! Like a flashflood battering into our dorm! Hear the cries! Hear the hurrying! Oh, let me hide! Let me cover my ears! Let me close my eyes-let me huddle alone-alone on my bed. The pain-the terror-the empty, empty voices-they're mine-they're mine. Of course! Of course! Since I was a parasite on someone else's life, I have to be a partaker of her death. I can't stay here, now that it's too late. Hurry, hurry, I must join the others! Shake off this paralysis! Run! Run! 'She's dead,' said Dorothea wondering, dropping the limp hand. 'What do we do now?' 'She told me she felt bad when we left the cafeteria. She wouldn't even come over to my room with us for a decent cup of coffee. She said she was going to take something and lie down.' Allison's mouth pursed tremulously and folded in between her teeth, dimpling her cheeks. 'When I brought her a cup-' 'We'll have to tell someone,' trembled Cleo. 'The police will come. Only we haven't any police-the sheriff?' 'So her bottles finally got her.' Kit's brassy voice was muted. She pushed one small bottle and it started a chain of tiny clicks down the length of the shelf. 'They were the death of her after all, weren't they?' 'I'll call the hospital.' Dorothea deftly tucked the covers under the quiet figure, then slowly untucked them and pulled the sheet up over the mop of dark hair. The sheet wasn't quite long enough and left the top tangle of curls uncovered. There was a doorwards surge behind Kit. 'But we can't leave her alone!' Cleo pulled back. 'Not all alone!' 'You stay then.' Kit's face turned away. 'Much thanks you'll get from her.' 'Oh, no, oh, no!' Cleo hurried into the hall with the others. I'm alive! I'm alive! Death has come and gone and I'm alive! I wasn't the victim! I didn't die in agony. That tiny round white door into death wasn't for me! I'm alive! I'm alive! Oh, thank you, God-But Oh, God, have mercy! Since I'm not the victim, maybe I'm the killer! I can't be-I can't be! And yet-and yet-that other self. How can I tell what she might have done? But I can't remember doing– Of course not. Break every fingernail you have, you can't pry open that honeycombed bell. Greta is gone now and we hardly avert our faces as we pass her closed door. Someone will be moving in there soon and the ripple that was Greta will be stilled forever. The law came and went. I don't know what they think. They didn't say much. They didn't leap to life at a sudden betraying word and hurry someone off, screaming, to the bar of justice. It's a little disappointing. In fact, as they gathered together all those little boxes and bottles of hers, they said, ' 'S a wonder she didn't poison herself long before this.' They took Greta away with her bottles. We're in a lull now-a smooth nothing. We can slide through the day without even having to think. The last three days we've rattled out numbers like muffled hail-mechanically. I haven't been lost even once since Greta died. It's as though I had been purged of some dark sickness- which doesn't comfort me as I huddle on my bed listening to the papery rustle of rain across my darkening windows. I wish I didn't have that other lost self. She well could have dreamed up the whole thing. People who are bankrupt of legitimate interest and excitement often take refuge in imaginary terrors. They're much more engrossing than imaginary delights. My lost self may have done just that. Or perhaps that last meal of Greta's in the cafeteria actually did have death in it-natural death-and my lost self sensed it and misinterpreted it giving it a local habitation and a name. Anyway, today the personnel office asked me if I'd pack Greta's things and get them ready to send back home to her folks-back in Tennessee somewhere, I believe. As soon as I gather myself up a little more, I'll go get it done. There are cardboard cartons in the hall awaiting the overflow from her suitcase and trunk. Well, they told me to pack everything-but what good will all these little charts do them? Little hand-drawn charts something like the ones you find on the foot of hospital beds, with Greta's temperature and pulse and all the other tickings of her body for the last three years-temperature graphs that stubbornly stay on normal. One excited
