The Ignored

My heart was pounding, whether from excitement or fear I couldn’t tell. The sound seemed extraordinarily loud in my head and I wondered if Stewart could hear it.

Footsteps crossed the tile floor toward the stalls.

What if it wasn’t even Stewart? What if it was someone else and they opened the door of my stall and saw me there, a deranged clown with a knife? What would I do? What could I do?

The footsteps stopped outside my stall.

The metal door was pulled open.

It was Stewart.

For a split second, his face registered surprise. Then I stabbed him. The knife did not slide easily into his body. It hit muscle and rib and it was tough going, and I pulled it out and pushed it in again, only this time with more of a thrusting motion. I guess the shock must’ve worn off then because he started to scream. I shoved my left hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, but even without the screams the loud, rough sounds of our struggle echoed in the empty bathroom. He was pressed against the side of the stall, and he was kicking and fighting and trying desperately to get away. There was blood everywhere, flowing, spurting, on him, on me. A kick connected with my right knee and almost brought me down. His fist hit the side of my head. I realized instantly that I’d made a mistake, but it was too late to turn back now, and I continued to stab.

It didn’t feel good, the way I’d thought it would. I didn’t feel satisfied, didn’t feel as if justice was being served. I felt like what I was. A cold-blooded killer. In my plans, in my fantasies, this had been the payoff scene of a movie, and I’d been cheering the hero — me — as he finally meted out retribution to the villain. But in reality it was not that way. It was brutal and messy and ugly: he trying furiously to save his life, me no longer wanting to kill him but fully committed to that course of action and unable to stop.

He fell, hitting his head on the bottom edge of the metal door and causing a new geyser of blood to gush forth from his forehead. He was dying, but not quickly and not without a struggle, and I was being hurt. If he had been quicker or I had been slower, he would have knocked the knife out of my hand or wrestled it away from me and that would have been the end.

He punched me in the balls and I tripped backward, but I fell onto the toilet, and I lunged forward and stabbed him in the face.

His body convulsed crazily for a few seconds, then was still.

I withdrew my knife from his nose. It was followed by a wave of blood and some sickly gray clumpy stuff that washed over my shoes.

How was I going to explain all this to the costume rental shop? I thought stupidly.

I stood, pulled off some toilet paper, and wiped the blood from the knife. I stepped over Stewart’s body and closed the stall door behind me. His head and one arm were sticking out from underneath the side of the stall, his hand practically touching the edge of the adjacent urinal, but I didn’t care. There was no way I could hide the body at this point or even remotely disguise what had happened.

I felt nothing. No guilt, no fear, no panic, no exhilaration. Nothing. I realized that I was probably suffering from some kind of shock, but I didn’t feel like I was suffering from shock. I seemed to be thinking clearly, my mind functioning normally.

It had not happened the way I’d thought it would happen, but I decided to stick with my original plan. I walked out of the bathroom and down the hall to the elevator. I walked through the lobby and outside, but by the time I started looking around for my car I had already passed it. I was on the sidewalk and looking at cars parked on the street. I guess I was more in shock than I thought.

It hit me then.

I started trembling, and I dropped the knife. I could no longer see because of the tears in my eyes. I could still feel the knife stabbing through muscle and hitting bone, could still feel my hand over his mouth as he bled and drooled all over me and tried desperately to escape. Would I ever be able to erase those images and sensations from my consciousness?

I walked slowly and dazedly down the sidewalk. I probably would have felt foolish had I thought about the way I was dressed, but right now my appearance was the last thing on my mind.

I had killed a man. I had taken a human life.

I realized that I knew nothing about Stewart’s existence away from work. Was he married? Did he have a family? Would there be a young son and daughter waiting at a house with a white picket fence for their father to come home for dinner? I felt guilty, horrible, and within me was a black blank feeling that went far beyond depression. The strength and will I’d felt at the moment of the murder was gone, replaced by a tired, lethargic despair.

What had I done?

Behind me, on the street, I heard sirens.

Police.

“Bob!”

I turned around at the sound of my name.

And saw the sharp-eyed man running toward me across the sidewalk.

I had a momentary sensation of panic, a quickflash feeling of fear, but though I wanted to run, I did not. I turned fully, faced the man.

He slowed as he approached, grinning at me. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

I tried to keep my face innocently neutral, tried not to let the alarm show on my face. “Who?”

“Your boss.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do, Bob. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t. And how do you know my name?”

He laughed, but strangely enough there didn’t seem to be any maliciousness in the laugh. “Come on. You know I’ve been following you, and you know why.”

“No, I don’t know why.”

“You’ve passed the initiation ceremony. You’re in.”

The fear returned. I suddenly wished I hadn’t dropped the knife. “In?”

“You’re one of us.”

It was like I’d suddenly figured out how to do a complicated math problem that had been frustrating me. I knew what he was. “You’re Ignored,” I said.

He nodded. “But I prefer to call myself a terrorist. A Terrorist for the Common Man.”

I felt strange, unlike I’d ever felt before, and I didn’t know if the feeling was good or bad. “Are… are there more of you?”

He laughed again. “Oh, yes. There are more of us.” He stressed the word “us.”

“But — ”

“We want you to join us.” He moved forward, next to me. “You’re free now. You’ve cut off your ties to their world. You’re part of our world now. You never were one of them, but you thought you had to play by their rules. Now you know you don’t. No one knows you; no one will remember you. You can do what you want.” His sharp eyes focused on mine. “We’ve all done the same thing. We’ve all done what you’ve done, I offed my boss and his boss. I thought I was all alone then, but… well, I found out that I wasn’t. I found others. And I decided that we should band together. When I saw you that first time, at South Coast Plaza, I knew you were one of us, too. But I could tell that you were still searching. You hadn’t found yourself yet. So I waited for you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I know you. I know what foods you like; I know your taste in clothes; I know everything about you. And you know everything about me.”

“Except your name.”

“Philipe.” He grinned. “Now you know everything.”

It was true. He was right. And as I stood there and looked at him and that strange feeling settled inside me, I knew that the feeling was good.

“Are you in?” he asked.

I looked back down the street, toward the mirrored facade of the Automated Interface building, and I