16 Short story — Fear Of Knives
55 Short story – Fear Of Knives
A short story about a man who lived with fear of knives.
by Jessop Sutton
He lay quiet for a while, looking at the open window. It came to him slowly that the fear had gone. It was all over. It started when he was just a little lad and now he was past 81. That was a long time to live with it.”It began”, he thought, “the night there was a commotion outside my bedroom window. In the morning Mother found the long stabbing spear stuck in the ground. I saw the knife and it stuck in my mind.
“Then there was Kista. At first Kista had been nice to him. Then one day Kista in jest opened a pocket knife and pretended that he wanted to mutilate him. He remembered the fear, the shame and the anguish he felt while he ran and everyone laughed. Kista did it again next time he went to the sawmill, and again and again until he just could not go there anymore. One day Kista said sorry and didn’t do it again, but the damage was done.He spoke softly to himself, remembering: “After that I couldn’t look at a knife blade without my eyes getting all screwed up and me having to hold my head”.
He sucked air through his teeth and shuddered a little as he always did at the thought of a knife blade slicing through his flesh.
“It was then that I decided that I’d face a bullet rather than a knife”.He overcame the fear but never lost it. In his days, twice he faced a man wielding a knife and both times his boldness crowded out the fear – until it was over and the reaction set in. Once he came across a group of rough street-people in a fight, one stabbing at another with a knife. “How foolish” he thought, “how very foolish it is to go between them”, but he did. A colleague from the office walking past stared briefly in amazement before walking hurriedly away. Later at the office the colleague said: “How foolish to get between two street ruffians fighting with knives”. He shrugged it off but when he was on his own the fear crowded in and he shuddered over and over again at the thought of what might have been.
Years went by. One night there was an urgent banging on the door and outside was a hysterical woman with a man behind her lunging with a knife. He stepped between them and shielded her as she fell into the house, blood streaming onto the carpet. The assailant made stabbing threats towards him but eventually went away. Only after the police had come and gone again with the woman did the fear appear. The thought of the stabbing blade caused him to shudder deeply and clutch his forehead as his eyes screwed up tightly as if to shut out the sight.
It was ten years ago that the youth confronted him. There were four of them, layabouts, no-goods who paraded the car-parks and station platforms, wolves waiting for victims. They walked passed and he glared at them. One opened his hand backwards to show the old man a long, sharp shiny piece of steel clutched there – something to threaten, maim, kill anyone who resisted or fought back. The youths walked on but the old fear came back, mature and irresistible now.The street which had been a happy place now became a jungle filled with fearful beasts. He could no longer venture out without the thought that a youth with a knife could leap out from any corner. He would imagine the lunging hand and the feel of the blade entering his chest. He sold up hurriedly and moved to the apartment on the third floor of this block in the city. He lived here in seclusion, shut away from the dangerous world outside.
The guarded door at the entrance and the distance above the ground gave him a sense of security, but not enough. He added a security gate to his own front door and bars on all windows.”All windows except for that one”, he mused as he looked from where he lay on the floor to the open bathroom window. The intruder climbed up the water pipes, came through the little window, stabbed him in the chest, picked up all the small valuables he could find and left again the same way. He could have left the thief to take what he wanted but his instinct was to fight back just as he had with the two fighting street-people and the girl at the door.”I saw the blade in his hand”, he said to himself in amazement, “I saw it coming”. He expected to feel his whole body shudder at the thought, but it didn’t. Then he realised that the fear had gone. “It wasn’t so bad”, he thought and a wry smile creased his face. He turned his eyes towards his bolted front door as he thought “I wonder how long it will be before someone finds me here?” He closed his eyes. He no longer felt any pain, just a feeling of peace — and a little happiness that he was no longer afraid.
Copyright: Jessop Sutton Cape Town South Africa September 1999
