Breaking the Cycle by Zane Page B

sidewalk. His life’s essence paying the cost of inflicting pain on another life—with man-punches to the face. Counting the cost that life is sweet, every life, and that a soul cries out to be free… no matter the cost.
    It was the ending of the cycle. There would be no more pain.
    The old man’s body lay there, of course, but it looked like all of his blood and guts were rushing toward the opening where his head used to be. It looked like wormy guts and thick blood were pulsing, desperately straining to get loose, but only rivulets of brackish liquid oozed out. I stayed there, transfixed, until the firemen washed all the red fluid down the street. I looked down at my smashed and bloody toe. It didn’t hurt anymore.
    The front wheel of the bike was bent so I limped, walking the bike back up the hill, dumped it out front, and went inside our house. My mother looked at me.
    “What happened to you?” she asked, mildly interested.
    “I flipped my bike.” I exhaled as I flopped on the couch.
    “And tore your head up?”
    I nodded my head in reply.
    “That’s what you get! Good for your ass, then,” she intoned. “Didn’t I tell you about that shit? You always doin’ shit. You need to learn to sit ya ass down somewhere.”
    My insides were hollow as I told my mother what Donnell Shunt’s grandmother had done to her husband’s head. I had an image stuck in my mind. A picture of his guts straining to escape from his headless neck.
    “She did that with a knife?” My mother looked me in the eyes.
    “A machete, you know, those long knives,” I answered.
    “Musta been sharp, then.”
    “Ma, she swung that knife like she was a home run king! It was like… like… flop and crunchy when his head came off. It went… like thump and crunch all at the same time. Nasty.”
    I told her how I had seen Jessie Mae sharpening the blade on the grindstone earlier that day, shortly before she took her husband’s head off.
    I knew there was something desperate in the night, when I saw the brightness of the sparks that shot off the blade of the machete. Once again, I felt utterly alone. The flashes of light drew me like a magnet, so I crept over and watched the woman through the slats of the wooden fence. Her face was set in a mad glare as she worked the grindstone, turned the wheel, and aimed for the razor’s edge, moving the blade back and forth, watching intently as a sharp point began to materialize. An old lady. New in town. She was Donnell Shunt’s grandma. Her husband had recently moved with her to our small town of Hudson from somewhere down South—Louisiana, I think.
    I had seen her husband sitting on the front porch a few times. He was a rail-thin old man, rather fragile-looking, now that I think back on it, and he liked to sit outside and watch the people of the small town go strolling by. He would sit there with a grin on his face, smiling and waving at folks—at strangers that he didn’t even know. He seemed like a nice enough guy.
    I wondered why his wife was in the backyard sharpening a knife. She was a little sturdier than her husband. Her arms had little coils of muscle that were formed with strength developed from years of labor in kitchens, laundry rooms, and other roles of servitude. Yeah, she looked quite comfortable, familiar with the feel and handle of a sharp blade. I noticed the way she held it like a hammer. No, not a hammer; more like Mjolnir, the God of Thunder’s hammer… with a two-handed grip. It meant something to her.
    She paused and straightened up, wiping her brow with the back of her hand as she looked cautiously around the yard. I crouched down behind the slat of the fence as best I could when she looked in my direction. Their house stood on the corner of Front Street and Upwards Alley, a full, two-family home with a small-sized yard that stretched out behind it. I stood on the Upwards Alley side, a spot that was at the dead bottom end of the hill which stretched up, high toward the