That Little Spark
by Bee Williams
1. The Eye Opener
Feeling that knife entering your body is such a precipitous and pivotal moment that the shock of it doesn’t fully register until much, much later. In the moment that the knife pierces the skin and rips through soft tissue creating internal havoc, you are infused with an infuriating sense of invasion and outrage. It’s a murderous feeling that could have portended into other things if you weren’t so busy defending yourself. You would think that in something like this you would panic, freeze or give way to fear and shock. Yet all I could remember feeling at every knife entry, and there were several, was this incredible sense of rage to just fight this bastard off.
No, I’m not a soldier or a cop, nor a member of a street gang, nor associated with any terrorist groups. I do not have a dangerous occupation or pastime that might heighten the possibility of being involved in such a scenario. I’m just an ordinary wife and mother, a non-descript member of the public, trying to live day by day.
Twenty-four years old, a little delusional about life and its unfulfilled promises, but still possessing that pertinacious belief of youth that good will prevail and things will change for the better. Oh boy. What a long road we will have to travel before finding that philosophy again.
So then what could lead to the usually inconceivable situation of being on the other end of a knifepoint? Or the question I’ve been asked many, many times.
“What did you do to make him do that?”
It is an interesting question that reflects the very natural human incomprehension of the perverse. It’s the notion that as a species we aren’t capable of such behaviour unless driven to it. Perhaps the answer can be found in childhood, or in the social environment or perhaps it were the actions of the victim that provoked it.
Whatever. Being the victim, and I don’t like that term but it is useful for now, you do not care what explanation there is for this savagery upon your being. You know that it is unjust and undeserved no matter what the excuse. You know that each and everyone of us have a choice in any given situation and the choice to pick up a weapon and use it against another person is entirely the perpetrator alone.
In fact, it’s absolutely amazing how the mind becomes so poignantly clear that every single element becomes highlighted as though in definition of the highest quality. Every little sound or nuance were being registered or discarded as irrelevant to the moment. You forget about social behaviour and guilt. You are brought down to the level of the animal that he has instigated, where the natural instincts of survival takes root.
I was aware of people shouting and moving in the periphery and background, but the scene I was caught up in took on this monumental focus so that I saw the murderous gleam in my attacker’s eyes, and I knew I’m supposed to die this day.
You see I’d seen that look before. He was, after all, my husband, or soon to be ex. I had left him a few months earlier, a little after he tried to strangle me and throw me down the stairs. My crime? I dared to have an opinion and voiced that I believed that Princess Diana was a good person who tried to help others. I guess he wasn’t keen on the Royal Family. Or it might have been beautiful and successful women that he had a problem with.
Anger, rage, resentment, unhappiness, dejection are reasons that are banded around to explain these behaviour. We do so reluctantly of course because though we do know what propels this force we are not ready to believe that someone can get to such a level that they let it overcome them.
No one likes to see or stand in the face of pure, unadulterated rage. Seeing another stripped raw of normal, civilised behaviour can in itself be terrifying.
Here it comes again, another inane, ingenuous question founded on disbelief of the appalling disintegration of human behaviour.
“But what would make someone so angry?”
Yet before I beleaguer you with the grim tale of modern life, domestic abuse, and the trillion theories that exists on sociopathic behaviour its perhaps best to go back to that incredibly fateful moment.
It’s a moment of robbery and treachery at its utmost. When someone takes your life in his hands and then tries to stamp it into the ground, they not only rob you of your basic rights, they rob you of your belief in humanity. They betray your belief in them and in us. They kill something essential. The innocence, the hopes and dreams, the laughter and joviality, the light and sunshine and sometimes even that little spark. The aftershock and loss can cause long-lasting permeated damage.
That is exactly what my ex intended when he had me by the scruff of the neck and repeated plunged the knife into me. Each plunge was to say I own you and you are nothing. Each plunge was saying that your life is worth nothing. When I look back on it now, I realised that it also said, sadly, that our so-called highly rated evolution is but a sham. It’s a slightly shimmering veneer that loosely holds civilisation together, but just under the surface is that rawness that can come to light with random stimuli. I don’t truly know if this view is entirely true but given all that I’ve seen and just observing our world today, I’d say in the main it’s applicable.
A harsh view some would say. Yet why else would phenomena such as real life TV programmes hold such fascination? Just take a peek at the likes of I’m a Celebrity Get ME Out Of Here and Big Brother and it is clear that when you take people out of their normal environment and with a little given stimuli, the gloves of civilised behaviour quickly comes off.
Bee Williams is a first time writer of an auto-biography of an unusual life. Lives with partner and three kids plus two stepkids. No formal writing qualifications but does have a Master in Computing Science and Politics. Contact Bee Williams.
