From Jester To King CVI

I used to go to the south coast, to Parvenant and Sittinborough, to hang out with a few people I knew, and afterwards we’d sometimes take the tunnel to France, and as night fell we’d be sitting on the two-sided bench by the sea-front, or huddling over it, and one of the people who’d tend to be in the crowd was this guy Menda. And whilst the crowd was having its light-hearted fun, this time I was right next to Menda. It felt like he was watching me, hanging over me, mimicking my every movement, and whilst I was trying just to join in with the group, I couldn’t get as close as I wanted to it because of this Menda.

And I didn’t want to say anything; I didn’t want to upset him. And then you know when someone gets the idea that they can disturb you, they see something they can prey on, they home in on that one person that’s weak, well I suppose this is what happened with Menda because in not too long a period of time he has proceeded from being slightly pesky and obstructive to threatening to cut my arms with a Stanley knife. And soon enough he has the blade just above my arms, all whilst everyone else is just having their fun, and try as I might to get to the core of the group, Menda is still preventing me. But he doesn’t say anything, just grimaces and smirks, and I don’t really believe he’s actually going to cut me, but before I have the chance to really consider it, he has pressed the blade into my skin, and the skin parts easily, and he pulls the razor a couple of centimetres through, and I am shocked more than anything before I have a chance to be outraged, and although I am scared I am relying on the fact that Menda realises that you cannot just cut another human being in the open air in front of a whole load of other people without consequences and so will stop.

But it’s the reverse that proves to be true, because as soon as he’s done it once it seems the floodgates are open, and he looks at me even more menacingly than before to signal his intention to do it again, and this time I think I know he’s not bluffing, but he’s standing over me and I can’t get away, and all I can really try to do is to obstruct the thing’s path to my arm by putting my right arm in the way so I flail with my right arm but I just can’t stop him and he gets me again, once again on the fleshy underside of my left arm, another slice, the skin parts like butter, and now instead of being scared or shocked, I am livid that this guy Menda is repeatedly cutting me. Doesn’t anyone else realise he’s cutting me? I don’t even think they know he has a knife.

Eventually the authorities caught Menda, but it wasn’t that easy. I was there, and they brought him into the front room of a downstairs motel room, and they sat him down on the floor, and Menda played the whole thing as if he was catatonic -- he was all grey-haired by now --  I mean he tried to make the lady believe he was simultaneously mentally ill, fully recovered, but also extremely gentle, -- far too gentle to ever thinking of cutting people’s arms -- and as he sat on his floor, his back against the front-side of the sofa and his legs stretched out straight in front of him so that they protruded out from the coffee table, I was worried, no I was actually certain that the officer had been duped, moreover I was worried he’d get his blade out at any moment, and eventually she finished her inquiry, led Menda outside, then she came back in and the door was ever so slightly ajar, and as soon as she came back in, I made the exaggerated facial movements of a person showing he was fully aware he shouldn’t say anything lest the person who’d just been led outside should hear it but who still ensure she urgently knew that we were dealing with a stabber, but instead of having the desired effect, she became very agitated herself and starting miming to me in this even more exaggerated way -- it felt very charged – that didn’t I realise he was right outside listening, and that of course she knew that he was the stabber and that she’d been playing along and she didn’t want him to know that she knew, and I felt just really stupid for not having realised that she’d had it all under control, and I hoped that Menda hadn’t got wind, because I didn’t go out and check and she just walked out before me, and I didn’t follow it up with them so who knows where Menda is now, grey-haired and ageing Menda, but it did feel reassuring to know that I was not the only one who knew he was a menace.