You don’t expect a blade. You have been led to expect a gun. You don’t expect the strange motionless edge moving through you without pain until the action is complete. You expect a bang, and then you expect a miss. Why? Because you expect to be the hero of your own story.
You grew up in the era of the anti-hero, so you were happy to be compared to Dillinger. Weren’t you flattered by the comparison to Travis Bickle? It thrilled you to be the reason that people were scared.
This feels different though. This isn’t the cocaine buzz. This isn’t the ejaculation after great sex. This is a pushing inward – a shrinking of the space you occupy. You have, even unbeknownst to you, been believing yourself to be somehow immortal.
Who is this person? Some anonymous person has been sent by someone who has not yet been revealed to kill you? The impertinence of it all. And you laugh. The fucking comedy of it all. You don’t get to know who, so you don’t get to know why, and as you’re dying you don’t really care. All the vanity stripped away. And it is kind of funny that you weren’t expecting a knife.