Straw Dogs

Heaven and Earth are impartial;
They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The wise are impartial;
They see the people as straw dogs.
~ Tao Te Ching V

A monk asked Jōshū , “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”
Jōshū answered, “Mu”
~ The Gateless Gate, Koan One

At first, there was only silence, emptiness…

Then, the languid liquid drop, blood against pavement. And another.

And another, before the roar of sound washed over her: Chaos and viciousness showered in screams.

Screams meant someone had been missed in her frenzy, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t cared before either — everything had just… happened. Glancing down at her blades, still jutting from her trembling forearms, she was tired beyond words. She lifted her head to review the carnage, gore and faceless bodies ranging out from where she kneeled, painted in the blood of what had just moments before been laughing, happy people. Now, they were just meat.

In the distance, the sirens wailed to life. It wouldn’t be long now before the badges arrived and she was far too exhausted to run. Nor did she want to run.

The psychosis had come on without warning. She had always thought she would at least have time to hunker down before it went haywire. That’s what you get for thinking, girly, she told herself.

They would lock her up, of course. Worse. They would lock her up with all the other whackos down at Homeward Hills, the home for all the violent nutcases they found out on the City’s streets.

But incarceration was no place for a wild beast, a razorgirl of the streets, where they would cage her and she would find herself very likely declawed. The blades she wore were outlawed blades. A judge would have all eight removed by dawn, ignoring what pain she’d be required to endure, both physical and mental. It was a simple decision for them: the blades were illegal mods and she was about to be branded a mass killer. Whatever rights she might have had when she woke up this morning would evaporate like fog in the daytime sun once the badges saw the wasteland she had carved in the middle of Broadway Ave. It would be for her own safety, they would say. It would be for the other inmates’ safety, they would add. It was all drek, of course. The badges and politicos would be most worried that she would deny them their justice, whatever that was supposed to be. They would not want her to rob them of that.

She did not give two shits about what the badges wanted. Never had. “They can go slot themselves,” she muttered, not realizing she had said the words aloud.

One of the Mr. Johnsons she worked with had wanted her to get a special implant prior to a particular run, just in case. Just in case she was apprehended or otherwise proved to be inconvenient for his particular brand of truth. She had agreed because she had gotten tired of eating rat during a particularly dry period in her career, and the promised cred was more than good. After that job, she eliminating that Johnson who had backstabbed her after the gig and underpaid her. She had taken what little cred she earned on that shit job and hired a decker to hack the implant to respond only to her voice patterns and her password. Removal attempts would have caused a messy explosion in her cortex she was informed when they had installed the cortex bomb, so she did not bother to even try for surgical removal.

She subvocalized the passphrase. It had been selected solely because it was not something she ever expected to have an occasion to say.

“I love you.”

There was a loud, but muffled, popping noise and her body fell forward onto the blood- and rain-soaked street, just another body amongst the many she’d left in her wake that April evening.

The rain resumed as the first tires screeched to a stop at the scene.