Life from the Perspective of a Guilty Knife - Sean Vincent

Many people believe that all knives are like Swiss army knives. That we can do any job, in any environment, without experiencing any wear and tear. That we don’t know when we’re being misused, mistreated, or generally abused. That we can keep performing, over and over, with the same level of mechanical precision necessary to complete any task laid before us. And that we don’t care what we’re cutting, as long as we’re cutting something. All things misconceptions add up to probably the greatest lie the human race has ever manufactured. The fact is that we aren’t some kind of bionic super-utensils, and that we are made to do only one thing: cut. But there are some things that we just weren’t made to cut. I used to be just a simple dicing knife, but that was before my life was turned inside out. I wasn’t one of those suave, hand-crafted artisan knives, but I definitely wasn’t one of those name-brand slackers either. I was a strong knife, confident of my seven-inch long, one-and-a-half-inch wide blade, which I used to slice, dice and chop anything that may lay on my cutting board. Celery, onions, chicken, lettuce, potatoes, broccoli, salmon. Name the meat or vegetable and I’ve diced it into pieces so fine you could eat them like a liquid. I was sharp too, sharper than most, and grateful for the massaging touch of the kitchens built in sharpener. I was a role model to the other knives, and they felt both envy and respect when they looked upon my smooth, shining body. But that’s just it. I was a role model, until one fateful evening when my career took a turn in the worst possible direction. My caretakers, Alice and Jacob, had always taken good care of me, and in return, I gave them my body and soul as theirs to use. With my gently curving body and stiff back, they used me as a paintbrush to paint a beautiful love scene between carrots, potatoes, and meat over the blank canvasses that were their plates. That was, until that ill-fated evening when I lost all sense of right and wrong. I was sleeping peacefully with all the other knives in the knife block, enjoying a dream in which I was the strongest knife that ever lived, able to cut anything, even steel! Then, without warning, I was suddenly yanked from my euphoric state, only to find myself four inches deep in an ingredient I was unfamiliar with. Rising sleepily from rest, I tried to figure out what this strange new ingredient was. It reminded me a little bit of a thanksgiving turkey, given that I could feel heat all around me, along with the gentle pressure of its internal organs against my hard body. Was it duck? Perhaps it was some kind of pheasant I hadn’t encountered before. No, none of these things fit what I was now feeling. The heat was gentler than the intense heat I was used to from cooked turkey, and it brought with it a sense of wrongness that I just couldn’t shake off. In fact, the whole situation felt…wrong, as if I’d found something I wasn’t meant to cut. Again, I tried to shake the feeling that what I was doing was wrong, but no matter how hard I tried, the feeling remained. Ignoring it wasn’t an option anymore either, because I could now feel the warmth of its blood running down my body and onto my handle, which I now realized, was being held in a vice grip. I recognized the hand as Jacob’s, and noticed that I was being rotated, my body warped because of the force. My curiosity multiplying about the strange creature I found my head buried inside, I held my back straight at attention as I was slowly removed from my fleshy sheath, still rotating all the while. As soon as my head was free, I saw what the strange creature was. Then the horror set in. I was frozen in disbelief for a moment as I contemplated what I had just seen. As I tried to avert my gaze, I couldn’t help but stare at the inch-and-a-half wide hole, slowly vomiting out a stream of crimson liquid from Alice’s chest, that I couldn’t deny as blood. Then I looked up at Jacob, and was horrified to see a crooked smile stretching across his blood-spattered face. He and Alice locked eyes, both of them knowing what was about to happen. Standing as still as a statue, and holding me at his side, Jacob watched as the last of Alice’s life drained from her eyes. Satisfied at his handiwork, he grabbed a towel from above the sink and began wiping Alice’s blood off of me, his accomplice. As he calmly placed me back into the knife block with the other knives, they began sharing their own stories, bearing startling similarities to what was happening now. But I wasn’t listening. All I could think of was the burning sensation that now plagued the exact locations where Alice’s blood had flown not moments ago. The gentle warmth I had felt had now transformed into an angry burning. As I panicked, and the other knives continued to try and console me, I noticed Jacob take an expensive bottle of wine from the pantry, pour himself a glass, and sit down at the table next to Alice’s body. What he said next has haunted my nightmares ever since. He slowly raised his glass, as if toasting with the moon itself, and said: “Here’s to another night of good hunting”.