Who Are You?

Who are you? Most of the facts tell me you are me and I am you. But it doesn’t feel right or true. I look at you (me?) in the bathroom mirror and see a young Korean teenager staring back at me — he has deep brown eyes set within a round, smooth face and divided by a slim, delicate nose. I tell the boy to smile, and the boy contracts his facial muscles and draws the corners of his mouth away and upwards, stretching his lips that are already thin thinner. I tell him to contract the muscle harder and the boy obliges, revealing his porcelain teeth. I stare at the boy, following the curvatures of his quivering cheeks and lips that are now turning purple. I don’t feel the strain of the smile but the boy (me?) is tearing and shaking. Who are you?

I order the boy to relax and he (me?) relaxes. I look at my thin hands, the digits long and slender, but they don’t feel like my hands. They feel like new leather gloves layered over multiple other gloves. Are these my hands? I command my fingers to wiggle and the fingers wiggle. If these fingers were my fingers, why do they not move when the thought of wiggling emerges from my mind? Why must I order them to wiggle? I feel removed as if I was playing a facsimile of myself in a video game. I nervously chuckle but I don’t see the boy (me?) laugh.

I tell my right hand to grab the four inch pairing knife laying near the edge of the marble sink and order my hand to gently press the point of the knife on the boy’s (my?) right cheek. I command my hand to press the knife harder into the boy’s (my?) cheek and the knife pierces the skin and a stream of blood begins to run. I examine the boy’s (my?) eyes, and I see terror, but I don’t feel scared and I don’t see anything behind the frightened eyes — not a spark or the existence of me. I tell my hand to remove the knife from my cheek.

The facts tell me you are me and I am you. The driver’s license found in the right front pocket of my jeans tells me my name is Michael Kim. Though the name sounds familiar, it doesn’t seem right to me. The license also tells me that I live on 847 Golf Road in Rome, West Virginia. The bathroom I’m currently in is in a house on 847 Golf Road in Rome, West Virginia. But I don’t feel like this is my home. Everything tells me you are me and I am you! The professional family photographs hanging in the hallway, the smell of the bedroom sheets, and the creaks made from walking on the wooden steps leading upstairs seem familiar but off in a way, as if hearing a song that has a note or two off by a half step.

I asked your (my?) father who I was. He laughed and replied that I was Michael Kim. I asked him again and again and he always replied with the same answer but with an increasing nervousness. I didn’t believe him, so I struck him with a hammer that I hid at my side. I then tied him to a metal workbench in the basement. When he awoke, I asked him many questions: What was my name? When was I born? Who is my real father? Who is my real mother? None of his answers felt right. And I realized that this man with his legs and arms tied to the legs of the workbench was lying to me, preventing me from the truth. So I sliced him and stabbed him with a chef’s knife I found in the kitchen. He moaned and screamed. He swore and pled. But at the end, he never gave me the truth.

I am not you and you are not me! How could you be?! I tell my left hand to grab my left eyelid and order my right hand to use the pairing knife to slice away at the eyelid. For a moment, I believe I see the boy (me?) in the mirror mouth no. The knife pierces the middle of the drawn eyelid and moves up and down cutting away a piece of the eyelid. I see tears streaming down the cheek, and it mixes with the blood. I don’t feel any pain. I look at your (my?) exposed eyeball, but I don’t see myself in them. I giggle but I only see a quivering, sweating and bleeding Korean teenager in the mirror. So I tell my hands to slice and peel away the boy’s (my?) skin off his (my?) face. I madly laugh and laugh, but I am only able to hear screams.