Credit: Justin Randall

Bob rinsed the shaving foam off his face and slapped his cheeks three times. He picked up his towel and dabbed at his brow (one, two), his cheeks (three, four), his chin (five, six), and finally his nose (seven) and mouth (eight), counting under his breath.

He inhaled and told himself he needn't do what he knew he would do next, but it didn’t matter. He did it every morning, and he would do it today.

He looked at himself in the mirror and said in an even voice, as if recording a tape, "Have a good morning, Bob. A good morning, Bob. Good morning, Bob…" until he arrived at the last word – his name – and silence.

He had tried to describe the effect of his routines to Sally. He saw her pained expression when she caught him during one of his rituals, and tried to convince her that it wasn't that bad.

"Ever seen domino stones fall into each other, Sal? The way they fall forward and nothing can stop them? It feels like that to me sometimes. Smooth. Right."

They sat up in bed, holding hands.

"I want you to be happy." She squeezed his hand. "Are you happy?"

Bob sighed. Skin flaked off his fingertips. Her supple, tanned hand stroked his.

Throughout his life, Bob had tried to reason with himself. Touching things in sequence and counting his touches didn’t make sense. Nothing disastrous would happen if he dried his face with Sally's towel or if he dried his nose before his brow. Nothing, except that drilling into the back of his skull, and the dull pain, as if someone pulled a molar out of his brain, and the sickening lurch of the world losing its contours.

Sally had brewed coffee, and poured Bob a cup. Her lips were pale, her cheeks a feverish pink. He sat down, lifted the fork and put it down again, careful to pretend the gesture was casual. "Seems the big day has come, hon."

She smiled and her cheeks glowed, as if she had many more smiles inside her.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Her eyes welled up.

Bob took one, two, three sips of coffee. The hot liquid flowed down his throat, and it felt right. He loved things to feel right. He wondered whether he would ever feel that way again after the operation.

The operating room hummed with activity. Bob, covered in a terrycloth gown, sat on a leather chair. The leather clung to his naked thighs. He arranged his legs in the footrests, wriggled his toes, and wondered why he had to undress for brain surgery.

Dr. Morgan pumped his hand and asked him how he was.

"Not too bad."

"This is not going to be a big deal at all, okay, Bob?" Dr. Morgan said.

"Okay."

Bob folded his hands. A nurse shaved his head. A chill rippled across his exposed skull, even though the air didn’t move.

"Okay, we're gonna numb up the flesh around your skull," another nurse murmured. Bob saw a hand in a rubber glove holding a long syringe. He felt a jab, a quick burn, and spreading numbness.

"The brain doesn’t feel pain," he murmured to himself, again and again. When he caught a glimpse of the instruments being rolled past him on a trolley--laser scalpels of various sizes, ominous like dormant light sabres, and a heap of crayon-like markers--he ground his jaws together.

"No pain," he murmured under his breath. "No Pain. Pain."