The record of expiatory flesh, in the mechanism of rigidity engineering, does not begin as a ritual.
It begins before I can recognize it as one.
There is a moment when the body is already prepared for something the mind has not yet named.
There is no altar yet.
Only a surface that feels too still.
I am standing.
I think nothing is happening.
But the skin of my forearm is tighter than I remember.
I don’t know when that changed.
The table has a dark mark that wasn’t there before.
It does not look like blood.
It does not look like dirt.
It looks like something the object left behind while I wasn’t looking.
I stay there.
Not moving.
Not because there is danger.
But because movement does not fully start.
The knife is on the table.
That is the strange part.
Not as a threat.
As confirmation.
As if its presence alone had already completed something that never fully happened.
I try to think of Sade.
The idea does not fit yet.
It does not structure anything here.
It arrives later.
Too late to explain what is already occurring.
I notice something small.
My hand is closer to the edge than it should be.
I don’t remember moving it there.
And yet it is there.
As if the space had decided the distance without asking me.
The room of chalk does not change.
That is what unsettles me.
Nothing reacts.
But everything records.
On the floor there is a small object.
Metal.
Cold.
I pick it up.
It has no visible use.
But it feels as if it has already been used for something.
For a second I think I could drop it.
I don’t.
Not by decision.
But because the gesture is already split before it happens.
There is a simple contradiction:
no instruction,
and no exit either.
I take a step.
The floor does not respond the same under each foot.
It is not instability.
It is a difference of acceptance.
As if one part of the floor decided to stay with me.
And the other did not.
I stop.
Too late.
Not because of what I did.
But because I already did it without deciding.
And then something slower than thought appears:
the feeling that the act does not belong to me, but does not leave me either.
It just stays.
Like a mark that has not finished setting.
And I remain there.
Not sure whether I am inside the room.
Or whether the room has already finished using me as its measure.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
