Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

nobody will be the wiser.” “You can count me out if you plan to kill him,” Ding Jingou said. “His brother-in-law, Sima Ku, who’s killed lots of people, might show up, and he’d capable of wiping out our whole families.”
    I listened to them discuss my fate and future like a disinterested observer. I wasn’t afraid, and never entertained the thought of running away. I was in a state of suspended animation. I even had time to look far off in the distance, where I saw the blood-red meadows and golden Reclining Ox Mountain off to the southeast, and the boundless expanse of dark green crops due south. The banks of the Black Water River, as it snaked its way east, were hidden behind tall grain and reappeared behind the shorter stalks; flocks of white birds formed what looked like sheets of paper as they flew over waters I couldn’t see. Incidents from the past flashed into my head, one after another, and I suddenly felt as if I’d been living on this earth for a hundred years already. “Go on, kill me,” I said. “You can kill me. I’ve lived long enough!”
    Looks of astonishment flashed in their eyes. After exchanging glances among themselves, they all turned back to me, as if they hadn’t heard me right.
    “Go on, kill me!” I said resolutely, before starting to cry. Sticky tears ran down my face and into my mouth, salty, like fish blood. My plea had put them in an awkward position. Again they exchanged glances, letting their eyes talk for them. So I upped the ante: “I beg you, gentlemen, finish me off now. I don’t care how you do it, just make it fast, so I won’t suffer much.”
    “You think we don’t have the guts to kill you, is that it?” Wu Yunyu said, cupping my chin in his rough fingers and staring me in the eye.
    “No,” I said, “I’m sure you do. All I’m asking is that you make it quick.”
    “Men,” Wu Yunyu said, “he’s put us in a sticky situation, and killing him is about the only way out. We can’t back down now, no matter what happens. It’s time to finish him off.”
    “You do it, then,” Guo Qiusheng said. “I’m not going to.”
    “Is that mutinous talk I hear?” Wu said as he grabbed Guo by the shoulders and shook him. “We’re four locusts on a string, so nobody better think about taking off. If you even try, I’ll make sure people know what you did to that goofy girl in the Wang family.”
    “Hold on,” Wei Yangjiao said. “Quit arguing. All we’re talking about is killing him. If you want to know the truth, I’m the one who killed that old woman in Stone Bridge Village. No reason, I just wanted to try out this knife of mine. I used to think that killing someone would be hard to do, but now I know how easy it is. I jammed the knife into her rib cage, and it was like burying it in a cake of bean curd.
Slurp.
Even the handle went in. She was dead by the time I pulled the knife out. She didn’t make a sound.” He rubbed the blade of his knife against his pants and said, “Watch me.” Taking aim at my belly, he thrust the knife. I shut my eyes happily, and it seemed to me that I could actually see green blood gush from my belly right into their faces. They ran over to the ditch, where they scooped up water to wash off the blood. But the water was like nearly translucent red syrup, and instead of washing their faces clean, it actually made them dirtier than ever. As the blood gushed, my guts slithered out, slipping along the path over to the ditch, where they were caught up in the flow. With a cry of alarm, Mother jumped into the ditch to scoop up my guts, coiling them around her arm, one loop after another, all the way back to where I was standing. Weighted down by my guts, she was breathing hard and looking at me with sorrow in her eyes. “What happened to you, child?” “They killed me, Mother.” Her tears fell on my face as she knelt down and stuffed my guts back into my belly. But they were so slippery that she no sooner got one section in than it slithered right back out, and she wept in frustration and anger. Eventually, she managed to stuff them all back in; she then took a needle and thread from her hair, and sewed me up like a torn overcoat. I felt a strange shooting pain in my belly and felt my eyes snap open. Everything I’d seen up till that moment was an illusion. The real situation was: They’d kicked me to the ground, taken out their impressive peckers, and were pissing in my face. The wet ground was spinning, and I felt