Test of Love 2

This is the test of love, a tall man says to me. He is white, with a thin moustache, but one of his arms is red, as though he just dipped it in paint. He pulls out a pencil and starts tapping it on the desk. After a while, the sound gets annoying. 1-2-3. 1-2-3. I hope he’ll get tired, but he doesn’t. His red arm seems to be made of metal. – And then what happens? I finally say. The moment I do, he hits me on crown of the head with the pencil, then goes back to hitting the desk, then hits me again. I realize he’s following a pattern. He’s hitting me on the head every third time. It doesn’t feel nice, and after about five times, I try to move my head out of the way. Not only do I fail, but this prompts him to hit me twice on the crown of the head, then back to the table, then back to my head twice more. There are other people in the room supposedly doing the same test. But I can’t see what they have discovered about this test. The nagging, incessant feeling of a pencil eraser knocking on the crown of my head is making any other thought impossible. – That’s it! I shout. Give me that fucking thing. I grab for it, and fail; I lunge at the man, but he moves with almost supernatural swiftness, his legs humming under him, and now the pencil is knocking on the crown of my head three times in a row, meaning incessantly: 1-2-3, 1-2-3.