Niho Kaiū picks themself off the concrete. They bend at the waist and shake their head, run their fingers through their hair and gravel rains down. They brush dirt off their knees and examine their new scrapes—nothing serious, just some grazes. The largest runs down their back, red and hot and stinging. They touch it tenderly with their fingers, through their shirt,which is stuck to the soft under flesh. They pull the shirt off, and the graze sings with stinging pain. Their knife is in the gutter, spoiled with cabbage leaves and some loser’s karukaru. They wipe it on their jeans and stick it back down their boot where it belongs.
They aren’t the sort of Knifepunk that swears by their blade, worships it with oil and engravings and farfetched names. Niho Kaiū has gone through too many knives for that sorta bullshit. The first they owned was the closest they came to loving, and they hadn’t named it, and it feels stupid misguided to name the others that follow since. Knifepunking is about the lifestyle—about the exchange—of blows and weaves and stabs, of blood and metal, of blades swapping hands, blades passed between allies, kicked out of palms, taken up by an aggressor. It is all exchange, punch in the back and knee in the guts and your face sliced up and not so pretty but leaving you with a precious gift.
Two gifts in fact—your breath and the day before you. Life—aching, throat parched, glass and grit studs your skin, but the sky above still looks over you, the earth stays solid and rich below. You look out and life leaps up at you. Full colour, blood in your mouth, chest heaving, you notice the beating heart all around—the gulls scrap for food and the slaters scurry up building sides, ants crawl over concrete, people call up and down the street, moss cracks up the footpath and you notice the bee, hovering on the vine that winds its way towards the sun, nestled in a bracket of growth between brick and iron railing.
You have a reason to think about the lifespan of some things—trees, rocks, maunga—and the brevity of others, the bee and you, and it is all so glaringly good.
This is the church that Niho Kaiū worships at. It is not the material cult of the knife. The knife is the medium that brings them and others to greater beauty. As does the fist, the foot, the knee, the shin, the elbow, the guts and the collision with the ground.
Some dumb fuck flicks their knife open, and the sun shines bright on the gleaming metal. Dumb Fuck opens his mouth and says, ‘I call him Slicey Hamish.’
Of course, Niho Kaiū has to laugh, but Slicey Hamish and Dumb Fuck who wields him skim across Niho Kaiū and nick their stomach—barely, surface scratch though it tears their shirt open. Niho Kaiū laughs again and dances back, laughing because Dumb Fuck isn’t particularly fast, and Niho Kaiū can say that with confidence—and they do say it, grinning wide—because Niho Kaiū ain’t particularly fast either. They’re not the slickest on the streets, so Dumb Fuck’s clumsiness is just embarrassing. But maybe Dumb Fuck has some sorta martial arts training because when Niho Kaiū dances around, weaves under Dumb Fuck’s arms thinking they're gonna stab him in his meaty back, Niho Kaiū’s leg is swept and they’re flipped over Dumb Fuck’s huge mass, turning in the air for a moment. Niho Kaiū thinks, Whoa. I’m one with the sky.
Then the concrete catches them, hard, as concrete likes to do. Niho Kaiū is gasping on the ground, but at least they’re able to gasp—they’ve learnt to stick the landing by now, with the earth, diffuse the blow and spread that kinetic energy way outttt. Dumb Fuck towers over them, going for some sort of stomp, which isn’t exactly fair game, but what is? So Niho Kaiū squirms out of the way and grabs at the back of Dumb Fuck’s leg, twists themselves around it, and Dumb Fuck crushes the ground with all their weight, must hurt, not diffusing that energy at all owieeee, and Niho Kaiū sinks their teeth into Dumb Fuck’s calf.
Now a ‘real Knifepunk’, them who’re in it for the worship of the blade would take this opportunity to get their knife out and slide the stainless steel in, perhaps even drag it from the soft underflesh behind the knee, carve in, shallow or deep depending on their taste and their day, to the tendonous ankle. Most stay shallow because even Knifepunks agree it’s an unsportmansly move, it gets one more good player out of the game for maybe too long.
But there are enough who would scream, Don’t hold back, you fucking pussy. This is what we do. We stick it in and we rupture. We deal with the consequences. Niho Kaiū ain’t one, doesn’t care to take their knife out just yet. Half because sinking their teeth in is too much fun—besides, Dumb Fuck gets to go back to his buddies and say today’s freak bit me, and that’s a more exciting story. That’s a gift, from one punk to the other. Niho Kaiū tastes blood, and they grind their teeth further into Dumb Fucks’ hairy calf. Dumb Fuck yells, they call Niho Kaiū a twisted fucking monkey. A messed up little wank. They’re gonna grind monkey’s skull out on the footpath, how about that?
Something in Dumb Fuck’s voice says this might not be games and talk, this might be serious business and whether that means A&E or simply Niho Kaiū’s brains carpeting the car park they’re in right now, Niho Kaiū’s not sure and to be frank, not keen to find out. Best be safe. Niho Kaiū goes for their knife, thinking they’ll stick the bastard in the foot and mess those delicate bones up, but Dumb Fuck knows what they’re doing. Dumb Fuck smells their move to bring the knife out, as all Knifepunks can. After a few weeks decking it out, you begin to sense by smell and change in the air more than sight, the whiff of metal and the increase in adrenaline, when the knives are properly coming out.
Niho Kaiū knows Dumb Fuck knows what they’re about to do, but they’re starting to think that the initial snicker-snack across their puku was dumb luck and Niho Kaiū might be the faster one, so it’s worth a shot. But then Dumb Fuck does what you can do when somebody is biting you from below like a toy dog, which is collapse on top of Niho Kaiū and crush the stuffing out of them. Niho Kaiū tries to roll away but their head smacks against the tarmac and there is a moment of horrid confusion before they can think, ok, there might be some worth to the blade worship. They can’t bite now, their head and neck are locked under Dumb Fuck’s massive legs, their right arm pinned down by force, their left stuck twisted under their own body. They try, of course, to kick and squirm and wriggle out as best they can, but Dumb Fuck knows what they’re doing, and horribly, horribly, is applying pressure, pressing Niho Kaiū’s head closer and closer to the concrete. This might be skull-crushing.
Then Dumb Fuck puts one meaty hand on Niho Kaiū’s neck.
And there is a shift in weight. So slight, not enough for Niho Kaiū to get out of their pin, though they continue to try, fingernails clawing into the concrete and elbows trying to push off, but Dumb Fuck is heavy as a boulder, so goddamn heavy. But there is a shift in Dumb Fuck’s weight and a change in the air—the scent of metal and old blood. Dumb Fuck has taken his stupidly named knife out. He presses the flat of the blade against Niho Kaiū’s neck and says, ‘I think I’m gonna do it.’
Dumb Fuck turns the knife, and the blade slices into Niho Kaiū’s flesh. It doesn’t really hurt, it’s not deep yet, but Dumb Fuck says, ‘I think, yeah, today might be the day.’
Niho Kaiū freezes. They don’t want to, they don’t mean to, but some sort of nature is kicking in and Dumb Fuck is running his blade, lightly, but with force enough, along the back of Niho Kaiū’s neck. Flirting closer and closer to the jugular. ‘Please don’t,’ Niho Kaiū says, ‘Please give me a chance.’
Of course, Niho Kaiū has imagined this situation, but never quite like this. They usually imagine they’re backed up to a wall, and there is a blade already half buried in their intestines or vital organs, but they’re still alive and spitting like a cornered rat. You hear about it happening to other Knifepunks sometimes, though it’s rare—rarer than the papers describe. Never see it go down in person. But there are stories. Niho Kaiū has always thought if or when it happens, their animal nature would kick in, they would squirm and bite and claw to the end, go down fighting. After all, they do it for the fight. They do it for the lurid bright alive feeling, next to no thought, animosity and animalism, pure body moments. To die in that moment. It would be free, wouldn’t it?
But instead, they think about the wide grey sky, the ferns calling up from the gulleys not so far away, the bird on the branch, calling a warbling cry. Niho Kaiū can just see the tūī in the tree above them now, come curious to look upon the scene. ‘Please give me a chance,’ they say, and notice below the smell of the knife, of Dumb Fuck’s scent, of their own blood, is the scent of leaf litter. They can hear the river underneath them rushing.