Perhaps the razor blade had been charmed, like the enchanted sword or ax which wounds the person who wields it. Perhaps someone had stolen the blood-smeared obsidian knife and dropped it in water, so the wound would keep flowing. That was a well-established superstition.
A dog was trotting along the sidewalk out in front. He could distinctly hear the clop-clop of paws.
Tansy was still calling Totem.
Perhaps a sorcerer had commanded him to destroy himself by inches—or millimeters, considering the razor blade. That would explain all the self-injurious acts at one swoop. The flat voice in the dream had ordered him to do it.
The dog had turned up the drive. His claws made a grating sound on the concrete.
The tarot-card diagrams scribbled by Mrs. Sawtelle would figure as some magical control mechanism. The stick figure of the man and the truck had grim implications if interpreted in the light of his irrational fear of automobile accidents.
It really didn't sound so much like a dog. Probably the neighbor's boy dragging home by jerks some indeterminate bulky object. The neighbor's boy devoted all his spare time to collecting old metal.
"Totem! Totem!" Followed by the sound of the back door closing.
Finally, that very trite "sense of a presence" just behind him. Taller than himself, hands poised to grab. Only whenever you looked over your shoulder, it dodged. Something like that had figured in the dream—the source, perhaps, of the flat voice. And in that case—
His patience snapped. An intellectual exercise, all right! For morons! He stubbed out his cigarette.