A Perfect Crime by A. Yi Page A

death,’ he continued. ‘He has come to tell you that death is not a flash or an exclamation mark. It doesn’t come suddenly, in a violent moment. It is a process.Your organs are waiting to malfunction, one by one, like a water bottle cooling. It’s not about waiting for that one painful moment. Child, what I really want is for someone to lie down beside me and die with me. But that rarely happens in life. I see only you healthy people, growing. You frown, you cry, but you still have energy in your bones.Your bodies are like buds after the spring rains. I was exhausted long ago. You come only to reinforce this truth.You’ve locked mein this cell, but you are outside running like children in a playground.Your laughter is like a metal weight pressing on me, pinning me down. I feel ashamed of you. There is such a distance between us. Either fuck off, or get a gun and shoot me.’
    My father sighed, his dreadful attempt at a poetic monologue over, and finally brushed me away in disgust. I left, thinking of the injustice of it all. You’re born, you get old, you get sick, you die. Oh, humanity! It’s nothing but a fucking disgrace. All of it. But as soon as my mother walked in, my father rolled into her arms and cried. Ma didn’t say anything to comfort him.
    I started trying to keep up with life outside my cell. I would scrape my finger along the dusty floor and mark the days on the wall. But I soon gave up. I was going to die whatever, so what was the point? Time turned into a primal chaos, days could pass in what felt like only one, or they went on for ever (like broken shards of glass, impossible to count). Sometimes I wanted to keep the night from coming and other days I longed for it to come quickly, even when it might already have been dark outside. My dreams became more vivid. Once I pictured myself in bed. I went to get up, to visit someone, but I was paralysed. This was the only person in the whole world whom I cared about and who felt thesame way about me. There were no feelings of resentment between us. I couldn’t see his face, he had no name. I went through everyone I had ever met, but there was no such person. But when he brushed against the clouds, the branches and the occasional lightning when he flew up into the sky, at that moment I felt I knew him better than I would ever know another human being. He shook his scales and from them drops of water rained.
    ‘I dreamed of you, so I came,’ he said.
    ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I am the person in your dreams.’
    ‘Then who am I?’
    ‘You are the person in my dreams.’
    ‘Do you exist here on Earth?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What about me?’
    ‘Neither do you.’
    ‘But I felt it, when you pinched my hand.’
    ‘We don’t exist.’
    ‘I want to die.’
    ‘I dreamed that you died. But I can also dream that you live.’
    ‘Then dream that I live.’
    ‘It doesn’t make a difference.’
    I woke up and felt amused. I started imagining I wasa character in a novel. I saw a hunched author sitting in the glow of a lamp. He wrote my name on a white piece of paper before adding more detail: my clothes, where I lived, my school and friends, general personality traits, my life story, what would happen to me. And I in turn outlined his life. Every time my mind speeded up, I instructed myself to slow down. I planned it all, down to the songs he listened to when writing. He chose ten or so from his collection and listened to each in turn until the sounds of‘Silver Springs’ came from his speakers. This was when he found his writing rhythm. He wrote a few sentences, but it wasn’t quite flowing, so he read out loud. Anything just a little off, he excised like a ruthless despot. He stopped only when he felt it was too cruel.
    ‘That’s enough. You have to learn to forgive yourself.’
    This gave him courage to continue. The inspiration had finally come, but just as he was about to throw himself into the flames of creativity, his telephone rang. A friend. He made