I closed my eyes and imagined a tangerine light, Kong Jie shaking her hair free, slipping off her silk skirt and curling up under the covers. As she stretches, pressing her lips together, skin pulled taut, her body rises and falls. And I’m like a soldier on a dawn raid, marching my gun through the rainy night. I’m coming, my body starting to explode open like fireworks, but I stretch it out, until the moment detonates completely. I think I might have more to come, but I don’t.
I tore off a piece of toilet paper and wiped my sticky hands. I felt pretty gloomy. It was as if grey molecules were rising from the ground and falling from the sky at the same time, as if the whole world was drowning in them.
Afterwards all I could think was that the moment was approaching. I could hardly wait. I changed into another T-shirt and some tracksuit trousers, grabbed my switchblade and started pacing.
Execution
At 2.30 I caught sight of her talking to the guard. She was half an hour late and I’d begun to think she wasn’t coming. Kong Jie saw me and started walking over. She’d tied her hair in a ponytail and she was wearing a bleached white T-shirt and a light blue skirt. A necklace made of crystals glinted around her neck and a small square watch encrusted with gemstones decorated her wrist, along with a set of red prayer beads wrapped around it three times. Her shoes were embroidered with the most delicate lotus flowers. Life for her was this neat and finely detailed. Her eyes were like black pearls, her face as if flushed with rouge, her lips almost transparent, her breasts pert. I was breathless, flustered. A painted maiden.
‘I’m not late, am I?’ she said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.
It suddenly struck me with an incredible force that she was letting me kill her. It wasn’t my decision to make. She was the one in charge, walking in front of me, leading me up the stairs towards her death.
‘Why are you still wearing your cap?’ she said.
‘It’s part of the plan,’ I said.
She didn’t understand, so I repeated, ‘It’s part of the plan.’
I watched as the tiniest sweat pearls ran down her arm, glittering and translucent. She looked like she was sculpted from glossy porcelain and she smelt of forest leaves after the rain. I stopped. She turned around and waited for me. In that long, lazy moment, she shielded her eyes with her hand and looked up at the sky. There wasn’t a cloud above; the sky was a vast deep blue vault and the sun a ball of welding sparks. She bore her pearly teeth, that stupid smile, like someone not all there in the head. Then she carried on walking.
It was torture, but I swallowed it deep into my belly. I kept wanting to call out to her, Get as far away from here as possible.
Finally she reached the door.
‘Is your aunt really that difficult to talk to?’
‘It is what it is,’ I said.
She pulled the door open, revealing the inky blackness inside.
‘Why don’t you open the curtains?’
I went in and switched on the light, then closed the metal outer and wooden inner doors behind me.
She faltered. ‘Where is she?’
I grunted a ‘mm’ in reply and walked across to my bedroom, pulled the curtain aside and peeked in.
‘She’s sleeping,’ I said.
Why was I still bothering with this story?
She examined the room carefully, her eyes falling on the suitcase. Then she saw the washing machine.
‘You’re taking this back too?’
I nodded stiffly.
We carried on with our awkward conversation. It felt like I was never going to do it. That is, until the spring in the clock on the wall suddenly burst into action, a bullet piercing through my heart as the bell inside chimed three times in quick succession. I stumbled behind her and fumbled for her waist, covering her mouth and nostrils with my other hand.
Her quick breaths were fighting back. I dug my fingers firmly into her cheekbones. She tried pulling my hand away, gouging her nails into me. She kicked me like an obstinate foal refusing to be tamed. I never imagined she would be so strong and sweat ran from my every pore.
I whispered quickly into her ear, ‘Be gentle, please. I’m begging you.’
Suddenly she stopped, softened. I pulled the tape from the wall and, using my teeth, ripped off a length of about six inches. She was in a daze. As the tape was about to close up her mouth and nostrils, she started pulling and tearing at it. She spat it out like she was spitting out fruit peel. She flapped and screamed. The sound was piercing. A gunshot drawing a perfect arc through the air on its way to the street outside and into someone else’s heart. I imagined armed soldiers and concerned citizens would be at my door within moments. She tried to keep screaming, but I muffled her.
Then I took out my switchblade, flipped it open and stabbed her in the waist.
This was my first murder. My hands, just like my soul, seemed empty. It didn’t feel like the knife was cutting through her, but rather that her squelchy, muddy flesh was swallowing it.
My thoughts were slipping. It was scary and I wanted to silence them, stop myself, but instead I wrapped the rope around her neck. I couldn’t tell if I was doing it right. I went back to the knife and stabbed her three more times in the chest. The rancid smell of raw flesh rushed into the room in waves. I pushed her, twitching, towards the window and, using the knife, pulled aside one corner of the curtain.
The guard was standing a few paces from his post, listening carefully, unsure if he had really heard what he thought he had. Had the scream come from inside the compound? Was it human? He’d heard her. I watched as he reluctantly went back to his post and assumed his usual position.
My breathing was heavy. Kong Jie was sliding down in my arms, so I let her slip completely to the floor. Her mouth was open, her eyes bulging, her brow, eye sockets, the bridge of her nose, her cheekbones – these normally hidden parts of her face were all jutting out at me. Her T-shirt was now a bright crimson, red with added red, the stain fresh and angry like a peony. The largest peony I’d ever seen. It was horrifying.
I’d destroyed her. She was gone for ever. Like a big sheet of glass thrown from a high building, there was no way of bringing her back.
I squatted down and started scratching the knife across her face and stabbing all over her body. The blade snapped and blood spurted onto my face. Then I took her in my arms and put her head first into the top-loading washing machine before staggering to the bathroom. I glanced back at her legs sticking out of the top.
I took off my clothes, switched on the shower. Blood washed from my body in a river of red. I growled in a deep voice as I scrubbed, before catching sight in the mirror of what looked like a dark stain on the back of my shoulder. It made me shake. I divided my body into seven parts and I started cleaning methodically from the top down. But I stopped and emerged from the shower like a wandering ghost. I started searching in the pool of blood on my bedroom floor. I couldn’t find it, so I went to the washing machine. There it was, her phone. It still had a signal. I tore the battery out and threw it away.
I went back to the shower and got dressed in my usual T-shirt and gym shorts. I slipped into a pair of trainers, shoved on my cap and swung my bag onto my back. I was ready. I looked back one last time, only to see that I’d left the rope and crackers in the corner of the room. I pulled the curtains across, checked there was no one outside, opened the door and left.
I sprinkled some of the cracker and rat poison mix along the road as I walked. That’d sort out the old dog. My hands were shaking so I threw the rest away.
The guard had his back to me, standing straight as always. I’d tied my laces very loose in the hope of making my shoes quieter when I walked. But as I got closer to him, my confidence was suddenly knocked out of me. What if the bloodstain on my back had started to spread? Had I checked before dressing? I couldn’t remember and wanted to go back.