He looked in the mirror, or rather, stared at the man standing across from him. He analyzed his build, the shape of his head, the line of his neck, the length of his arms, the way he positioned his body, standing on one leg, the other slightly bent, the crooked foot 10 centimeters back from the other. He blinked, grinned briefly, then raised an eyebrow. He loved observing the human body, following its every movement, examining facial expressions, the fanciful movements of the shadows on the skin. The fact that he was looking at himself now wasn't due to vanity but to the fact that he was alone in the room. No one had visited him for hours, and he couldn't spare a single human being a searching glance. He always stored in his memory the individual expressions of those who came, their unconscious gestures and reflexes. He absorbed them. Perhaps because he was most often surrounded by bodies incapable of expressing anything through the language of movement.
He was responsible for preparing the deceased for their final journey, for laying them in the chapel so that family and friends could gaze upon the deceased one last time. Often, the corpses were in terrible condition. His job was to recreate the "client's" appearance from a photograph as it had been before death. What he accomplished was truly artistic. He created works of art from livid, swollen, and distorted semblances of their former self. After the procedures were completed, the person in a state of preliminary decomposition looked like a dormant specimen of health, freshly returned from vacation, rested and full of life. He was a wizard, a first-class magician.
He stood there, concentrating, his gaze fixed on the gentle undulations of his own hand. The creak of the door opening roused him from his lethargy. A funeral parlor attendant brought the body, covered with a white sheet, on a metal stretcher. He glanced at the bulging back as the man wordlessly turned and left. He knew he would have to stop what he was doing and begin working on the deceased.
He put on white gloves—the elastic rubber fit his long fingers perfectly, the fingers of a one-of-a-kind master. He applied a mask to his face, first smearing a strong eucalyptus-scented ointment under his nose. All this to prevent the human stench from unsettling him. He had become accustomed to the sight of corpses. At first, it was true that he was deeply affected by each new victim of brutality or the passage of time, but over time, he became inured to it and began to approach corpses as material, a substance from which he was to conjure something beautiful. However, this specific smell always made him nauseous, and he couldn't get used to it; he couldn't treat it as an ordinary, unobtrusive witness to work. This very smell brought to mind how disgusting a human being, despite its beautiful packaging, is from the inside. He alone knew the true stink of an organism at the highest level of evolution. Each one, pouring copious amounts of perfume from beautiful bouquets of flowers, is saturated within with an extremely unpleasant fragrance. He experienced this stench, the stronger the more cut wounds, especially to the abdomen, the victim had.
With a delicate movement, he removed the sheet, folded it into a neat square, and placed it on a small table. Only now did he look at the figure lying on the cool steel stretcher. It was her, the girl he admired, who captivated him with her beauty every time she walked her dog, and he secretly observed her angelic beauty and the delicate way she moved from behind the curtain of his apartment window. He didn't know her name, but he knew she was the most beautiful, the most fascinating woman he had ever seen. She always reminded him of something soft and airy as she walked so fluidly across the grass, as if floating a few centimeters above the ground. He adored her fluffy, golden hair, gleaming like an angelic halo in the warm rays of the sun. Twice, passing her in the shop doorway, he gazed into her green eyes. He was captivated by her gentle gaze and her smile, whose heat could melt Arctic glaciers.
He could admit to himself that he loved her. He loved this quintessence of beauty and subtlety, the embodiment of delicacy. She was his dream. He could only think of Arcadia when he imagined her. He felt that if he could extract black and white from the world, she would be that pristine white, the down of feathers, the softness of a small cat's fur, the airy thread of gossamer stretched between the branches of a tree. He loved this unknown mystery, a mystery that daily added not a drop but a whole jug of joy to the emerging day, a mystery that adorned the gray reality, a mystery that now lay before him, his closed eyelids concealing two mirrors of his most magnificent soul. He looked at her, and tears welled up in the bottom of his eyes, and there were more and more of them. In a caravan, they left the site of the uprising to fall on her skin, leaving salty trails on his face.
He didn't see her posthumous ugliness. To him, she was still beautiful, the most beautiful. Subconsciously, he recalled her face, remembered with photographic precision from the days when she'd walked her dog, gracing the world with her presence in the fresh air. He didn't see the strangulation marks on her neck, the scratches on her chest and arms, or the livid marks of rape on her thighs. He didn't see her face contorted in a sign of suffering, that calling card of pain.
Before his eyes, at last, lay the heroine of his dreams, the companion of his thoughts, the most essential ingredient of the air he breathed, the quencher of his thirst and hunger. The most magnificent work of God's hand lay before him, at arm's length. But he knew it would never again bear witness to its perfection, its goodness, that the last wisp of breath had already escaped her. The question rose to his lips: "Why her?" Why had fate allowed her eyes to close forever, why had it allowed her flame to be extinguished... why had God allowed it.
He grabbed her cold, numb hand, then pressed his entire torso against it. He hugged her close as if to give her all his warmth, all his energy, his life. He tore off his mask, pulled off his gloves. He wanted to feel her close, to experience her with his fingertips, masters of touch. He memorized every detail, every square millimeter of her face. He absorbed her physical presence with his senses. He cried, he cried deeply. His tears soaked his muse, his beloved. He nestled against her again, smoothing her golden hair, running his fingers through each strand.
He gently pulled her closer and lay down beside her. He kept looking at her face—saw it unchanged. Just as he always imagined her lying in his bed, covered in cool sheets, dreaming of her kissing him and saying "goodnight."
In that moment, as he lay cuddled up to her, he began to imagine again how happy he would be if she were his, if he woke up next to her every day. These thoughts, this "journey" into an imaginary world, calmed him so much that he fell asleep.
He slept there in a basement room, in a white coat, on a stretcher, nestled against the naked corpse of a raped girl, his face awash with happiness. He was happy to finally be sleeping next to the woman who ruled his thoughts, his dreams, his life..
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