Perfection
He lay there, staring.
His ceiling had many cracks, many imperfections. But, then, perfection was boring. He knew that as well as he knew his own name.
The ceiling was so far away from the mattress on which he lay. His old life felt like a dream which he had suddenly awoken from after 25 years … It wasn’t true, wasn’t real. It was too perfect to be called either of those things.
He hated perfection.
Now, this … Well, it wasn’t quite tragic enough for his Shakespearian personality, but it was close enough. Studio apartment, fire escape with good suicide potential, lots of nooks, crannies, peepholes (which he wasn’t sure was a good thing) and secrets. Death was also common—cockroach wise, anyway.
He rolled over on his empty mattress which lay on the floor, his heart as content as it could ever be. The mattress moved slightly as he did so, but in the opposite direction. A draught swept over his body and he sat up, goosebumps appearing on his bare arms. Curiosity caused him to lean over the mattress edge, and peer down at whatever lay there. His face flushed warm, then cold again. His heart beat a little faster, and a nervous feeling filled his entire body, mostly in his stomach.
Her eyes were so intense; so deeply green like a cat, yet full of childish hope. She wore nothing but her underwear, but her soul was concealed from his prying: her eyes were his only insight. But they were enough.
After a few moments, he realised he was holding his breath, daring her to notice his one brown eyes gazing down upon her beauty. Covering his mouth with his hands, he let out a deep breath.
He watched her until she left that small bathroom, growing more and more infatuated with each movement; each simple flutter of an eyelash coursing a new, unfelt-before emotion throughout his body. Rolling back, he laid there for a moment, not understanding how a small part of his soul could be stolen so selfishly by a creature of such so-called perfection.
And then he thought he understood.
He understood those who said "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"—even though they were only partly correct. He felt a great awakening within his soul. "Perfection is in the eye of the beholder," he murmured softly. Calm fell over his body and his mind, and he settled into dreamless sleep.
He was jolted awake by something he knew nothing of … yet the calm he had felt only a few hours earlier seemed to have lifted, and been replaced by a sense of lost mortality.
Soft sobbing could be heard nearby. Still groggy from sleep, and scared for his own life, he was still so haunted by the movements of this one person that it stirred him to action.
Once more he stared through the small peephole that was his only window to the real world—his real world. She sat on the white bathroom tiles, her soul as stripped naked as her body. He was overcome with emotion as he gazed upon what his one perfect person in the world had become—she was ugly in his eyes. Yet he could not look away, for some strange fascination deterred him.
She seemed to stand, and wipe the remaining tears from her eyes. His disgust at her open show of emotion faded slightly as he felt pity for the marks on her body. A tepid bath sat next to her, the bubbles of which were now straggly and dry. Although such a bath was pointless, she climbed into it anyway.
She lay back in the cool water, her eyes closed as she tried to relax and clear the lump from her throat. She twisted her body into a more comfortable position, then opened her eyes. Terror filled them at the sight of someone looking down upon her; seeing her for what she really was. His eyes tried to calm her as her lower lip began to tremble under his gaze. She looked around for something to hide herself; a smoke screen to replace the façade she always had to carry on the outside, but found nothing.
In desperation, she stared back at her murderer, the sympathetic brown eyes, and mouthed a question upwards, "Why?"
Shock ran through his body as she began to vanish underneath the dead bubbles and cold water. Her eyes were last, and the image of them engraved themselves into the retina of his eyes, forever a reminder of the death he had inadvertently caused.
He jumped to his feet, unsure of how to save this woman of the beautiful soul, unaware of the direction he should take. He knew either way would end in death or self-destruction, but after a moment of consideration, he raced to the fire escape and pulled open the window, not pausing before climbing out.
The wind whipped around him as he perched precariously on the third floor metal grate, the late night breeze making him shiver. He walking softly to the ladder, pulling down on it gently. It wouldn’t budge.
Again he pulled, always giving in to cowardice at the last minute and pulling with only half the strength his body contained. The ladder was nearly rusted in place, and would be impossible to move without using force. He knew that, unless she had resurfaced, the woman would most certainly be dead by now.
Courage, he thought, trying to ingrain it into his mind so that his fear would not let him give in. He pulled one last time with every bit of strength he could muster up. A creaking, cracking sound emanated from the ladder.
Then, he was falling. He hit the next grate—her grate—with a pain in his side, a thud from his body and a creak from the metal supports. Too much pressure had been applied to the old iron fire-escape, and he was falling again, plummeting to the cold, hard concrete side walk below.
The pain was different now, more of a dull ache in his stomach that quickly became nausea. He opened his eyes weakly, finding it difficult to separate the eyelashes. Looking up, he saw a strange light hovering above him; it was blue, calm … something was familiar about it.
It reached out to him, and as it touched his now non-existent body, he realised that it was the woman he had been trying to save. Then, the world again became visible, and he saw himself lying on the pavement, his arm pointing to the window of her apartment, to the fire escape he had fallen from. Even in death, it seemed he was still trying to save her.
Death. So that was this feeling of total limbo, full of unfulfilled dreams, promises and regrets. He was so young … so unexperienced. He glanced back, looking for the blue spirit, whose face was now recognisable. She smiled down at him, and he wondered exactly what he resembled right now.
Deep inside those emerald eyes, hope glimmered. Realisation filled his soul. He stared up at her and began to speak. "I—"
She placed her finger over his mouth, and he wondered if his face had yet returned or she had just taken a guess at where his mouth was. Her body seemed to be reforming quite quickly, but she could have died hours before he had. She gave him a knowing look, and smiled her thanks at him for freeing her soul from the physical bonds it had been burdened with. Her look told him that they both felt the same for each other.
"*Corrine." She had finally spoken. Her voice filled his head with memories of love songs which were beginning to dissipate from his mind. Then he saw the expectant gaze she gave him.
"Oh!" He was taken aback. "Uh …" his own name became nothing but a blur. Then, he realised he wasn’t meant to remember his physical lifename, but his truename. "*James," he said.
Now, they both understood each other perfectly, and embraced before departing to the time after death and before life, the real world—that which was real, true, eternal, ethereal—
Perfection.
* These are the closest translations of a certain truename in lifename form.
