Skin

I will use 187 milligrams of propofol. She weighs about sixty-two kilos. I could increase the dose—the formula allows four milligrams per kilogram of body weight—but I know she was dieting, and I do not want to risk it.

The most precious part is the skin, and it is extremely delicate.

Human skin deteriorates if it is not properly treated, especially once it is no longer attached to muscle, supplied with blood, and threaded with nerves.

I use a small mirror to make sure she is still breathing. She is asleep.

On the table beside Her I have arranged a spoon, a pair of small scissors, gauze, cotton wool, a straw, a bowl, bleach, and a kitchen knife: whatever I managed to gather around the place and by rummaging through my bag.

I feel the invisible heat of Dad’s slap on my cheek. I am not doing this properly. I am reckless and untidy, so I slap myself. I have to stand in for him.

I take a deep breath, count the numbers 13, 15, 7 in their scattered sequence, fill the bowl with bleach, and immerse every instrument.

I rummage in my bag for the heparin, find the bottle, and quickly read the doctor’s instructions on the label: 0.5 milligrams a day. I retrieve the straw from the bottom of the bowl and, very carefully, try to open a gap between her lips. Slowly, I empty the bottle into the straw. As the grains of coagulant dissolve in her mouth, I gently clean her face with the wet gauze, lingering along the hairline.

I could change my mind now.

I draw the knife and place its tip at the centre of her forehead. A little pressure and the blade pierces the skin. A little blood escapes the slit, and I try to dab it away with gauze and cotton wool. My left hand clings to her neck, my right clenches the knife handle, and I begin to circumnavigate her face, drawing an almost perfect ellipse.

Now the skin of her face seems to float on a thread of water.

Before the final tear I must cut around the eyes and mouth. I study her mouth.

The longer I look, the more convinced I am that there is no justice.

I feel an itch along my hands, low in my belly, behind my neck.

I seize the upper flaps of the forehead between my fingers and pull firmly.

I have torn it off. At last, clenched in my fists, I hold her beauty.

I arrange the mask of skin over my face.

In the viscosity of the blood and the scent of bleach I feel my own face disappear. Her flesh is burrowing beneath my skin like a larva, digging hungrily, and I think I can feel it bite.

I let it feast on my face, swallow every fold and wrinkle of my ugliness. I feel myself suffocating, constricting: her skin is strangling me.

It has wrapped itself around my entire head and is killing me.

Saliva presses against my sealed lips, and my final sob is a laugh.

I will die beautiful.