As I build this list, I am reminded of the list in that bastard’s notebook and his belligerent response when I saw it. I’m pretty sure all the names on the list were women. What do those dates and names mean? I feel like I could make sense of it if I saw it one more time. Rapes? Murders? My imagination expands into the dark corners. I feel like if I don’t stop myself I’m going to go crazy, kill myself, or kill someone. I desperately wait for slumber to arrive. I briefly fall asleep, and like a shadow, someone slips in through the door. I keep my eyes shut tight, feeling the gaze of a man by the bed. He runs his hand along my arm, bruised from needle marks. He pulls the blanket up to cover me and leaves something on the shelf by the bedside. I hear him walk to the window and picture him looking out. He returns to me, barely grazes my forehead with his fingertips, sighs, and slips back out of the room.

•

In my head, I heard a crow flying, caw caw.

I was about seven years old, crying, and as the sun was going down, I looked up at the sky above my grandma’s fence. An unfamiliar lady gave me a small carton of milk, gently brushed my forehead with her hand, and left.

After he’d gone, I struggle to get up and look at what he left behind. A bottle of cherry juice, a carton of strawberry milk, straws, two tangerines, and a poetry book by Baudelaire. I didn’t know a dentist could be this nice. It’s so late at night too. It’s almost creepy that he made a point to come by.

I pull the spout of the milk carton open, put the straw in, and suck the milk through the straw. Is a mother’s milk supposed to be as tasty as this? Was I ever breastfed? In the silent stillness of the night, I fall asleep with the milk carton in my hand.

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

A detective stops by.

“So what happened was …” I stumble over my words as I try to explain what happened, what Sungyun did to me. The detective chuckles as he takes his hat off. Shit, I realize it’s the bastard. He pulls a gun out of his belt and presses the barrel against my temple. The gunshot rings in the air.

“Are you there?” The door opens and Jihyun wakes me up from the dream.

“You scared me.”