The Perfect Crime

Graham Isaac looked into the wet cement the way God looked at whatever it was he made the universe out of. Playdo, maybe. Or Lego?

The cement was grey, which is not usually an exciting colour, but it glistened ever so slightly with the promise of immortality and more literally its own water content. With a stick, with a rock, with his bare hands Graham could shape the very future itself. This was his Sphinx, his pyramid, his celebrity sex tape.

‘Hurry up, we’ll be late for school,’ said Aaron Taylor.

There will always be small minds.

Graham Isaac drew himself up to his full height and spoke like the prophets of old. ‘Nah uh.’

His full height was technically more than four feet.

Aaron Taylor displayed his Ben 10 watch. ‘We’ll get detention!’

‘Fine, go then.’

‘I’m not allowed to walk to school alone!’

‘Then stop distracting me.’

Graham dug deep inside his mind, in search of the poet who dwelt there. These words would outlive him. Outlive his civilisation. They would be read by kings, by aliens, by the future itself. He reached out a finger.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Aaron Taylor.

Graham didn’t answer, his thrust his finger deep into the cement, cold and grainy.

He wrote his name next to a dog’s paw prints.

Aaron Taylor nearly fainted. ‘What have you done?!’

‘I wrote my name, so what?’

‘Now the cops will be able to find you! You’ll go to prison!’

At nine years old, Graham Isaac discovered panic and regret.

***

Detective Inspector Richard Henley looked down at the scene of the crime. Humanity’s rotting teeth made him furious and sick.

‘What do we do next?’ said Detective Inspector Trish Spencer.

Henley spat, but nothing would scrub the evil from his species, or the words from the footpath. ‘There’s nothing we can do next.’

It was the perfect crime, right there in the cement at his feet.  GRAHAM ISAAC WOSENT HEER.