He always compared himself to the only elephant trapped in the desert, looking for something to hold onto while losing hope until the end of his life.

   As this is the end of the story,he figured out that everything had started from his childhood , a miserably sad cliche. His parents divorced when he was only six because of alcoholic abuse. He reviewed his own memory as a horror movie every night in the dreams, breathlessly drowning. But that afternoon, in which he was surrounded by his favorite plush, leather armchair thinking about the warm smell of the young, fresh body sitting in front of him at school, he thought he finally found what he was desperately desired , since his mother’s suicide 10 years ago.

Let’s set the time back to 5 hours before that afternoon.  Ashley, the girl who sat in front of him, left her shirt on his desk by mistake.  As he just signed in at the playground and skipped the rest of the P.E lesson by running back to the classroom, he found that white shirt resting on his desk like a sleeping naked angel. He looked around, only to find dust dancing in the sunlight, and then he picked up that shirt slowly. It was so warm, so pure, reminding him of his mother’s innocent smell which filled the sweet  memory he only had. Gently, he lowered his head, covering his face with the shirt in his hands. At that moment, he thought he would die for the girl.

   Seeing Ashley’s little skull became the greatest happiness in his daily life and lying in his favorite armchair while refreshing the memory of her skin’s temperature and smell, her black pigtail with red string and her shiny fine hair on her neck under the sun became his loyalest hobby.
  However, the memory did fade while his love accumulated. He started to panic. He pushed the desk a little bit closer to the girl everyday,trying his best to create a conversation between he and Ashley,even using the most trivial thing.
“How are you today.” he caught the moment she turned her head back while delivering the homework.
“Quite good! How are you?” her sakura pink lips opened and closed, melody coming out from them.
“Do you know how fast sakura falls?” the boy smiled with confidence, leading her to his little secret world by not answering a prosaic daily question.
“Um…..” she shook her head, just the same as he expected.
“It’s five meters a second.” Then she would think he was a cute boy with lot of knowledge.
  But this scene only existed in his imagination. In the real world, he was just a shy weirdo.Sometimes he rested his head on the smooth surface, closing his eyes, taking deep breath. A deep sound inside of his head kept urging him to tell her, to touch her, to hug her, to trap her, and to love her. 

  “Oh,God.Please let me feel the warmth of being in love even just once.” he begged.

  Time fleeting. He’s love became stronger, at the edge of exploding.His inside was not strong enough for this powerful emotion anymore. I have to tell her,determining his mind, he wrote a poem on a small piece of paper scratched from his only notebook and put it in her pen case without anyone’s notice.
  You are the whitest cloud ,
   the innocent wind.
   You are the closest lust,
       the wildest dream.
       You are the coziest armchair,
       the eternal embrace.
      You are the carnalest angel,
     the verginal devil.
    ……..
                                                                Your closest classmate

    Next morning, he put on his favorite dark grey Star War T-shirt , shaved his face with the new bought automatic shaver and shaped his hair by spraying mint flavor gel on it. Maybe she will look for the guy who wrote the letter. Maybe she will know it was me, the guy who sees her as a goddess, he thought. During class, he sat as straight as a soldier in case she would turn around at any time. As it turned out, nothing happened that day, the girl didn’t even turn her head back or start a conversation.
  On his way back home, the sky started to change it’s color as if a baby was getting mad. It cried and shouted, pouring tons of teardrops and throwing out thunder like the least adorable toy. The poor boy was shivering in the cold rain. His hair was messed up and sticked at his forehead with sticky hair gel. So cold, he thought.
  “I am not mad at her,” he said to himself, sitting in his lovely arm chair, “I love her, how will I be mad at her? Maybe  other boys write her poems too, that’s why she didn’t have a reaction.That’s why she didn’t notice me.” Then he nodded his head, showing he was agree with himself.All of a sudden he found this mood was so  familiar and his memory flashed back. Two years before his parents divorced, his father started to drink all day and beat his mother after coming back home from work with a mind poisoned by alcohol. His poor mother tried to hide under the bed and in the closet at first; however, she was found after few days and his father beat her harder while shouting, “Trying to get away from me? Ah? You think I’m poorer than those man outside. Don’t you? How dare you!”
“No! I didn’t! I didn’t! Please! I can’t...  I can’t…” mother struggled,trying to run away but failed. After that, she started to hide in boxes and let her boy tape them closed That’s when his lovely mother started getting crazy. After two years’ miserable life, they finally divorced on a sunny day that his father was not drunk. However, that poor woman’s life could never back to normal just like a one way train. One day, after her little boy was asleep, she put her boy in a taped plastic box and then hide herself in another one, whispering “He can’t find us now, we are safe. Shhhhh, we are safe.”
The boy found himself in the dark after he woke up, trapped. He was so scared,screaming,trying to move his body. “Mom! Help me! I’m in here ! Please get me out! Mom…” he cried, with tears streaming down his face.All his efforts turned out to be useless.
Not knowing how much time had passed, he was worn out and then he heard. “My kid, don’t be afraid. We are safe. Your father can’t hurt us now.” An idea flashed into his mind. It was his crazy mother who put him inside his box. Although he was so terrified  of small room and the dark in the rest of his life, he still couldn’t blame his Mom. He loved her.
                                                                     ***
  Smooth melody made by friction between chalk and blackboard fulfilled the whole classroom in which the fan was the only thing trying to stir the almost solid hot air. The dust floating in the sunshine,swaying, like a visual lullaby.Some boys fell asleep under the the spell from this endless summer. Their breathe were long and deep and their faces were occupied by peaceful smile as if they were in the same sweet dream at this moment.
  It had been two weeks since the teacher rushed into the classroom, throwing a bomb by announcing that Ashley was missing.All the students in this classroom was shocked. They kept reticent for several seconds then bursted out chatting.
“What does it mean missing?” Ashley’s deskmate stared at the teacher while asking as if she really didn’t know what that simple word mean.
“Her family couldn’t find her. They thought she is at school, but she definitely not.” teacher answered her in a ponderous voice.
“How could this happen to her?” one of Ashley’s best friend murmured.
“Maybe she went to somewhere, not telling anyone else, like a secret trip.” there’s another girl tried to comfort her.
“Oh my god! Hope she is still alive.”
    ...…
  The loud volume almost blew away the roof.
  However, everything will deposit under the magic of time. The classroom was so peaceful now as if the teacher had never rushed into here and students never had known about Ashley’s missing. The boy sitting at the corner at the back was looking outside the closed window where several kids were playing hide and seek. The blank seat before him made the boy looks forlorn. He was so worried about Ashley. Was she afraid? Was she hungry? Was she as lonely as me at this moment? He couldn’t stop his mind from flying away from this tranquil room.
  After he came home, he hurried to his favorite arm chair and turned it upside down. Then he found himself a metal ball pen to open the bottom of the armchair. “She must be very hungry and want me to feed her so much.” he thought while prying the bottom open. A pair of legs which were tied up exposed from the inside of the armchair to the air. He continued pulling out yellow sponge and whispering “Ashley, Ashley. I’m back. You must be missing me.”
  She didn’t struggle as normal at all.
  “Ashley!”
  Her skin was cold.
  “Ashley!”
  So cold.

                                                                      ***
The school found him missing three days later. As the police broke into his house, they were astonished by the smell of rotten dead body. The boy sitting in a armchair had turned green and swelled. Countless flies was dancing around him.The police approached the body slowly, one of them murmured while shaking his head, “How could this happen to a kid.” Then, the boy was covered by white cloth.
  Several hours later, the consistently dancing flies around where the boy’s body once was led the police to the discovery of another girl’s dead body located in that leathered armchair. They also found an empty sleeping aid bottle and a letter wrote by the boy.
                                                                    ***
  “I can’t let myself lose Ashley again, just like I lost my Mom.
   I do love her but I’m also sad because she could never see me. So I followed her after school on a scorching afternoon. My perfect plan was let her temporarily suffocated by covering my scarf on her nose and mouth. However she struggled so hard that I have to pick up a stone by the road and hit her at her back side of head. I didn’t want to hurt her at all. I promise. Her skull was my favorite. Her house wasn’t far away from mine, so I pull her to my place as if she was fainted because of the heatstroke. Luckily, no one suspected me. I got my love, my goddess.
  I tied her up by strings, two times. (I said that I can’t lose her like I lose my mom.) Then I opened the bottom of my arm chair, using a sharp knife, pulled out most of the sponge in it to make room for Ashley. So if she stayed in her new home, she would feel the dark like me . She would understand me and have the same fear as me. The most important thing is that I can be surrounded by who I love again. So I put her into the armchair. It was such a hard work that I was totally worn out. I sat in her arm for a rest and fell into a dream about my sweet Mom.
  These three weeks are the happiest time I have ever had after my Mom’s death but I made a mistake I could never forgive myself. I forgot to feed and check her for a whole day. I found her dead after I came home from school.
Since who I loved was dead because of me, again,this world isn’t warm enough for me to live anymore.
Bye, world.
                                                                                                                                 xxx”
  “So the girl was murdered under the name of love,” the police who read this letter looked up to his partner.
  “The poor girl,” his partner shooked his head, not mentioning that boy.