Prince had crossed over to the next life once more and had left behind nothing but a shell. He was lying in bed, wrapped in a green fleece blanket with bubblegum-pink lipstick on his lips and glimmery eye shadow around his sunken sockets. A lustrous bronzer on his cheeks. You’re beautiful again, Starman, I said, surveying my handiwork.

A few hours earlier, I’d crept into the airless bedroom with a mug of coffee for him, just like I did every morning. Black with a single cube of sugar in a chipped mug bearing the image of a Romanian castle and a caption in medieval script that read, I’m not yelling, I’m Romanian.

Someone should track this mug’s journey around the world, I thought. We weren’t in Romania, but Morocco, outside a big city in the middle of the country, between the Sahara Desert and the Atlas Mountains. I walked over to the bed and put down the mug, and it had only just touched the dark brown surface of the nightstand when I realized that Prince wasn’t silently watching me approach—he was dead. Stone dead. I held a hand over his mouth: no heat, no breath.

In that moment, it was as though all my senses sharpened, as though I’d stepped through an invisible membrane and into a new dimension, one where everything flowed and blended together and merged and expanded until it was somehow more. Prince’s face was gray and lifeless, but his eyes seemed to follow me around the room. There was foam at the corners of his mouth, his face had distended and contorted as he breathed his last, he bore no trace of a smile, his eyes had clouded over. Had he cried out? Had he been afraid? This wasn’t his first time. He’d done it again and again and again. Crossed over into yet another life. So why wasn’t he smiling?

I could feel the reek of the bedroom with my whole body. It was heavy and sour and tickled my nose and throat. Goosebumps stippled my sun-browned upper arms, my chest, my legs. The pale down on my forearms stood on end. Furry arms mean you’re going to be rich, echoed the voice of my old elementary school teacher in my head. Though she didn’t need to see my hairy arms to predict that—I belonged to one of the richest families in Iceland.

In the kitchen, I could hear Destiny’s loud, shrill voice and Jill’s more subdued one, scolding Destiny for having forgotten to wash up after breakfast once again. Cheerful dance music was playing on the little speaker we never turned off. One of my black running shoes was untied. I knelt down and retied it. My heart beat slowly, but rhythmically.

When I stood up again, I walked slowly but resolutely to the window and pulled back the cream-colored blackout curtains that had been hung to keep the bedroom cool and dark. The sun crashed down on Prince like a spotlight. His skin hung slack and flabby on his skull, making his cheekbones and big nose jut out. He reminded me of a shiny, gray dolphin, beached on a barren shore. His hands were splayed around a nearly empty plastic bottle of vodka that was clutched to his chest. The only painkiller that works, I heard him say in that deep, sing-song voice of his. I had to pry his fingers apart to wrest the bottle away from him.

Then I lay down beside him and gently embraced his emaciated body, which felt like a snakeskin. I was afraid he’d crumble to dust if I squeezed him too tight. I snuggled up to Prince, buried my nose in his shoulder, into the thick, hooded sweatshirt that he never took off, even though it was over 30°C outside and there was no AC in the bedroom, nothing but an old fan with wooden blades that sliced through the air with a loud click, click, click.

“In that moment, it was as though all my senses sharpened, as though I’d stepped through an invisible membrane and into a new dimension, one where everything flowed and blended together and merged and expanded until it was somehow more. Prince’s face was gray and lifeless, but his eyes seemed to follow me around the room.”

As I lay there with Prince’s body cooling in my arms, I felt a deep longing to die, unlike any such longing I’d had before. It was entirely bland, tinged neither by despair nor relief. Just an ice-cold calm. As if dying would be less a decision than a reflex, like lying in a bath and letting yourself slip under the warm water. I cast my eyes around for something sharp I could cut myself with, but saw nothing but empty wine bottles. The only painkillers within reach were some paracetamol tablets, and those would hardly be strong enough to kill me.

After I’d lain there with Prince in my arms for a moment, I felt something wet. Something moist was beginning to seep into my pink leggings. I jumped up, flung back the duvet, and was accosted by such a vile smell that I gagged and held my breath. There was a large dark stain at the crotch of his thick gray sweatpants. He was lying in a puddle of urine and black, bloody shit.

Prince had voided himself when he transformed.

All that autumn, Prince had lain under heavy blankets in the dark bedroom and slept. His eyes had turned yellow, and his face had turned yellow, and his hair was brittle and thin. He wore thick sweaters under the duvet and yet he was always shivering.

He’d had almost constant diarrhea and bled every single time he went to the toilet. Satan’s bleeding from my ass, he said at first, as if it were funny, but as the months passed, all the moisture gradually leaked out of him until his body became dry and brittle like a chrysalis. He got sores at the corners of his mouth, and his skin, normally so dark and shiny and firm, turned deathly pale and became covered with dry, red splotches.

Prince became so brittle that once, he broke his arm just by falling off the toilet when he fainted. Don’t you dare disobey me, you fucking mouth-breathing shit-stain motherfuckers, he screamed if anyone mentioned a doctor. We tended to the break as best we could with a splint made of whittled sticks and a thick shawl.

Over time, Prince could no longer walk without assistance, so we had to be on the alert for his moans to help him to the toilet and then back into bed. He refused to eat, drank nothing but black coffee and straight vodka to numb the pain—maybe had a saltine or two if he got hungry. He smoked one joint after another when his agony was at its worst.

If I tried to take his dry, flaccid cock in my mouth, it was like trying to breathe life into a dead earthworm, but he still got mad when I gave up. Whore, he mumbled, half-asleep. You’re just gonna give up? You fucking pathetic excuse for a whore, you can’t even suck a dick.

His breathing grew shallower with every passing day. His body more shriveled. I don’t want to die, I can still be of use, he cried in my arms, and I reminded him that he was immortal. I told him the story again and again:

Your soul is ten thousand years old. You have three hearts in your chest because one is no longer enough. You’ve gazed into tongues of fire across the plains and chased wild animals.

You’ve lived innumerable lives. You died on the cross. You died beneath a tree in India. Now, you are dying in the desert, surrounded by those who love you. It is your calling to keep us from destroying ourselves. Again and again and again and again and again and again.

I can’t bear the wailing of my followers, I don’t want to do this anymore, Prince slurred, giving me a look of raw hatred before fumbling for the vodka bottle.

And now he was gone. He died alone, but not for nothing.

And it was I who was standing over his excrement-covered body. Prince was clearly gone from this husk, but we had nothing else to remember him by, and our last memory could not be of him like this. I had to make him beautiful again.

I took off my wet leggings and threw them into the corner of the bedroom. Then I took off my t-shirt and tied it around my face to stifle the smell before I started to remove Prince’s clothing. He was unbelievably heavy, considering how withered his body had become. I took the sheet off the bed and then wrapped his socks and clothes and everything else up in it and put it all in a heap on the floor. I washed his naked body with the baby wipes we used to bathe him after he was no longer able to get in the shower. Wipe after wipe until I’d finished off the whole pack. Then I swaddled him in a green fleece blanket like a newborn babe, daubed the foam from his mouth, pulled out my makeup kit, and started to make him beautiful once more.

Extreme makeover, baby, baby, baby boy, I crooned to myself as I massaged thick French moisturizer into his cheeks, forehead, chin.