redstoreroom

[redstoreroom]

The King of Singapore

The young man in blue paid him two dollars reluctantly then walked away. He dropped the money into his pouch and, with weathered fingers, zipped it up. His hands were still sticky so he wiped them on his shirt. His clothes looked like he had had years of sticky hands.

The sky was blushing mauve; he should start packing up. His ice-cream cart was parked by the suspension bridge over the river. He stretched his back with a groan. It had found an uncomfortable curve as its daily normal.

His precious cart was one of those with a large umbrella and conjoined to a bicycle. He looked too old to cycle, in my opinion. He knew it too. He also knew that one day, he wouldn’t be able to anymore. His joints were less like joints than bends lately. There weren’t much of muscles left on his bones either. And it worried him. Money, it worried him a lot. He could survive without shelter and homelessness was familiar. Food however… When that day comes, he’ll be fucked. His stomach too. Empty and fucked.

He lifted the metal lids of his cart, one after another, peeking into their freezing chambers. They usually contained many flavours of ice-cream. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies and cream, mango, sweet corn, red bean, raspberry ripple. He even had durian flavoured ones; they taste better than you think, trust me. They cost more too; more than they should. You can buy them scooped on cones or cups, or sliced from icy blocks and sandwiched between wafers or bread. He had them on sticks too. However, that evening as he peered into the compartments, he saw that they were empty except for cold exhalations meeting his face and a single popsicle. The tubs were all scooped clean. The blocks for the sandwiches were all gone. It had been a busy day so he hadn’t noticed. Even the corn flavoured ice-cream had sold well. One more popsicle.

His heartbeat rushed. Happiness; he hadn’t felt it for a long time. He turned to the river and the towering buildings beyond it as he tried to girdle his emotions to his wasted body. He wanted his entire nervous system to experience every droplet of the contentment. He needed it to nest in him forever. He smiled. He listened to the distant of laughter that travelled from nearby bars and restaurants; laughter of smoking and drinking people. Feasting people. Joyful people. With them, he felt a shared glee from afar. It was lonely but not lonely.

This land, my land.

He was a king of this country, centuries ago; a raja, when the gods of the sea were still awake and sending bladed hordes from their depths to the shores of this island. A young boy, still unclaimed by puberty, but with smarts and banana trees, saved the land from the piscine attackers.

When his subjects—with mouths stuffed with panggang garfish—threw adorations at the child, our king grew worried the story would end with him throne-less. The boy was the David to his Saul.

He sent five men to kill the boy when the moon turned blind and unable to bear witness. They went to his home upon the hill and entered his room through the window. His parents were asleep. Five men. Five blades. Seven stabs each. They left quicker than they came.

As his life began its migration from his body, he wept to the gods. His final breaths called to the gods of the winds. His tears called to the gods of the waters. His temperature, lowering fast, called to the gods of fire. His blood seeped through the floor and called to the gods of the earth and thus began the slow and famous red-dyeing of the hill; Bukit Merah.

Forgiveness or revenge, the gods asked the boy.

Revenge, he said. Revenge and multiplied.

And so, they commenced the punishment. Food from the earth withered black in the mouths of our king’s family while water turned to poison down their throats. When they are shrivelled and broken, air then fled their lungs in slow hisses and rattles and so much pain. One by one, members of the royal family died, leaving our monarch completely alone. You see, fire, most cruel, cursed him with a promethean spark of life, so that he will never die. He will age, slow, but no death.

For hundreds of years, he searched for Death. He found her, one day, during the second world war, and asked her to take him. She laughed. Ask someone else, she told him. Then she left. She said she was rather busy. She had a lot of work to do.

It wasn’t till the nineteen eighties, that he met that ‘someone else’; at this very bridge, in fact. She looked like an old woman, greying hair and all that. Her ill-fitting blouse was a vomit of tiny purple and grey flowers, and dark patches of sweat under her arms, on her chest and her back. Her black trousers were too loose for her legs. He approached her.

“You’re the Devil, yes?” he asked her. “I need your help.”

“Cavenagh Bridge.” She placed a hand on a railing of the bridge. He wasn’t sure if it was for emphasis or support. “Did you know, it was built in Glasgow, dismantled and reassembled here in 1969?”

“Yes. I worked on it. Forced to. I was in prison then.” He placed a hand on the railing too but found it too hot from the sun and retreated his hand. She kept hers on it.

“My, my. From king to convict. When the mighty fall, they plummet.”

“At least I had meals behind bars. Out here… Empty belly and immortality; brutal combination.”

“Tell me, did they really sacrifice children when building bridges? Or is that just an urban myth? Oh, please tell me they did! It would really make my day!”

“Even if they did, who am I to judge?”

She laughed, hard and with bouts of coughs. “I like you. You’re hilarious. Your entire situation is hilarious. And you’re pathetic; that’s lovely too! Like a monkey. Like a drowning monkey. And that makes me smile. So, fine. How may I help you?”

“I want to die.”

“And in this heat, I want ice-cream. Boohoo! We all want something. You were given life without expiration. You could have earned every ounce of your riches back. Your land, even! I don’t understand how you managed to waste it all. Why are you such a failure?”

“Bad choices?”

She smiled a sigh. “Well, I can’t fault you for that, can I? Even God makes choices He regrets. I’m proof of that. Fine, I’ll help. But my dear, I can’t peel the curse off you. Amend it, however—”

“I’ll take it.”

And a contract was signed on Cavenagh Bridge, with the river and sun as witnesses, and the Devil gave the ex-convict king an ice-cream cart, telling him that once it is empty and frozen goods all sold, he will die. Easy, right? Yet for some reason, the thing never seemed to empty.

He could see its contents decreasing yet there was always more left. As time went on, the cart grew and accommodated more flavours and types of ice-cream. It even added a bicycle to itself. The king—now ice-cream man—could never remember when or how these changes to his cart occurred. He could only notice that it was different from before. Like realising there were now wrinkles under your eyes but never being too sure when they first appeared.

When he started selling popsicles, he tried counting them to keep track of their number but could never finish the task. So, he gave up. No surprises there. Once, he tried to buy his own wares. That didn’t work either. Everything in the cart doubled itself in quantity.

For years, he peddled. It turned his dark skin papery and covered it with wrinkles and spots. He joined the country’s army of the aged men and women who toiled—often disregarded—right up to their deaths. And like him, a small few toiled for their deaths as well; praying they lose balance at the next foodcourt table they cleaned or the next floor tile they swept, and fall, snapping their cervical spine, killing them instantly. It was the nation’s waiting game and our king feared he would be playing it forever.

Yet that night, he found his cart finally empty save a single popsicle, more than three decades after his compact began. He called to people to buy it. No luck. I was walking by his cart when he begged me. I asked him what flavour it was. Yam. Who the hell eats yam flavoured anything? So, I said no. He fell onto his knees, crying and pleading. I heard him screaming as I walked away.

I wonder whether anyone bought it. I really hope no one ever does. Such a waste of money. Living is so expensive as it is. I mean… yam, for god’s sake.

(Note 1: This story was inspired by the Singapore folktale, Attack of the Swordfish, a tale of how Singapore was attacked by schools of swordfish and saved by a young boy, Hang Nadim (using a wall of banana stems), who was then murdered by the king. 

Note 2: An earlier version of this piece was initially posted on 12th June 2017 and has been edited and revised on 4th August 2020)

[redstoreroom]

The Seed

It was the last train bound east for the night and my head was throbbing. I should have left the campus much earlier. I was in a carriage with red and burgundy seats. There were six other people. Sleep had conquered most of them except one. I hate sleeping on the train. It happens from time to time but yes, I hate it. I always wake up slightly ill and my pores would feel open and greasy. So that night, I fought hard to not doze off.

The other man awake was wearing a white cotton shirt, the cuffs of which extended beyond his wrists, and the seams of the shoulders reached lower than they should. His loose dark trousers were also too long, gathering in folds at his ankles. His face was heavy with fat under the eyes and had two permanent creases above his brows. And his head was more skin than hair. A brown messenger bag sat beside him.

He had his mobile phone out and vertical, and a stretched smile. It took me a moment to realize what he was doing. Sitting right across from him and fast asleep was a young woman. She was slender in her green shift dress. Her hair was up and against the window of the train as she leaned back in her slumber.

His eyes jumped back and forth, between the screen of his phone and her. I should have done something or told him off. Or reported him. Or grabbed his phone. Something, you know? Instead, I alighted for it was my stop.

After I had left, the train entered a tunnel. The lights from the streets and buildings disappeared and everything beyond the glass went howling dark. Noticing that no one else was awake, he stood up, crossed the carriage and sat beside the woman. He then inched closer towards her until their sides were pressed against each other. She remained asleep. He slid a hand between his thigh and hers, and began moving it up and down slowly. She didn’t move. He had never gotten this far before. They usually wake up at this point. It emboldened him.

His hand crept over her leg and crawled up her skirt. She still didn’t stir. His own hidden member swelled from the excitement. He went further until his fingers discovered she wasn’t wearing undergarments. He pushes two of his pudgy digits into her. She was still unresponsive. He noticed her lips were parted just. He grinned before stretching his neck and leaning over to her. He pushed his mouth to hers. His slug of a tongue violated her face, while his fingers, her body.

Her eyes flashed open and wide.

He felt her spit something into his mouth; something small and hard which he swallowed. A pill? A drug? He jumped and fell onto the floor of the carriage.

The train was still in the tunnel. It should have made a few stops by now, he thought, why hadn’t it?

She rose tall from her seat and moved towards him, unaffected by inertia of both sleep and motion. Every gentle stride she made was thunder to the train floor. She was smiling now and with venom. He tried to crawl away from her but pain burst within his stomach. He has had gastritis before. This felt different. It felt wrong and worse. He yelled for help between groans but the other passengers remained unconscious. His head went light and unanchored. He was sweating cold.

He looked at her and she just stood there, monolithic. The pain began rising up and out his belly. His oesophagus went into panic and spasms of tensing and stretching. He gasped for air when he could. He clutched his neck as it climbed out his throat. It scratched his tongue and mouth in its escape and grew out of him; a branch, dark with leaves extending. The plant continued its ascent towards the train’s florescent lights.

The man tugged at it, weeping and desperate to pull it out of himself. That was when he felt it. The agony was spreading, descending into his intestines, slowly making its way out another orifice. And while she stood over him, silent and solid, it dawned upon him; roots.

[redstoreroom]

Going Home

The sun was still in the sky when he arrived. Two cigarettes and half a popsicle later it was dusk. Two dollars for ice on a stick. Not worth it, he thought. He had bought it from the man with the ice cream cart parked by the bridge. Never again.

He was careful to make sure nothing dripped onto his clothes, stretching his neck with every bite. His shirt was blue and checked, sleeves rolled halfway up his fore arm and untucked over his navy trousers. He wore loafers because it was a Friday. The thought of countless future loafer Fridays made him feel ill. He looked around to see others like him, just off from work yet still somehow stuck to the place, many with cigarettes in hand. Why don’t we just go home?

The lights from the street lamps and the nearby bars and restaurants lit both sides of the river and clawed at its surface. Smoke and voices of laughter and alcohol bled from these establishments. Why don’t we just go home? He usually wanted to, but that night, he waited.

He took one last bite, walked to the river’s edge, and tossed the stick into the black shiny water.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” an elderly woman walked up to him. Her hair was short and had gone grey. She wore a dark green blouse over black slacks and pair of sandals.

“It’s the only way I could get your attention,” he replied, smiling.

“Do I know you?” She looked puzzled.

“I’m your son.” It used to break him. The first time she couldn’t recognise him, he felt he had lost her. He felt it was the end of the world. In some ways, it was. He felt erased. He used to try to make her guess until she figured it out herself and actually say it; that he was her son. That was magic to him. At some point, he stopped going through the trouble. He would just tell her.

“I don’t have... I don’t know what the word is.”

“Children?”

“You threw the… You shouldn’t have done that.”

“You have several, actually. Children.”

“I don’t have children.” She started walking away. He followed after her.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Anything?” It must not be one of her better days.

“No. I…” She stopped and looked at him. “Who are you again?”

“I’m your son. And I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t remember.” She turned to the river, then back at him. Her face turned panicked. “Why can’t I remember?”

“Because they cleaned you.”

“What do you mean? Oh God! I don’t know what you mean!” Her breathing accelerated. “When did this start? Do you know?”

“When you started forgetting? Is that what you mean? Or the cleaning?”

“Yes,” she sobbed. “Probably… I don’t know…”

“They began in the 70s, remember? It took them about a decade. But when they removed the waste and litter from you, they took away your past too. By the time all the pollution and popsicle sticks had been purged from your body, you had few memories left. And even those… Does any of this make sense to you?”

She looked at the waters again. “I am the river, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And who are you?”

“I am your son, mother.”

“Yes. I remember now. You are a creek?”

“A brook.”

“A brook. Right.”

“They filled me with earth to raise buildings. I live as a person now.”

“And your siblings?”

“Many are like me, living as people, in a land foreign to us. Some of my brothers and sisters have become citizens of the country and have families. I don’t know if I can ever do that.”

“You said you could help me. How?”

“A few days ago, your kin, Ganges and Yamuna were given rights equal to humans. And Whanganui, before that. Maybe you can do the same. Make them listen. Dry yourself and destroy a little bit of their tourism and economy. Or swell and flood into their land and claim their children as they did yours. Show them that dams and barrages and concrete cannot control you. Then when they’re listening, demand for what you want and need.”

“My dear, they have taken so much of my memories, I no longer know what I want or need. Now I wonder whether that was their point.”

“Then make something up. People make memories up all the time.”

“Why are you really here, my sweet boy?”

Even in her dementia, she knew him. He led her to a bench and they sat.

“I thought I could be a person, mother. I worked hard. I went to university. Got employed. I did many things to try to find my direction but nothing seemed right. I kept trying. Change. Redirect myself. Find my purpose, my current. Yet I am still aimless. And it scares me, not being able to find my flow. I am not getting any younger. People my age are succeeding in so many things. They know where their lives are headed. And here I am, afraid and failing. I don’t belong here, as a person. I don’t want to forget being a brook but I’m afraid I am forgetting. I am terribly afraid.”

“So, you need you mother?”

He didn’t look at her.

“There’s no shame in that, love. It’s human to need your mother. Many people, call for their mothers when death comes for them. Even soldiers do. So, you want me to carve you out from me again? Is that it? Because, look around, it’s not worth it to be a water body in this country. You’re not the first of my children to have come back to find me and ask that of me, I remember now. Maybe a bit of my past was hanging off the stick you threw into me.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“You don’t know that it doesn’t. Anyway, many of your brothers and sisters have returned to me, into me, where I can protect them and keep them. Return to me too and we can be in this perpetual amnesia together where the past and what was taken from us may never haunt us again. What do you say?”

He took her aged hand in his and squeezed. He then smiled. Why don’t we just go home?

He stood up and walked towards the edge of the river, leaving her still seated at the bench. He descended the steep steps into the water. It was a comfortable sort of cold. People began shouting at him. He went under and disappeared. Two men jumped in but they couldn’t find him. The police and ambulance turned up soon after but they too were unsuccessful till daybreak; in time for the morning news to report that, yet again, a body was found floating in the Singapore River.

[redstoreroom]

The Animal

There was a cat I once saw at the void deck of my flat. It was the colour of coffee with splotches of white and stripes of black. Someone must have poured something on its head. Probably hot oil. Or maybe, they simply burned it with fire. I never found out. Its face had no fur left, only melted and malformed skin and flesh; all pasty and creamy, and shaped by gravity and healing. The result was a countenance that was startlingly human. Brows that protruded and drooped sideways. A nose that was sharp and arched. And its mouth, the scars around it had shaped into very human lips, I was so sure it would speak. It even had a chin, or what looked like one, and no trace of the dainty muzzle of cat. However, its eyes were feline, thank heavens.

It was a few feet away from me, close to where the cars were parked and pressed against a pillar. There was a plastic container near it, which the neighbourhood cat feeders were known to leave food in. It was empty. The cat was already looking at me before I even noticed it presence. It lowered its body closer to the ground, back arched and tail down. Its jade eyes widened. Its ears twitched, one of which had the snip of sterilization. I remained still, staring at that grotesque face.

Its lips parted and my skin went cold. It was meow but the tone was all wrong. It sounded human, like the yowl people would make when they mimic cats.

It meowed again, this time loud and fuller and there was pain it. It was a cry for help. It was all the cries for help in the world, squeezed into a single whimper. The hungry child soaked in the sweat of hefty men. The woman in the storeroom with broken skin and broken bones and missing teeth. The man waking up in the hotel bathroom, absent memories and kidneys. The half unconscious girl on the grass with bruises on her and inside her. The boy tied to the fence and tortured and battered and left for dead. The severed family on the sinking boat, out at sea, without a home anymore. The forty-nine and hundreds of thousands and millions before they died by the guns and blades and bombs of hate or for the profit of the few. The newborn in the rubbish chute. And there were more. My god, there were more! And I heard them! All of them! The creature poured all of it onto me, into me. And I beheld all that we had done, and it was far from good! Far from good!

Trembling, I walked away. Ran, almost. What else could I do? My body was weakened yet weighing heavy. What else could I do?

I never saw the animal again but I still remember its face and the sound it made. I worry, one day, we will all be made to hear that very sound.

[redstoreroom]

The Toll, Sufficient

You have seen them. I am sure you have. If you, like many of us, are not fortunate enough to own air-conditioned transportation, you have seen them. If you are one of those who choose to squeeze into themselves among other sweating sardines, just so you get to boast a reduced carbon footprint, you have seen them.

And they have seen you.

They often perch on the steps of the island’s many train stations, those dames with their packets of tissue paper they hope passers-by will barter loose change for. Some of them (thankfully not many) would croak tunes about their one-dollar-priced wipes, completely unabashed. The loss of dignity no longer threatens them, I suppose. Some would smile tired smiles with missing teeth. Others would simply stare without any effort at all to promote their wares.

There is one whom I pass daily. She is always stooped on a stool and never without a gargantuan red plastic bag of tissue packets. Her clothes are usually in some shade of grey and tired, and a water bottle sits by her feet. At another exit, her friend keeps somewhat vertical, aided by a walker. The last exit is left to the buskers, the blind and the illegal water chestnut sellers. She seems like any other old crone but don’t be fooled. While most of these old women are just like any other, some, like her, are far more ancient.

They were present when the earth was still an incandescent sphere of hydrogen, helium, heavy elements and possibility. They inhaled the sulphur and death that filled the atmosphere at every rebirth of the world, and they bore witness; sometimes more.

Look at her, and closely. The hunch of her back is not due to the weight of age upon spine. It disguises the presence of wings. Large wings with plumages of black and grey and white. She doesn't move from her rest much, but not because the years had weakened her bones and atrophied her muscles. Her shoes are too small for the taloned feet that are bent and folded within them, hurting her when she walks. So, she avoids it when she can.

What is she?

She, and her sisters, are angels. They are more beasts than the beautiful seraphim that crowd the art of the Italian renaissance. She hates these fallacious depictions, by the way. She once flew, on a whim, to Rome just to urinate on one of the statues guarding Castel Sant’Angelo. It’s true.

I never fail to give her my money, not out of generosity, but out of fear of the repercussions otherwise.

You see, after several millennia of human existence, God in all his wisdom, finally found an efficient way to judge mankind; money. And he employed his feathered hags as his jurors. The celestial custodians of each nation chose their own payment systems. Ours had decided on one that is simple. Come the end of days, if you have bought enough tissue packets from them and paid the toll sufficiently, they will raise you to the better place, wherever that is. This is the rapture and soon.

And those left behind, the almighty has given his angels permission to feast upon. A celebratory banquet for their long service, so to speak; the damned among us, their main course. For these heavenly harpies feed on sin. They can smell it off our flesh. And I am certain that, at the close, they will make sure to leave the most delicious of us down here.

But I haven't done anything sinful, you say. None of the ten commandments or deadly kinds of sins, at least. Well sadly, sins, like most appetites, change. They go in and out of fashion. So, stop thinking old testament, my friend. There is no telling what human depravities now stimulate their taste buds.

There is one way, thankfully, to be safe. Give them money enough, clean yourself enough with their brand of wipes, and you may just counterbalance any palatability in you with bitter (albeit forced) generosity.

Alternatively, you can be like this man here. Yes him, with the see-through comb over. Him, in the white shirt with grey stripes and the black trousers belted high. Him, with his shoulders hunched in a way that protrudes his stomach. Him. He is just off from work and very late tonight. He had managed to catch the last train. He decides to walk home from the station. He passes our aged angel without looking at her. She gets a whiff of him. To her, he smells like pastries and raspberries.

He nudges his metal spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he wonders if his daughter is already asleep. It wouldn’t matter. He will just wake her up. He needs release tonight. He doesn’t feel sick about it anymore. To be fair, when he first began with her, he did. She was eleven then. Now, no more guilt. Even his wife doesn’t seem to care anymore. He walks beneath the concrete of the elevated tracks and by the rows of street lamps. His shoes patted the ground to a metronome. He walks fast and intent, one arm carrying his briefcase and the other swinging in large arcs.

He hears something. Like short gusts of wind. No, like wings beating. Like giant wings beating. He didn’t even get to look up before the large talons clamped his shoulders, digging into his flesh, and he was lifted into the dark sky.

His briefcase, abandoned.

She brings him to the roof of the tallest library in the city. It is her turn to bring food to the congregation tonight. Her sisters are already waiting and hungry. God permits them to eat once in a while, just so they don’t starve to death before they could fulfil their duties. The women were unclothed from the waist up. Their wings were free and stretching. So were their breasts. They lunge at him and began tearing him greedily; ripping flesh from body and bone, and straight into their wrinkled mouths. He screams but no one hears him. He screams until one of them tears his throat open and blood replaces cries. And with every bite of him they take, they say to him, with voices of gentle grandmothers, “Thank you.”