Fiction

Merilyn Chang is a journalist and digital media manager based between New York and Berlin. She’s studied comparative literature and creative writing for her bachelor’s and has since been working on her first novel. Her work has been published by Dazed, Resident Advisor, Fact Mag and more.

God’s Seat

The day August died was just like any other day. It was all the days after that were different. That morning he woke up earlier than I did, as always, and made tea for us in the kitchen while I journaled in bed. August didn’t like to lay around in the morning. He liked to get up minutes after opening his eyes. Said it helped him start the day instead of ruminating. Not that I’m running away from anything, he said. It just never did anyone any good to swim in your thoughts.

I was writing about our evening by the lake yesterday. Since I met August a year ago, my journal was filled to the brim with notes about him. In the beginning, his moppy hair and big hands. He had a curious obsession with birds, even though he rejected bird watching as a hobby. He liked to read about them in books and always kept a pocket-sized notebook in his shoulder bag. It was from a trip he took with his family to Thailand years ago. He had detailed drawings of all the birds he’d seen then. Even the one that broke his arm. He always laughed when he told that story.

A few months in, my journal entries grew more detailed. I wondered why he didn’t like to speak to his family. The only person he’d talk about was his sister Ryan. He loved her more than he loved most other things. One word by her could make or break his entire day. He kept talking about having her fly out so I could meet her. You guys would love each other, He said. You both have this thing about you…the thing that makes other people want to get close to you. Like you both just get people.

I think what he meant to say was that we were softer, more pliable, easy to bounce ideas off, or be a sounding board for. I didn’t know Ryan, but I knew she became the mother that they lost to depression. A divorce gone haywire, rich fathers with powerful lawyers, white horses, and country houses. All lost in a moment of breakage. I thought August would be deeply opposed to marriage, but he seemed to want it all the more. Even if it is an act of insanity, weak knees giving into momentary desire, it’s a feat to be able to feel anything at all, he argued. We all know nothing lasts. So isn’t it all the more fantastic that people still feel strong enough to do it? They’re saying, fuck probability and shit, we feel so much right now that we may be the exception. And they’re probably not. But that kind of thinking, isn’t it the point of being alive?

He asked me to marry him five months in. I couldn’t tell where the line was drawn between joke and reality. Sometimes it seemed like August couldn’t tell either.

He called me from the kitchen and my pen went stray, trailing off the page.

“Tea?” He chimed from behind the walls.

I set the journal beside my bed and lifted my feet from under the covers. It was February, but winter never really came where we lived. Still the air was chilly as it hit my body.

August had a cigarette between his lips and all the windows open. He was straining the tea leaves, making puddles on the counter.

“Come on, August. It’s 10 am in the morning. Kinda early for a cig, no?”

“It’s been like three days! Life’s about moderation isn’t it?”

“Moderating death, if that’s what you mean.”

August put the cigarette out in the sink. His mom had picked up the habit after the divorce, leaving a permanent scent of nicotine on all her clothes. August had this brown leather jacket from his mother. It was his favorite piece. Went well with everything. But the smell of smoke seemed so ingrained in the fibers of the leather that I could smell it from across the room. He loved it. Said it smelled like her.

I watched August spread jam on his toast, making sure to cover all corners of the bread. He didn’t like any part untouched. “Why don’t we go to Thailand together?” He suddenly raised his head.

I laughed. “You tell me! Why don’t we?”

It was a special place to him. The last place he saw his parents happy, the last trip they took as a unit. He wanted to reclaim that trip.

“Maybe we should go before it gets too hot there. Like this winter. I can buy your ticket!”

August had funds from his dad. Perhaps from the guilt of his absence, or the regret of having let down his only son, post the failure of his second family. His younger wife left him after seven years, taking their little daughter with them. They got child support every month, but August’s dad was denied visiting rights. After Ryan cut him out, he turned to August, the only child left that would still give him the time of day. They didn’t have a good relationship, but it was salvageable. And his dad knew that. He would spend the rest of his life investing in automobile safety research, after the accident that killed his son. When he reached the old age of 85, his daughter would finally speak to him again, long after their mother passed. She would go to her father’s big house upstate and tell him she forgave him, after realizing that there were, indeed, still good men out there. Like her husband, she would say. Like August, they would both agree before staring off into the emptiness of the big driveway that rarely saw more than its own car.

August didn’t like accepting his money, but we were still in college. He swore that the moment he graduated, he’d make his own.

I fumbled the spoon around my empty teacup that was waiting for liquid. “I feel bad taking your dad’s money.”

“Don’t. He’s got more than he knows what to do with. And it’s not going to any good use anyways.” August was scrubbing down the counter, waiting for the boiled water to cool slightly. He was a stickler for morning routines, even though no other parts of his existence beckoned any type of routine. Being with him calmed me down from the noise of the rest of the day. Even just a morning together. If I could piece together all our mornings like a puzzle, I would, and re-live each of them, every single day. Pitchy kettle and hot tea. The crunch of a butter knife on toasted bread.

He poured hot water into my mug. We were on a coffee break to reset our tolerance. After tea August would realize that we had no more tea bags for tomorrow and run out to the market. He would die before reaching the market—my 1967 vintage Jaguar, or, our car, as he liked to call it, totaled in a messy heap of metal and leather. In the eulogy his mother, more consumed by madness than before, would reach a moment of clarity and commend her son for getting more out of his 21 years of life than most did in a lifetime. She would say that her son broke the curse of the family, sacrificing himself in return, then, retreating back into madness, mumble antics about his childhood till Ryan escorted her off the stage. His sister would deliver a speech that garnered a standing ovation from the funeral attendees. She would go on to become a renown psychologist years later, giving speeches becoming part of her profession. In her eulogy for August, she asked the crowd to imagine the feeling of getting out of bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Imagine it was the dead of winter, bare feet on hard tiled floors. The kind of cold that stings like glass. The starkness of overhead lights in your eyes after the dark bedroom. That’s what it feels like to live without August she said. That feeling will be there for as long as she lives.

But I digress. I want to linger on this moment a little longer. Maybe rewind to last night. Yes, that sounds right.

Last night August drove us out to the lake where we spent summer evenings last year. We were only months into the relationship, then, and everything still felt new. My stomach flip-flopped whenever he would ring my bell, and my appetite was unreliable. The lake was where college kids came to get drunk at the end of the semester. Skinny dipping, and keg stands, fireworks in the summer. Sometimes someone would bring some hash, some of the good green stuff, and the night would take a calmer turn.

We went there with our friends before it was closed off indefinitely for the last month of summer break. A freshman named Olive, petite girl with long red hair and pale eyelashes hit her head on one of the rocks on the deeper end of the lake. There was a part out by the east end of the lake where kids tied an old rope to a tree calling it the God’s Swing. It attracted the younger kids more than it did my friends. But sometimes we’d drive by and watch the commotion.

Toward the end of summer, Olive took a faithful dive, after a couple rounds of beers coaxed by her friends and dove straight into the shallow end of the water. She’d apparently hit her head and died on the spot. Some of the kids scrammed when they found her floating face down. Others called the cops. August and I weren’t around that night, but it was local campus news for a few months. The lake closed entirely—the rope cut off from the tree. Pictures of Olive were placed at the entrance to the lake—fresh flowers replaced every few weeks for the first months. Everyone at school knew her name by the first week of classes.

August and I tried to go back several times in the fall, but it was still closed off. Only last night, did we find the blockade to the entrance removed. We drove in and parked at our side of the lake, across from where Olive head-dived into heaven.

It was different without the backdrop of summer. Without our friend’s horsing around in the back, without the slight buzz of alcohol and the yells of our classmates. Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart was playing on the radio. It was a throwback kind of night, where they only played music from over 10 years ago.

“They stopped giving Olive flowers.” August said, after a long silence.

“I guess they can’t stay alive in February.”

“Not in California. Everything stays alive here.”

August was gazing across the water, his hand fidgeting with my nail, as he gripped my hand. “When my mom tried to kill herself, I thought that was a young death.”

“What do you mean?”

“When someone dies young, we’re programmed to be sad.”

“It’s all about the potential. Someone older might have lived out their lives to the fullest. Younger people haven’t had the chance yet.”

“Yeah but, I think most old people haven’t really lived out their full potentials either. They’re just pulling their weight along, trying to make something meaningful of all this time we have.”

“It’s a lot of time.”

“We can’t waste any of it, Amelia. We have to do something.”

“I’m down. For something!” I laughed. “Like what?”

“I want to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and I want take the Trans-Siberian railway from Russia to China. Then we’re going to make a film about it.” August looked me in the eyes, half joking, half serious. Then he drifted his gaze across the water again. He went on about the places we would go. Ice climbing in Iceland, Svalbard, the most remote Northern town in Greenland for the northern lights, dancing in Cusco, Peru. He had an uncanny knowledge of geography and wanted to turn everything he saw into a film. When he finished, he looked me dead in the eyes again. “We’re going to do it?”

We sat for a little longer and talked about the first film we would make. An intercontinental journey from Moscow to Beijing. And we would be the first people to cover it entirely on film. We’d revolutionize the documentary filmmaking scene. Change it overnight, once our piece dropped. “Maybe we can do it when we graduate this year.” He said.

“Seems like a nice grad gift.” I brought his hand to my lips and grazed against it.

We went for a small dip in the water later. Just our feet. It was too cold to take clothes off, just socks and shoes thrown haphazardly in the car as we tiptoed down by the water. The grass was cold and sharp against my feet. I clenched my teeth as we waded closer to the water. August seemed to like the cold. He rolled up his pants and dipped both feet in, walking deeper till he was several feet from the shore. “Come here!” He motioned.

It was too cold for me. I dipped my feet in and squealed, jumping back onto the grass, which felt warm in comparison. August laughed and ran back to me. The bottom half of his pants were a shade darker, wet, and half stuck to his calves. “I’ll keep you warm.” He lifted me up and ran toward the car, throwing me into the passenger’s seat before grabbing my feet and rubbing them between his hands. He threw his breath onto it, huffing warm air onto my skin as I laughed at the tickle.

Later as we drove home he reached into his backpack and pulled out a flower. He stopped right by Olive’s photo, at the entrance to the lake, and lightly placed the white flower in front of the framed image.

“You didn’t know her, did you?” I asked.

“No. But I feel like I did. Or I do.” He shrugged.

At home, August brought me tea in bed. He had some more cinema readings to do before class the following week, so sat with the lamp on, in the corner of the room while I wrote in my journal.

I wrote about him, of course. I’d loved a few boys before. It was hard to decipher what love really was to me. Was it the comfort of feeling a home in someone else, or the intensity of a more passionate union. Did one mutually exclude the other? What was the difference between loving someone and being in love with them? People have told me they fell in love after three weeks. For me it was always much longer. Months and months until one day, I’m sitting on my couch, eating take out with August, staring at the TV which is playing a re-run of some dumb show, his foot rubbing against mine, to show he was still there despite the boxes of Chinese food between us. It hit at that moment. I realized I loved him.

It was the first kind of love I’d felt that wasn’t contingent on something else. All the past loves felt like they had to lead somewhere. Somehow, at some point, we were all fed the narrative that finding love and finding a partner should spearhead a direct pipeline to marriage and a forever union. It made sense. But it detracted from how present I could feel in the relationship. Always waiting for something else, always fearful of it being taken away. With August, I felt just right, just at home, with the exact present moment. There didn’t have to be plans for a future, as long as we could just continue on like this, everything would be ok.

I glanced up at him, focused on his texts. Papers thrown around messily, gathered by his feet, the light from the lamp cast a gauzy halo around him. He sensed me staring at him and looked up. We both started laughing. He put down his book and tackled me onto the bed, pushing my journal out of the way.

We almost fell asleep in our clothes that night, until I woke up in the middle of the night and stripped it off both of us. We lay naked next to each other, all the lights off, except the streetlamps from the outside bleeding through the white sheets we had up for curtains.

“Let’s stay up till the morning.” August said as I closed my eyes.

“Keep me awake then.”

August moved closer and kissed my shoulder. “You look too peaceful. I feel bad.”

I opened my eyes. Moonlight fell on his face, erasing all the lines and creases that came from being alive. He looked smooth, like something out of a photograph. I held his face in my hands and he did the same, to my waist. I think we stayed awake for another hour or so, saying nothing to each other, until gradually we drifted to sleep. I couldn’t tell who fell asleep first. I suppose I would never know if August really did stay up all night.

And that brings us back to where we started. I hate this part of the story, really. Even though I think about it nearly every day.

When we finished our tea that morning, August leaned over the table and lightly grabbed my face. He liked to give standing kisses, the ones with our bodies straddling a dining table—knees half crouched, half straight. The kind of motion that screams we couldn’t even wait long enough to get on the same side of the table to start kissing! Sometimes, though, we liked to sit on the same side of the table at restaurants—the waiters giving us funny looks before turning into smiles. It made talking easier, we both had quiet voices. It made us feel closer to each other amidst the chaos and conversations of all the other people we didn’t know around us.

But tea in the morning was our thing to do with the absence of anyone else around. It was something I looked forward to every night. And an extra treat if we had the time to eat breakfast together. Which we did, on that morning. It was sunny that day. The type of sun that tasted fresh with the cool air, the kind that performed warmth in the early afternoon, before setting at 5 pm. But it was still so early for us. Only 10 in the morning.

August turned and placed our cups into the sink. “Need anything else from the store? Should we get some peanut butter? Can make some PB&J’s for later?”

“Whatever you want. I think we have everything here.”

I watched him slip into his favorite jacket. I replay that image in my head again and again and again. It’s really one of my favorite moments to remember. The way he moves the hair out of his eyes, the flick of the jacket over his elbows and onto his shoulders. Like something out of a movie. The jacket, his mother’s old favorite, ripped apart in the midst of the crash. It was thrown aside by one of the officers when he tried to perform CPR at the scene of the accident. Later, after the two victims were taken away in their ambulances, one which carried a dead man, and the other, a living one, the leather jacket would be left on the street, crumpled at the ledge of a sidewalk even after the police removed the yellow hazard tape. August’s mom would throw a fit at the hospital, asking for her all her son’s clothes back, breaking into tears when the nurses said they hadn’t found a brown jacket. She would go home and throw away all her leather, making a promise to her dead son that she would never wear the fabric again. Until years later, right before she is sent to the senior home, she’ll see her grandson, Augustus, Ryan’s first and only child, on the day of his college graduation wearing a brown leather jacket under his cap and gown. When he throws his cap into the air, the leather peaks through, almost shimmering in the morning light. She’ll look at her daughter and see tears in her eyes before they look at one another and share a smile.

“Amelia, baby” August had his hand on the door. “I’ll be right back.”

I kissed him. Once and once again, for good measure. He indulged and kissed me on the cheek once more before opening the door and stepping outside. I closed it behind him. We still had the whole day ahead of us, I thought. We were going to make sandwiches and head out for a hike, maybe watch a movie later in the evening with blankets taken from the bedroom and splayed out on the couch in my living room. My favorite kind of day. I walked back to the kitchen and took some bread out of the cabinet. He’d be hungry when he got back. I’d start cooking now.

Amanda has lived in Singapore, the United Kingdom, China and Taiwan. She has a BA (Hons) in Chinese and Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, and an MFA in Art and Design. She has taught English and creative writing for over ten years. She is also a Chinese-English translator, as well as chief storyteller to her son. She was a winner of the 2022 Writing the City Showcase Competition.

Yearning

Raquel shook the sheets, once, twice, three times. Each time pink nylon wafted and floated, suspended in the air for a still second, then like a parachute, made a crumpled landing on the King Koil mattress. Thank God for fitted sheets, she thought, as she tucked the edges in neatly, smoothing out the creases with her forearm. She fluffed up the pillows and looked at the clock: 9.25am. Tucking a loose ebony strand behind her ear, she stretched her arms wide. The morning sun was seducing her to hang out the laundry.

With a mountain of Tide fragranced washing in her arms, she hummed a tune she had heard on Class 95 FM the other day, some trending K-Pop remix. Deftly hanging out bulky work jeans, black lacy underwear, dinosaur pyjamas, she lifted her head back exposing her tanned neck, soaking in the morning sun. She felt lucky that she worked for a household with a balcony, one that afforded her views of the canopies of the rain trees. They also had these trees in her hometown in the Philippines, though the mynah birds that made their home here were not to be found there.

The rain trees made her homesick, but looking after the family’s adorable four-year-old son, Danny, brought enough joy to ease the heartache a little. He had a cheeky smile, that boy. His eyes exposed a gentle soul and a strong-willed heart. She was looking after him with an unconditional sort of care she would one day hope to place on her own fantasy children, one with no expectations that Danny had to mould himself into. The way he clung onto her was unlike how he was with his parents, hiding behind her legs when they chastised, “Aiyo, why you cannot even tie your shoelaces yet? Next door Ethan already did it so well!” “You come back from school and cannot even remember your two times tables. So shocking!” Danny would withdraw and Raquel instinctively wanted to shield his ears. He was in nursery school now. Most likely having his morning snack, she mused. From the kitchen wafted the smell of his favourite lunch of rice, minced pork in soya sauce, and sweet potato leaves. She had also prepared multicoloured agar agar jelly for dessert. Today, she was going to pick him up at noon rather than at 4pm as he had a doctor’s check-up later.

Gazing absent-mindedly ahead of her, she saw a woman in the block opposite, seemingly also making use of the morning sun to hang out her laundry. She had seen this woman airing laundry at this time of day before, and she wondered those fleeting thoughts you have about people you walk past in the street. Who was this woman, where did she come from, where was she going, was she happy?

—

The woman spied across the block was Madeleine Wang. She was 35, with many boxes ticked. Well-bred, well-spoken, largely liked, with a husband and a young daughter named Amelia. Life was comfortable in the way that most Singaporeans liked their comforts—an efficient and convenient kind. Blessed with a high forehead, Bambi eyes and a wide smile, as well as intelligence and a charm that she had passed down to her daughter, there was nothing more she felt was allowed to want. Her husband was making just about enough so she could spend more time with their daughter, despite friends chiding her, “Just hire a maid!” With a stubborn sense of self-sufficiency adopted from ten years working in England, she didn’t feel comfortable hiring a live-in helper. In England, helpers were reserved for the mega-rich or royalty, whereas in Singapore, many working and middle-class families hoarded one in their HDB flats.

This was not the first time she had noticed the beautiful maid hanging out laundry in the block opposite her, but today, she really observed her. Her eyes lingered over her long black hair, tanned skin, lithe movements, her seemingly light ease with the world.

Madeleine felt a sudden jolt of yearning. It surprised her. She had not expected that.

This faint lurch in her stomach happened again, followed by a hollow pit. She touched her wrists and decided to ignore it. Strange mood she was in. She preoccupied herself by resuming airing her laundry, then looked at her watch briefly. A couple of hours until picking her daughter up from nursery. The morning felt empty without her.

—

As Madeleine walked out of the condo compound, she saw the maid from across the block walking out too. She gave a warm smile of acknowledgement but realised that no one could see the raised corners of her lips under her surgical mask. She hoped instead that her eyes betrayed warmth.

They walked in the same direction, turning left out of the compound and ambling along the busy main road, until they reached a traffic light and both paused at the crossing, waiting for the man to turn green. Raquel walked with purposeful steps, slightly ahead of Madeleine, who faltered behind, fearing an awkwardly shy companionship while counting down the seconds until the red man disappeared.

Raquel strode fast because life had never permissed her to slow down before, so it was as if she did not know how. Born in the resort town of El Nido in Palawan twenty-eight years ago, her family owned a small hotel business. As a young child, she was enlisted as a helping hand, and remembered making beds for guests. When the Covid pandemic hit, she gamely told her family, “I’ll go and find work in Singapore,” knowing that their family business would be greatly affected. With her expertise in helping to run a hotel, she knew she could surely run a household. One year in and she hadn’t expected to love life in Singapore so much.

—

“Hi” was almost on the verge of running out of Madeleine’s tongue but it seemed almost rude to disturb a woman on a mission. Domestic helpers and the local population enjoyed a different status in Singapore, the former often treated like second-class humans with a low double digit IQ. This sat uneasy with Madeleine. She saw helpers out with families on the weekends, lugging bags and babies, being overly enunciated to in slow motion. She heard tai tais barking, “Stoooopid ah you, forgot to pack Jeremy’s toy!” The irony was that a fair number of these helpers were more educated than their employers, in more ways than one. Yet, whenever she tried to strike up conversation with a maid, she was met with eyes lowered. She would be crossing the invisible line by speaking to Raquel, but she couldn’t help it, she was inexplicably drawn to her. She couldn’t shake the yearning that had crept up again, lingering on her skin. She satisfied herself temporarily by gazing at Raquel’s form again.

—

Waiting for the man to turn green, Madeleine thoughts drifted to her own childhood. The image of Raquel’s back, her long sleek black hair, morphed into that of Eva’s, the maid who had been hired to look after Madeleine as a child. They had been inseparable. Madeleine had adored her. The French plait that was now holding together her flyaway hair had been taught to her by Eva, “See put your fingers like this and separate the hair into three parts. Well done, you got it!” Madeleine had often liked to run her hands through Eva’s shiny waist-length ebony hair. Eva appeared in all Madeleine’s earliest childhood memories, Eva bouncing her on the freshly made beds, Eva teaching her how to tie her shoelaces, Eva embracing her when her own strict mother did not. She had loved Eva with a simplicity that was reserved for those who love you unconditionally. And Eva had been proof that water was not necessarily thinner than blood, that someone who was not related to you could love you more than your own mother.

Then one day she was gone.

Madeleine remembers that day well, she had just come home from school, excited to share details of her day with Eva. But there was no Eva there. Six-year-old Madeleine searched tentatively in the uncharacteristically quiet kitchen. She looked in the living room, nothing but the red dot of light on the television. She raced up the carpeted stairs more frantically now but there was no sound of Eva’s humming. Where was she? She looked to her mother and father, who muttered something dismissively about Eva going home. To visit her family? Then when will she come back? 

No Madaleine, she’s not coming back.

Her parents then said no more and tried to distract her with a toy, a board game or something, it was all a blur. She asked a few times but was silenced with her mother’s indignant anger, “Madeleine, stop asking about grown-up matters!” So she sat there silent, cuddling with desperation the red soft toy rabbit that Eva had bought her over a year ago. It smelt safe. From then on, Madeleine internalised the hurt she felt, the hurt with no explanation. No goodbye, no closure. Had she been naughty? Is that why Eva had left?

Only many years later did she overhear the truth from an aunty who couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Eva had been dismissed swiftly because Madeleine’s uncle had fallen in love with her. And she in return. She had been twenty-two then, and he twenty-six. It would not have been the first time social status was defied and people married out of love. Madeleine’s Chinese family had liked her well enough, however they had liked her as a maid, not as an equal. “Mama, I love her,” her uncle had pleaded, but Madeleine’s grandma could not accept Eva as the wife of her first-born son. And so Eva lost her love, Madeleine and her livelihood in one day. She was sent back to the Philippines without a second thought for love or for the innocent child who ran from room to room searching for Eva’s smile, crying herself to sleep every night for three months.

—

The red man finally turned green after an age. Traffic came to a pause. Madeleine snapped out of her reverie. Both her and Raquel crossed the road to the nursery. Unbeknownst to them, Danny and Amelia were playing together at a toy kitchen inside. When they saw their caregivers waiting for them by the door, they rushed out excitedly. Both children leapt into welcoming arms and were embraced as if parted for three months. Around them, stood detached mothers staring at their smartphones, oblivious to their children’s pleas for connection and attention. Whilst hugging Amelia, out of the corner of her eye, Madeleine saw Danny embrace Raquel in the same trustful way she herself had embraced Eva all those years ago when Eva showed up unfailingly at nursery each day.

She touched her wrists and now understood the yearning she had felt when she saw Raquel. It was for the memory and experience of the simple love she had felt years ago, the love that had been snatched from her with no closure.

Invisible threads bound her to Amelia; they bound Danny to Raquel. The frayed threads that bound her to Eva would always be there, waiting to be resown into the fabric of her heart.

—

As the four of them walked home, Amelia nattering away happily with Danny, they all fell into a comfortable step side-by-side. At the traffic lights while waiting for the red man to turn green, Raquel turned to face Madeleine with a warm smile in her eyes.

Srinjay Chakravarti is a writer, editor and translator based in Salt Lake City, Calcutta, India. A former journalist with The Financial Times Group, his creative writing has appeared in over 150 publications in 30-odd countries. His first book of poems Occam’s Razor received the Salt Literary Award in 1995. He has won one of the top prizes ($7,500) in the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Poetry Competition 2007–08. www.srinjaychakravarti.com.

The Butterfly Net

The little boy was skipping about in the green paddy fields under the mild winter sun, now catching a dragonfly and then setting it free, now chasing a grasshopper and then teasing it, annoying it no end.

Suddenly he stopped in alarm. A tall bearded man, dressed in a white flannel shirt and khaki corduroy trousers, with a sola topi on his head, was peering at him from behind a bamboo grove. But then the man smiled, a nice kindly gentle smile, and the boy felt more at ease.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’

‘My name is Prof. Chayan Rakshit. I am a professor of entomology at a university in Calcutta. Can you do something for me?’

‘Anto—antomo—what? What’s that?’

The man smiled again. ‘Entomology. It’s the study of insects. You know—grasshoppers and dragonflies, mantids and moths, butterflies, bees, and ants…’

‘Ants? You study ants? What for?’ The little village boy was astounded.

Prof. Rakshit sighed. ‘Oh, never mind. Can you do a little task for me?’

‘What sort of job?’ The boy’s guard was up.

‘Can you catch me a few butterflies? I’ll pay you good money.’

‘Butterflies? What for?’

‘To study them, of course.’

‘Why do you want to study them?’

Prof. Rakshit was exasperated. ‘Look, boy—now, what’s your name again?’

‘Shobuj Tanti.’

‘Ah, “Shobuj”, which means “green” in Bangla. How appropriate! Well, Shobuj, take me to your parents. I’ll explain it to them.’

Shobuj’s father ran a small grocery shop in the nearby village, a few miles from the town of Anjanagunj. The boy announced the professor as he entered the shop. ‘Here’s an antologist to meet you, baba. He teaches everything about ants in a big school.’

‘Huh?’ The boy’s father stared at them, startled.

Over a cup of tea, Prof. Rakshit explained what he wanted. ‘I’ll pay you an advance of a hundred rupees. And twenty rupees for every butterfly Shobuj can catch.’

Shobuj’s father, Mr Niramoy Tanti, was astounded. ‘If my son catches fifty of those flying insects, you’ll pay him a thousand rupees?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’

‘I’m too old for it, for one thing. I’m over fifty. I can’t go gallivanting over all that mud and slush at this age. This boy can do it much better than me.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Shobuj’s father, dubiously.

Prof. Rakshit produced a crisp hundred-rupee note, which Mr Tanti pocketed with alacrity. The professor went to his vehicle, a Tata Sumo, and took out a big butterfly net.

Shobuj woke up at dawn the next day and skipped off to the fields, armed with the ‘antologist’s’ butterfly net and a packet of muri and gur his mother had given him.

He roamed all day, netting all sorts of butterflies—emperors and monarchs, cardinals and satyrs, metalmarks and swallowtails.

At the end of the day, when he returned with his catch, his parents were dazzled—‘You’ve caught at least thirty!’ said his delighted father. Mrs Deboki Tanti said, ‘How lovely! That should bring us at least six hundred rupees!’

It was a happy and contented Shobuj who went to sleep that night. But just before daybreak, he crashed out of his little bed, entangled in the mosquito net. His body was drenched in a cold sweat, and he was trembling with terror as he struggled in the fine cotton mesh in which he was trapped.

His parents had come running over on hearing the crash. They rescued him and pulled him out. ‘What happened?’

‘I—I—dreamt that I had become a butterfly, and that I was caught in the professor’s net! I had nowhere to escape!’

Shobuj started weeping. ‘Oh, it was horrible. Just horrible! I felt someone was suffocating me. I felt as though I would die!’

‘Don’t worry, son,’ said his father soothingly, ‘you had a bad dream. Just a nightmare.’

‘No,’ said Shobuj, ‘I won’t keep the butterflies. I shall set them free!’

‘What! Set them free! What for?! What about the cash?’

Mr Tanti went on threatening and cajoling his son, but Shobuj was obdurate. When Prof. Rakshit arrived at seven o’clock, Mr Tanti was still haranguing his son.

Shobuj came running out. He told the professor all about his dream, then pulled out the butterfly net. Before anyone could protest, he opened the net and set his entire harvest free.

‘Hey, what’re you doing? Wait a minute!’ said Prof. Rakshit. But he was too late. The lepidoptera blossomed out in a brilliant burst of fluttering, multicoloured wings and dispersed immediately, revelling in their new-found freedom.

Mr Niramoy Tanti fell upon his son, pummelling Shobuj with blows and slaps. Prof. Rakshit intervened and stayed his hand.

The entomologist then said, more to himself, ‘Chuang Tzu dreamt at dawn that a butterfly had lost its way…’

‘What’s that?’ Shobuj’s father was still panting with rage.

‘Oh, it came to my mind that there was an old Chinese philosopher, who once dreamt he had become a butterfly. When he woke up, he wasn’t sure whether he was a man who had been dreaming he had been a butterfly in his sleep, or a butterfly dreaming it was Chuang Tzu in its own sleep.’

Shobuj’s parents exchanged astounded glances. Shobuj was now looking distinctly happier.

Prof. Rakshit patted the boy on his head, then extracted a couple of five-hundred rupee notes from his wallet.

‘Keep the money,’ he said to Shobuj and his dumbstruck parents.

The entomologist picked up his butterfly net and strode out of the courtyard. Shobuj and his parents stood there, gaping after him.

Corey Miller was a finalist for the F(r)iction Flash Fiction Contest (’20) and shortlisted for The Forge Flash Competition (’20). His writing has appeared in Booth, Pithead Chapel, Third Point Press, Hobart, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. He reads for TriQuarterly, Longleaf Review, and Barren Magazine. When Corey isn’t brewing beer for a living in Cleveland, he likes to take his dogs for adventures. Follow him on Twitter @IronBrewer or at www.CoreyMillerWrites.com

All That Remained

Li sprinted through the grimy city street on the hunt for the beast. The smell of fried crucian carp was suspended in the air like a welcoming veil to the Chinese New Year. Street vendors huddled over their fires, their breath fogging their faces as they flipped and confirmed meats for tenderness. Every year the festivities ended the same way — with the Grand Parade. The city came together and was packed elbow to elbow. Li ran past them.

The boy was small, even for his age. His hair was shoulder length, stringy, and jet black. He wished he could afford what the vendors were selling, being that the chicken had more fat on its bones than he did. Even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to stomach food now. Li pushed his long hair back and tucked it behind his ears to utilize his peripheral — but he knew he would hear it first.

As Li sprinted down a back alley he reflected on his Grandfather’s wisdom, “Li, the dragon is the symbol for power and strength. More importantly for me now, it is also the symbol of luck.” Fits of coughing exploded from the old man’s throat as he grabbed for his handkerchief. The noises were hard and crackling, but Li stayed at his hospital bedside. The veins glowed through his Grandfather’s pale skin, speckled with blue and purple blotches that were widening.

“Grandfather, you need your rest. You need your strength.”

“Listen closely, Li. It’s your turn to be the protector of the house and watch the family. You can no longer be scared.”

The parade commenced and last in line was the Dragon’s Dance. Every year the puppeteers moved fluently as they dipped and dived, holding tall poles that supported the paper scales. They soared snake-like between the gangs of percussionists. In previous years, Li would hide behind his Grandfather as the monster approached. To Li, the dragon was alive and warm. “You don’t need to hide behind me, young one. It knows me, and it knows to leave my bloodline alone. You are safe.” The memory burned in his mind, but Li remained hidden all those years. Back then his grandfather stood with such force. His presence was luminous and shielding.

The memory faded. Li lengthened his stride.

Patrons of the festival lined the road. They showcased beautiful silk gowns embellished by gold lining that swirled and circled to create intricate designs that shone bright in the sunset. They danced and cheered with pride. Everything was different today. There was less garbage blocking the fire hydrants, and the blue trash bags that did exist blended in with the banners hanging from the residents’ awnings, which were normally draped with faded clothes drying for the next work day.

Li felt the shifting energy as he turned the corner. The sun was omnipotent on the horizon, and the rays raced down the blocks, striking him sharply in the face. Even though he was expecting it, Li still flinched when the drums pounded. They were distant, but sounded like they were coming from within his mind. The high frequencies cut through the children’s laughter, and the bass rumbled the pavement. Its vibration traveled up through his body into his skull. The hard mallets pounded in unison and became the city’s heartbeat. The buildings in front of the boy were tall and intimidating. This was the street that led the way.

The population was dense; the crowd was pulled towards the parade like a positive charge, creating a solid wall along the sidewalk. The beating grew louder and much more fierce. Li rushed like an arrow toward the barricade and sharply penetrated. He was encompassed by scaled performers wearing ruby red and deep yellow to mimic the beast they carried. The heat felt like the center of a volcano and stole his breath. The dancers moved with vigor, swaying and throwing their poles side to side as the dragon formed helixes around Li. The dragon was flying and the performers were merely chasing, trying to keep up. Smoke from its nostrils bellowed out, and Li’s vision became hazy. The crowd vanished and the performers disappeared. All that remained was Li and the dragon. It looked at Li with its wide emerald eyes and smiled. Its lips were full and plump, and its teeth were sharp and many. The scales were gems that reflected ancient history. The beast was a flame and the embers bounced with the loud heavy beats. It knew Li and it welcomed him.

The memory of his Grandfather resonated. “Grandfather, I’m not just scared of the dragon. I’m scared of losing you. I’m scared of disgracing my family. I’m scared of getting older.”

Li didn’t expect it, but his Grandfather laughed. “Li, you probably aren’t as scared as I am.” That was the moment Li knew he must leave his Grandfather’s bedside, to run for the fire.

The drums went silent. The dragon was before him. Li’s heart froze.

The smoke cleared. The dragon sprung high in the air, opening its mouth, ready to swallow him whole.

Strength conquering fear, Li stood his ground.

Marcus spent 18 months in Shanghai’s former French Concession. He is the author of two novels, German Justice, which was published by Blackspring Press in 2020 and Sarabande, published in 2008. This short story is part of a collection of stories titled “Loneliness”.  Marcus works in development-finance and writes and paints in his spare time. The proceeds of his writings and art sales go to support the children charity Children of the Mekong (www.childrenofthemekong.org).

Jia Chen

Jia closed the window mainly to shut out the sound of the rain and took her photo album out of the drawer again. Ten years ago she had collected all the photos of the moments she had shared with her husband Bingwen. At least ten more years it should have been, alas, the last ten years she had spent alone in their apartment in the Xincun in Xuhui, Shanghai. She remembered well the day she had been waiting for him for hours to come back, for the screeching sound of his bicycle when he braked in front of the door, for the click in the lock and the footsteps on the staircase. By ten pm he had not returned from playing Mahjong with his mates and Jia sensed that something was not right. Just after midnight the call from the hospital came. At one am she was standing at his bedside but it was too late. Bingwen smiled when he saw her. At least this is what she thought.

“I am sorry, he is dead,” said the doctor. “It looks like he had a heart attack and fell off his bike.”

Bingwen continued smiling and his wife smiled back at him, holding his hand which seemed cold.

Jia remembered she could not cry. The funeral took place, her son Donghai arrived from New York and still she could not cry. She tried, but failed.

“When you cry, you finally accept fate,” she explained to her son. “I just cannot accept it yet.” Her son tried to comfort her but she did not need comforting, preferring to smoke and listen to Chopin, which her son played for her. She had kept the Bechstein in her apartment even though she could not play. Bingwen had been a superb pianist and she used to love to listen to him. Music was love. And now the piano was cold and slightly out of tune.

Donghai was 35 at that time and already working as a surgeon at Mount Sinai hospital in New York. He had married an American born Chinese colleague and had no intention of ever returning to China for good, which saddened his mother. Jia hated New York and found Nantucket, where Donghai spent the summers, just too American. She felt a bit out of place, even though the people were friendly. As were most Americans. Jia did not understand her daughter in law, which of course was another reason. How come that after only one generation, we are so different, she had asked herself at the wedding. Her daughter in law had made all the efforts to welcome her, but only the American way, not the Chinese way, and so Jia felt like an outsider in her own family. When she and Bingwen flew back after the wedding, it felt like flying back after a funeral. First class, paid by her daughter in law, and Jia somehow felt that it was an insult to herself, her husband and their lives that she was shipped back first class, almost as if it was expected of them never to return.

Was it? To her friends she told a different story, how proud she was of her daughter in law, how luxurious the first class flat bed and the Veuve Clicquot champagne had been.

Jia looked at the photos, the wedding photos of her son, her husband in a tuxedo, which made him look so weirdly out of place. She took a photo out from the previous page which showed her husband in 1975, in a Mao dress, a revolutionary, full of idealism. Both Bingwen and she had been dedicated to build a better China and both had become engineers. And China had become such a better place, she reflected, comparing the two photos. Did her daughter in law not realise? Did Donghai not appreciate all the efforts they put into his education from kindergarten to university? And the money they spent on Columbia Medical School straight after Fudan.

Another photo of her alone on Staten Island, and one with her grandchild on the beach of Nantucket. The toddler could not even speak Chinese.

Jia closed the album and took out a cigarette but put it back again as she realised the rain had stopped. Like every evening she walked over to Xujiahui Park to join the group of friends practicing square dance to both Korean pop and then to revolutionary music. She loved the atmosphere, being with her friends, talking about the good times, comparing notes on their smartphones.

The previous week she had met with some of her former work mates. All grandmothers like herself, alas more fortunate than her as their grandchildren were now part of their daily routines. Jia would have loved to live with her son, or at least nearby, picking up her granddaughter from school, accompanying her to piano lessons and ballet classes, teaching her proper Chinese and calligraphy. Alas.

One of her former workmates had discovered on Taobao, the Chinese ebay, a manufacturer of revolutionary clothing. Just like in the early 1970s. The group decided to order uniforms for each of them and when the dresses arrived three days later, they all dressed up and went to Xujiahui Park. Properly dressed, she thought and felt proud for the first time in ages. She did not mind the stares of some of the youngster. What little did they know.

Later that evening she decided to sit outside for a while on the bench in front of her house. Here nobody stared as everybody knew her and she knew that most people had either already been living here in the Xincun in the 1970s or moved in during the Revolution. She finally lit a cigarette and inhaled, slowly blowing out the blueish smoke. She watched it rise into the evening sky, a sky that never ever went totally black anymore, black, as she had experienced it in her youth. Her phone rang but she declined the wechat call request, as she realised it was her son who tried to reach her. A video chat in revolutionary dress would be too much, she thought, and had to smile. He would not understand, having been born only in 1975. She would call him later, or over the weekend. She was not lonely, she thought as she inhaled again and again blew out the smoke towards the trees.

Habib Mohana was born in 1969 in Daraban Kalan, a town in the district of Dera Imsail Khan, Pakistan. He is an assistant professor of English at Government Degree College No 3, D. I. Khan. He writes fiction in English, Urdu, and Saraiki (his mother tongue). He has four books under his belt, one in Urdu and three in Saraiki. His Saraiki novel forms part of the syllabus for the MA in Saraiki at Zikria University Multan. His short stories in English have appeared in literary journals in India and Canada. In 2010 and 2014, his Saraiki books won the Khawaja Ghulam Farid Award from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. His book of short stories in Urdu, titled Adhori Neend, won the Abaseen award from the Government of KPK. He is currently seeking a publisher for his novel The Village Café.

‘The Dark Dawn’

The bountiful monsoon season was drawing to a close, and the village farmers were busy preparing their land for the winter crops. Whistling to himself, tall clove-coloured Soobha was cutting the wild grass from his land when all of a sudden a cobra bit him on the forearm. He lifted the sickle and brought it down on the snake but it slithered away into the high waving grass. Soobha shouted to a shepherd who was passing by on his donkey. The shepherd took a close look at the two deep puncture wounds and tightly tied a jute string around Soobha’s forearm to limit the flow of blood and to slow the traffic of the poison to the other parts of the body.

The shepherd helped Soobha onto his donkey. They had just started out towards their village when a farmer asked the shepherd not to take Soobha there.

‘In the village, a pregnant woman’s voice can have a harmful effect on a person who has been bitten by a snake,’ he said. ‘I’ll sit with Soobha under this acacia. You go and tell his family what has happened.’

So the shepherd straddled the donkey and sped towards the village, about twenty minutes away.

Soobha, his elder brother Shadu, and their children lived in a sprawling adobe house in the middle of the village of Mastan. No sooner had the bad news reached Soobha’s house than his wife, sister-in-law, daughter, and nieces burst into tears. The men and women of the village crowded into their house to commiserate and give advice.

Shadu asked the mullah to gather his students in the mosque to recite the Koran and pray to God for Soobha’s recovery. The village chief sent his son to Daraban Kalan on horseback to bring the hakim.

‘Offering an animal sacrifice wards off evil,’ Soobha’s wife said to her son, Dani. Being staunch believers, Dani and some neighbours slaughtered the ox that was chomping on sorghum stalks in the corner of the house.

Carrying charpoys, pillows, lanterns, and pitchers of water, a procession of over twenty men strode towards the place where the patient rested. They placed the charpoys on a treeless plane spot and laid the patient down on one of them. It was late afternoon and the village cattle were returning from the pasturelands, leaving plumes of dust in their wake.

Redness and swelling had started to appear around the snake bite on Soobha’s forearm. He was sweating profusely and had vomited several times.

The shepherd returned with a bowl of butter oil. To suck out the poison he took a draught of the oil, put his mouth on the snakebite on Soobha’s forearm, and sucked and spat. He repeated this more than ten times, and then swilled his mouth out with water.

‘Give him milk to drink. It will soak up the poison. Don’t let him have any bread,’ the shepherd advised.

The sun was setting when the village cobbler brought a brood of seven juvenile chickens in a cage made of tamarisk sticks. To suck the poison out of Soobha’s arm, he put the backside of one of the chickens over the snakebite, held it there for some time, and then let it go free. One after another he used all the chickens this way. Clucking, they perched on the legs of the charpoys, and some climbed up a nearby dwarf bush.

After sunset, the village chief’s son retuned with the white-bearded hakim. The hakim opened a small silver box containing a zehar mohra—a snake’s head that was believed to suck the poison out of the body.  He took the item from the red ocher, dipped it into a bowl of milk, and placed it on the snakebite. After a minute he took it off and plopped it in the bowl of milk to release its load of poison. He repeated this process more than ten times.

‘If he can survive three nights then he is out of danger,’ the hakim said, then took Shadu to one side and whispered in his ear. ‘Send for the drummer and tell him to beat his drum over the patient’s head to stop him from sleeping, because sleep is a killer for anyone bitten by a snake. Also – I almost forgot – we’ll also need the barber to make a cut.’

Shadu’s elder son Ramza was sent to bring the drummer and barber. Ramza went to find them but they weren’t at home.

The men sat on the charpoys around the patient, who was rolling around in pain, his face haggard and pale. Darkness fell and cloud of mosquitoes danced over the men’s heads. Shadu’s younger son brought dinner for the attendants and sweetened milk for the patient. The attendants spread a palm leaf mat on the ground and sat down to eat. Two chickens started clucking around the men, and Shadu slung them bread crumbs.

‘Give me some bread.’ Soobha requested.

‘No. Bread is not good for you. It causes drowsiness. If you are hungry, drink milk,’ the hakim replied.

‘Give me just one morsel.’

‘No.’

‘Give me just a bit of meat.’

‘We can’t. Sorry. It will kill you. Solid food brings drowsiness and drowsiness brings sleep and sleep means death for you.’

All they could give him was sweetened milk.

After night prayers the barber’s brakeless bicycle rolled up.

‘Sorry I’m late. I was in the village of Loni for circumcisions,’ he said, hands clasped.

‘We have an emergency you stupid fool,’ Shadu said, teeth bared.

The barber unstrapped the bag of his tools from the pannier of his bicycle. Like a veteran surgeon, he examined the snakebite in the light of the lanterns.

‘What a terrible thing,’ he said, and started honing his cutthroat razor on the small whetstone.

Four people pinioned the patient, and the barber cut the bite wound on the hakim’s instructions. Soobha bawled with pain. The hakim untied the jute string from around the patient’s forearm and squeezed the bitten arm hard. Black-brown blood started trickling down.

‘Let him sleep for a while, but not for long,’ the hakim said to Shadu.

He dragged a charpoy some yards away from the patient and lay down on it. To keep the patient awake, Dani, Shadu, and their neighbours took turns talking to him. If Soobha drifted off to sleep, Shadu and Dani would wake him up by pinching his arms or shoulders.

‘Please let me sleep,’ Soobha said in a weak, tearful voice. ‘My head is splitting with pain.’

‘Brother, please try to stay awake,’ Shadu said. ‘Too much sleep brings death to a person like you,’

To keep him awake, Shadu started telling a story and after a while asked, ‘Brother, are you awake? Are you listening?’

When he received no answer from his brother, he pinched him. Soobha woke up.

After midnight, pinching had no effect on Soobha, and he drifted off to sleep. Shadu brought acacia thorns and pricked his brother, but it was no use. So Shadu and Dani went into a huddle. Shadu brought out a little packet of paprika from his pocket, and with a small smooth stick applied it to the patient’s eyes, which started burning.

‘What is this?’ Soobha cried. ‘Paprika in my eyes? Don’t treat me like an animal!’

‘It’s not paprika,’ Shadu fibbed. ‘It’s bitter antimony. It cleans eyes and wards off sleep.’

They applied the paprika to his second eye.

Soobha cried out again. ‘If you’re bent on killing me, then do it in a gentle way. Don’t kill me like I’m an animal.’

The night wore on. A prowling jackal closed in on the bush where the chickens were roosting. It pounced. The victim uttered a startled squawk, and the jackal scrambled away with its prize. The sudden noise pulled the hakim out of sleep. He gibbered and then drifted off again.

At long last, the call to morning prayer echoed from the village mosque. Soobha had fallen asleep. Shadu felt his brother’s wrist and then lifted his hands towards the sky.

‘Thank you, God. If the night has passed without an incident, please let all nights pass the same. Life is in your hands, O God. Give my brother another chance!’

In the morning, two villagers brought tea for the attendants. Shadu dipped one end of his turban sheet in water and swabbed his brother’s face with it, then gave him a cup of tea. The attendants were taking morning tea when a pir with a white flowing beard arrived on a roan horse. All the villagers stood up and shook his hand. He had come from the village of Punjan Shah.

‘I was in the mosque for night prayers when this sad news reached me,’ the pir said, settling on the charpoy and holding the patient’s hand in his soft white palm.

He recited holy verses from the Koran and blew over the dark bloody spot. He patted Soobha’s back.

‘You’ll be alright, my son. The Master of the Blue Roof will help you. It’s nothing!’

After a while he took his leave. Shadu scurried after him and thrust a one-rupee note into his delicate fingers. The pir mounted his horse and rode off, leaving a ribbon of fine dust behind him.

When he finished his tea, the hakim took a long look at the bite on Soobha’s arm. Then, he peeled the man’s eyelids back and examined his eyeballs.

‘Have courage, Soobha!’ he said. ‘You have survived. You have crossed the hardest part of the journey.’

When the sun became hot, they moved the patient’s charpoy into a shady toothbrush tree. Then, the men from the surrounding villages poured in to commiserate with Shadu and Dani.

In the late afternoon, the attendants returned the patient to his former spot.

‘Take me home and let me die in peace there,’ Soobha moaned. ‘I can’t see clearly. I’m sure I won’t survive. Last night I saw my late father in dream, standing on a hilltop. He called to me. I know he was calling me to the other world.’

‘We can’t take you home. In the village, a pregnant woman’s voice can have an adverse effect. We’re keeping you here, for your own good.’

‘Then if you can’t take me home, bring my sister, my wife, my daughter Zaibu, and my nieces. I want to see them before I die.’

‘Ok, we will bring them,’ Shadu said.

‘Uncle, we should not do it,’ Dani said. ‘The women would weep and cause chaos. You can’t let them come here.’

His uncle didn’t listen.

That afternoon, the women came with a group of other ladies. They wrapped their arms around Soobha and dissolved into tears.

Soobha said, ‘I know I won’t survive. The poison has reached my heart. I can feel it. I’m dying. Please forgive me if I have said or done anything wrong to any single one of you.’ He clasped his shaking hands.

‘Don’t say that,’ his sister wiped her tears with her scarf. ‘You are going to be alright,’

‘Allah will give you long and healthy life,’ his wife said, passing her fingers through his dusty hair.

Soobha turned to Shadu.

‘Please, brother – accept my daughter Zaibu’s hand in marriage for your son Ramza. Ramza, I have one daughter and I want you to keep her happy. And Khero, my dear sister, I beg of you – please give your daughter to Dani in marriage. They will make a wonderful couple.’ Tears were rolling down Soobha’s pale leathery cheeks. He then turned to Shadu again. His sleepless eyes were red and puffy. ‘And after my death, my brother, take care of my wife and kids, they will be…’

‘What are you talking about, brother?’ Shadu cut in. ‘You will live to see your children marry and live happily.’

‘Please take me home. Don’t let me breathe my last in the wilderness.’

The women sat down on the bare ground around the patient’s charpoy and wept collectively.

‘Didn’t I tell you not to bring the women here? Look at them,’ Dani said to Shadu, who shooed them away.

The wailing women made their way listlessly to Mastan, looking over their shoulders from time to time.

The second night fell. To keep the mosquitos at bay, the attendants had set piles of cowpats smouldering. A cloud of smoke hung in the air. They gave Soobha milk and then allowed him to sleep for a while.

Towards night prayers, the one-eyed drummer showed up, his double-headed drum strapped to his broad back.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Shadu yelled at him.

‘I was in Madi for a wedding. I’m terribly sorry. As soon as I got your message I headed to Mastan.’ The drummer settled down on the string bed near the patient’s head and started beating the drum to keep Soobha from sleeping. The attendants dragged their charpoys some yards away from the patient and lay down on them.

‘Please stop beating the drum. I feel as if you’re hitting my head with your drumsticks,’ Soobha said but the drummer did not listen to him.

The stars shone brilliantly in the sky. The drummer carried on beating his drum, and the patient’s brain throbbed in his skull.

‘Don’t kill me cruelly. Take me home and let me die in peace.’ Soobha moaned, but his voice was lost in the sound of the drum.

All the attendants were snoring. The drummer’s hands were moving wearily, and the patient was breathing with great difficulty. Then the drummer too succumbed to sleep. Dani woke up, and he shouted at him to keep drumming.

‘Let me sleep!’ the man begged. ‘I’m exhausted. I beat my drum continuously for three nights at a wedding in Loni.’

Dani woke Shadu and told him that the drummer had fallen asleep. Shadu stumbled to the charpoy and slapped the man across the face. The drummer sat up and started playing again.

‘For God’s sake, stop beating this monstrous thing,’ Soobha pled. ‘My head is bursting with pain and sleeplessness.’

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Shadu ordered. ‘Carry on.’

The night had deepened. The drummer’s sticks were banging the drum. From Mastan came the barking of dogs, while nearby the jackals were howling hysterically. A lone chicken jumped onto the string bed beside the drummer. He hit it with his drumstick and it flapped away, squealing in panic.

After about an hour, Shadu let Soobha have some sleep. Then, he asked the drummer to play again.

‘I’m awake,’ Soobha muttered. ‘Please don’t beat the drum. Give it a break.’

‘I can’t,’ the drummer said.

Soobha snatched one of his drumsticks and tossed it away. As soon as the drumbeat faded, Shadu woke up. ‘Why have you stopped?’

‘Soobha threw my drumstick away,’ the drummer explained. ‘I’m going to retrieve it.’

As soon as he returned, he started pounding the drum again.

‘Please stop,’ Soobha begged. ‘It’ll kill me.’

‘I can’t help you,’ the drummer replied.

Soobha lifted his hand. ‘Please! If you stop, I’ll give you these two silver rings.’

‘Never. Your life is worth more than that.’

‘I’ll give you a cow if you stop.’

‘No. I can’t do it. I can’t orphan your children. I won’t stop even if you fill this drum with cold coins.’

‘I’ll not die of snake poison, but I’ll surely die of the noise of your goddamn drum,’ Soobha put his finger into his ears.

Late into the night, the drummer was overcome by sleep. The drumsticks fell from his hands and a deep silence descended over the wilderness. Only the crickets’ chir-chur filled the star-bedecked night. Soobha too dropped off to sleep.

The jungle birds were heralding the dawn. A soft breeze soughed eerily through the tamarisks. A red-wattled lapwing lighted near the attendants’ charpoys, then took off again with its plaintive cry of did-he-do-it and pity-to-do-it. The saffron sun peeped over the horizon, and suddenly everything was casting long shadows: trees, string beds, pitchers, and tumblers. From Mastan came a faint mix of sounds: the bleating of goats, the crowing of cockerels, and the barking of dogs. Plumes of blue smoke rose from the houses as the women prepared breakfast.

All the men lay deep asleep with their limp, sprawling limbs. Soobha’s body had turned stiff in the meanwhile. His face was a figure of anguish with a slightly open mouth, a fly drinking from its corner.

Habib Mohana was born in 1969 in Daraban Kalan, a town in the district of Dera Imsail Khan, Pakistan. He is an assistant professor of English at Government Degree College No 3, D. I. Khan. He writes fiction in English, Urdu, and Saraiki (his mother tongue). He has four books under his belt, one in Urdu and three in Saraiki. His Saraiki novel forms part of the syllabus for the MA in Saraiki at Zikria University Multan. His short stories in English have appeared in literary journals in India and Canada. In 2010 and 2014, his Saraiki books won the Khawaja Ghulam Farid Award from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. His book of short stories in Urdu, titled Adhori Neend, won the Abaseen award from the Government of KPK. He is currently seeking a publisher for his novel The Village Café.

The Brutal Spring

Back then, we lived in an adobe house in a village on the Damaan plains, and all our mud rooms were bird-friendly. In fact, they were more bird-friendly than human-friendly. Even after having been bolted or locked, the doors of the rooms were wide enough for winged creatures—swifts, swallows, house sparrows—and they could easily squeeze in and out. Then there were the holes that were punched near the ceilings for sun and air and smoke. Our straw-wood ceilings had enough gaps and spaces for the birds to build nests. The beaten earth floors of the rooms were always messy with nesting materials. Every morning my mother would sweep them away, grumbling, “Why don’t they build their nests in the village orchards?”

At our house, one small mud room was under my occupancy, where I would study or sit daydreaming. The ceiling of my room was hummocky with bulging nests of house sparrows, but they all lay deserted.

Then, one afternoon a lone female house sparrow flitted in. She looked at all the abandoned nests, chirped, frisked on the plate rack for a good while, and then flew away. I was expecting her to mate and show him her pick. I was jubilant that now my silent mud study would ring with the twittering of nesting sparrows. Towards the evening, she flew in and squatted in one of the best nests, all by herself. The single sparrow spent entire winter in my room. Every morning she would wake me up with her staccato chirping.

One afternoon, the sparrow hopped into the room, dragging her right wing and leaving a bloody trail in her wake. Her wing was badly wounded, certainly the doing of some impish urchins. She would fly for a few feet and then come tumbling down like a paper airplane. But still she gave me a tough time catching her. I cleaned and dressed her wound. I put her in a twig cage and filled the two little bowls with wheat grains and water. I did not release her until I was sure she would not be an easy meal for cats on the prowl.

Spring arrived. There was love in the air. For the birds it was time of spring dancing, but for me, the hectic exam season had just kicked off. The village orchards were a blaze of colours. Now and then, the fragrance of lemon blooms would waft in from the orchard belt, and I would think of freedom and friends. Away from the colours and fragrances, I sat besieged by bulky books.

Then one day my lady sparrow glided in, a dashing male in tow. She showed him around her property like an expert real estate agent. Her choosy mate was a little jumpy. He flew back, and the resident sparrow tailgated him, twittering incessantly as if she was saying, “Wait – I have something else to show to you.” A little before evening, she arrived back with her new boyfriend, who seemed to like her choice. They started living together, not bothering to get my blessing.

The birds would sit on the beam or on the wing of the ceiling fan, and mated right in front of me, excited calls streaming from their short beaks. But the pleasures of coupling also brought a basketful of responsibilities for my birds. To give their future chicks a comfortable bed, they flung themselves into collecting straw and husk for the nest, while I remained immersed in my books.

One morning, I woke up to the peep of newly-hatched chicks. The pair was busy ferrying tidbits to their new arrivals. Spring also brought the creaky ceiling fan back into action. Whirring over my head, the rickety fan sliced the air with its rusty blades. Their beaks wriggling with worms and flying low, the pair fed their demanding chicks with the feasts they found. They were fully aware of the squeaky fan, and had learnt to dodge its whirling wings. In one hour they made several manic trips, flying in and out until the gorged chicks fell silent with satisfaction.

One crisp morning, the male sparrow was returning with his pickings when he was suddenly sucked into the vortex churned up by the ceiling fan. He was hit like a cricket ball is hit for six. He cannoned into the whitewashed wall, imprinting it with a bloody abstract painting. Then he fell to the ground with a dull thud. A bouquet of green worms wriggled free from his unclamped beak. I made a dash for him, and took him in my palms. I had hardly located his warm wound when his beak opened and closed for the last time. I made a lunge towards the power point and pawed the fan off. The cursed thing groaned, then came to a standstill, its one blade flaunting shameless blood stains.

I was responsible for the death of the father sparrow. I was disgusted with myself.

With her partner gone, the mother sparrow girded her loins and raised her two chicks single-handedly.

I took some security measures. Firstly, I was extremely careful with the fan. Secondly, I bricked up the smoke holes so that the lone parent would not drift into the deadly droning blades. I wanted her to enter from the door and fly low get to her nest.

One day when I came back from delivering a paper, I stumbled upon a wriggling ball of tiny yellow ants. I took a closer look and found that it was a featherless sparrow chick that had tumbled down to the ground. It squirmed helplessly while the ravenous ants feasted on it. I picked it up, plucked at the predatory ants with my fingers, and blew them off. The chick’s tender, almost transparent body was riddled with multiple tiny wounds. A few ambitious ants had blazed a trail into its flimsy digestive system. Sensing danger, the ants stumbled out, their mouthparts gory from the bloody feast. The doomed chick yawned for the last time.

The mother bird was now left with one chick. After a couple of days, it grew into a fledgling. It would peek out of its straw home, surveying the weird world below. Their nest was positioned exactly over a huge chest that was filled with winter things. The distance between the nest and the chest was less than a yard. Often, the restive chick would flap down to the chest, scamper on it for a while, and then wing its way back to its dwelling.

One day when its mother was out, the chick landed on the chest. I offered it cracked wheat in a saucer. While it was chirping blithely and pecking at the food, a cat appeared from nowhere, pounced, and took off with the tiny bird. I scrambled after it, but it climbed onto the roof and tore away. I was angry at myself. After some time the mother sparrow flew in, her beak bristling with choice worms. I could not face her. She headed for her nest but found it silent and empty. She popped in and out several times, confounded. She called to her baby, but to no avail. She called and called and called. Her panic made me nauseous. I averted my gaze. She perched on the peg that supported my ironed college shirt. She pumped a slushy dropping over the stiff collar and flew back to her abode. She flapped out the room and then came back again. She made many restless trips back and forth, keening. That day I was utterly miserable. The words in my book seemed to bite me like scorpion’s sting.

Evening fell. The mother sparrow came to roost, but couldn’t accept reality. She wailed. All night long I could hear her quiet weeping. She drifted in and out of sleep like a sick child. I couldn’t sleep peacefully either that night.

The next morning, she once again bulleted out to hunt for breakfast, and reported back, her beak full of larvae.

After a few days, the disconsolate sparrow left. Each day I waited for her, but she didn’t return. Eventually, her haunt was occupied by a new and hopeful pair.

Choo Yi Feng is currently an undergraduate majoring in life sciences at the National University of Singapore. He has previously been published in Curios, the annual student journal of Tembusu College at NUS. He also a volunteer who gives tour guides and conducts intertidal surveys on Singapore’s diverse seashores. 

Brightest Day

In the dawn before the sun had fully risen, my bedroom was flushed in a deep blue light that promised to stain everything it touched forever with its saturated tint. My eyes opened, and it was as if my body was instantly filled with an electric vitality, my heart pounding from either the thrill of a forgotten dream or the anticipation of a good day. I eased out of bed and poured myself a cup of water. There was none of the usual grogginess and heavy lids, and even the usual stuffy nose was gone too. It was as if I had closed my eyes last night, counted to three, and simply opened my eyes to welcome the new day.

Inside the stale auditorium I was seated somewhere in the middle rows, finishing the remains of my bread. The lecturer entered with a tote bag slung on his shoulder. From it he drew out a thick stack of papers. His assistant divided them into even piles and laid them out on the table, and he instructed us through the mike to come down and collect our scripts. I did decently, but didn’t score as highly as expected. There was a particularly thorny question right at the beginning that tested Euler’s formula, which I didn’t understand very well. It had thrown off my momentum for the rest of the paper. At the end of the period, as I was sliding the swivel table back into place, I felt a sharp graze on my arm and swore in a low whisper. The auditorium was quite old, and the table had a crack in it. A sharp, jutting edge had carved a thin line, which quickly began to bleed.

The next few hours passed in a slow blur. I cleaned the wound. It stung for a while, but the blood cleared fast, leaving only a pale stroke. I was aware of a lot of walking, of one crowded venue growing in volume as it approached, until I was fully immersed in the ripe hustle and din of activity, and then fading with relief and growing quiet as I left. Then I would enter another space and the cycle would repeat itself, over and over. I tried to look for people, but I couldn’t find any. There were plenty of students and a smattering of staff, but if they were queuing at a stall for food, then that was all that mattered. They only existed to me in that very confined space for those short moments. I found it difficult to think of them as people rather than just elements of physical geography.

Someone was studying at the table next to me as I ate lunch in the canteen. I threw one or two glances at him because I felt like I had seen his face somewhere, but when he looked up I averted my eyes. Last week – I think it was a Tuesday – another person had also been studying at a table next to me as I ate. I finished my lunch and joined the short queue of people carrying empty bowls and plates to the return point. Later in the day I had a vague idea of failing to understand the cause of centripetal acceleration along a wave element. I leaned back and became conscious of a cold, mild ache in my legs.

Outside this lecture theatre there were booths set up – a makeshift basketball arcade game crafted inventively from basic materials. Young people in matching t-shirts were stopping passers-by to talk to them, and passers-by were listening to nothing in particular, deflecting away as though repulsed by an invisible current. There was a display of eco-conscious things, of pens and stickers, but also of folders, pouches, cases, cloth bags – things designed ostentatiously to hold other things. I lingered there, as I enjoyed looking at these things. Inevitably, one of the young people started sharing their ideas with me, about a project involving a neighbouring, poorer country, and rebuilding homes for displaced people and animals.

The difference that I noticed, which she later also explained, was that they were using a novel approach – reconstituting the natural habitat by first reconstructing the human environment, which sounded familiar to me but also very new – almost ground-breaking. I offered her my well wishes. As I approached the bus stop I heard someone speaking loudly. He was a middle-aged man dressed in loose clothes, and he walked with a pronounced limp. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but he kept repeating it, sometimes at a random stranger but mostly into thin air.

I was basically alone in the chill upper deck of the nearly-empty bus as it crawled along its route. At one stop, the sound of someone clambering up the stairs could be heard, growing louder with every step. She approached and fell into the seat next to me with such weight that I bounced slightly. She wore a black hoodie, and her eyes were framed by messy, dark purple bangs tinged with orange. Her eyes bore into me as I took in the sight of her. Someone in the lower deck pressed the bell for the bus to stop. The girl said nothing, and I said nothing, and afterwards I turned my attention back to my phone for the remainder of the ride. She stayed where she was. Her heavy, laborious breathing grated on me.

In my room I tried to sift through the tasks of the day, but the golden glow of the late afternoon cast sharp, oblique shadows that distracted me, splayed across the furniture in whimsical postures. I only tended to get any work done after the sky had darkened, but then it would almost be dinner time. I took my Lexapro and gazed out of the window instead. The heat of the afternoon was quietly receding, and there was a mild breeze stirring. I felt like going for a walk. Mommy would not be home for at least another half-hour.

The girl from the bus was at the void deck, seated at the green metal table with her feet propped up. She looked at me, and then turned her attention back to her cigarette, saying nothing. I walked cautiously towards the table but did not sit down. She puffed up her cheeks and blew a smoke ring. It pulsed in my direction and dissipated, leaving the sharp odour of tobacco. A pair of cats were meowling aggressively some distance away, perhaps in the next block.

“Look, I don’t really want to be here either, but it felt like it was necessary to at least make you aware of this. If you’re just going to stand there and show me that ugly pout then give me the word and I’ll go.”

I took a deep breath and slid into the chair opposite her, chewing my lower lip. We sat in silence for a while more, the lighted tip of her cigarette flaring up with every breath she sucked through it. Her hair was really quite mesmerising. It was a rich, deep purple, but when she brushed her hands through it, there were unmistakable patches of bleached orange that almost glimmered. We stayed silent together for a while and watched as the daylight faded further.

“You used to write letters to me. Remember?”

I groaned involuntarily, burying my face in my palm as the goose-bumps rose on my neck.

“Oh don’t act so coy. It happens.” She stubbed out her cigarette against the table and flicked it aside, shifting her feet off the chair so that she could turn towards me.

“I need to go back to that day. Jog the memory. What happened?”

I leaned my chin against my hand and stared at the space around her, trying to recall. Now I really was pouting.

“I stapled a whole bunch of recycled paper together and started scribbling down everything on my mind. About why I was doing this and how I felt and what my intention was, and who I was sorry to and what would happen to the things in my bedroom.”

She made an attempt at a sincere smile that came across as a smirk instead.

“Because it felt like the worst day of my life and it felt like I wasn’t going to make it through, and I thought I should write a letter and that way I could either feel better after that, or if I didn’t it wouldn’t be a total waste.”

“On your way home. You had your report book in your hand because it wouldn’t fit in the bag. Just after the overhead bridge. Was the neighbourhood quiet that day?”

“I – I can’t remember.”

“Did you remember somebody dropping a bunch of coins?”

“Yes. I… think so.”

“And you stopped to help him pick them up.”

“Oh yeah. Okay, I remember that.”

She stayed quiet for a while. I felt like asking her now. She got up and turned towards the small field next to the flat.

“Come with me. We’ll go somewhere. Field trip.”

I stayed in my seat, fingers curling weakly. She turned back around at me.

“Come on. You’ll like it.”

We travelled there by bus. We sat in the upper deck. Again it was basically empty. I sat on the inner seat, the one closer to the window. She sat next to me, closer to the aisle, and when she took her place again it was with a force that caused me to bounce a little in my seat. She was heavily built, and I could feel her weight pressing against me at every sharp turn. The streets were so quiet that we skipped many stops. Eventually we got off on a secluded road that I didn’t recognise.

She opened the gate and I walked through it. The guard at the post didn’t notice us and he looked monumentally stoic. The prison compound was almost empty. We passed through gantries and steel doors that I didn’t even know how to operate. Every handle opened magically under her hand, and every door without a clear mechanism seemed to give way at her touch. We passed through a warren of passages, making turns to the left and right, taking elevators, climbing staircases.

At last we were in a sparse, tight room with silver panels lining the walls and a couple of surgical beds in the middle. It was unnaturally cold, and I was reminded of my lecture theatre. We stood against the sides of the room. I felt the cool concrete of the wall, and heard the silent whirring of the vents. In the stillness, again I felt like asking her, but she spoke first.

“That person whose coins you helped pick up. Let’s call him Jared for simplicity. In a sense, you could say that he was your neighbour, even though he lived in the rental flat two blocks down from your own. I’m not usually in the business of judging, but somebody like you would say that he was an actual waste of a life.”

She took out an iPad from her bag and scrolled through it. I was facing her and couldn’t see what was on the screen.

“He did some pretty fucked up things, by your standards. Stole money from his mom’s medicine fund to fuel his addiction. At an earlier point he had twice tried to get away with not paying prostitutes, and later raped them. But that part isn’t on his criminal record. The thing that did the job was just the packet of heroin found in his jeans, on the day that you nearly jumped.” She looked up at me.

I opened my mouth wanting to say something then closed it again, thinking. Finally I just said, “That was seven years ago. And I’m guessing it was today.”

“Clever kid. It’s unfortunate, because he was running the drugs to buy more medicine for his mother but, well, guess he was already in too deep.”

“Is he…dead?”

“Yeah, they hanged him three days ago. His wife came to collect his body afterwards. There’s no funeral because she doesn’t have any money.”

I tried to recall if I had ever seen a funeral at the bottom of the rental flats. There were weddings, which were usually glimmering, riotous affairs, but no funerals.

“That’s the whole lot of them. His mother was cremated just two months before that, too, from neurodegeneration – genetic, but those years of heroin didn’t help either. The father…he’s somewhere in my archives, long gone. His only living relative is the uncle in prison – for sexual abuse – but he’s due soon, too. His sentence is going to outlast that cancer-ridden body. No funerals for any of them, just straight into the chute. Well, at least that makes things easier for me.”

“If he’s already gone, why are you only telling me now?”

She gave me a certain kind of a look, brows furrowed. “What, did you want to watch the hanging?”

“No!”

“Then?”

“I – I don’t know, I could at least see him, see what he looked like before they hanged him.”

Her eyes bore into my and she smirked again. This time it was the kind of smirk that would ordinarily have got on my nerves, but now made me wince in fear.

“See him? What are you talking about? Nobody sees Jared.”

“What do you mean?”

She stifled a chuckle, a manic look in her eyes as she stared at me, first in silent disbelief, then with an explosive bark of laughter as she threw her head back.

“Trust me, nobody in this country wants to see Jared. Nobody thinks about people like Jared, and nobody talks about people like Jared. Your lot do such a good job of turning death row criminals into a series of numbers and things that it makes me look bad. That’s saying something. That’s a big fucking deal.”

The idea seemed to amuse her so much that she doubled over, clinging to my shoulder for support. She laughed and laughed and laughed. I looked at her in horror, unsure of what to say. The pumping in my chest was so intense it seemed as if my heart was trying to drown the world in blood.

Eventually she laughed herself out. All that remained was a smile. She got up and shook her head, wiping a tear from her eye and sweeping the bangs out of her face.

“So that day, and those coins,” I said. “What was that? Was it like, he had to die because I didn’t die in the end?”

She stifled another giggle. “Not everything’s about you, you know. Look, it’s so simple. You borrow something and you return it when you’re done. You romantics make it into such a big deal – your masochistic jack-offs, your lurid death cults. Do I care whether you come back to me in a carriage or a sack, in April or December? No. The answer’s no.”

I leaned back against the wall and felt my knees buckle. I suddenly felt tired and out of place. I sat on the floor and looked at the bare, white tiles. She was busy with her iPad. She walked over to the silver panels and grabbed the handles, pulling out the long drawers with a tremor of stainless steel. She lifted the blankets, took notes of the faces, and dropped them back before bumping the drawers shut with her hip. Occasionally she made noises of approval or looks of surprise.

“You know sometimes, the cord’s too short. You can tell when there’s a gash on the neck. That’s what you might call a botched execution, and you could actually sue for that. Oh, but – not here, of course.”

A while later she gave her document a quick appraisal and put the iPad back inside her bag.

“Ready to go, kid? My car’s parked nearby so I can give you lift home.”

It turned out that she drove a Lamborghini. We cruised over the road without a single bump, and made clean, sharp turns at junctions. I sat next to her in silence, looking out of the window. My hands were shaking a little, and my fingers were curled on my lap in a loose fist. Inside my head, our conversation in the morgue looped over and over. We stopped at a red light at the junction right outside the promenade. We were the only vehicle on the road.

“Sometimes I think about what might have happened if I really had ended up killing myself seven years ago. At lunch, in the middle of an especially boring lecture. I think of all the pain, the guilt, the confusion of the people that I love so, so much. I think of them having to sort through the things in my bedroom, or just leaving the door closed. I think of all the little moments this week when things were actually okay, I guess, and how I would have missed all that. I think that I don’t deserve this. Maybe I have it too good.”

She didn’t turn to look at me. She just stared straight ahead at the traffic light, nodding lightly. She had been tapping her finger on the steering wheel but stopped by the time I finished speaking. The light turned green and the car accelerated to a smooth sixty.

“Look, all this cause-and-effect stuff is really… I just don’t deal with it. It’s not in my business. I take numbers. I track the inflow and the outflow. Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s Dharmic karma. Maybe it’s just pure cosmic chaos.” The blinker went on and we flushed into the leftmost lane. “I don’t know if you’d call it good luck or bad. But if you’re thinking that way, maybe the universe dealt you a joker.”

“And it’s up to me to decide how to play it?”

“Clever kid. No wonder you’re at university.”

“I grew up without a father too. But for Jared, that… on top of everything else. It’s almost like he never got a chance to be anything other than a shadow of his parents’ failures. And if they couldn’t even raise him right, I wonder why they tried. I wonder who gave them the right to cause all this suffering.”

“It’s a mystery. The world could be burning and they’ll try anyway. Over and over, with their children, and their children’s children. On and on for as long as it’s possible. Many things change, but that doesn’t.” “Waiting for the execution date nearly broke him. Each time the prison officer came to announce the coming month’s numbers, he would think it was him. Days before he would tell his girlfriend his final wishes. They would announce it, and his number wouldn’t be there, and he would have salvaged another month. This happened repeatedly over fourteen months. Even I had to change my projections a few times because his attorney tried to stay the date.”

“At least it’s done now.”

We drove on until we were back at the bottom of my flat.

“Well,  don’t think too much about it. It’ll just fire up your depression again.” She tousled my head. “Don’t talk to lawyers, don’t listen to politicians, and don’t go on Facebook. It’ll pass out of your brain in about a week. I’ll see you whenever, I guess. If it starts hurting when you pee, get yourself checked for cancer. Just in case.”

I managed a weak smile and waved, watching as the bright orange car slipped back into the moonless night and vanished from my view. I stood at the same spot, staring at the space where it should have been. It was all quiet now.