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mybukz · 2 months

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"Writer’s Postcards" by Dipika Mukherjee: Review by Lawrence Pettener

Dipika Mukherjee is a globe-trotting poet, sociolinguist, writer, editor and educator who often travels alone. Her family and friends are scattered worldwide: Malaysia, Chicago and Delhi to name but a few.

To offset our dizziness with Mukherjee’s continual world tour, we are brought into the subjective world of a poet early on, with the disarming assertion that the cicak (gecko)’s “thik thik thik” sound is repeating ‘truth’ in Bengali. She goes on to say, “What we do is so inexplicable to the more pragmatic.”

One clear thing Mukherjee does here is to stand for the oppressed, detailing migrant workers’ poetry. She is told first hand of Tibetans escaping Chinese repression:

“…trying to avoid the splitting ice and the strong currents… they took turns to piggyback the young ones, but inevitably… some were lost in these passes, while the sick had to be abandoned.”

She relays the message: “One person blows up a building and the media has pictures everywhere, but our youth are burning themselves and no one cares.” While Dipika sometimes backs up her political punches with literary references—on self-censorship, she quotes Jane Austen—she certainly remedies whatever ‘harmlessness’ an earlier reviewer accused her editing of.

We also get into specific details; ghungroos are bells, but they could be creatures or a vehicle from a Dr. Seuss novel. True to form, the author credits the translator of every work cited. Far from simply being nice, it’s all part of Dipika’s revolt against historical erasure, as she puts it.

Mukherjee deploys declamatory one-line paragraphs as little jabs of truth or summation, occasional fresh claims that could easily belong in the preceding or following paragraph. She uses them sparingly enough not to clobber us over the head with them, as in advertising copy, interspersing them with longer paragraphs.

Penguin have never been strong on proofreading since the early eighties, to put it politely. Here, the Hindu deity Dasarath is spelled Dasarth, and the sacred plant tulsi starts with upper- and lower-case ‘T’ randomly.

As with Mukherjee’s recent poetry collection, Dialects from Distant Harbors, these nuanced pieces bring to mind BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent; the pleasurable, subjective pieces balancing the hard reportage. Mukherjee honours local efforts and enactors such as Malaysia’s preeminent creative writing host (Readings at Seksan) and teacher Sharon Bakar.

As most of these pieces are not about herself—though some of the strongest, most connecting passages here relate to the deaths of her brother and her father—if Mukherjee occupies one clear role, it has to be that of representative or champion of others.

Interview

Lawrence Pettener: Dipika, you wear so many hats and do so many things: lecturing, judging competitions, editing, panels, your own writing. How do you stay on top of it all?

Dipika Mukherjee: Nowadays, I think everybody’s being tested for various inability-to-stay-focused issues to put it euphemistically. I think I may actually have some ADD (sic) as well, because what I find is that I actually work best when I’m working on more than one project, ‘cause I tend to get bored very easily. So let’s say I’m writing a novel and it’s going well, but then, you know, you hit a bump as one always does and then I have maybe an academic project which is very cut and dried, and I don’t have to expend my imagination; so I find that if I switch my brain to something more cut and dried that just needs to get done, then I come back to the imaginative project feeling rejuvenated. But if I keep hammering away at my, you know, “Come on Muse, where are you?!”, it’s just so tedious for the process and for me of course.   So then very often I have at least two projects on; and sometimes a poem pops into my head because of something that happens. I secretly write from a point of rage! (Laughs.) So let’s say I read something in the newspaper, or I see something happening out in the street, and something overtakes everything else that I’m doing, and I feel I need to get a poem out, or maybe a short piece of fiction that addresses the immediacy of what I’m feeling.

LP: Maybe you’re one of these people who, like me, might have fifty to a hundred Internet tabs open at once?

DM: Yes, I’m a little compulsive about that! I try not to have more than about twenty-two open!

LP: I should follow that.

DM: I know, it’s like throwing stuff out of my cupboard and not letting that overwhelm, because I do tend to be a little bit of a going-down-the-rabbit-hole person, so if something else is interesting and shiny, and gleaming, I just rush to it. But as I’m getting older I’ve learned to control that. I use the Pomodoro Technique, do you know that?

LP: Yes but I’ve forgotten.

DM: OK. You can find timers online, and you write for twenty-five minutes and then you take a break for either five or fifteen. And what helped with my writing, when it’s not going well, is if I know I only have to sit down for twenty-five minutes, and after that I’m free to go and make myself a coffee, I really do sit down. And then what happens is that in twenty-five minutes I may be at a point where something is taking off; so I make myself some coffee and come right back.   Whereas I think that if I sit in front of just a blank sheet of paper and think, I have to get Chapter Four done, it’s so intimidating. Twenty-five minutes isn’t, because you can sit there and shake your leg – watch this (shakes leg; laughter).  LP: Yes, I tell my students the best way to write a poetry collection is to flit between five or ten pieces simultaneously. They feed into each other; it shows which ones don’t fit into the collection.

DM: Absolutely. I have not actually ever tried that, but I think I might. The other thing I find when I’m teaching writing is that students are often very concerned about having spent a lot of time writing something they’ll never publish or never use and which they feel is like a bunch of rubbish. I actually have a folder for unused writing, or writing in progress, is what I title it. I often cannibalise from that folder, because sometimes when you’re kind of lost for ideas, you go back to a piece of writing and once it’s been marinating for however long, it doesn’t look that bad, and you can still see the bones of it, the ones you can use. And you don’t have to use it as it is, but it’s a wonderful jumping-off point, you know? And I think anything that frees you from a blank page is a good thing, because a blank page almost universally for writers is a very daunting thing.

LP: It could be the opposite of a rabbit hole in a way. What would be the opposite of a rabbit-hole though? Serous question.  DM: Yeah, for me I think it would be sort of just being mind-blocked, and not having your mind going anywhere. Thankfully again, because of the way I think my mind is, it doesn’t happen too often. But again, you have what the Buddhists call the monkey mind, right? Then also, you’re really not doing yourself any favours, and ultimately you get to a point where you’re so frustrated and discombobulated that it goes nowhere.

So I try to in a way structure my time into bits where I have to let go after a certain time. That’s my Pomodoro Technique. It has helped me because as a person I’m naturally not inclined to stop worrying something until it’s done to death, whereas now if I know that, OK, I’ve got it in a schedule, twenty-five minutes, and I have X, Y, Z things to get done, I will move on instead of wasting the whole day.

LP: How often do you manage to read others’ poetry yourself?

DM: Sometimes when I’m writing my own poetry, or editing it, I find it very useful to read people that I absolutely adore. Naomi Shihab Nye is a favourite, because she writes political poetry with great heart; I like Mary Oliver. I like Billy Collins, you know all these people who write with a great deal of heart. I think that kind of helps me put my own poems into perspective, because as I said I do often start from a point of rage, and that rage overcomes any poetic beauty.

Whereas getting back and latching on to somebody who writes lyrically, about things that are important, kind of centres me as well; it doesn’t all have to be vomiting stress. It can be beauty, even within the stress.

LP: I was discussing your poetry with somebody who said, from what I’d shown them of your stuff, that perhaps you didn’t take on social issues enough.

DM: I think I do take on social issues wherever I can. I was listening to this lecture by Gitanjali Shree, who has just won the Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand. She said very eloquently – far more eloquently than I’ll be able to tell you right now – is that there is a kind of a global movement now, because the world is just such a shithole place rally, I mean every country has so many problems; there is such a burden now on writers to lead the protest. But it’s not our job, it’s never our job to be in protest lands, and leading protests with little soundbites about what we feel.

What we like to do is go off and do the writing that sometimes addresses these issues, but I do not feel like I have to address every issue in Malaysia. I do not have to address the traffic jams, and the racial inequities, and the school system. I mean, I would go mad!

So I think I’ll pick and choose, and because I have such a strong allegiance to three countries, I will write about the anti-Muslim sentiments in India, which I’ve done in this book in a few poems; I’ll write about the Trump presidency and the marginalisation of any non-white people in America, which I have also done here; and I’ve addressed Malaysian problems in various books, including my debut novel, which was never published here because of that; because it starts off with a chapter on a model being blown up in the fields of Shah Alam (greater Kuala Lumpur area). Any Malaysian knows that politically that’s very, very controversial.

That’s Ode to Broken Things, and it’s related to the death of a model who was the mistress of the powers that be. It’s available here. I did have a Malaysian publisher but he pulled out about four months before the publication. And by that time it had already gone into print in other parts of the world, but he wrote a very – ‘kesian’ is the only word that comes to mind – a very sad email saying that he can’t publish it here because it will pretty certainly get banned, and he will lose his job and it will affect the livelihood of everyone who works for that company.

I have a little bit of an advantage in that I don’t live here but then it will affect my ability to come back. So I also don’t want to rock the boat too much.

LP: This recalls Preeta Samarasan’s latest novel, The Tale of the Dreamer’s Son.

DM: I was supposed to be moderating the launch of her book, and obviously because of my own book tour, which took me to many countries, I fell a little behind and I couldn’t read it. But I love Preeta’s work; I loved Evening is the Whole Day. At the time when she wrote that, it was very close to Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things in terms of the lyricism and the sentences feeding into each other in very ripe and visual ways. I think that that kind of style seems to have gone out of favour right now. I think that people very often do not like to read what they consider a little bit overdone style; but I absolutely adore Preeta’s work and the reason is also that I find it so fearless in terms of what she says.

You know, Preeta and I see Malaysia through very different windows, because I continue to come back here and I continue to interact with a lot of writing people. I have mentors who are writers and published collections and short fiction with them. And so I have a much more optimistic view, whereas I think Preeta sometimes, can come across as pessimism, certainly.

I absolutely love the fact that we have her, in Malaysia, as a voice with such a strong conscience.

LP: Who can you see as a mentor? I imagine you get some of that from literary interactions.

DM: Right. I love literary festivals because of that, because one of the things it makes really clear is that the people who are truly great writers are not the divas, and I was telling this story to someone else just a few days ago:

My first novel, called Thunder Demons at that time, and the title was changed to Ode to Broken Things, was longlisted for the Man Asia literary prize. In that long list, there was also Su Tong, a Chinese writer. I don’t know if you know Su Tong’s work, but he’s a highly respected Chinese writer, he wrote this book called Wave the Red Lantern, which was made into a Hollywood movie. I have been reading Su Tong since my late teens, and then read his novel Rice when I was about nineteen, and I was just totally in love with it. His style is very Zola-esque, very dark, but it’s beautiful.

So anyway, I was in this long list with many people. Soo Tong was also on it, and he had been one of the people I had worshipped as a writer. I was at Shanghai Literary Festival, and Su Tong was one of the main guys talking at that, so I went up to him and said “I’m delighted to meet you, and I’ve been reading you” blah blah, and he turned to his interpreter, who said, This is your fan, and she says she’s also on the Man Asian long list with you. He looked a little puzzled, and then he asked the interpreter to ask me what my book was. And so I said it was Thunder Demons. I saw his name on the list and I knew I would lose to someone so worthy, it would not be a loss.  So he turned around and he takes my hand like this, and he said, in English, Miss D, you should have won! And I start to laugh, his interpreter starts to laugh, because he’s saying this in English, and with such heartfelt, You should have won! That’s the kind of interactions I have with people who are really writers.  The other person who I felt was a really good mentor was Amitav Ghosh. I met him at various places; the last one being Northwestern University, where I was teaching, and he came in in one day. He has written this amazing book that talks about climate change, and true fiction as well as non-fiction. And he’s this amazing towering person in the literary world, but he has always been very open to just talking about literature on a level that is very accessible. He doesn’t just say, Oh, this is a book that I wrote; he will also ask, What are you writing. He’s wonderful; people should all be like that.

LP: Are you in any writers’ group, or somewhere that you can get feedback?

DM: Yes. Thank you for asking this, because I do think that writers’ groups are important. You have to be a bit smart about them of course, because there’s always a danger of you writing only to the group. That is never a good thing. What I do is, I have different types of writers’ groups, so for a long time I had an Asian American writers’ group, in Chicago, so I would be able to write whatever I wanted without a glossary, because they would just get it. And then I also have a women’s writing group that is about four of us, all working on longer pieces; and nobody else is Asian there. So then sometimes I can check out whether it translates.

It’s good to have more than one group because it reminds you that even if one group tends to go in a certain way, that opinion is not universal; there’s another group that would take things completely differently. So yes it’s important to have writers’ groups and it’s important to have a variety of them, and not just have an echo chamber that gives you what you want to hear.

LP: With that, I imagine that your being on the move so much helps to keep that sense of who you’re writing for rooted in the generality.

DM: Yeah, I don’t really have a reader in mind, it’s not like my sister-in-law’s my ideal reader or anything like that. I try to not patronise my audience, because I’ve felt patronised so many times, especially by Indian authors writing in English, when their gaze is very much the Western, often male gaze; so I tend to just think of you now, an educated, global person. Of course it’s impossible to do on my own because I’m so close to my own writing that I don’t see the defects; which is why having a writers’ group tells me that this makes no sense, or a character is just not believable.

LP: And then what really should be written about because it’s so unbelievable, is just that: unbelievable.

DM: Yep. You know, when I wrote Shambhala Junction, I had a really good agent in London, and she was shopping it around. The good thing about having a power agent is that you get a response back quite quickly, so she came back to me with a publisher who had read it, and she said that she could not read Shambhala Junction as the mother of young girls, and she did not feel that any father would sell a child, or rather abandon their child. Now if you’ve grown up in any part of Asia, you know that that happens all the time. So again, there is obviously a dissonance between what I see as possible in the world and maybe a London agent is able to show.

Bio:

Lawrence Pettener is a poet and freelance editor living in Subang Jaya, Malaysia. His reviews and interviews have appeared in Juliet Art Magazine (Italy), Asian Review of Books and The Culture Review. He recently co-edited ‘Salleh Ben Joned: Truth, Beauty, Amok and Belonging’ (Maya Press, Malaysia), and a collection of poems on Malaysian food is due out this year. He’s editing another book for somebody right this minute.

#travel #non-fiction

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mybukz · 6 months

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Fiction: "Good Riddance, Lah" by Sam Daer

Diane’s dreams came to fruition in her early 30’s when she met Thaddeus. Like her, Thaddeus had always felt a pull to serve the church and live a Godly Life. He was even a pastor. Looking back, it was convenient since she had been thinking about leaving her job, God always could use another housewife. They tied the knot after six months of dating and spent their first night together. There are infamous stories about Christian newlyweds awkwardly spending their first night, if at all. The awkward forehead touch of a poorly coordinated kiss, fumbling over the clasp of a bra, the lowering of eyes and palpable embarrassment when they see each other naked for the first time. Diane and Thaddeus weren’t like that. When they were married, well, they were married.

They moved into a house from Thaddeus’ family. The two story suburban terrace had a broken-in feel, from the many families, humidity, and rainy seasons. Stray dogs and cats roamed the neighborhood, scavenging on trash and crumbs dropped on the street from the Wednesday market. A monitor lizard ruled the local sewer, crawling up the street every so often to sunbathe. All the neighbors were more or less friendly, raising their own families and doing their best. Diane admitted to herself that she felt a little anxious. She wasn’t sure about what though, maybe starting a new life as a housewife, moving into a new home, or living with Thaddeus. The house itself was quite old- the faucets leaked, plumbing howled, blocks of wood dislodged themselves from the wooden tile floor. The floors were perpetually dusty with age no matter how many times she mopped. She told herself to stop being fussy.

Everything seemed to be going to the Christian playbook. First comes love (optional), then comes marriage (required), then comes the baby carriage (at least one). But Diane had a problem. There was something wrong with her body. Painful miscarriage after miscarriage. The constant reminders how her body was growing older, the fertility window was growing smaller, and Thaddeus’ patience was growing thinner. Finally, the third time's a charm and God accordingly delivered. Joshua was born and he was absolutely adorable. Everyone who saw him had to coo at the happy baby. The next few years were good for her. For a while, Diane felt happy. She was content with looking after Joshua and cleaning up after his messes. It felt better to clean up after him then clean up after Thaddeus.

Joshua was a good distraction for Diane’s deteriorating relationship with Thaddeus. They fought, bickered, screamed, and were set off by the mundane annoyances of living under the same roof. Each day Diane grew more resentful of Thaddeus. He saw the world in extremes: black and white, good and bad, Godly and sinful. He had no situational awareness. He never cleaned or did chores. He was judgemental, misogynistic, and butt his balding head into everyone else’s business. However, on long car rides during a weekend staycation when Joshua was sound asleep in the back, the countryside unfolding along the two lane road, and the sunset reflecting into the car windows, she saw him. If she took off her glasses and looked just right, like really looked, she could still see the man she loved and married. Then he turned to look at her. The charade spoiled when he opened his mouth to talk, and asked her to turn down the music since he needed silence to drive safely. The house felt smaller and smaller as the years went by. She mopped the floors less and less, seeing it was pointless. She asked herself why she agreed to move into a house where everything was dirty to begin with.

Joshua went abroad for college and Diane was left alone. She felt conflicted; she was angry since she was left alone with her husband, and angry since she felt angry for something so selfish. At this point Diane and Thaddeus barely spoke. She didn’t really know what to do about it. Thaddeus had driven a wedge between many people they knew. Family, friends, Church contacts. Each day began with Diane waking up, avoiding Thaddeus, collecting coupons, going to the store, cooking, and going back to sleep. Still Thaddeus accused her of spending too much money, asked her where she was going, what she was buying, who she was seeing. Each transaction resulted in an interrogation. At first she was upset. Then it got too tiring to be upset. She became apathetic. She used to hate having to be in the house. Her feet were always black. Now it felt like a necessary prison, a place she secretly wanted to escape but couldn’t imagine living without. But one thing. If only she could remove the damn mirrors. She hated accidentally glancing the wrong way to see how her breasts sagged, hips widened, and hair was drained of pigmentation. She had worn the same thread barren old printed T-shirt everyday with a hole at each seam. She would open her closet and sneeze from the dust billowing off the hangers. Quickly she would close it and wonder why she opened it in the first place. Everything either didn’t fit her anymore or she had no reason to wear it. All her clothes looked gray.

Pill after pill. Diane and Thaddeus had a lot of health issues. Thaddeus especially. He was a sickly child, and that sickness never really left. This gave Diane an excuse to sleep in a separate bed, Thaddeus’ sleep apnea and asthma combination could wake the dead. That being said, Diane wasn’t the pinnacle of health herself. They were both diabetic and only getting older. She wondered if the dust was slowly poisoning them. She kept stubbing her toes on loose blocks from the tile.

Joshua came home from abroad. Diane was so happy to see him, she was seeing his beloved son and now had more distance from Thaddeus. Perched on the kitchen counter, Joshua and Diane enjoyed muted conversations at odd hours away from Thaddeus’ ear. Joshua brought up some disturbing points. Abuse, divorce, and other weighty words that Diane had buried in a deep recess of her mind. Diane didn’t know how to process it and she knew she likely would never know how. At least Joshua brought some stability to the home. He even mopped. But the novelty of his presence wore off soon. She soon went back to scrubbing her feet until the water ran white.

Besides arguing, the only constant in the house was sweets on the table. After all, there was a reason Diane and Thaddeus had so many health issues. They would eat them before taking their pills to prepare, and after to help the medicine digest well. They would eat them in the afternoon as a snack, and after dinner as a dessert. Eating snacks was some of the only argument-free time Diane and Thaddeus spent together. She thought maybe it was because they both liked to ignore their health issues. Joshua even joined snack time too. The only downside was having to run to the store so often to replenish their stash.

The pineapple tarts in particular were fantastic. Sweet pineapple jam with chunks of fruit encased by flaky pastry. They were to die for. Everyone in the house loved them. Multiple times a day they would sit quietly around the kitchen table and feast on the tarts, emptying a container easily between the three of them. Diane could even ignore the creaking from Thaddeus’ chair each time he reached over to grab another, his drooping stomach pushed out by his poor posture. She could ignore the slight smack of his lips as he savored the sticky jam, and the crumbs on his shirt from the pastry. She probably looked the same way for all she knew. Joshua was happy to see his parents enjoy an activity at least. A pragmatist at heart, Diane enjoyed good food and a roof over her head. She happened to glance down from the table. She grimaced. Her feet were still black with dirt. She looked up and reached for another tart. Then she looked at Thaddeus. Then she reached for another.

Bio:

Sam Daer is a young woman from Phoenix, Arizona currently living in Portland, Oregon. She enjoys going on solo trips around the Pacific Northwest and petting cats.

#fiction #short story

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mybukz · 7 months

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Poem: ‘Being 34’ by Peter Soh

The neighbour below my unit was drilling

the ceiling probably

but that didn’t stop the noise

from dispersing to the entire building

for every minute one lives

or lived

or has lived

It’s a cacophony of farting

brep brep brep

druh druh druh

just like how she claimed the waste water was coming from me

though

tik

is so much quieter than her

caterwauling

The clamor didn’t bother me anymore

perhaps because I was going to be 34

or maybe I was so afraid of death

for my heartbeat jumps and sings at an

irregular melody

though I was assured that

if there is no pain in my heart

there will be no gain

of a heartache

at this age

Really?

But since the clamor didn’t really bother me anymore

I think that’s because there’s a power of turning 34

of being unruffled

of being quiescent

of being quiet

in and out of us

So what if I would die from a heartache?

I have no regret for a life filled with

ups and downs

of tragic and sweet moments

because even my heart does so

since the moment I was born

34 years ago

Bio:

Peter Soh is a Peranakan writer who is very interested in exploring the discourse and identity of the Chinese Peranakan. He made his publishing debut with his short story, The Missing Tomb, in the Emerging Malaysian Writers 2018 anthology. He mostly writes lesson plans and report card comments nowadays and he tries to keep his creativity juices flowing by writing something shorter such as poems.

He is currently the Head of Humanities in Maple Leaf Kingsley International School.

#poetry #malaysian poetry #poem #malaysian literature

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mybukz · 10 months

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Fiction: "Physical & Mental Warfare" by Kyra Allyson

Mud. Deep, thick mud. It surrounds and stifles me – there is no way out. The trench slowly fills with stagnant water, drenching my already soaking boots, giving me no chance to run. The crimson clay floor lays waiting below me, the blood of my comrades flowing through, begging me to join, to put an end to this nightmare. I had gotten used to the coppery odour of blood a long time ago, but there is a new smell that hangs in the air, a dank, dark smell that only a man devoid of all hope could smell.

Fear.

It clings to me like a weeping child, in what feels like the last few hours of my life. I break down in great tears, the salty droplets cascading down my battered face, giving a reassuring tang to my mouth, and as I lay huddled in my tomb, the dark veil of death covers me like a shroud. My legs suddenly feel warm, as I urinate myself like a toddler. The pungent smell hits me and I instantly sober.

I look down at my dark green uniform, covered in mud and remember my sole purpose. With a sudden surge of confidence, I sought to relinquish my deep cave of dark emotion and peer over the top. Immediately the chatter of guns sparks to life and I dive back down again, fortunately dodging the incoming hail of bullets. I make out the sound of heavy machinery, roaring into life and the deep barks of soldiers everywhere, shouting and yelling over the noise. Men in grey uniforms are everywhere.

The enemy.

A strong smell of metal washes over me, and I know straight away it is the smell of old blood. I had fallen into a puddle of it, assimilated with murky water, the liquid runs over me as I start to gasp for air. I feel claustrophobic and trapped, causing me to lash out through the puddle, kicking, punching and yelling. The walls of mud seem to close in on me, getting smaller and smaller, robbing my longed-for air as I swim in and out of consciousness. I feel betrayed. Betrayed by my own people. My country does not care about us, the endless deaths that occurred means nothing to those heartless villains.

A low whine hums, progressively getting louder and louder. A cluster munition. I have to get away immediately. Using my remaining energy, I hoist my frail body out of the trench and sprint like there is no tomorrow.

The lifeless bodies of my fallen comrades, never to be seen again.

Kyra Allyson is a 17-year-old Malaysian who enjoys reading thriller books and an occasional pinch of romance while also possessing a discrete love for writing short descriptives. She uses writing as an output for her creativity. Other interests of hers comprise K-pop, binging K-dramas and animes, as well as playing Genshin Impact.

#malaysian literature #malaysian fiction

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mybukz · 1 year

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Fiction: A Shot of Love and a Cup of Health by Vanitha Thurairasu

Priya sat quietly at a corner table in a hipster cafe, enjoying her favourite aromatic coffee in the bustling city of Penang. The cool breeze, accompanied by the scent of freshly cut grass, wrapped around her like a cozy blanket, refreshing her senses. She savoured the evening sunlight and enjoyed the hot beverage sip by sip, allowing it to roll over her tongue, to appreciate its unique taste.

She was dressed in a neatly pressed black saree, draped and pleated with intricate precision. In between sips, she adjusted the saree pleats into perfect alignment, artfully covering her tight-fitted black blouse that revealed a hint of her womanly curves. The elegant embroidery on the blouse accentuated her feminine grace.

"Hi. Can I buy you a dessert?" a deep, croaky voice struck her eardrums as she daydreamed, looking at the high clouds through the window. She turned in curiosity and noticed the voice came from a manly-looking guy standing next to her, smiling. The man stood tall and confident, a ruggedly handsome figure with broad, tough shoulders.

"Err... Hi... Yeah, but... I'm not really hungry," she replied, her eyes widening in surprise and curiosity. She was taken aback, unsure of what to make of this unexpected interaction. Intrigued, she tried to gauge his intentions and motives for approaching her.

"Why not give me a chance?" He pulled out a chair without screeching noise. "Let me help you feel less devoid of appetite."

Priya moved to the edge of the chair but was still able to control her excitement of wanting to know who this mischievous guy was. "I'm full, but you can join me for a drink," she replied in a low pitch. "Nice. Anyway, I'm Shiva," he said, leaning his muscular body on the chair. "Don't worry. We aren't really strangers. We bumped into each other months ago, but my face was shielded with a face mask," he continued while nodding his head to the waiter at the edge, requesting the menu booklet.

His muscular body was evident beneath his loose semi-transparent white cotton shirt, with the first few buttons undone to reveal a glimpse of his hairy chest. Her eyes were drawn to his well-rippled pectoral muscles, too sexy to be handled in modest admiration. Priya gently pushed away her thick strands of wavy, silky black hair that covered her face as the wind picked up in strength. "It's interesting to know that you know my name," she said, as she tilted her head to listen to what he had to say. "Go on, Shiva. I'm all ears now," she urged him. She revealed a relaxed posture as she was comfortable in her own skin.

"Yeah, so..." Shiva began enthusiastically. "Yes, sir, how may I help you?" interrupted the waiter whom he had forgotten to acknowledge a while ago. Donned in full black attire, the waiter was ready to take their order using the gadget he held in his hands.

The restaurant was one of the most sophisticated tech-forward eateries in the city. It had high-speed WiFi, charging corners for electronic devices, automated espresso machines, as well as traditional coffee-making counters with modern furnishings and futuristic designs. The in-house ambient lighting created a welcoming atmosphere, with laid-back jazz music in the background. "One hazelnut coffee, no sugar and without whipped cream," answered Shiva without looking at the menu list in front of him. "Hot or cold, sir?" the waiter questioned monotonously.

"I like my coffee HOT," said Shiva, fixing his gaze on Priya's hair curls that rolled over her saree pleats. The waiter left the table, giving them the space and privacy to continue their conversation, which he assumed to be intimate and romantic. As the wind blew gently, the curves of her breasts were hinted at, but not overly exposed, lending an air of subtle allure to her appearance. Shiva's gaze zeroed in on her feminine bodily features, as if he were trying to drink in every detail of hers with hidden desire.

"Arghh, just another lecherous man!" Priya mumbled to herself in irritation as she had noticed his fixated eyes and inappropriate reply to the waiter. Her initial excitement of wanting to explore his masculine physique did not last long. As a middle-aged woman, she wasn't interested in conversations about infidelity. She quickly took her last sip of coffee, emptied the beautiful ceramic cup, and searched for her car keys in her synthetic leather handbag while thinking of an excuse to leave the cafe politely.

She was no longer drawn to his prominent Adam's apple beneath his partially shaved beard. "I think I need to leave," she said firmly. She could already imagine the wild thoughts and fantasies running through Shiva's mind. Her gender-centric assumption was based on her past experiences with men and their sexual obsessions. Shiva's face turned into a mask of confusion as the woman he had been talking to suddenly announced her intention to leave. He wasn't sure what had prompted her sudden change in demeanor.

"But I have an important matter to discuss with you. Could you spare just a couple of minutes, Dr. Priya?" Shiva requested humbly, furrowing his eyebrows. He had already raised his gaze to her eyes, randomly assuming that his unintentional blank stare at her chest must have caused the discomfort.

Priya was taken aback. As soon as Shiva referred to her as "Dr.", her expression dipped in puzzlement. She cocked her head slightly to her right, as if trying to figure out how he knew her profession. Her narrowed eyes and raised eyebrows studied Shiva's facial expression for any clues. She started querying, "How did you know about my profession? Who are you actually?" Shiva calmed himself and answered, "Yeah, that's what I was about to open up to you."

His frustration vanished all at once, replaced with a sense of respect and acceptance of her right to know his identity and purpose of approach. He pulled his chair forward and tilted his body closer to Priya. He cleared his throat, ready to explain. "My name is Shiva. I moved into your neighbourhood a couple of months ago. I heard from people there that you are a doctor attached to a government health clinic nearby. And, thankfully, it came to my knowledge that you do a lot of charity programs related to women's health aimed at the local community. I truly adore your dedication and kindness!" Shiva poured his heart out to Priya enthusiastically.

"Here's your hot coffee, sir," a sudden interruption of voice broke his train of thoughts. It was the same waiter who had arrived with the order. The steaming cup of coffee was laid on the table, and he seemed to smile with tightly sealed lips. His well-rounded cheeks uncovered his teasing and assumptions that they both must be a new couple. "Ma'am, would you like to add an order?" he asked Priya with mild chuckles.

"No thanks," Priya answered in a posed manner, unwelcoming, and denying his false predictions about them. The sound of the saucer hitting the table caused her to let out a contented sigh. Shiva pretended as though he did not notice her reaction. Moreover, he could already sense the presence of the little droplets of water vapor on the cusp of his nose as the coffee aroma was gently inhaled through his nostrils. His olfactory nerves got turned on, for he was known for his craze over caffeinated hot beverages.

The waiter nodded and left. Unknowingly, Priya once again fixated her attention on Shiva's masculinity and got lost in her thoughts. She couldn't resist staring at his jugular veins as they bulged intermittently while he took sips from his drink. Despite the momentary annoyance of her hair falling in her face, Priya remained unfazed and calm. "Let me continue," Shiva broke the silence. With a flick of her wrist, Priya quickly tamed her wild strands of hair and returned them to their rightful place.

"I'm in love with a girl," Shiva began. "She lives in a shared room just a stone's throw away from my house. Love at first sight, I would say. I proposed to her instantaneously only to find out that she had been living a promiscuous lifestyle for the last two years. She went through a horrific experience when her drug-addict single father abandoned her. It was a broken family, and that's what led her down this path," he sighed.

"Wait, why are you sharing your personal matters with me out of nowhere? Why me?" Priya couldn't contain her curiosity. She seemed hesitant to listen further, but her expression was a mixture of amusement and surprise. Her lips curved into a half-smile as she laughed to herself, trying to make sense of Shiva's story and how it was connected to her.

"No, let me clarify your doubts," Shiva replied, shaking his head. His thick, straight hair bounced on his forehead as he spoke. He paused and took a deep breath before continuing. "I want her to get out of that life. When I fell in love with her, I didn't care about her past," he explained patiently.

Shiva's lover was incredibly beautiful, with long, luscious curly hair cascading down her back in glossy waves. Her features were glowing, with a high forehead, sharp and slender nose, and sculptured cheekbones. Shiva described every detail of her beauty to Priya, noting her deep, soulful brown eyes that held a world of mystery and her full, plump lips with a soft pink hue that looked almost kissable.

"That's interesting, but Shiva, if you're looking to enhance or freeze her youthful beauty, then you should know that I'm neither a cosmetic surgeon nor an aesthetician. My field of expertise is different," Priya clarified with utmost clarity.

Shiva smiled gracefully and responded, "Dr. Priya, I'm aware of that. Your field of expertise is exactly what I'm looking for. Sorry for going on about her beauty for too long. I always get drawn to it involuntarily," he added, taking another sip of his coffee and glancing at Priya's red leather handbag on the edge of the table. "You know, during the earlier days of our friendship, I bought her a luxurious leather handbag, but she refused to accept it. She believed that leather products were a symbol of animal cruelty. She always had a soft spot for animals, and her kindness extended beyond the average level of humanity.

She was involved in various charity events and always felt the urge to give back to the community. Despite her unfair fate that led to her dark side, she's a lady of a golden heart with a great spirit of generosity. That touched my heart deeply. Her name is Samantha," Shiva explained with full-blown love visible in his tearful eyes. He continued, "Hence, I made the decision to marry her. I want to take this relationship to the next level. But before that, I want some medical advice. How can I screen her for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)?" he asked passionately.

Shiva's hopeful eyes portrayed a burning desire to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Priya was touched by his pure love and intentions, and her mind was conflicted with questions confined to her heart. She felt embarrassed as she had gross assumptions about Shiva earlier and had falsely generalized him with other nasty men she had come across in life. Her disbelief popped out uncontrollably as she spoke, "Well, that's really noble love that I haven't seen for real. But what if she is proven to have contracted any STDs? Will your love favour detachment then?" Priya exhibited some sarcasm in her tone and posture, firmly believing that soulful love was too poetic to be true.

Shiva quickly put down his cup on the saucer, and the loud hitting sound proved that he almost forgot something. He dug into his shorts pockets hurriedly and retrieved a few papers folded in four. He laid them on the table while trying to neatly press the crumpled paper. "Dr., see this. I almost forgot that I've already screened her for common STDs," he explained. Priya was convinced that Shiva was serious about his relationship, and she carefully examined the lab results. A sense of relief washed over him when Priya confirmed from the documents that Samantha was free from STDs. "She is clear, Shiva," Priya reassured him with faith. From that very moment, Priya completely trusted Shiva's devoted love for Samantha.

"Thank you so much, Dr!" Shiva sounded excited. "I am aware of that, but I wanted reassurance because my knowledge on this is based only on Google. But a good friend of mine told me about another important test, especially for those who have been sexually active: the cervical cancer screening test," he replied with confidence.

"Alright, so you are here to ask me about the test?" she questioned him, to which she already knew the answer. "Yes. You are right. Samantha felt anxious and scared to discuss about this with anyone. We did watch some videos on YouTube. The explanation freaked us out a little," he narrated in a cracked voice. The frown on his forehead became very obvious as he revealed his fear of medical devices.

"I can help you with that. I'm amazed at your willingness to support her through this," Priya complimented him heartfully. She further explained, "The test is called Pap smear. Don't be deceived by the shapes of the medical instruments you saw on the internet. They aren't as scary as you think." She continued as she pulled out her striking handbag. "It's not really a painful procedure. Probably a little discomfort but it doesn't take much time. Most importantly, it's lifesaving," she concluded.

Shiva listened eagerly while maintaining eye contact with her. His unblinking eyes exhibited genuine interest in the health topic. He then patiently watched Priya unbuckling her delicate handbag. "This is my card. You can call this number to fix an appointment for a consultation session," she explained softly while grabbing her car keys and handbag. "Bring Samantha along. Don't come alone. There's no way I can screen you for something you don't have," she cracked a lame joke and giggled modestly.

"Dr, I owe you my gratitude. Thank you so much. Yes, sure. I'll bring my love of life to see you soon," Shiva replied with a long smile. His face looked bright. He closely watched Priya as she stood in front of him, adjusting her saree pleats that had always been in precise perfection. "The treat is mine, Dr. Please allow me to pay for your coffee," Shiva requested genuinely.

Priya smiled back pleasantly and left the cafe. Along her slow-paced steps, her mind was overwhelmed with Shiva's goodness, great compassion, and pure love. She was eager to meet Samantha soon, and even planned to recruit her for her health campaigns in the near future. It was indeed a memorable day for Priya, for she had met a true gentleman.

Bio:

Dr. Vanitha Thurairasu, is a medical doctor, who aims to raise awareness about community health. She enjoys writing and traveling to various places. She loves learning new skills and meeting new people.

#malaysian fiction #short story #malaysian literature #fiction

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mybukz · 1 year

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Fiction: Flight of the Undead by You Lin

The zombies of Kwan Yin Temple were getting more and more restless by the hour. There were eleven of them, mouths permanently twisted in a scream and purple veins crawling the length of their stick-like limbs: an atlas of rivers snaking across terrains roughened by age. Their hair were hay-like, dry and unwashed and oily, and yet they paced the length of the temple with their heads high, occasionally rattling the rusty red temple gates confining them, unsteady gaits never deterring the gleam in their eyes.

They had a caretaker: a man whose skin was just as rough as theirs. No one really knew who he was, let alone how he ended up sweeping dried leaves under ripening Bodhi trees and tossing slaughtered bulls into the zombies’ confinement every stroke of the hour. All they knew was that he was the only one who could control the zombies, and that he was older than the seas itself.

The caretaker never spoke, but he did frequent the bar adjacent to the temple, downing shot after shot in thick, dust-rimmed glasses. It was always Carlsberg; never Tiger, or any of the cheap brands of beer that fizzled out lamely under the attack of the chilly night air. He was a man who could hold his liquor, a man who had seen too many things to be remotely unnerved by the violent brawls that commenced at the center of the dinghy bar, musty shoes squelching against the wooden floorboards perennially soaked with vomit and spilled rum. Most nights, he sat exactly three seats from the bar counter, watching the gregarious crowd shove against one another, unshaved armpits jostling noisily with an air of indifference. He had no need to engage; amateur gangsters left him alone after being brutally kneed in the groin before they could even get a word of insult out and those who sat alongside him wordlessly for years now knew that he was better off being left alone.

This night, however, the caretaker shuffled one seat closer to the bar counter, amber liquid sloshing in his glass. He remained mute, but there was something in his eyes that raised the hairs at the back of the neck of anyone who dared look him in the eye. Something ancient. Something evil. Something that looked like a warning.

The doors burst open when he was reaching out for his third drink, spindly fingers closed around the neck of the beer bottle. The caretaker squeezed, beads of perspiration from the sweating glass numbing his fingers. This angle, he could almost envision the green-tinted glass as a grappling victim, their face blue with hypoxia, pulse racketing below his thumbs. He broke the bottle in one clean snap, eyes flitting emotionlessly to the splatter of frothing alcohol on the ground.

They said he walked out of the bar that night, lips curled upwards.

The people of Chinatown lived on gossip and news that travelled at light speed by the word of mouth; the next morning, they woke up to a disappearance and a doll, dressed in black laces.

Black—the color of funerals, the color of death.

Back at the temple, the caretaker tossed a fresh carcass into the zombies’ pen, the tolling bell signifying the end of yet another hour. Brown leaves fluttered below his feet, but for the first time, he did not sweep them away. Instead, he leaned against the metal railing, watching as the zombies tore the body to shreds, crimson oozing out of the plump tendons and flesh that glistened under the slightest illumination.

“Zai,” the zombies hissed collectively. “Zzzzzaaaiiii…” rose their mournful wails into the air permeated by burned incense. Zāi. Danger. Disaster.

The caretaker smiled. In the inky darkness of the pen was a shadowy figure, rising from the ashes. A scream pierced the air. And on the forty-ninth hour, there were twelve zombies in the temple, their mouths permanently twisted in a scream and purple veins crawling the length of their stick-like limbs.

The second night, they finally brought around the doll to the bar. It was a gangly creature with unusually porcelain skin, lips painted cherry red and eyes darkened with shadows. Patrons bent over it in healthy mixtures of fear and awe, commenting on the doll’s long lashes, the peculiar texture of its face. The caretaker sipped at his drink.

The girl who disappeared was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, all dainty sighs and smooth, unmarred skin. He had seen her once or twice before, dark hair pulled up in pigtails embellished with a single gold hairpin; she always chased after the pigeons whenever she came round the temple, her clear laugh undulating in the air like the tinkles of a wind chime.

“Qí guài,” someone muttered at the edge of the crowd. How strange indeed, the caretaker thought as he tapped two fingers against the rim of his glass.

“What material do you think they used to make this doll?”

Loud jeers saturated the already tipsy air, raucous debates shattering the ambience of mystery. Some said silk, others insisted that it was rag. “I’ll tell you, it’s latex. I saw one with my own eyes at the border of Chang Jiang when I travelled there once,” a red-faced man boomed. “Excellent quality, that one.”

Someone else interrupted. “But surely, it has to be some kind of skin. Snakeskin, perhaps?”

“No, pigskin!” someone called out.

“Murine!”

“Equine!”

“Canine!”

“Feline!”

Neither could hear the other over the sound of fifty patrons shouting the names of different animals all at once. The caretaker closed his eyes, the sound of arguing pounding on his eardrum without relent. Amidst the chaos, the doll disappeared, and yet the battle recommence. The caretaker left not long after, but not before bending down to examine the doll and chuckling under his breath.

“It’s rén pí,” someone heard him say. “Human skin.”

When he spoke, his voice was the rustle of wind through yellowed leaves, the crackle of joss paper being burned in honor of the spirits. Ghost money: that was what he burned when he returned to the temple, watching the swirls of smog spiral heavenwards. “Na Mo A Mi Tuo Fo,” he chanted monotonously. “Na Mo A Mi Tuo Fo. A Mi Tuo Fo. A Mi Tuo Fo…”

The answer of the wind came swiftly, “Huò bù dān xíng.” He agreed, looking at the shabby building where the zombies paced, agitated. Misfortunes rarely came singly. Something was coming. Something was coming for them all, but he knew that he would be the only one left—again—when the dust settled, everything else wiped off the grid for the second time.

The people spoke of disease. Of suffering and of calamity. They could feel it everywhere: in the rattle of the wind through narrow alleyways, in the echoes of rock music snaking down night markets, in the dead silence enveloping the city at night. The city was crumbling, its foundations whispering warnings as cracks filled the ground. Nothing was the same anymore; nothing was the way it used to be. Even coffee tasted different: more bitter, more foreign. As if someone had tuned the dial of the world down a notch, slowly churning this reality into oblivion.

He moved another seat closer to the counter. One seat—he was now one seat away from the center of the bar. Beside him, the bartender stood, wringing his hands in front of his apron as the caretaker fixed his stare on him. “Your usual, good sir?” the bartender squeaked, glasses clinking unsteadily on his tray.

The caretaker nodded, accepting a beer bottle fresh from the metal bucket filled with ice. Tendrils of fizz and condensation rose as he twisted the beer cap. There was something in the air today: a beast slowly awakening, its consciousness a low hum spreading through the streets. It yawned, great fangs dripping with saliva, blinking eyes shielded behind a thin film. It was a creature born from the vilest pits, a creature of malice and vindictiveness. It would strike tonight, that he knew of, that he was certain of.

He wiped his arms on the sleeve of his trousers. Even his beer tasted different now: sour. Even more so now that the lull of apocalypse crept closer. Outside, the clock tower struck twelve: the beating heart of the city, tolling its last laments. Dong, dong, dong, dong. He wondered if the people had noticed the difference as acutely as he did, if they felt as if the world was holding its breath in preparation for the final plunge. He was sure they did—to some extent. And if they listened carefully enough, they might even hear the howl of the beast, whistling through the cracks in the door. The people had a name for it—the death rattle—he supposed it was fitting for an empire tethering on the edge of destruction.

The caretaker stood, sliding a crumpled note across the counter. There was no use waiting around; he might as well return to the temple where he could sacrifice another round of golden papers to the ancestors that governed their fate. The crowd parted easily for him—they always did. He thought he spotted something as he passed, though he could never quite figure what. A different energy, he mused. An omen.

He woke up to a newspaper clipping hastily slid between the bars of the temple, proclaiming that the bartender of Dragon Lily Palace was dead.

They held a funeral for the bartender for he was well-known and well-liked; the people mourned his death openly, perhaps even more so than the daughter of the merchant, much to his chagrin. Yet, the merchant donned a simple black suit and drove his ridiculously expensive car down the square, white lilies flapping on his bumper in honor of the bartender whose name no one really knew.

The caretaker was there too. All over Chinatown, people brought liquor and splattered them on the ground where the bartender would be buried. The dry land cracked the more they poured poison into the earth, but no one seemed to notice. Navy blue banners flapped in the wind, golden calligraphy tracing bold words that marked the end of a beloved citizen’s death. Jié āi shùn biàn, they murmured to each other, neither quite knowing who exactly to deliver their condolences to. The bartender was such an individual: adored by many but known by none—his death was all it took to unearth that startling fact.

The clock struck one. The caretaker watched in silence as they took in the body, meticulously arranged in a wooden casket. They’d cleaned him up, but the caretaker could see the wounds they couldn’t, the breaks in the pimpled skin where viscous blood leaked out slowly as silver met pink, again and again until all the victim could utter was a single wheeze. Belatedly, he wondered if they’d used a scythe—if it had used a scythe. It did seem plausible enough.

Words were spoken: kind words, meaningless words. None of these people had really known the bartender, and yet they spoke of him like they did, illustrating colorful tales of bravery, humor, and passion. The caretaker scoffed, consulting his watch briefly. It was fourteen past one; fourteen—the unlucky number, the number of death.

He waited. The air rippled, deliciously sated with smoke from burned incense sticks and the weight of shared grief. Then, a scream rang out: bright and clear in the wide courtyard.

In the casket, the body had disappeared—the barest flicker of light preceding the occurrence. No one had noticed. No one had thought to notice. In its place, a doll sat, its curious face stretched into a grin so wide that it elicited a sharp wince from the crowd.

Some said it resembled the late bartender. Most fled before they could catch a better look at the masqueraded abomination looming above them all.

There were thirteen zombies clawing at the bars of the temple now. These days, most doors were barred shut, locked once, twice, thrice until there was no remote chance of any individual breaking in. Chaos broke out everywhere: an invisible virus that transmitted quicker than any other kind. Soon, even the slightest disarray spurred the people into action, banging doors and muttering prayers, trying in vain to ward of the imminent disaster.

“The end of the world is coming,” the caretaker caught someone whispering to their partner. “We must flee.”

“To where?”

“Anywhere but here.”

On the other side of the street, someone else spoke of the zombies. “There are thirteen of them now,” they said urgently. “What happens when there’s fourteen?”

“Shí sì,” they passed on to one another. Si. Death. All the way down the interconnected network of the city, people spoke of the number fourteen, their voices jumbled in a disjointed chorus. “Fourteen,” they intoned, singing the melody of death. “Death. Fourteen. Death.”

Death, death, death, death, death.

It was all they spoke of now.

The gates of the temple were not locked though. The caretaker thought of it as pointless; what was a locked door against a cataclysm? It was the only constant that remained in the city now: the temple, the zombies, the caretaker. Everything else was changing—everything else was rapidly spiraling into the void that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, sucking the life out of the city, breathing back darkness in return.

Everything else but the temple.

The temple never changed; it was a point in history that remained stagnant, a beacon that anchored the rest of the world to reality. Day after day, the zombies rattled against the chains that held them in place, and the caretaker tossed meat into their cage and swept the dried leaves. Sometimes, he chanted prayers. Other times, he gazed at the horizon wordlessly, broomstick tightly clutched in one hand as he watched the sky darken and lighten in cycles.

If they hadn’t known better, they would have said that he was counting the days till his death, just like the rest of them were.

When disaster strikes, people turn to God for forgiveness. They pray. They weep. They beg for atonement to all the sins they have committed, even when the logical part of their minds knew that no god was listening. There had never been any higher power in the first place.

Still, the people prayed. Day and night, they prayed, burning candles, lighting incense sticks. Smoke clouded their visions, burning their lungs as they inhaled, and yet they prayed. Again, and again, and again so that the gods would spare them, would spare this piece of land that was their home.

Occasionally, they would have parades, throngs gathered en masse on the narrow, winded streets, sprinkling holy water and worshipping large, golden statues. He used to watch them walk by, heads bowed in supplication. Now, all he did was let the drone of their voices fill the backdrop as he fed his zombies and swept his leaves.

There were no more deaths after the bartender. No more zombies, no more dolls. But the people knew that it wasn’t over; the disaster was merely recuperating, pondering the best moment to strike. They could feel it in their bones, even in the air they breathed in. Beware, the wind seemed to say. It’s coming, it warned. It’s waking.

But what? The people wondered. What was coming? What was waking? It was a different kind of fear they felt—the kind you never knew you could feel until it invaded your soul, festering on every breath you took. The fear of not knowing what was going to happen. It ate you from the inside out.

It was always the worst kind of fear.

Two months after the bartender’s death, they started seeing things. A flash of a serpent’s tail. A shadow lingering even after dawn. A presence, salivating all over the city. This is it, the people whispered feverishly as they huddled closer to each other. This is it: the end of the world, the eruption that was going to doom them all.

No god was coming to save them; they were on their own now. They were all alone in a world destined to burn.

The beast had no name. It was a silver of consciousness, a formless vapor enveloping the city. People revered it; they used to compose songs and dances to honor it. They gave it a name, but that too was swallowed by the ages, just like how time had wiped out any lingering memory of it from the minds of the people.

It hated the dark; it had always been waiting in the shadows, never strong enough to manifest a form under the scalding rays of light. Now though, it was almost ready. It was almost ready to venture into the territory that was its to begin with, to seek the revenge it had been dreaming of since centuries ago.

It let out a sound of victory. In the distance, rocks crumbled, thunder breaking across the open sky.

And in the decaying buildings straining under the weight of its return, the people whimpered, counting down the seconds before it all came raining down above them.

It saw the caretaker in the temple first: an old man brandishing his broom like a sword. It slithered closer, listening, looking. It heard its brethren, captured and tormented. It saw their jailer, timeless and ancient.

A flare of anger surged. The old man looked up as it approached, inky fire licking its skin. The slightest sign of recognition clicked. “Nian,” the caretaker spoke slowly.

It bared its teeth. “Hou Yi.”

The caretaker started; it had been too long since someone—since anyone—addressed him by his name. He was surprised the beast remembered; in retrospect, of course it remembered. He was the reason of its downfall: the archer who shot down the suns, the savior of humankind. It advanced, fixing its unblinking eyes on him.

“What happened to your flames?” he asked, the way one would address a friend.

“I was reborn.” Its mouth was an abyss that siphoned every sensation off the face of the earth. “I used to be light personified; now, I am both. Darkness and light, love and hatred. I am everything and nothing.”

“What do you want?” the caretaker stumbled—it was the only sign of his hesitation.

It laughed, the sound tugging at his life force, drawing him closer towards complete destruction. “I want revenge,” it snarled, lunging. “I want to end you. And then, I want to end this whole civilization, once and for all. You will no longer be here to rebuild. No one—no being—will ever stop me from dominating the skies again.”

The archer was powerless without his arrows; he was almost mortal in the face of the beast, and the beast knew it. It smacked its lips noisily, savoring the last moments of a hero’s ruination. “I’m sorry,” the caretaker said to no one in particular.

“I’m not,” the beast replied, tilting its head skyward as the essence of the archer fueled its century-old veins.

Fourteen zombies. One last doll.

Deep from the belly of the city, the clock tower chimed. Dong, dong, dong. No one made another sound; no one made another move. The city was still, so still. Too still. Crouched in the darkness, the people waited with bated breaths for the beast to reappear, but it never did.

Slowly, the city lived once more, but there was a new undertone to its existence. Somewhere below the ground, a distant rumbling echoed faintly, and in the temple, fourteen zombies rattled the dusty red gate, incomprehensible hisses pervading the air. Soon, the sonorous bell reverberated through the compound: once, twice. The people watched, waiting for the caretaker to resume his duty, but from the darkness, all they could see was the beast lumbering towards the pen, tossing a fresh bull carcass to the swarm of hungry zombies, their teeth gleaming red.

Bio

You Lin is a writer whose work surrounds the darker fragments of her identity. Her work can be found in Archer Magazine, The B'K, and The Borgen Project among others, some of which were published under a pen name. When she's not writing, you can find her overworking as usual, losing faith in humanity, and drowning in the nightmare that is medical school.

#malaysian fiction #short story #fiction #malaysian literature

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mybukz · 1 year

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Fiction: The Straw and the Turtle: From Tragedy to Triumph by Vanitha Thurairasu

Image by Josh Miller from Unsplash

Vijay was a noble fisherman. During his childhood, he often accompanied his late father out fishing. He was born and raised in a small coastal village surrounded by the sea. He had spent most of his childhood exploring the beaches, collecting seashells, and sitting by the shore, just seawatching. The synchronized and harmonious rise and fall of the waves had always etched into his heart. As he grew up, his fascination with the sea intensified, and he began to learn sailing and diving. He fell in love with the chill breeze and the rhythmic beats of waves crashing softly against the shore. The magnificent serenity of the ocean completely hypnotized him.

As his thick moustache and well-groomed beard turned gray, aging gracefully, his love and passion for the waters only grew deeper and deeper. Vijay became a great fisherman and sailor, often venturing out into the open ocean for days at a time. He was often teased with the name 'Human Trawler' by other fishermen in the village. As he had an uncanny ability to predict the weather and navigate the waves, his fellow fishermen often sought his advice and guidance while going out to the waters.

Vijay's profound love for the sea was matched only by his love of life, his wife, Prisha. They had met as children, playing on the beach and collecting seashells together. As they grew older, their love for each other gradually blossomed, and they were married on the beach where they had first met. Prisha was an artist. Her captivating paintings often featured the tranquility of the sea and its marine life. She had a deep understanding of and appreciation for the intricate beauty of the ocean, to which her artworks expressed enormously.

More often than not, she loved accompanying her husband on his fishing and sailing trips. Her excitement and enthusiasm did not fade even after all these routine years. Vijay, Prisha, and the sea were inseparable. They loved nothing more than taking long walks on the beach, holding hands, and enjoying the chilled breeze and the salty taste on their lips. They spent hours exploring the coastline, watching the sunset over the horizon, and indulging in the chuckles of the waves surfbreaking against their boat. They felt a sense of peace and contentment whenever they held hands witnessing the calm water, much like a blue carpet spread on the chest of the Earth. Living by the shore, in a modest home, the sea had always fed them with compassion, keeping away boredom for good. They adopted the sea as their home and did everything they could to protect it.

On a fine early morning, Vijay was roused by his flaming desire to celebrate his wife's success. Prisha made some profit out of her modern paintings. Hence, in a buoyant mood, Vijay was enthusiastic to go to the sea alone that day. He planned to dig the ocean to cook her favourite butter-dredged prawns, lobster thermidor, Thai basil squid, and his favourite red snapper curry sprinkled with seaweed. He hopped on his boat and left the dock with a hopeful smile on his face.

It was a scorching hot day. The heat rays pierced the fine lines on his face, forming small beads of sweat that trickled down to his thick sideburns. He quickly put on his bucket hat hung on the boat's anchor. He, then, rolled down his sleeves to cover his forearms, disallowing further skin tanning. His overwhelming thoughts about his lunch date kept him conscious of the need to be at his best look and outfit. Suddenly, in his nearest vicinity, he saw an object, afloat on the water surface, He squinted his eyes to focus for a sharper vision, eager to find out what it was. With eyeballs subsequently popping out, he was taken aback to witness a poor turtle struggling in the water.

The pathetic sea creature was thrashing about and swaying its limbs in bizarre directions. Vijay could see that it was greatly tormented. Upon closer inspection, he saw a long plastic straw lodged firmly in its nostril, sticking out bent, causing immense pain and discomfort to the harmless marine life. The white straw seemed to have strips of faded red lines, somewhat similar to streaks of blood, probably originating from the injured creature. Nonetheless, it could also be regular patterns imprinted on the straw. Vijay heard his heart pounding so hard in anxiety that he almost forgot the purpose of his sail on that day.

He could neither find a moment for an outburst of profanity nor think about the unsafe ocean currents at that particular spot in the deep sea. Sans a second thought, he quickly folded up his sleeves untidily and grabbed his moderately sized net placed at the edge of the boat. He plunged it into the sea, entangling the turtle within the net's mesh of thickly knotted fabric. The unuttered ache seen in the animal's eyes, solely hoping for a relief to the dismay, made his eyes pool in tears as he empathized with the pain sustained by the cute creature.

He successfully caught hold of the turtle and gently lifted the creature onto his boat. Spot on! It was a leatherback sea turtle, a species that has existed since the age of dinosaurs. What a beautiful, God-created being it was. Initially, the turtle was paddling its flippers vigorously, expressing substantial fear of seeing a human, who seemed much like a beast during the peak of its distress. Nevertheless, Vijay knew he had to act quickly.

With steady hands, he carefully removed the poky plastic straw from the turtle's nostrils, while comforting it with gentle words and strokes. He gazed into its eyes with much love and respect, while thanking it for preserving the marine food chain across the ocean. He also pondered for a second about the possible microplastics in its tummy that might have been accidentally swallowed, mistaken for sea algae. He tried unsuccessfully to inspect the injured site for any bleeding as it moved its head back and forth into the shell. Vijay felt it was rather safe to release the turtle back to its habitat.

He gently swaddled the turtle close to his hairy chest and bent over at the port of the boat to unbuckle the turtle from his arms. The turtle, initially, wabbled against the splashing water. He then watched the tears of excitement in its eyes for having rebounded from the horrid pain. Then, it slowly swam away in coordinated movements, indicating its joy of survival. As the turtle took its first deep breaths of air in what must have been a long time, it finally got back to nature safely, painfree. With both eyes zeroed in on the cute animal that was set free, Vijay felt a sense of contentment and exuberance for having saved a sea creature, which had always been a sentimental element of his life.

Nonetheless, this incident left his mind and heart deeply troubled. He knew that plastic waste was a major threat to marine life. He couldn't help but think about the fate of the rest of the sea creatures that might be suffering similarly due to human negligence. He could no longer proceed with staying in the water, even for the sake of his beloved wife. He returned home in a devastated state. That noon, Prisha found him sitting silently on his resting chair at the doorway of their hall. She saw a terrible bewilderment on his face, holding back an unpleasant precedent encounter. She was then no longer surprised to see his fishing basket absolutely empty.

As she delicately held his chilled hands, she was shaken to see her masculine husband in huge despair, broken into tears. The lionhearted man, whom she knew to have the traits of a stoic, just burst out weeping before her. Vijay slowly narrated the awful incident to his wife after being soothed by her. He poured his heart out as his wife ran her fingers through his coarse strands of hair. It was rather an obnoxious moment of discussion in which lots of emotions, moral dimensions, and theories were involved. Together, they foresaw the hardship of breaking the stereotype of plastic usage, even amongst their very own community of villagers.

Due to the special bond they shared with the ocean, the duo saw it as their mandated duty to protect and preserve it. From then on, they started researching on the detrimental effects of human-created plastic pollution, reading books and articles, and talking to other fishermen and sailors about the issue. It was evident that unregulated plastic waste dumping was not only harming the marine and wildlife but also polluting the air, soil, and water, as well as the entire ecosystem as a whole. These animals often mistake plastic particles for food, which can lead to blockages in their digestive systems, causing injury, pain, or even death. They understood that human health was also closely related to these food chains. Plastics have been a major threat to all biological beings for many years.

Ever since, they have become absolutely passionate about reducing the use of plastic in the village. With the support of his wife, Vijay rigorously started off his endeavor with the "Stop single-use plastics" campaign, educating his fellow villagers about the dangers of plastic materials to their environment. He also encouraged them to use reusable materials like paper bags and cloth-based bags as environment-friendly and sustainable alternatives. He tirelessly gave talks at local schools and community centers, showing videos and images of the damaging effects of plastics on wildlife.

At first, many people in the village were doubtful about living without plastic. The cheap and durable material had become an integral part of their lives. But Vijay's determination outweighed their skepticism, which then drove him to continue spreading the message. He even organized beach cleanups and recycling drives, and gradually, more people began to take notice.

Eventually, Vijay and Prisha became local ambassadors for the sea, spreading the message of conservation and protection to anyone who would listen. Their passion and dedication inspired others to join them. Soon, they successfully gathered a small army of volunteers who were committed to saving the sea. Their hard work paid off when the village gradually became cleaner and safer for both humans and marine life. The village community started using cloth bags instead of plastic bags and carried their own water bottles instead of buying disposable ones. Plastic waste was significantly reduced, and the sea looked happier than ever before.

The couple's love for the sea was unshakeable. They felt that the ocean was their lifeblood, and they would do everything they could to protect it. They mutually envisioned a world with no plastic pollution, where future generations could enjoy its beauty and bounty. They knew that it would take time, effort, and sacrifice, but they were willing to do whatever it took to make their vision a reality. At times of highs and lows, Vijay always remembered the turtle, a God-sent creature that made his life much more meaningful. He never could thank the turtle enough till the rest of his life.

Dr Vanitha Thurairasu is enthusiastic about expanding her interest and expertise in the field of Environmental Health, which is a crucial and integral part of public health. Her goal is to educate the community about the importance of a safe and sustainable environment for their health, and to be instrumental in mitigating the serious health impacts associated with environmental issues.

She is a medical doctor serving under the Ministry of Health in Malaysia. As a public health professional, she is committed to promoting and protecting the health of the community. She graduated from Universitas Padjadjaran in Bandung, Indonesia, with a medical degree (Doctor of Medicine, M.D) and continued her postgraduate studies in the Master's in Public Health (MPH) program at the Royal College of Medicine Perak. Currently, she serves as the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Officer in the Kinta District, working under the Perak State Health Department.

#malaysian fiction #short story

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mybukz · 1 year

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Fiction: Sweet Escort by Ng Chuan Qi

Image by Danie Franco from Unsplash

She looked down at her hands, confused as to whom these wrinkled hands belonged to. Last she knew, she had just celebrated her first anniversary with her dearly beloved. Her eyes scoured the unfamiliar room, littered with familiar items. The shelf her mother-in-law had gifted her and her husband on their wedding day, the tattered baby gloves she had knitted for her firstborn child, the picture of her in her bridal gown, hand-in-hand with her charming groom. Her groom. Her husband. As though he heard her thinking about him, he walked over and draped a shawl across her petite shoulders, mumbling about the cold.

He looked young, as though he had never aged a day since the monochrome photograph was taken. Confused, she stared down at her gnarled hands. Her husband held out a calloused hand, as he always did when he wanted to bring her somewhere. She tried to take his hand but found a foreign weight in her arm. Frowning, she pulled and pulled until she felt a lightness like never before.

Before her eyes, the youthful fingers, untainted by harsh cleaning detergents or the unrelenting heat of the sun, stretched out and firmly held onto her husband's. She stared at the hands, then stared down further, seeing the gnarled hand where she last saw it. Her husband smiled warmly and gently coaxed her up. The same lightness spread from her arm to her head, then to her torso and finally down to her feet. Standing beside her husband, she turned around and saw the shell of a woman bent forward in a wheelchair. The sun was setting out from the window behind the slouching woman, illuminating her in its radiant warmth, hiding all other features bar her silhouette.

"Come, my dear. I've been waiting," her husband murmured and planted a firm kiss on her cheek, smiling as though he had been wanting to do that for a while.

She smiled back, despite her initial confusion, and walked with him just like they did back then at the aisle towards the altar. As they walked, she saw a beautifully decorated urn on a dresser beside a bed. The date engraved on it went back 10 years and she could see husband's name above it. The memories that she had been steadily losing over the decades flooded back in an instant and her husband, seeing her enlightenment, grinned even wider and led her up the stairs to a place where even death could no longer tear them apart.

Ng Chuan Qi enjoys writing and often writes experimentally. She claims her work may be a bit wonky in some areas but she hopes they get enjoyed by whoever reads them.

#malaysian fiction #malaysian literature #short story

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mybukz · 1 year

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Fiction: The Fight by Gibien Guan

Image by Kristina Tripkovie from Unsplash

The Fight

We fought in the morning. It was a loud and physical fight. We shouted at each other. I flung my hands up and pointed my finger at her. She looked away at the wall and shook her head. Our voices rang between the walls of our new and empty house, and bled into the corridor on the 18th floor of the condominium. Some neighbours were home, most had left for work.

We fought a long while until we ran out of words. But tension still hung between us. I sat down at the table, took my phone out and began to watch videos. My eyes were staring at the screen but I didn't know what I was watching. I just needed a distraction. She walked to the bedroom and closed the door behind her. As the videos went on, my mind boiled over with words I could have said. Finally I put the phone down, got up, opened the door of the bedroom, saw her sitting up in bed, watching videos on her iPad, and then I said, "So this is how we solve problems, huh?" She raised her eyes and looked at me. She breathed in and was about to say something. But only her shoulders were raised, chest inflated and lips apart. I closed the door, turned and went to the kitchen.

Then she suddenly swung the door open, ran up to my feet, went down on her knees, threw her head on the floor and said in a shaky voice "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I felt the floor tremble under her head. I panicked. I kicked my foot out to try to stop her head from hitting the floor. She kept throwing her head down. I got more angry. I picked her up by the collar of her t-shirt, grabbed her by the arm and shouted "Stop it! Stop it!". A beat of silence passed between us. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She swallowed hard and breathed in deep. Her crying stopped, although her shoulders were still shaking, and her eyes were red and cast sideways. Then I snatched my bag up and marched out of the house.

I got in the lift, staring at the floor, anger clouding up my vision. I wanted to go somewhere. There was a co-working space near the condominium. It charged about 16 Ringgit for a day. Free-flow coffee and tea, snacks, Wifi... It was a nice place to be. I had my laptop with me. I could browse the web and relax. Then I remembered I had spent my last thirty Ringgit on dinner last night. I needed money. I crossed a few roads and arrived at a supermarket. It was fairly empty, with a few families strolling around with their trolleys. I went to the ATM and withdrew 200 Ringgit, promising myself that it would last for ten days. I closed my wallet and looked around.

The shops were bright and expecting visitors. Some shopkeepers looked at me and readied themselves to welcome me. But I walked on. Now I had money and lunchtime was near. I came to a sandwich shop and slowed down. With my hands in my pocket I stood there smelling the freshly baked bread, watching the sandwich man peeling and slapping slices of turkey and pepperoni onto the bread, thinking whether I should turn in. But the fight had taken all my appetite. My stomach was full of anger.

I walked out of the supermarket and went to a playground. There were enough trees to block out the sun and the wind felt cool and gentle. I sat down on a stone, pulled out my phone and began watching videos. I knew she didn't like me watching porn. I wanted to get even. So I brought up videos with girls wearing just enough. I switched off the sound and when people walked by I closed the window and brought up another on the screen.

I must have sat there for about 45 minutes when a text popped up on my phone. It was her. When I saw her text, the hardness in my chest began to melt and I wanted to see her again. She asked where I was, she wanted to pick me up. I told her, at the supermarket, and added I would be buying pizza. We usually eat pizza on Tuesdays because there is a promotion on Tuesdays. I placed my order online and waited. Then I crossed the same roads and collected four small pizzas, two for her and two for me.

I was approaching the lobby when I saw her turning out of a corner. She was carrying a bag full of snacks. She usually buys things to make her feel better after we fight. I don't blame her. It's her way of coping with pain. I knew she saw me out of the corner of her eye. I went up to her and she said nothing. We went up in the lift together, and I asked if she had eaten lunch. She shook her head and made a sound.

We came back home and set all the food on the table. I pushed one of the boxes of pizza to her and opened it, hoping to get a smile or look. It was her favourite: pepperoni. She didn't smile. But I knew she felt a warmth. We ate quietly and offered each other food. Then I reached out and touched her forehead. I ran my thumb over where it had hit the floor. I felt a rush of emotion rising up my chest. I felt guilty and sorry. Before the feeling flowed out of me, I got up and brought her head to my chest and wrapped my arms round it. Then I felt the front of my shirt wet and warm. I pulled back. Her eyes red with tears, her brows scrunched and wrinkled, and her lips pulled back and opened. My eyes welled with tears. I put my hands on either side of her cheeks and wiped her tears with my thumbs. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." My voice was low and soft. I hugged her again and held her for a long while. I had no words. But I had her.

Gibien Guan has been teaching drums for about about 9 years, and he also writes.

#malaysian literature #malaysian fiction

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mybukz · 1 year

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Poems by Priya Chouhan

Image by DDP from Unsplash

BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION

(This journey never stops, no matter what happened yesterday. The brain doesn't agree with life's philosophy, it doesn't want to leave things behind, until the present grips us tightly.)

Toes adjusted to the difficult way, a glass of acceptance

I drink,

Past left behind, the unfelt moments still haunting.

Senses stopped working, the present grabbed my neck.

This stage is beyond my comprehension, noticeable are its

after effects.

Painful to erase the bygone times,

no room for grief, rolling is the dice.

Yesterday's touch spilled all over the floor of today's.

This minute will become the past of tomorrow, wiping the

habit doesn't help.

The playful gestures wandering in the boulevard,

repentance is the demeanour, frolicked amidst the pasty trees.

Living a day twice, fully processed are the sentiments,

gladness, shadowed by the lament.

Senses stopped .................................. after effects !

CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST

(This poem is about the feeling of one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ.)

Blood spilled all over the way to Golgotha,

eyes filled with tears, hands held back in despair.

Chains tied to Him, made us freed from sins,

that dark day, I was crucified with Christ,

lights of Jerusalem dimmed.

The cross became pure from His touch,

heads down with grief, heart aching ......

We did nothing.

Bleeding heavily from our sins,

We stood there until the silence silences.

A crown of thorns, going deep down the skull,

I faced death as His smile dullened.

By the end of this dark time, we were all out of blood,

together we were hanged, the dark sky got

two studs.

Chains tied .................................. dimmed !

TAKE A MOMENT

(We are too busy to see what is happening around us, need to feel things, so that they come to life once again.)

Hands folded behind back, head towards the sky,

heart humming rhythmically, a sigh of relief.

Conversations will exist for a little while,

take a moment, knit the memories to create an

unforgettable pile.

Seconds pass by, minutes are short-lived,

encircling the known, but ignorant route paved.

Gone are the chattering, departed are their souls,

pictures become the token, the love is showered upon.

Lifeless room suddenly starts breathing,

moments became alive, sitting next to them,

a hot cup of tea is living.

Hands joined, head bowed down,

the stillness of lost ones are found.

Conversations will .................................. pile !

PRIYA CHOUHAN graduated in Economics Honours from St. Xavier's College, Jaipur, Rajasthan(India) and is preparing for her Master's. For her, poetry is a tool to speak on silent matters. She has been writing poems since class 6th. Her poems have been published in the following magazines/journals: Corvus review, the Black moon, Dreich, Brief Wilderness, Literary Yard, Littoral magazine, etc.

#poetry #poem

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mybukz · 1 year

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Poem: Christmas Eve by Peter Soh

Image by Anton Darius from Unsplash

#poetry #malaysian poetry #xmas

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mybukz · 2 years

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Poem: To Punjab by Moham Wang

Image by Naman Pandey on Unsplash

Zheng (Moham) Wang is a multilingual artist, poet, novelist, and art historian/critic based in Singapore. He graduated from Rice University in 2020 with a B.A. double-majoring in Art History and Studio Art and from California Institute of the Arts with an M.A. in Aesthetics and Politics (Art Criticism) from the School of Critical Studies in 2022. He is currently a Ph.D. student of Art History and Theory at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, with an NTU Research Scholarship. His poetry and novels are published in Chinese and Bilingual magazines such as Voice and Verse Poetry (Hong Kong), Vineyard Poetry Quarterly (Taiwan), China Daily (Taiwan), Tsingtao Literature (China), Youth (China), and Rice Magazine (Houston, TX). His poetry has won awards internationally, and he is recently writing in English, Chinese, French, and his ethnic mother tongue, Iu-Mien, a Hmongic language native to the Iu-Mien people living in southwestern China and Southeast Asia.

#poetry

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mybukz · 2 years

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Poem: longing by Nicole Lee Jiaqi

Image by Kat J from Unsplash

Nicole Lee Jiaqi is a 19-year old girl from Selangor, Malaysia. She is a 2nd-year student at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, studying for a degree in English with Creative Writing. She has written for MABECS, her university's magazine, as well as published a poetry collection on Wattpad titled "sunflowers by the sea". Her most recent works consist of her battles with mental health. Check out more of her works on her Instagram @nicoleleejq.

She wrote "longing" during a dark period in her life. When her first year of university ended, she realised she could not sit down with herself without tears streaming down her face. She had lost herself somewhere along the way, and felt absolutely helpless; stuck in a constant loophole battlingher mind. She had to either write down her emotions or go absolutely mad. This poem portrays how she felt during that period of time.

#poetry #malaysian literature #poem

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mybukz · 2 years

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Fiction : Realm by Lo Sin Yee

Image by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Realm

By Lo Sin Yee

The stars were bobbing in the galaxy.

She was given some drug. The drug kicked in and everything in the hospital became lost to her. When she came around, she was inside a void, a white tunnel.

Something throbbed heavily. Was it her heart? The palpitation grew stronger, her surroundings resounding with it, making her insane. Nausea overwhelmed her and she wanted to vomit. Fire stung her. Pain traversed her. She warded off the fires, nothing singed her body. One thing for sure, the sensation was real, tormenting her. She wondered if it was the effects of her treatment.

Voices boomed around her and she segued to outside the operation room, where people stood about. Someone dressed like a doctor said, “Sorry, we have been trying our best, but she has slim chances to live.”

Her father closed his moist eyes, and prayed. His two sisters sobbed. In a corner, a young man Cheng clenched his fist, his shoulders shook. A bespectacled Englishman named John looked at him, expressionless.

She went up to them, tried to tell them she was alright, but they did not respond. She heard Cheng say, “God, let Liza live. I’m willing to give my life to her.”

Liza was touched, unable to utter a word but then, very quickly, she was sucked back into that void, the vortex of sufferings.

After what seemed like an eternity, all suffering seemed to desert her. Then, bright light more intense than the void flashed. A ruffle of wind eased all her discomfort.

The void slowly disappeared and what greeted her eyes was an expansive galaxy. Stars of various sizes suspended about her. Strong wind moved past her ears, whooshing at speed as she drifted down towards a shining orb in the distance.

She closed her eyes. All of her past looped—from the very moment she was birthed, to the day she cut her finger, to the night she tiptoed to her parents’ bedroom and saw her father hug her sick mother, to when she was drawn to John’s riches and broke Cheng’s heart.

If she had a chance to live again, she would return to Cheng’s arms, whatever the costs. She wouldn’t mind leaving John behind and making a simple life with him. Cheng would not mind her past and would be ready to receive her with open arms. John, to her, mattered not a thing. Yes, he had a fortune. But in the name of true love, he was worth nothing. May he slowly come to this realization. In this world what matters most is true love.

Liza slowly opened her eyes and, oh my, she was in a large field. Lying ahead was a long river. Flowers in a field tilted their heads upon stalks, to greet her in unison. She gingerly approached the river, feeling the grass susurrate around her. When she reached the riverbank, she saw someone waving at her. It was her mother.

“Go, Liza, go and enrich others. To you I give all the blessings,” said her mother. Liza was bewildered.

The green field blurred and vanished, and she was back into the galaxy, heading towards the shining orb.

When she entered the gaseous atmosphere of the orb, she experienced a jerk, so sudden that she had no time to shout. She expanded, and disintegrated, into a liquid which turned bluish and reddish.

In the middle of nowhere a giant tube appeared, through which she injected all of herself. She swam in a reddish liquid, which turned into steam, and blue liquid flushed out through the bottom.

The bluish liquid turned into numberless beads, raining down on something scarlet—a massive stretch of sand. Much of it evaporated in the heat and the remaining droplets eventually fell onto some protuberance—a rain tree.

The tree was huge but too old and gnarled and wilted, alone on a small mound. The moment moisture touched the tree, young leaves burst out of every branch and covered the whole canopy. Then, the liquid travelled though the branches and trunk and fattened them with a new leash of life.

The greenness continued to spread. Grass sprouted through the soil and spread far and wide. The roots reached deep into the earth and broke the giant ice beneath. In no time water covered every nook and cranny of the orb and it soon teemed with all manner of organisms.

One organism, very much like a fish, crept up the shore, and gradually a human head, hands and legs emerged out of its body. Looking closer, she saw it was female and it strangely resembled Liza. Another organism crept up the shore and morphed into a man—Cheng!

The two met and struck up an instant liking for each other. Together they searched for shelter and found a cave and it became their abode. While Cheng went out hunting, Liza stayed home, stitched clothes, and cooked.

Very soon they had children, who later met with other humans and their numbers multiplied, till they founded the first civilisation of the planet.

Every subject thrived on true love. True love was the one and only thing that mattered on the planet. It enjoyed countless generations of peace and tranquillity, becoming prosperous and advanced, generating new terrestial civilizations beyond its planet, spreading what sustained it over the years.

Lo Sin Yee is a teacher. He writes about stories of underdogs.

#malaysian literature #malaysian fiction #fiction

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