Waiting for love

At sixty, she knows love has slipped her by. Bundled up in her thick winterwear, she cuts a sad and forgotten figure sitting at the park bench; each passing minute seemingly to shrink her smaller and smaller in the face of the cold and unforgiving wintry gust.

The few stragglers walking past her would notice at most an old lady of small build wrapped up in interminable layers of winter clothing, her head crowned by a mane of shocking white hair and two small rosy patches flushing on her leathered and nondescript face - the face of a woman who has lost her fight against Father Time.

The old lady likes to sit at the park bench whenever winter's first footsteps pad into the small village she lives. She likes to watch the tykes throwing snowballs at each other, or making a snowman. She likes the bitter cold wind whipping her every senses. Winter, with its relentless daggers of falling snow; winter like a mad artist lustily painting the whole village a uniform shade of white; and most of all, winter with its reminder of that long-ago memory when she lost her love.

Winter forty years ago was when her beloved D had bidden her goodbye. Told her he was going to that faraway place to make his fortune and promising to return to marry her in five years' time. They had sat at the bench, holding hands and not saying much. Their shoulders nudged each other's and both of them had their eyes averted, preferring to focus on the white slush coating the ground, tree trunks and roofs. They had sat that way for long, dragging minutes, all the while the snow flakes falling down with unbridled abandon. Finally, he had stood up, and with nary a word, picked up his small knapsack, slung it over his thin shoulders and trudged off in the snow. He walked unsteadily, sinking his boots into the gradually thickening slush, while she watched him. As D became a speck in the horizon, the wind howled louder and the snow started falling in clumps. She left for home to soak in the warmth of the fireplace and wallow in her sadness.

Five years went by without D returning. Ten years elapsed. No news and no sight of D. Every day, the tiny flicker of hope she nursed became weaker. Until it burnt out totally, and forty years have marked itself on her wrinkled and wretched face.

Every year, she had sat at the park bench during wintertime for at least a few hours a day hoping for D's return. With the passage of forty years and even though her last glimmer of hope had long disappeared, she nevertheless still goes to the park bench out of habit.

It is getting colder and her health can no longer hold up against the invincible wind for long periods. Another ten days or so, winter will pack up and the warmer fingers of spring will sweep away the snow bedecking the land, rejuvenating life.

Disappointment written in her hunched shoulders and gnarled back, she shuffles painfully away,

Another day of waiting for her love to come back has been in fruition.

30 candles for her

With painstaking care, he flicks the lighter and a tiny sliver of flame spits out kissing the wick of the candle placed on the birthday cake. There are altogether 30 candles embedded in the creamy firmament top of the Black Forest cake he had purchased with his last twenty dollars from a neighbourhood confectionery.

There is no longer a cent left in the well-worn wallet in his hip pocket, and Tomorrow is on the threshold, with its gaping mouth staring at him. Tomorrow, with its uncertainty and uncertainness; hangs at the back of his mind, but Today is only what matters.

Today marks her thirtieth. The big 3-0, the curly 'three' juxtaposed next to the loop, a noose that is waiting to hang him when Tomorrow comes. But that does not matter Today.

He finishes lighting the 30 candles, his finger singed by the wavery flame of the lighter. But he feels no physical pain because Today is celebratory; Today is valedictory; Today is victorious.

30 candles in a mish-mash of different hues burning abright.

30 candles stand stoic saluting her birthday.

30 candles cutting a fiery cleave through the dimly-lit room.

His heart sings out a song of love to his Valentine, and harken!

The candle light does not shine forever. When the candles finally complete burning, darkness has totally annexed the room. Today has ended. Shrouded in complete darkness, he presses his lips to the photo of his Valentine and kisses her goodbye until the next autumn.

A victim of the times

Sniffles, coughs, someone else sneezes, and a rasping tubercular cough erupts from somewhere. Madame Hypochondriac starts feeling all jittery and shivery as she hurries down the thoroughfare, rays of sunlight streaming iridescently on her, and glancing off the shiny metal and glass facades of Orchard Road.

Her beady eyes furtively scanning the sticks of human beings around her, scouring faces for signs of sickness or disease; her every step quickening as she strides purposefully towards her destination - the Great Singapore Sales going on in one of those towering flashy shopping malls.

Madame fastens her N95 facemask and takes a deep breath behind the protective carapace of plastic. Her spectacles mist up, and through the mist, she sees the path in front of her metamorphosise into an Edenic boulevard of bright blossoms and fresh-smelling flora. The sticks of humans have vanished and the burning orange ball in the sky flashes crimson and anoints Eden with a healthy aura.

Madame dances a jig and hums an euphonious tune. This Eden is so far removed from pandemic-stricken Singapore where her peace is constantly shattered by intermittent sniffles, wheezes, coughing or throat-clearing. She feels reinvigorated as the sunlight flows into her bloodstream. Her feet become lighter as she treads on the plush green carpet of Eden. A reddish hue suffuses her physiognomy, restoring the traces of her long-lost beauty.

Life is so beautiful, she thinks to herself, submerging deeper into this misty Xanadu.

Until the quietude of her Eden is shattered by the clangour of blaring horns and anxious shouts. The last vapour of her breathy condensation clears from her spectacles and to her horror, she finds herself standing smack in the middle of a busy road with vehicles horning crazily, vehicles juddering to a halt, vehicles whizzing past and bystanders screaming her to get the hell out of the road.

Her head dulled by too much vitamins, and perhaps still clearing from her reverie of a few moments ago, Madame Hypochondriac reacts too belatedly. A taxi rams into her and like a crash test dummy, she flies into the air, taking an awfully long moment, before she hits the bitumen, painting it a bright dazzling red.

As if on cue, the germs-ridden air of pandemic-stricken Singapore is washed by thick furious sheets of rain, and a mist arises from the hot bitumen as life continues unabated.

The old man and the sea

He is there - a speck, a dot in the endless expanse of blue.
That blue sea plumbing unfathomable depths.

He sits on the ark of his own solitude, drifting and drifting.
Awaiting the set of old age's sun.
Loneliness plumbing unfathomable depths.

He fishes patiently for the company.
Of someone's friendly glance, caring words or a gentle wave.
No one cares.

The troughs and crests he has experienced and lived through -
that was his life.

And today he has grown old and worn, drifting and drifting,
a speck, a dot on this sea of loneliness.

And this is his life.

As the sun sets on his old age.

The mama shop uncle

The last lights have gone out in the surrounding HDB flats. The thick blanket of night contains within it a miasma of soporific allure, and one could have expected most people to have stolen off into a well-deserved few hours of rest before the inevitable cock's crow of the next day.

But not the old Indian man, sitting forlornly on a stool that has seen better days, in his cubbyhole of a mamashop. He sits on his stool, waiting for the business that will not come - not when night is at its darkest and most of the denizens in the estate are bewitched by Morpheus' seduction - and hopes his nightly hope that there will be one or two stragglers or late-comers who will pop by his store for a pack of cigarettes or some other provender.

The old man needs provender of a different kind. The paper kind called currency. He is behind payment for the goods ordered from several wholesalers. The refrigerator housing his forlorn few cartons of milk and desolate cans of soft drinks is wheezing its last breath. His family in India is looking forward to his long-missed remittances. There are so many responsibilities, so many bills, and so many burdens he is carrying on his hunched and arthritic shoulders, he thinks to himself.

The old man summons his rheumy legs and gets up from the stool. With pain etched across his face, he limps outside the sundry shop. He stares at the streetlights, the towering HDB blocks and listens to the shrill cries of crickets. Somewhere a stray cat mews. He thinks to himself as to whether he should pack up and throw in the towel. What is the purpose in opening the shop until 3am every night awaiting slack business? What is the point in soldiering on when he cannot offer himself and his wares against the metronomic precision of neighbourhood convenience stores and the giant supermarkets with their multifarious goods, shiny cash registers and immaculately-attired service crew? David versus Goliath.

He strikes up a hand-rolled cigarette and settling himself on his stool, puffs thoughtfully away; all the while his eyes glued to the shopfront and ears pricked for the sound of human voices or movement.

As someone on his cosy bed tosses over and dreams a sweet dream of tomorrow to come; the old Indian man ensconced on his ramshackle stool muses on his own hard life that is surely reaching its nadir as the night gets darker and darker.

Nursing a plangent hope for an elusive sale, loneliness in the form of his malfunctioning refrigerator, the haphazardly arranged stacks of sweets and chocolates on the counter, the shelves replete with cans of sardines, baked beans and other sundry goods, accompanies him through this most bewitching of nights.

Sex under the moonlight

Night's sweaty palm chafes his bare back but to him, caught in the throes of his emotions, everything in his orbit does not seem to register. Except her. He works his tongue over her neck - damp with perspiration - and worms his fingers clumsily into her Mango top. His fingers touch the two mounds. Her plump breasts have never failed to turn him on, and tonight, he is burning with excitement at his impending conquest. Months of relentless pursuit have finally dissolved this icy and aloof girl. Like a barge entering the narrow estuary of a harbour, he is touching shore.

He caresses her breasts and she lets forth a soft moan. The scant moonlight in the ripening dark provides just sufficient illumination for him to catch a peripheral sight of her closed eyes and the tiny beads of perspiration formed on her pert nose.

Their argument of a few minutes ago had faded into oblivion. Self-restraint had surrendered to burgeoning youthful passion. Ah, the impetuosity of doing it in a public park! - Surrounded by the attenuate stalks of trees standing around like silenced witnesses. The chirping of crickets and the occasional distant flare of motor on the expressway a few kilometres away are the only sounds providing accompaniment in this darkest and most passionate of nights.

His fingers migrate downwards, unzip her shorts, and feel the wetness of her female genitalia. He pushes a finger into the treacly darkness of her clitoris and at that point, he is totally consumed by his inflamed passion. He takes her in the quiet park and experiences bliss which he has never felt before.

****

With the water from the showerhead cascading over him, he casts his mind back to that magical one hour with her. They had parted three hours ago, and on the bus-ride to her home, he had told her he loved her madly. Life could not have been sweeter for him. His application to the local university has been accepted. He has finally won her heart after so much uncertainty and efforts. He feels like he now has a purpose for looking forward to tomorrow. Such is the feeling of being in love - in love with that wonderful girl whose every move elicits glances of admiration from men and women alike.

Towelling his hair, he turns on the computer and logs on to the Internet to check his e-mail. There is a new message from an unfamiliar e-mail address. He clicks on the attachment - a video file - and almost freezes in his seat.

As the images of his lovemaking in the park play out grainily, the horror that is slowly forming in his throat threatens to asphyxiate him. He can see his face quite clearly despite the bleariness of the video which was clearly taken by a mobile phone. He angrily closes the video file and looks at the e-mail address again. It still doesn't ring a bell in his mind, but somewhere in that phantasmal and unreal cocoon of his horror, his mobile phone starts ringing....

He picks up his mobile phone and seized by a moment of irrational madness, hurls it at the computer monitor. The screen cracks into spiderwebs, and in his mind's eye, he sees his future finished - like a fly that has unwittingly strayed into a spiderweb and is fruitlessly trying to free itself.

****

One week later, his sex video is paraded and flogged online.

The joy of pain

When the castors of the gurney squeaked into the operating theatre with my wife lying on it, moaning and groaning helplessly; I could feel the stanchions of my faith shaking.

My life had revolved around her, and now like a house in the prairie buffeted by the heaviest storm, I was on the verge of collapsing, all my wavering hopes disintegrating into smithereens.

We had hankered for a child to make our family complete for the last five years we were married. And when news emerged that she was pregnant, our euphoria was indescribable. It seemed so long ago - those joyous scenes when we were hugging and crying each other in front of her gynaecologist who had told us the good news - and now, I stood on the precipice looking into a gradually darkening abyss of gloom.

She had been bleeding the last two nights, and we had decided that although the baby was not due for another two weeks, it was much better to send her to the hospital for observation and professional clinical care. To me, the signs of bleeding were ominous, but I had cast those negative thoughts off my mind, and preferred to concentrate on the positive. Besides, our belief in God would see us through, and God would grant us a healthy baby boy after all the travails He had put us through these last five years, when we were trying so futilely to conceive.

The operating theatre's light flashed ominously red and every minute that ticked by only added to my heightening anxiety and agony. I must have paced the aisle a zillion times, buying some reprieve from being cast into the abyss of gloom and ended hopes.

The doctor came out of the operating theatre with two nurses in tow. He stripped off his face mask, and looked at me apologetically through his misted spectacles. He told me the news and gave me a consolatory pat on the back.

I had been yanked off the periphery of one abyss and thrown into yet another. I had never felt such pain in my life before, and I collapsed into a heap on the floor, wailing crazily. The nurses and doctor crouched down humming gentle soothing words to me. However, in the desolation of my pain, nothing registered. Except I was the newly-minted father of a healthy baby boy and a widower at the same time. What cruel hand of Fate! And what tricks God do play!

From the operating theatre, the bawl of my baby boy sounded like a dirge....

Through the window grilles

A slash of cerulean cuts across the gradually lightening sky. Shadows slowly form on the walls of his spartan room. He glances at the window grilles and panes, mottled with a coat of dust. He blows some specks of dust dangling on the grilles, and they dissolve away into nothingness.

As dawn pushes the last remnants of night away, the first sun rays of the day reflect off the window pane, showing his reflection: haggard and drawn, a day-old stubble bedecking his chin.

He looks idiotically at the brightening sky. He looks at the clouds, clouds like candy floss. Tendrils of cloud, curls and swirls of cloud, interspersed with blue, black and pink. He craves some candy floss now. When he was a child, he would always implore his mother to buy candy floss whenever they chanced upon a mobile stall selling that. Alas, that was so many years ago, and his memories are now not so reliable and lucid.

Time holds no meaning for him in his prison cell of a bedroom. He could lie there or sit up painfully and look out of his window grilles at a world that is full of zest and life, but which holds no meaning for him. Life, for him, has no meaning. Meaning has filtered out of his life when she killed herself. Plunged down ten storeys, and him a sobbing wreck, standing by her side and screaming his lungs out. It was then that his hair had turned white. It was then when meaning and purpose had drifted away, oozed out of his life - like an artery that has its blood all drawn dry.

He sees some black birds flying in a formation across the sky, their shrill cries, jabbing his loneliness. The squares of the high-rise opposite slowly bustle with activity. He sees a man brushing his teeth. He sees a maid carrying out a bamboo pole full of wet clothing. He sees a light flicker on in one of the units, and then flicker off. He sees the colour of blue steadily suffusing the candy floss. He craves some candy floss now, and is it time for breakfast?

He hears a knock, and the nurse enters, bearing him his day's medication and a paltry breakfast of porridge. She looks at him bound in his strait-jacket, and caws, "You wet yourself again."

A visitor during lunch

James thought that he could steal 40 winks while no one was watching. It was after all, lunch time. And always on the dot, gaggles of hungry office workers would mechanically drop what they were doing and systematically waddle out of the office door.

His eyelids slowly grew heavy and the screensaver on his monitor became blurry; his head was tilting to one side, and the sleep that had eluded him last night had finally caught up. A good hour of rest was just another droop of the eyelids away when suddenly, the bell rang.

The peal of the bell jolted him awake; and the adhesive of sleep binding his bleary eyes loosened; revealing a woman of about thirty standing in front of his desk. She had long, raggy hair. The thing he noticed most about her was her physiognomy. Her eyes were bloodshot red, like eyes afflicted by a bad case of conjunctivitis. A slash of blood red lipstick anointed her upper lip. Angry red pimples dotted her facial landscape. She looked terrible, and for a moment, he was repulsed sufficiently to subconsciously recoil in his seat.

"Er, how can I help you?" James said with a lump in his throat. Mentally, he regretted not following his colleagues out for lunch. If it came to choosing a sleep that was going to be interrupted by a most physically-repellent customer and gorging himself on food and sharing rowdy jokes or catty office gossip with colleagues, he would have chosen the latter. But it was too late - he had made the choice to stay in and sleep, and now he had to entertain this ugly lady.

The woman did not reply to him. Instead her eyes goggled wide and her stare at James was unnerving him. After a few seconds had passed, the first words coming out of her mouth were the cryptical: "Don't you remember me?"

"I don't remember serving you before, Miss. Er, I think you must be looking for another colleague of mine. All of us office workers do look alike, you know," James joked. If he had expected a laugh or a smile from the ugly woman, what he got was instead stony silence and the unnerving eyeballing she was giving him.

Another few more seconds elapsed with no other words passing between them. All this while, James' bewilderment was heightening. He wriggled his toes in his Clarks. The gentle humming of the airconditioning and the snatches of music from someone else's radio in the office were the only sounds.

The woman continued to stare at him, and the twitching of her mouth added to James' uneasiness. The last vestiges of sleep had been brushed away from his eyes like cobwebs swept away by a wayward hand.

"Hey miss, could you say something? How can I help you? Are you alright?" The sentences popped out from his mouth like strings of firecrackers let loose. Stultifying silence doused his firecrackers.

He could not stand it anymore. Pushing himself up from his seat, he stood up and glared at the woman. The woman eyeballed him back evenly. Then her right hand flashed up and made contact with his left cheek. James was shocked and before his indignation could be expressed, the woman spoke.

"Remember that night. Remember what you did," she said, then pointed to her stomach, continued, "I am pregnant now, you bastard!"

With that, her stony face crumbled into a maelstrom of tears. Sobbing, she turned around and ran out of the room, leaving a shell-shocked James with the light of comprehension blinding him.

Four months ago. A nightspot in town. A wild night of revelry. Bottles of heavy liquor going around like they were out of fashion. Eye contact. The darkness obscuring her face. Too inebriated to bother or notice what would normally revolt him. They dance. They depart. His gang of friends laughingly telling him to enjoy. Some hotel room. A wild night of sex. Awakening and finding himself alone on a bed, naked. No recollection of what has happened. Brushes it off as a one-night stand. Typically him. Pays the hotel bill, leaves. Relegates that night to the back of his mind. Life goes on.

The light had suffused his memory, shining upon the crevices where his jumbled recollections of that night had hidden. Epiphany, realisation, light - and an excruciating pain on his left cheek.

The bell rang again....

Windfall

The child has been crying for the last hour and his patience is wearing thin. He had tried all ways and means to pacify that little devil, but to no avail. Milk didn't work. Toys didn't work. Even carrying and patting him - a deed he detests very much - was futile.

There are so many things in his mind, and like a garbage bin filled to the brim - not with rubbish but troubles, in his case - he feels like he is going to explode. He is high-strung and the incessant cries of the child are not giving him any relief either. Something has to give soon.

He had opened the letterbox earlier in the day and thought he had opened Pandora's box when he saw the stacks of envelopes. White, with officious-looking logos emblazoned on them; the envelopes spelled authority. Unforgiving authority. Authority with ultimatums hanging over his head if he does not pay the outstanding bills by when and when.

He had taken the lift up with the pile of envelopes crushed into a ball in his fists. Rage simmering all the while as his bloodshot eyes took in the slowly blinking numbers on the lift panel display. The stench of someone's yesterday's urine stuck to the firmament of the lift. Some vandal had scrawled a fresh set of expletives on the lift walls, commingling with earlier gems like "Free Fuck, call XXXXXXXXX", "GOVT IS SHIT" and a whole host of unprintables.

When he entered the living room, the child started crying from its cot. He shouted for her to attend to the child, but there was no response. Goddamit, she is out again, he thought. How many times have I told her not to leave the child alone?

He looked at the ashtrays and visually counted eight butts, one of them slowly dying in its embers. She has been smoking a lot lately. It must have been the list of neverending troubles plaguing them. He threw the ball of envelopes into the child's cot and picked him up.

Made him a milk. Threw toys into the cot. Carried and patted him. And yet the child still keeps bawling. Every little cry seems like another shovel of blame being cast into the grave of his uselessness and worthlessness. A useless and worthless father who could never hold down a job for long. Who impregnated his girlfriend (now wife) when he could barely support himself. Who is months behind payment for the housing bills, utilties bills and whatnot.

He lights up a cigarette and puffs away, all the while looking at the child. His cries seem to rise a notch, and the tether of his tolerance loosens slightly over the cauldron of his immeasurable rage which he is always capable of. A cauldron of rage fed by the troubles that never seem to end, a life that has been nothing but a dead end, and now this crying child - another mouth to feed, another burden for him to bear.

The tether holding him back surrenders its hold and he plunges into the cauldron of his burning rage, rage devouring his senses and sanity.

He puts down his cigarette. He picks up the child and starts shaking him violently. He slaps the child across the face. The cries worsen. Another slap, and the cries continue. Fed up, he throws the child back into the cot. He takes the cigarette and jabs it into the child's soft, fleshy leg....

The phone starts ringing in the background of the child's wails. The child is wailing like a banshee. He leaves the child alone, and ventures to the coffee table to pick up the phone. Amidst the static of the phone, and the child's cries; someone is telling him about some prize he had won.

There is an intermission in the child's caterwauling as his young eyes spy something. He sends his little fingers on an expedition to retrieve that something he sees. His fingers grasp the lit cigarette and the heat scorches them, causing the child to instinctively fling the cigarette onto the crushed ball of envelopes residing in his cot.

The tendrils of orange, blue and crimson embrace paper...whilst the child's father, with his back turned, can hardly believe the good news of his windfall over the phone. His luck is about to change, exciting thoughts race through his mind about how the money is going to engender a new beginning for him and his family.

When he plops down the phone and turns his back to the cot, wondering why the child has stopped crying; horror seems to have garrotted his neck....

Monday

tedium, weekend hangover and malaise bookmark monday.

monday: (noun) the fly in the ointment, the obstacle as the key struggles to find a groove in the lock to open up a new beginning to the week; seconds, minutes and hours chug along like tendrils of bloated smoke sputtering from the carburettor, threatening to overwhelm with boredom ad nauseam.

i count time, cups of watery ersatz caffeine while the gentle, rhythmic throb of a headache kneads the cranium.

the photocopier spits out printed sheets; disembodied voices, phlegmy coughs and the occasional sneeze perforate the consciousness, fingers caressing the erogenous buttons of keyboards futilely as screens register non-productivity in bold capital letters summarise the gentle humming of an office in motion on a morose monday.

the minutiae of monday moods is captured in physiognomies that ache and hang heavy with helplessness, voices that sputter rather than spill, and movements that are akin to dragging along corroded chains and balls.

monday has to be written off, interred as an early victim of the week. it has to.

may tuesday throw us a respite.



first written circa Jul 09

A dog's life

Oh, how I hate her!

That mouth with those thin maroon lips and that tongue swishing out, wetting the lips, like some kind of morbid attempt at seduction.

Those owlish spectacles reflecting my harrowed image in the lens – I could see my cowardice playing out like a short film on the celluloid of her lens.

And her voice, that voice! Words joined together in a mish-mash that is called language, worming and forcing its way down my throat. They come as injunctions, commands, orders, reprimands, nags. She spits bile, growls threats and ululates like a rabid bitch.

Through the years, I thought I had loved her. How mistaken I was!

As I stand there, head bowed; I could feel her voice drowning out everything in the background. I try to block myself from that weaselly voice, the pitch gradually escalating to high, by imagining myself in a kind of vacuum. No way, Jose. My plan is not working, my imagination is futile, and that voice continues to pierce through the armour of my self-created vacuum.

She is screaming something at me. I don’t know what she is saying, I can’t be bothered. How I regretted loving her!

In my peripheral vision, she is wagging a stubby finger at me. I see a tail spouting from her behind. Her sartorial accoutrements transform into a mat of thick fur. And her head with that Pomeranian-like coiffure becomes that of a Pomeranian! No, it’s a mongrel that she is transmogrifying into.

A bitch of a mongrel.

A mongrel bitch.

Interchangeable the phrases and the nouns.

I stand watching mouth agape, amazement pulling the flesh of my face. She is turning into a dog! What is this, a Twilight Zone moment, I wonder to myself, eyes horrified, mouth quivering.

And her screams have become barks. Her saliva has turned into canine spittle. She has turned into a dog.

Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis recalls itself into my head and before I know it, I have taken the fruit knife from the table top and plunged it into the bitch’s matted body.

A spurt of red washes across my vision, splattering my tear-streaked face.

And the horror of it dawns on me then.

I had stabbed my mother!

She had picked me up like an abandoned stray those years ago, and had slogged to provide me an education and a roof over my head. I had loved her like the biological mother that I never got to know and love.

And I had killed my adoptive mother.

The death of a clerk

The clacking of the keyboard is rising in crescendo.

His typing is gaining in fever pitch.

The pounding of fingers on the individual squares of the keyboard gets louder and louder.

He stares at the monitor, goggle-eyed as words crawl across the screen. He feels a sense of achievement as each word is born, and grows to become a sentence, and finally arrives as a paragraph. Paragraphs, paragraphs and paragraphs multiply on the monitor.

His deadline is just around the corner. He has to get the document ready. To be sent to the supervisor for counter-signing. Time is of the essence. The clock winds down quickly to 12.30pm - lunch. Lunch to others, Deadline to him. He could feel the sand emptying quickly through the puny slot in the hourglass; as each minute ticks away, and more paragraphs are born.

Yet something feels wrong. He is missing something. Something is missing.

His eyes sweep over the monitor, breaking up the paragraphs into sentences, and the sentences fragment into individual words. It is like a reverse process of creativity. He created what he wrote and now he is destroying what he wrote.

He scans quickly but thoroughly. Trying to find the black sheep in the flock of words - some word missing, a meaning gone awry through the use of a wrong or inappropriate word. God forbid, an inaccurate use of punctuation! How can that be! The syntax seems creaky - should he reconfigure that sentence?

Febrilely running his eyes through the words massed together like some morbid humanity packed tightly in an MRT cabin, he searches for an aberration. He tilts his head up to the wall clock - the long hand is touching 'Five' - could it be 12.25pm already? Five more minutes to his deadline.

Through the smorgasbord of letters, he sees something. He has found it!

Just then, the screen flickers and before he knows it, darkness stares at him. The long hand of the clock, like a creditor nudges 'Six' and his deadline has expired.

At that moment, his heart stops beating and finally his frenzied and tightly-wrought sinews relax.

He slumps in his seat - the life seeping out of the lowly clerk that he is.

"He was a clerk and he did his job well. But he took his work too seriously at times." - So read his epitaph.

Escape

The whirring of the fan in the background weaves a hynoptic cast on him as he lies supine on the bed. The ceiling light seems a tad too bright tonight, he thinks to himself. His eyes hurt in the glare, and he can feel the gentle kneading of Migraine's fingers. He has tossed, turned and turmoiled in his sleep the last few nights. Lying on his bed, trying to force sleep to absorb him into its maw; he had thought of himself like a seasick sailor on the uncertain and rocking vessel that is his thousand over dollars King Koil bed. Like a sailor from one of Conrad's tomes, he had wondered whether he should heave-to and escape from this sinking boat. Cast wide adrift in the turbulent seas of this marriage heading nowhere, the vessel of his faith is rocking and wavering bit by bit. Very soon, it will be torn asunder.

She had been so nice the last few days, whispering sweet nothings in his ears, and gently nuzzling his neck whenever their heads met whilst turning on the bed. Ah, the bed - it is like a metaphor for their unravelling marriage, like a turbulent-wracked vessel on uncertain seas. So it was kind of ironic that those gentle and more pacifist moments should come while he was contemplating the toughest decision of his life.

To end this marriage once and for all. To abruptly tear off the page of this opus that they are writing with no end in sight, and getting all out of point. To jump ship. And yet, he can't find the courage to come to that decision. How could he when she had threatened suicide, when she had poured forth those threats - he, a weakling, a hostage to emotional blackmail....

As the thoughts swish and swirl around in his reverie, the bedroom door opens gently. She enters - a sylph in her diaphanous negligee - whitish and eerily ghostly. Two crimson balls seem to have sprouted on her cheeks as she crawls up onto the bed.

She whispers Honey to him, and her tongue makes its incipient foray down his stubbly chin, onto his neck. He can feel a bulge in his shorts and a frisson runs through him. It has been a while since he feels this way, and it makes him think of the halcyon days when they had just got married, and found sex to be a pivotal part in their gradual fortification of the institution that is marriage. However, since then, the walls have been crumbling, and sex has become as infrequent, in a counterpoint to the increasing bouts of insomnia assailing him. For a moment, he thinks of taking her....

Then, she drops the bombshell. She is proposing divorce. She has fallen in love with her colleague.

She has carved an escape chute for him.

His tumescent penis gradually deflates, and in the storm of his earlier emotional introspections, an abeyance signals. Like Conrad's sailor, the seas have quietened down and he lies down content on the bed.

He says yes. Let's get it done.

And they kiss - content in knowing that each has found his/her escape.

The light out there

Raj can feel a surge of blood to his head. He can barely open his eyes and his legs wobble. Knocking back three bottles of Tiger Beer and half a dozen cans of assorted beer two hours ago had seemed like partaking in heavenly manna. Now that does not seem like a wise idea. He feels terrible and the beer swishing around in his intestines is like a vice, gripping him tight. In hindsight, he regrets the binge. But what could he do? He had been trying and trying, but he just could not free himself from the thrall of alcohol.

He totters along the corridor towards the unit that he shares with his elderly parents. Visages of the crazy drinking moments ago crisscross his mind - Amrit encouraging him to down another, Sanjay already stoned and toppling over the chair, the cackle of the coffeeshop skimming his alcoholic reverie. Drink has caused him to lose his last two jobs, has caused Kareena to leave him, has caused him to lose the strength to carry the kavadi for Thaipusam; drink has wrecked him.

With great difficulty, he manages to find the right key and insert into the lock. The ethanol ether has blinded his vision and crippled his movements. He envisages the wooden door opening and swallowing him into a black hole. Suddenly, a sharp glint of light slashes across his bleary eyes. Shaking his head to rid the pounding ache, he espies his parents seated at the sofa.

His father looks stern - his face set in a stony, inscrutable look. But the slow twitching around his mouth betrays the elderly man's mounting anger. Raj sees rivulets of waterfall dribbling across his mother's leathered face. Why are ma and pa so old all of a sudden, he thinks to himself.

Suddenly, Raj can feel himself flying forward; no, no he is toppling forward onto the sofa. Strong arms grip him and steady his fall. He feels himself plonking into the seat in between his parents. A sourish feeling churns in his gullet, and before he knows it, an emetic projectile erupts from his mouth, splaying the coffee table with dregs of his dinner earlier and the sweetish-sourish pang of beer.

"Look, what you've done!" His father cries out. The elderly man's shoulders are trembling and then, he slaps Raj once on his right cheek. "Thwack" - the blow jolts Raj out of his alcoholic drowse. Images of his earlier boozing and those olden happier days when he and his parents would sit down and chat at the sofa flash across his mind's eye.

"You are a disgrace! Why are you drinking so heavily? Why???" His father screams amidst the amplifying sobs of his mother. Raj blinks his muggy eyes and tries to utter something, but no word comes from his mouth. He looks out at the open door and sees his father holding out his hand to him. His father seems to be saying something to him and exhorting the toddler Raj to come over.

Summoning all his energy, Raj pushes himself off the seat, overturns the vomit-strewn coffee table and runs out of the house. I am coming, dad. Raj pushes himself over the parapet and as the alcoholic mist slowly dissipates from his eyes like cotton wool being gingerly picked apart; he could see his father pushing him on his toddler's toy car; his father and him sharing a joke while fishing; he could see his father giving him a lift on his first day in school...the images keep coming fast like light streaming through the parted cotton wool of his intoxication, and then the light is no more.

Love resurrected

There can be no doubt in his mind that it is now or never. Standing outside the door with a bouquet of freshly-watered roses in a chiaroscuro of colours, Victor allows the fingers of his free left hand to wander to an errant part of his nose where an itch is developing. His legs are like jelly, and even though it is a cool breezy evening, he can already feel the beads of perspiration forming in a ring around the back of his neck.

He has been carrying a torch for Jeannie ever since they were classmates in junior college. The gawky teenagers of yesterday have grown with the advent of Time's interminable hands to be the freshly-laundered adults of today, standing crisp on the threshold of nascent careers and emerging responsibilities.

Standing outside Jeannie's door, a myriad of thoughts crawl through Victor's mind. He could still remember the time when their fingers had touched each other while sharing a glass of iced lemon tea. A frisson of excitement had coursed through his back then. He was particularly chuffed when Jeannie withdrew her hands in an overly exaggerated gesture of embarrassment. "She must have liked me", he had thought then.

Five years ago. That was how long ago. Gauche JC kids struggling with studies, the palpitating sensations of puppy love...Looking through the glass panel as her flight wheeled down the runway, before developing wings and ascending into the thick blue azure, trailing a plume of smoke, like the last tinges of regret he had felt then. Regret that he had not told her he loved her, while both of them were standing together, a "goodbye with a five-year expiry date" hanging at the tips of their tongues. And it was all over, as she turned around and headed into the boarding area; did he detect a trifle of her shoulders hunching in disappointment as she walked away with her customary big gait?

While, the flames of passion he nursed for Jeannie were doused five years ago; today they are burning bright and evanescent. Ever since that chance meeting three weeks ago, when they had bumped into each other at the atrium of a commercial block downtown - she, there for a job interview, having just returned from Down Under; he, on a trip to meet a client - the flames were simultaneously reignited. He realised that his love for her had never flickered or burned out - rather he had stashed love away like an old photo of a bygone memory lovingly cloistered in the treasured confines of one's old wallet.

Victor stirs himself from his dip in the pool of reminiscences, and left index finger trembling, depresses the doorbell. The shrill ring punctures the early evening's quiet, and the seconds seem to tick away ever-so-slowly, before the door is yanked open.

"Victor! You are early!" Jeannie chirps. "Such beautiful flowers!" She receives the bouquet from him and grabs his left hand, pulling him into the cool living room. And then he sees him.

He gets up slowly from the sofa, his right hand holding on to the television's remote control. There is a langourous air about him as he shuffles slowly forward to shake Victor's hand.

"Victor, meet Pete. He's my fiance. Pete, this is Victor, my JC classmate and a wonderful friend of mine. We met three weeks ago after losing touch for five years. Is that right, Victor, five years?" Jeannie gushes - a deluge of sentences dousing Victor's fiery heart.

The treacle doesn't taste sweet on his tongue, and he chews through the limp tendrils of pasta abstractedly, all the while, an unhappy and unwilling witness as Jeannie's happiness writes itself on the scroll of her alabaster face, as jibes and jokes trade readily between her and Pete.

He never keeps in touch with Jeannie after dinner, and he never thinks of the past again.