The House of Life 1

by Vann Chow

  Then there appeared a car on the right lane next to him as he tried to cut across. He wouldn’t have known in time if the driver in the other car hadn’t honked so hard through the storm. He swerved the car back into the center lane just in time and was able to avoid an accident. The Eclipse zigzagged a few hundred meters before Ian regained control of the car again. The girls screamed at his abrupt deceleration. His backpack and his guitar had slid off from under the back window and poured their contents all over the people in the backseats. Only one of the girls was able to keep herself from being hit on the face by the guitar neck that swayed left and right inside the car.

  Ian had missed his exit and he could not tell where he was heading anymore. It was starting to look like a really bad dream, Ian thought to himself. He wanted to ask Chad to navigate — afterall Chad was the one who lived over on the Kowloon side — but a glance at the rear-mirror revealed that he had already passed out on the leather seats long before Ian had noticed, his arms and legs sprawled all over the girls.

  They went further and further along the same highway for what felt like fifteen minutes. Ian was now going much slower than he was in case he missed another sign. Yet nothing came in view. Going fifteen minutes without an exit on the highway was extremely rare in Hong Kong, as it would normally take only about thirty minutes to traverse across the entire island on highway when traffic was light. Ian started to panic. He was lost.

  About another auspicious fifteen minutes later, Ian finally reached what seemed like the end of the highway and there was a traffic light ahead of him. He skid to a stop in front of the red light. The angry sky still didn’t give them a break.

  “Where’d you say you live at again?” Ian asked the girl next to him. She was fast asleep, her chest heaving up and down, breathing out warm mists onto the front window her head was leaning against. In between the roars of thunders and scrapping noises of the wipers, he noticed that the passengers inside his car had all worn themselves out and grew quiet. Everyone had fallen into a deep sullen reverie as he alone toiled on the choppy road home. No one was in a hurry to go anywhere, it seemed. So despite the fact that he was lost, Ian regained his composure.

  He figured it might be better to just let them sleep until he had figured his way back onto familiar roads. There was an inspirational quality in it when a man was confronted by the vastness of nature such as a night like this. He felt as if the road before him was the path that would go inward deep into himself.

  When the traffic light turned green, he slowly inched forward, watchful of any helpful road signs that he wouldn’t want to miss again.

  Interlopers

  Ian had now driven very far away from the outlet of the cross-harbor tunnel. He had gotten off the highway and gone deep into local streets. Navigating between local streets at night in Hong Kong wasn’t the easiest thing to do. There were streets with multiple names from different translations of its English counterpart assigned when Hong Kong was still under British’s rule. Then there were indigenous ways of referring to them. One could get very confused despite having lived here for many years because of the names. He wanted to stop and ask for directions but the stormy weather had herded every pedestrian and street-stall owners into the safety of their own homes.

  “Which part of town is this?” Ian asked himself. “There is not one 7-11 in sight?” It was very rare not to see any convenient stores. Thinking that 24/7 convenient stores might be the only chance he had of getting any help from someone at this hour, he weaved through the deserted streets for another five minutes before he saw the unmistakable green-on-white sign of the 7-11 shinning like a golden gateway into a shrine. He parked the car right in front of the stores and without waking anyone he rushed quickly under the rain into it.

  To his surprise, there was no one on duty, yet the doors to the store were wide open. He waited for five minute and still nobody came out from the back room. The owner certainly was not worried about theft. Ian ran back into his car and sat in the driver seat, lost in thoughts. He was mystified, as anyone would be in his position, by the situation of things. Suddenly, someone knocked on the window. He jumped at the noise, yet relieved to find another person out in the night whom he might get help from. A Chinese male about thirty-year-old was standing outside of the car. He had a trust-worthy look on his face, although being unusually tall, spotting a rather big nose much like a horse’s, Ian thought to himself mischievously. He rolled down his window and immediately he felt a draft of wet breeze seeped through the growing gap and rushed inside the car. The man outside was drenched from head to toe and his long pony tail of sleek black hair was dripping with water. But he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Did you take anything?” The guy asked.

  “Excuse me?” Confounded, Ian asked. He couldn’t hear him properly through the rain.

  “Step outside of the vehicle, please.” The man pulled out his badge and flashed it in front of Ian’s face.

  Abhorred, Ian said defensively. “Are you talking about the 7-11? No, I didn’t take anything. There was no one inside the store but I promise I didn’t steal anything.”

  The stern expression on the man’s face didn’t change a bit. Ian sensed that verbal explanation probably wouldn’t him do any good so he obliged and slowly got out of the driver’s seat.

  “Who are they?” The question came from a second voice. There was another man bending over the other side of the Eclipse trying to look into the misty back window. This man was much bigger and his arms were ripped with muscles the size of bowling balls and looked as thick as tree trunks.

  “Uh…they are my friends,” Ian wasn’t sure how to describe this strange clique of people. “They are just drunk…but they are fine. We just came out of a party. Do you need me to wake them up?” Ian asked giddily. It suddenly hit him that he shouldn’t have brought to light the fact that they had been drinking. “We got lost on the highway. Missed an exit. You know, the storm. I was just trying to drive them home and so I stopped on the way to ask for directions in 7-11, but there was...”

  “I didn’t ask you to tell me that, did I?” The man with the long face asked, making one threatening step closer to Ian. Ian could now see clearly that he was wearing a leather jacket and a pair of blue Levis jeans, the metal badge sat deep inside the pocket — an undercover policemen.

  Don’t they have something else better to do? Ian thought.

  “Sorry, sir.” At a lost, Ian didn’t know what to say but apologize. “You can search me. I don’t have anything. I mean anything from the store.” Ian said. How he wanted to get this over with and go home!

  “Give me the keys.” The big beefy guy commanded. Ian unwillingly turned over his car keys and threw them over the top of the car, now praying to God that this was not a set-up. He hadn’t really looked at the metal badge when the guy had flashed it at him. He hoped that they were real policemen instead of some punks with fake badges trying to mug him. But he had chosen to remain quiet, because asking them to show their badges the second time might really set them off.

  The man with the key opened the right rear door where Chad was wedged between the three girls. Ian had no idea who they really were, and hoped that he wouldn’t be asked their names. It wasn’t the best thing in the world to be seen with unconscious girls in the back of your car. The girls were starting to stir and one of them had unglued her eyelids and stared with her hazy eyes at the strange sight in her surroundings.

  “Who are you?!” She howled at the policeman.

  Unexpectedly, the officer wasn’t irritated by the way she reacted. “It’s none of your business. Just go back to sleep.” The girl caught Ian standing outside the car and she stepped out from the left rear door in a dizzy haze. Seeing another strange man, she stood frozen at the spot, alarmed.

  “Are we being mugged?” She asked dumbly at Ian. Ian hushed her up immediately.

  “Police,” he explained. At that point, the girl started whining and murmuring infuriatingly like a child.
“I didn’t do anything. That guy said he would drive us home so we followed him…” She kept talking in a feeble peevish voice.

  “Denial is always the first response. Whether you are guilty or not, we shall see.” The police snorted, obviously very experienced in dealing with criminals. No one paid any more attention to that girl, however, because the other officer seemed to have found something in the back of the car. Whatever he was interested in was inside Ian’s backpack. He was trying to pry Chad’s hands off it now.

  “Should I wake him up?” Ian asked with apprehension.

  “I’ve got it,” replied, the officer. With one forceful tug he wrestled the backpack away from Chad, not a single muscle twitched. It had probably slid into Chad’s arms from the compartment under the back window when Ian braked abruptly during one of the traffic light. Its zipper was wide open and half of its content had poured out all over the place. The front flap of the backpack was now fluttering in the strong wind, revealing the rest of Ian’s belongings, half soaked in rain.

  “Ah-hah!” The officer exclaimed. “Here we go.”

  “Show it to me!” The other man who was originally standing pensively next to Ian had now probed his head inside the car in the excitement of a police officer breaking a case. Ian felt sick in his stomach. He didn’t want to know what they’ve found. Did Chad put something illegal in his backpack?

  “Take him out!” The man with the long face said to the bigger guy and at that cue, he slapped Chad a couple of times on the face.

  “Ouch! What the fuck was that?!” Chad emerged from a stupor, pissed. Even though Chad was of no less than a hundred and ninety pounds, it only took the officer one arm to drag Chad out of the backseat. “Hey! Hey!” Still in a trance, Chad wailed as he was being dragged across the carpeted floor of the Eclipse, hit himself haphazardly on the different parts of the car. Now lying on a puddle of cold water on the street, Chad sat up in confusion. The police officer squatted next to him and held his chin up with his beefy hand in a forceful grip so that Chad couldn’t look away. The man started to interrogate him in a very serious tone.

  “Did you take this?” He was holding up a red notebook with his other hand. The red notebook Ian’s picked up this morning from the MTR! When Chad didn’t answer, he shook him vigorously with his muscular arm and asked again. “I am asking you a question. IS THIS YOURS?”

  Seeing it, Ian shouted. “It was mine! The backpack belongs to me. Urggh...” In an easy maneuver, the police next to him had instantly locked Ian’s hands in his and handcuffed them behind Ian’s back. He was pushed against the car and couldn’t move an inch.

  “Shut up!” The man with the horse face said.

  The other guy asked Chad again for the third time. “TELL ME NOW IF THIS IS YOURS!”

  “The hell it’s mine! It’s mine…” He answered without thinking through. A drunk’s talk. The man loosened his grip on Chad’s jaw instantly and the later fell feebly on the ground, unconscious of the consequences of whatever crime he had just admitted to.

  Ian sighed. Can he be any more stupid?

  “The diary belongs to me! I meant, a girl dropped it on her way out of MTR today and I was gonna put it in the Lost & Found. We didn’t take anything from anybody!” Ian bellowed to the two officers.

  “You have an explanation for almost everything, huh?” The guy pressed on Ian’s hands with the metal cuffs, obviously disliked Ian’s attitude. Ian groaned in pain.

  “Who should we arrest? They both claimed they took it.” The squatting man asked his partner.

  “Let’s take them both.”

  “Wait. Wait! Where’re you taking us? We didn’t do anything.” Ian shouted again as he was shoved next to Chad. “When the fuck are you gonna wake up?! We are arrested!” He kicked Chad in the back with frustration yet all he could do was making a disgruntle noise. Still intoxicated.

  “What ‘bout me? How am I supposed to go home?” The girl that everyone had forgotten about interjected.

  “Take these keys.” The bigger guy threw Ian’s keys into her hands.

  “Hey! That’s my car! You’ve no right to give my keys to her! Are you guys real cops? How do you even know whether she has a license?”

  “That’s not our problem,” the man said decisively as he dragged Ian without a hint of mercy round a corner into the darkness of a disagreeably damp alleyway, abandoned long ago by all hopes and spirits, now only served to be the backdrop of a ghastly event about to happen. Behind him, lugging Chad was the other man, strong as a bull with Chad on his shoulder. He looks almost like a troll. When they reached a dead end, the big man flung Chad off his back as if he was a thin summer jacket. Chad prostrated on the dirty ground faced down, grumbled in pain, his mouth opening and closing again, uttering inarticulate noises.

  “Argh. What a busy night! I am itching in this human skin. The trousers are chaffing my crotches.” The man complained.

  “Busy night indeed. With the banquet and everything going on… Are you ready?” The other asked.

  “Ya. He is as good as dead.” He tugged Chad to convey his point.

  Sneering, the other man produced from underneath his leather jacket a pear shaped wine flask made out of dull brown clay. It appeared as if two coconuts had been glued together, a smaller one on top of a bigger one, and in between them on the waist of the mysterious container where the man was gripping tightly with his fingers tied a red silk tassel. Dangling with the tassel was a golden pendant.

  Rays coming from the full moon high above them shone on their path for the first time that night. From the reflected rays that bounced off the golden pendant, Ian could make out the outline of a flying bird, its wings spread apart proudly, and a Chinese character meaning “Medicine” was found engraved in the center of the pendant.

  “Ready? I will pull the cork now.” One man warned the other.

  “Not a problem.”

  As soon as he pulled the wood cork out of the wine vessel, an explosion of white light roared out from its mouth and the three-dimensional space that Ian was breathing in suddenly cracked like an eggshell rupturing. More light flooded through into their space. In a horrifying second, Ian witnessed the impossible — Chad had been sucked inside the bottle. His body stretched like a stressed rubber band, part of him clung to the muddy ground of the alleyway and part of him gave in to the sucking force inside the vessel. The big guy gave Chad a deadly kick into the bottle yet himself standing still as if the effect of the flask eluded him. The voice of Chad’s cry waned to nothing as he plunged into the dark hole of unknown. Ian would have been sucked in too, if it weren’t for the man who had used his arm to bar him from being sucked in and becoming the next victim. Yet he saw little particles of his bodies detached and lifted away from his skins into tiny droplets as if he was made out of cooking oil, being sucked away into a kitchen sponge by a very powerful detergent. He screamed helplessly, staring at the empty spot where Chad once was lying on. Ian wasn’t spared, however. As soon as Chad was gone, the man with the long face let go of him, and nothing prevented him from meeting the same fate. He too, in a woozy moment of terror, was devoured by the monstrous gadget.

  Alternative Reality

  Ian couldn’t help thinking about the story of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet boy who was gorged down the stomach of a big white shark while he was swimming in the sea for the first time, unaware of its lurching predator. The white shark with teeth like planks of painted white iron fence, closed upon his arrival locking him in the clammy stinky mouth cavity in a giant gulp. But Pinocchio didn’t die. He met his father there, the old Geppetto who created him from a carved woodblock.

  “I was looking for you everywhere. When I couldn't find you on dry land, I made a boat to search for you on the sea. But the boat capsized in a storm, then the shark gulped me down.” Said the senile father.

  Ian would not have remembered this story more vividly if he wasn’t experiencing Pinocchio’s adventure himself. His adventure was manifested in a slightly
different way though: the rough sea became the two men who trapped him with a deceptive ploy posting as cops; The shark became the strangely powerful clay container that sucked them in; And the moist hollow of the shark’s inside, the part where the most unexpected variation of the Pinocchio’s story occurred, had turned out to be a great span of bright green and dull yellow field cultivated with tens of hundreds of different crops — rice, barley, oilseed, wheat, cotton, soybeans, corn, grain — million blades of erecting stems brushed against each other to give a low collective rustle in the dry crisp breeze that sweep through the farmland occasionally. Spots of reflected light from the warm shine of the good-natured sun hanging high above them on the calm blue sky sparkled in front of Ian in the spectacular landscape that came into his view as his body was dropped from a crack in the sky, piercing through a maze of clouds and finally plopping on his butt on the soft cushioning wheat bushes. In front of him, Chad was lying on the mushed plants painfully, with his hand on his butt, rubbing in circular motions with an agonizing expression. Ian couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculous sight.

  “What’s so funny?” Chad snapped. “I’m gonna beat the crap out of them!” Chad patted his behind and moaned in pain again because he was bruised himself on his haphazard landing.

  “That is if we can get out of here at all.” Ian added. “Look at where we are.” Extricating himself from the matrix of wheat bushes, he scrambled to stand up on his feet and looked out across the field. The magnificent view had mesmerized him. Ian stood there transfixed, his soul eager to communicate with the serene nature enveloping him.

  “We are stuck in a forlorn hellhole, that’s where we are.” Chad had managed to get up on his two feet too. Even though he didn’t want to admit it, his mind seemed to have cleared up for every breath of fresh air he inhaled. “Well, it could have been worst.” He comforted himself.