The Minorities
Page 17
“What happened to Mahmoud?” A bit too hopefully, I added, “Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I tried. Believe me, I tried. When I got there, I found out he was already married, with three kids! The oldest was six.”
I did the maths and gasped. “When you first met him, he already had a wife—and kid!”
She nodded. “I was angry! I felt so used, so forgotten and discarded. So I haunted them. Tossed furniture around. Shredded some sheets.”
“A pontianak-fuelled home makeover, as it were,” I offered wryly.
She indulged me with a small, breathtaking smile, but it faded quickly. “After my first haunting, though, he brought in a bomoh.”
“What did he do?”
“He bound me to one of those small marble balls. Imagine that! Having to haunt a damned marble!” I tried to think of ways in which a singular marble could be fearsome—a thinking exercise about as fruitful as a thinking exercise about fruits having thinking exercises about marbles. She continued, “Then he got rid of the marble.”
“Where?”
“He took it back to my kampong, my home, and just chucked it through an open window.”
I smiled. “But you got back to your family.”
“It wasn’t the reunion I had hoped for. Coming back as a pontianak proved one thing to them: that I was immoral and evil when I was alive, what with getting pregnant out of wedlock. They moved out—my parents, my brother and my little sister. I don’t know where they went, and I haven’t seen any of them since. I don’t even know if they’re still alive. I was left to haunt an empty house for decades. I sat there, watching the world go by. Sometimes, kids would come into the ‘pontianak house’ on a dare. If I felt like it, I would make myself visible to them. They would scream and run out in fear. Some would piss their pants. It was hilarious…for a while. It got old really fast. The entire kampong got old really fast. People began moving out to live in the city. I stayed where I was, bound by my covenant to haunt the house.”
“Those who pissed on your abode—why didn’t you haunt them?”
“They were children! The covenant protects them—mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“If a being chooses to haunt or hurt children, if it falls within the ambit of their covenant, then, technically, they could. It’s detestable even among us, though, haunting the innocent.”
“That’s good to hear,” I stated. “How did you end up in Yishun, then?”
“A couple of trekkers had sex in my abode.”
I laughed.
Diyanah laughed, too. “I did not want to spend an eternity haunting an empty house, so I followed the man—all the way back to Singapore.”
“Why follow the man?”
“It’s what my covenant demands.”
I nodded, a million questions exploding into existence in my head about who or whatever power brought these heteronormative covenants into existence. I did not voice them.
“I didn’t haunt him much, gave him a couple of bad dreams and left claw marks at his door to sustain my covenant.”
I remembered how I felt at the handprint upon my bedroom door—a mark left by a hand I now found myself wanting to hold. “Oh yeah, that is not terrifying at all.”
“Anyway, one day he passes by the garden outside, and I latched myself to the clump of banana trees.”
“You can do that?”
“To banana trees, yes.”
“Let me get this straight. Your covenant requires that you die during childbirth and with revenge boiling in your heart. You’re only allowed to haunt men, and the only thing you can latch on to, other than them, is a banana tree?”
She nodded. “That’s right.”
“Which patriarchal lunatic created these covenants?”
“The Creator.”
“Well, that’s a very biased Creator.”
“Maybe The Creator has His, Her or Its reasons.”
“Maybe. But He does seem to have something against women, huh? The only things you can latch on to are men or male symbols.”
She grinned. “Maybe you’re just a pervert for thinking that a banana is a male symbol.”
Touché.
It was easy to forget that Diyanah was a pontianak. She was charming, funny. I could not help wanting to know more about her. “Can I try something?”
“What are you going to do?” Diyanah asked. There was apprehension in the supernatural wonder of her voice.
“I want to try the SoundLoft on you.”
“What’s that?”
“Hang on.” I headed into my room and returned holding the wHelm, my laptop, the Pianola and the wires that connected them.
“What does it do?” she asked, tracing the wHelm with a slender finger.
“It converts brain waves into music,” I explained.
“Meaning I will have no more brain waves? I will only think in music?”
“No,” I said. She made a whining sound. “It’ll make correlations between the frequencies of your brain waves with certain musical chords, and they’ll be played out through this automatic piano. Your brain waves stay where they are.”
She tried the wHelm on for size. “My physiology—if you can even call it that—is very different from a human being’s,” she pointed out.
“Exactly!” I said excitedly. “What kind of waves would it pick up from you?”
“I don’t know!” She, too, was excited now. We were like giddy schoolchildren discovering a secret stash of candy.
“Let’s try it!”
“What do I do?”
“Lie on the couch.”
She lay on the couch, her body stretched along my sofa. I fitted the wHelm upon her head. “What do I do now?” she asked again.
“Absolutely nothing.” I turned on my laptop and double-clicked on the BrainScan icon. “Here goes nothing.”
Something peculiar happened.
I looked at her. I must have been frowning, because the smile she was casting back at me faded into a look of concern. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No.” As discoveries go, it wasn’t jump-out-of-the-bathtub-screaming-Eureka! emphatic, but my mind was nevertheless in a delightful sort of frenzy. In her waking moments, Diyanah’s brain (or its equivalent in the essence of a supernatural being) was emanating delta and theta waves—the very brain waves that living humans produce when asleep. I asked her, “Do you sleep?”
It was her turn to say no.
“The brain waves I’m picking up from you are purely delta and theta waves. Do you mind if I record this?”
“I don’t mind at all.” Her smile returned, and she looked content and at ease. “Wasn’t there supposed to be music?”
“Right! I have sambal for brains I tell you.”
She giggled.
I opened a tab on the BrainScan’s interface and clicked on a round red icon.
With a gentle falling of keys, the automatic piano came to life.
The music that undulated from the pianola was wondrous and enigmatic—a mellow cocktail of light, tinkling high notes topped with deep, crashing, almost percussive chords. There was a sobering tranquillity to her music, and with every whispering note and every caressing chord, it became clearer and clearer that this was the most breathtaking thing I have ever heard.
Chapter Ten: Rum & Raisin the Roof
A violent pounding on the front door jolted me out of my reverie. Diyanah put aside the wHelm, and the pianola’s keys went back to their default position—flat, uncompressed, silent.
I glanced at my watch, perplexed at the prospect of a visitor at this hour. It was two in the morning. “Who is it?” I called out.
The deep, slurring voice of an angry man shouted back, “You know who I am!” His voice was accompanied by the jarring clang of metal against metal as he rattled the front gates and slammed his fists repeatedly against the door.
“Uh, no, I don’t,” I retorted.
From the corridor, at the other end of the living room, came the click-flicks of lights being switched on. Three clearly startled figures still dressed in their sleepwear trudged in.
“What the hell is going on?” Cantona asked worriedly.
“Who shouting?” Tights mumbled sleepily.
“Where the fuck is she?” the man at the door raged on, punctuating each word with a punch against the gate. “I know she’s here!”
Shanti’s eyes widened in dissipating fear, her weariness as recognition of the beastly voice washed over her. “Oh my God! How the fuck did he find us?” she asked out loud, her voice a panicked whisper. Her hands immediately covered her mouth, almost as if afraid that she had just given herself away.
“You know angry man?” Tights asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Before Shanti could even glance back at him, the doorknob turned and my front door swung open with a massive, wall-denting thump. It was then I remembered that while I had padlocked the gate, I had forgotten to lock the door.
There, behind the bars of my front gate, stood Devas, his eyes bloodshot, his countenance haggard, his domineering physique clothed in a poorly buttoned shirt marked with sweat stains. He reeked of alcohol.
“I knew it!” he screamed the moment he laid eyes on Shanti, dressed in her favourite South Park T-shirt and green lace panties. “I knew you’ve been hiding with this ugly good-for-nothing!”
“Hey!” I cried out indignantly.
“Have you been fucking him, too, you stupid slut?” he spat at Shanti.
“Don’t you dare speak to her like that! Get the hell out of here!” Cantona roared.
But Devas roared back louder, with an almost animalistic cry. He violently shook and kicked at the bars, the only thing protecting us from the full force of his wrath.
“I will talk to her however the fuck I want! She’s my wife! My wife! Who the fuck are you anyway? Are the two of you fucking her?” He then turned to Shanti again, glaring at her with those manic, bleary, bloodshot eyes. “You’re married to me you fucking slut! I own you!”
I turned to Shanti. She had been silent all this while, frozen in shock. She stood slightly hunched with her arms wrapped around herself, her face twisted by the tears streaming down her face. She looked defeated. Even without laying a hand on her, Devas had beaten her down with his words. For months, she had been hiding here, free to be herself. This Yishun flat wasn’t just a refuge. It had become her home. And now, with Devas here, mad and wild and raging, her sanctuary from a life of abuse had been utterly upended.
“You come with me now, Shanti!” He stretched a muscular arm through the bars, his cheeks pressing up between them as he clawed in Shanti’s direction.
She shook her head and backed away farther from the front door. Her defiance only enraged him more. Devas grabbed the bars with both fists and rattled and kicked at them again.
“You come here now, Shanti!” Spittle ran down the side of his mouth as he howled and roared at her.
Shanti could only whimper.
I had to end this insanity.
“Fuck off, Devas,” I said, taking a step towards him. “Or—”
“Or what?” He bore his eyes into mine. He screamed louder, “Or what, huh? What can you do, you small kunji pervert? I bet after you fuck Shanti, your Bangla boyfriend here fucks you in the ass!”
There then came a terrible guttural moan from behind me. I turned. Diyanah was in full pontianak form. Her lips cracked as her mouth stretched open from ear to ear, baring her horrid bloody fangs. Once neat salmon-coloured nails elongated into ferociously sharp splintered claws; her eyes glowed a nightmarish red. She seemed so much larger, so much more a force of destruction. With her long, matted hair swirling atop her head, she floated towards Devas. She made an inhuman heart-stopping snarl as she towered over him.
Devas, once full of sound and fury, rubbed his eyes frantically, possibly considering that Diyanah was just an alcohol-induced hallucination. His mouth hung open.
Diyanah reached a clawed hand towards him. With a frightened cry, Devas fell backwards, his eyes never leaving the fearsome sight in front of him. He inched away from the gate and with a final scream of fear that steadily rose in volume, he bolted. I watched him as he scrambled away towards the stairs, not even daring to look back.
Diyanah slowly morphed back into her human form, and threw me a satisfied smile. I smiled back, though mine was a grim one. “How did Devas find us?” I asked out loud.
Shanti was immediately defensive. “I was careful! I did not contact him. I did not leave a trail.” Her arms were still wrapped protectively around her body as she spoke. “Qyburn Labs! He could have gotten your details from Qyburn Labs.”
I gestured to Diyanah in a manner I believed to be jaunty. “Either way, there’s no way he’s coming back after seeing a pontianak.” I felt I owed Diyanah an easier smile, a less grim smile, and I gave it to her.
But Shanti, her voice still quivering, said, “No, you don’t know him like I do. He’ll be back. And the next time he comes back here, it’ll be with his gang. And when he’s with them, he’ll feel a lot less vulnerable than he did just now.”
“We can call the police!” Cantona said. “Tights and I can hide.”
“They’ll be here before the police arrive. Trust me. When the alcohol wears off, all he’s going to think is that he humiliated himself in front of us, acting like a coward. He’ll be back to reassert his strength. He’s probably off now to round up the rest of his gang as we speak.” Shanti turned to face each of us, her eyes pleading, “We can’t stay here.”
I glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes past two.
I knew what Shanti was implying.
All I could say was, “Ah, fuck.”
Chapter Eleven: The Emperor’s Fortune Cookie
In the dark of night, a vocal klaxon heralded our flight.
“We have to go,” Shanti was yelling, “now!” She looked absolutely rabid. “Pack clothes, toiletries, food. Just the necessities.”
I sprinted into my room, changed into black sweatpants and a black T-shirt, shoved two sets of active gear into my black sports haversack, as well as the wHelm and my laptop. I clutched the autopiano under my arms. Breathing heavily, I sat at my desk and tried to steady my racing mind. Devas filled me with an existential kind of dread. I’ve tried, as much as I could, to live outside the existence in which one man could be determined as “more man” than another, where my worth as a male member of the species was not evaluated by archaic measures such as strength or a domineering nature. And yet I recognised the value of being strong. For one, I wouldn’t have to be afraid of a showdown with Devas, who looked far more capable than I when it came to a fight. The truth remained that I would not be able to protect my friends and my house from Devas and his gang. The more inconvenient truth, however, was that we had nowhere to go. That said, we did have a destination—Diyanah’s kampong.
The door flew open. Shanti was in sweatpants and a hoodie, also all in black. Upon seeing me seated and contemplative, she screamed, “Do you think this is a fucking joke?”
I shoved the old yellowed copy of Cosmos into my haversack. A solitary almond fell in along with it, but I didn’t have the luxury of time to fish it back out. Opening the drawers under my desk, I grabbed my Swiss Army knife, a couple of torchlights, several batteries and my passport, and threw them all in the bag.
Shanti was still at the doorway. “Get off your ass!”
I zipped my bag and stood up, autopiano in hand.
Shanti was beyond livid. “We don’t need the goddamn autopiano!”
I threw it onto my bed and joined Tights and Cantona in the living room. Cantona,
like Shanti, was dressed to blend into the night. Tights was wearing one of my jogging tights and a grey sports top. They each carried a sports haversack, too.
Diyanah stood by the door, watching.
“I feel we’re forgetting something,” I said to my friends.
Shanti was frantic. “It doesn’t matter, we have to go now. We need to get to safety first.”
I opened the gate and the door for my friends, and they all streamed forth, each one bounding urgently out of my house. I put a hand on the doorknob and pulled it towards me. Like an eye being forced shut, the door winked out the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. It winked out the sparse furnishings of what used to be my father’s house. It winked out the shadows.
I locked it.
Later, another door closed with a thud. It was the blue door of my mother’s Toyota. To my left, in the front passenger seat, Shanti’s alert eyes were scanning the carpark. Behind us, Diyanah sat between Tights and Cantona.
“Drive!” Shanti barked.
“Where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
I glanced back at Diyanah. “Let’s head to Malaysia,” I said to Shanti, bracing myself for the backlash that was sure to come.
Sure enough, it came. “Don’t be stupid,” Shanti hissed.
“We agreed!”
“Is now really the best time?” she asked loudly.
“Now is the perfect time! Diyanah can protect Tights and Cantona.” I turned on the ignition and pushed down the handbrake. “Shanti, where else can we go? Where can we hide?”
She did not seem convinced.
“Shanti,” I said, my eyes not leaving hers. “We’ll be okay. We have each other.”
In the dark of night, I left the life I knew so, in that respect, I was no longer the odd one out among my friends and the lone pontianak among us.
In the dark of night, there was a whisper of salvation. It came above the hum of our car’s engine, above the whirr-whooshes of the ones that zoomed by. It came from the infinite stars above us, and it came from within our hearts. It held steadfast against the words that we found ourselves actually speaking.