The Minorities

by Suffian Hakim

  “Careful, father, you’re in danger of sounding like a hippie.”

  “The hippies don’t own the fact that love is love. Nobody has claim over that truth. It’s a universal, timeless truth. It’s immutable, son.” My father continued, “The only label your mother and I cared about was ‘lover’, that we loved one another and had the freedom to express and explore that love.”

  I simply nodded. These were words I did not expect from my father.

  “Things got bad after your mother and I married. She wanted to travel some more, but I associated travelling with shirking my responsibilities…and the death of your grandmother.”

  “I understand,” I said, and meant it.

  “We were free spirits, we weren’t meant to live according to the routines of society. We began fighting—a lot, and, in trying to repair my relationship with her, I disassociated our problems from us, and put it on you.” My father sounded truly remorseful. “Son, I saw you as the projection—nay, the manifestation—of my own shortcomings. That was unfair to you.”

  “What’s unfair to me is your use of the term ‘nay’,” I said.

  A thoroughly unfamiliar experience was unfolding before me: I was sharing a laugh with my father.

  “I never truly overcame those emotions,” my father said solemnly. “And I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  I did not know how to answer him. I felt horrible, like I had forced him to apologise when the need for him to do so was long gone. I quickly changed the subject. “I opened the house to three friends since you left.”

  “Tell me about these people you brought into the house.”

  “Well, there’s Cantona.”

  “Like the footballer?”

  I nodded. “He’s from Bangladesh. Did not want to be a construction worker, so he ran and hid with me.”

  “What did he want to be then?”

  “An artist.”

  My father, surprisingly, seemed impressed. “You know, your mother was a fantastic artist.”

  “I did not know that,” I said, and meant it.

  “She stopped painting when we stopped travelling, but her art was exquisite, always brilliant.”

  “So is Cantona’s.”

  My father smiled wistfully. “Who else lives in the flat now?”

  “There’s Tights Chang.”

  My father chuckled. “Tights? Are you making these people up, boy?”

  “Well, his real name is Chang Ying Hao, but after watching superhero movies and Robin Hood: Men in Tights, he believed that all good, brave people wear tights. With a different pop culture diet, his name could have been Chainmail Chang.”

  “Sounds like quite a character.”

  “He is. He and Cantona sleep in your room now.”

  “Oh. You put a couple of those types in our house?”

  “Those types?”

  “You know…butt people.” He saw the look on my face. “They’re, you know, of the gay.”

  “Father…what—no, they’re not ‘of the gay’!”

  “I don’t mean it as a bad thing!”

  “No, they’re not!” I repeated. “They’re just sharing a room. Cantona is in love with Shanti.”

  “Who is Shanti?”

  “She’s the third person I let in. She stays in the master bedroom. Or, well, the guest bedroom.”

  My father smiled sadly. “That empty monument to my hope that your mother would come back to me.” It was something I knew, but my father and I had kept it unspoken over the years. He sighed and stood up. Then he placed a ghostly hand on my shoulder. “Look out for them. Protect them and give them a home. Down there, people look at trivial things like nationality and education and income before deciding if they can be neighbours with somebody. Up here, all that matters is that you are kind and good. As above, my son, so below.”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, it is good to see you,” my father said.

  I smiled. “In any case, I think I’m bleeding to death, so you may see more of me soon.” I thought of the alternative to heaven, and I gulped. “Hopefully.”

  My father shook his head. “I won’t be seeing you for a while more.” He had a peculiar way of saying it, as though the fact brought him immense joy and insurmountable sadness at the same time.

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Oh, trust me. Being dead is much, much easier than staying alive.” Now I thought of the rod sticking out my back, and the round, gaping wound in my calf that burnt right to the bone.

  “Father, before you go, I need advice. How do I stop a horde of maniacal supernatural beings?”

  “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast,” he said, his essence fading back into the pearly wisps. “Now, open your eyes.”

  The kampong dissolved around me. I felt my father’s presence fade into the aether. There were a thousand voices in the air. Some begged, some pleaded, some lamented, some exalted, some laughed with mirth. Everything was black now, but in this blackness was everything. My mind bent and stretched and reached for the tangible, and then it was somewhere warm and familiar.

  I opened my eyes. I was inside my mother’s blue Toyota. There was a great heap of charred rubble outside, the smouldering remains of an abandoned mill. Jared’s black Audi was gone.

  In the blue Toyota, I thought of my friends. I thought of Diyanah.

  I turned the key in its ignition. The car trembled to a start. Something rattled by my foot. I looked down and saw that was a singular almond. I picked it up and held it to my heart.

  Chapter Eighteen: Reverie Rice

  A quick search on my smartphone told me that Bukit Halus was thirty kilometres to the northeast, and my navigation app mapped out the fastest way to the hill. To bursts of pain, I pushed my foot on the accelerator and drove until the trees gave way to shophouses. Some were metal workshops, with lengths of steel occupying much of their floors; some were auto shops, greasy and littered with vehicle parts. Tenants were pulling at rusty shutters, ending business for the day. The cafés weren’t, however, and were occupied by workers washing down the fatigue in their bones with a cold beer or a hot coffee.

  I drove until the roads became cobbled lanes and the shophouses became timeless red façades of Malacca’s heritage centre, where colonial churches have been transformed to museums, where a clock tower stood, revered for being built under the instruction of colonising Europeans centuries ago, rather than for its ability to tell the time. Tourists lined the streets, posing and taking pictures, and wearing bright visors to block out the sun.

  The cobbled lanes became roads again and all symptoms of European colonialism were stripped away, replaced by skyscrapers and office towers that bore the names of banks or captains of industry. Men in neutral-coloured suits and women in colourful headscarves were trickling out from the glass doors of these buildings. On the roads, cars that ranged from the still-functioning to the stylish-and-functioning piled up. Roadside food stalls enjoyed long, snaking queues. They chatted, these people of the world outside the blue Toyota. Some did so seriously and sombrely, some were laughing. With the sun down, their toil was over.

  My drive took me past the pagoda-like Kampung Hulu Mosque, crowded with people performing their evening prayers.

  Life swelled and surged around me, almost mockingly.

  A few people—those who looked long enough to notice—saw the rod that stuck out of the driver in the blue Toyota. It stopped them in the ebb and flow of their lives. They stared and they gawked, but they did nothing more. It was the age of change, when the demographics of society were gearing towards balance and equal distribution; when transsexuals took an active role in the economy and thus everyday life; when girls dressed for the sake of comfort rather than old-fashioned propriety; when, due to the prevalence and proliferation of social media, art bled into life. Perhaps that was all they thought of my suffering—art bleeding into real life. If I were truly in pain, they must have reasoned, I would be asking for help and
driving towards the hospital. I wish I could (be heading to a hospital, preferably on a comfortable stretcher in an ambulance). It might be the age of change, but love is love is love, and the people I loved needed me.

  The closer I got to Bukit Halus, the crowds thinned, and when my navigation app noted that I was a mere hundred metres from my destination, there was not a single soul to be seen.

  Bukit Halus loomed forebodingly against the bruise-hued sky. A smattering of trees on the gradual incline faced me, but it otherwise seemed devoid of life. That changed when I followed the road to the opposite slope where the road ended. There was an empty black Audi with a Singaporean car plate, its driver’s door ajar. Past the Audi, I continued off the road and higher up the grassy slopes. I was about ten metres from the top when I stopped and parked the car in the middle of a dirt path. I hobbled the rest of the way up, cold sweat drenching my sawdust-covered, rod-pierced T-shirt. Every step was a monumental feat, as I fought against the sharp, swarming pains in my right shoulder and left calf.

  A thicket of rengas trees stood between me and the hill’s flat peak. I hid behind one as I approached the plateau. A large crowd of people dressed in red robes had gathered there. Well, “gathered” is not exactly the right term here. They stood silent and motionless. They seemed to have been put there, like dolls at an exhibition. Next to them was an assortment of animated supernatural beings—ghosts and fully-veiled vampires and pontianaks, among others. I was reminded of teenagers at the screening of a new Star Wars movie. They were expecting their lives, or afterlives, to change forever.

  Before them, at the other end of the plateau, was a wooden platform about a metre and a half high. I could not make out the solitary figure on it, so I moved, slowly, noiselessly, to the next rengas tree, careful to ensure that the metal rod did not hit foliage. The figure was President Pupus Tan, his eyes were unfocussed. Above him, Durshirah hovered, his disfigured lips flapping rapidly in a chant. The chant grew steadily louder, and Pupus Tan’s body began convulsing.

  He repeated the chant over and over again, and with it, Pupus Tan’s paroxysms grew more violent. Suddenly, Durshirah stopped, and Pupus Tan lay down on his stomach. Durshirah repeated the chant, and Pupus Tan did a truly horrifying thing.

  Face down on the wooden platform, he raised his arms backwards, straight up, perfectly perpendicular to the ground. A sickening crunch marked the moment his shoulders broke. There was the sound of bones and sinew twisting out of position. With superhuman strength and speed, he dug his fingers into his back. Blood spurted where his nails and fingertips had pierced his flesh.

  None of the people gathered reacted. They continued staring with thoughtless, glassy eyes. Some of the supernatural beings, however, cheered the President on.

  The scene was grotesque. Pupus Tan’s hands were bent unnaturally as they burrowed into his back. Then, to the sound of bone gnashing bone, his arms straightened upright again—grasping the entire column of his spine. It had come out with a foul squelch, like pulling a root out of mud.

  I believed I had just witnessed the death of the President of Singapore.

  A supernatural black flame engulfed Durshirah. It did not waver but pulsated like a malevolent star. The fire died in a few seconds, and flecks of blood-brown ash fell pathetically to the ground.

  Durshirah declared in a triumphant voice, “I am free of my covenant!”

  His followers roared and cheered.

  Louder even than the din, he directed them to follow his example. “Chant the Severitas over your human. Be free of them! Claim the world for our kind!”

  The cheers returned and were soon replaced by a hundred voices chanting the Severitas. The robed humans fell to the seduction of the spell; they, too, began sacrificing their bodies to the metaphysical entities that haunted them. Some pulled their limbs out. Some gouged out their eyes. Some sliced their tongues. Some disembowelled themselves, their intestines and various innards spilling in sickening splashes on the grass. Pools of blood began forming on the ground.

  It did not happen to all who were present. Some of the supernatural beings appeared horrified by the chaos unfolding around them. Their howling laments seeped into the crimson below. I was glad that mercy and sympathy still shone in a moment as dark as this. But the time to exalt these virtues would come later.

  My mind was on my friends. Where were they in all of this? Had they already been sacrificed to whatever macabre desires festered in Durshirah? I scanned the plateau, my heart beating so fast it threatened to burst out of my chest. And then I saw them.

  Above the frenzy, Durshirah’s voice rang across the plateau. “Bring out our enemies!”

  Pushed up to the platform by a burly jinn were Tights, Cantona, Shanti and Diyanah—in her human form—bound and gagged. My dread dissolved into the night, and in its absence, my mind raced to a kind of muted but steely determination.

  “I see that some of you lack the spine to perform Severitas upon your human parasites,” Durshirah drawled. “Know that I can now perform it for you—or to you.” He telekinetically untied the ropes that bound my friends, with the exception of Diyanah. With their free hands, Shanti, Cantona and Tights removed their gags.

  Before they could undo Diyanah’s, however, the penanggal began chanting again, and on stage, Cantona began convulsing. A geyser of froth spilled from his mouth.

  “Do you see?” Durshirah’s voice echoed into the night. “This human is not mine to haunt. But now that I am free from the strings of my covenant, I get to choose who my dancing monkey will be. I get to have an entire army of dancing monkeys.”

  Shanti cried for Durshirah to stop, but the floating head continued his vile chanting. She rushed to Cantona and tried to hold him still against the vicious spasms that rocked his body.

  “Please, stop.” Shanti was begging now. “Take me instead!”

  Durshirah regarded Shanti with bemusement. “I will. In fact, I will take all of you.” He chanted again, and Shanti too began convulsing beside Cantona like a mindless marionette. Tights and Diyanah could only watch with unmistakeable fear in their eyes.

  Durshirah ceased his chanting and both my friends slumped to the floor, gasping as they regained control of their faculties. The penanggal then hovered towards Diyanah, who tried futilely to look into his eyes with defiance. “And I will begin with the traitor amongst us,” he drawled.

  I considered my options from behind the rengas tree. I would not be able to sprint to them in time. Doing so also carried the added risk of making my way through a swarm of bloodthirsty supernatural beasts recently freed from their covenants.

  Beasts.

  My father’s words came scrambling back to me. Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.

  I hobbled back to the blue Toyota and extracted my laptop from the boot. I connected it to the car’s stereo system—all with my left hand. By now, I had lost feeling in my right hand. I could not raise it or move it in any way. In any other situation, I think panic would have set in and overwhelmed me. But I thought of what Durshirah might make Cantona do to himself, or to the people he loved.

  I started the car, and my recording of Diyanah’s SoundLoft session reverberated from the Toyota’s speakers. As I drove up the slope, I wound down the windows, so the truly majestic sounds of Diyanah’s mind could undulate outwards and grace the plateau. All beings turned as one towards me as the blue Toyota rose onto the plateau.

  Some of the supernatural beings stood before me but I mowed into them, stopping just before I reached the few robed humans still alive. I twisted the knob on my car’s audio system, and the recording from the SoundLoft echoed into the dusky air.

  The humans began blinking. Some of them slumped to the floor. It appeared that whatever spell Durshirah had them under was finally broken.

  But the demonic head would not be defeated. He rose high into the air, away from my friends, and shouted so loudly I thought Bukit Halus would split underneath us: “Kill him!”

  An assort
ment of jinn, vampires and pontianaks stalked towards me. I could catch only a glimpse of Durshirah chanting before I stepped on the accelerator again to evade my pursuers. I drove in circles around the robed people. My orbit brought me close to the platform where my friends were.

  Cantona, obviously under Durshirah’s influence, had picked up a parang and was swinging it at Tights, who was evading it rather deftly. Shanti stood aside, yelling at Cantona to stop, to fight the penanggal’s spell. Diyanah was held back by three jinn, who laughed gleefully at my housemates’ predicament.

  Meanwhile, the people who had been yanked out of their reverie began reacting to the carnage around them. Screams of horror and confusion rented the air.

  I realised I needed Cantona to hear the music too, so as my orbit approached the edge of the stage, I slammed on the brakes. The car skidded. Earth sputtered against the wheels. My mother’s blue Toyota bumped with moderate force against the wooden platform and the metal rod sticking out of my shoulders was pushed even closer towards my heart. I felt the grind of metal on bone and the involuntary yielding of tears from my eyes.

  I stepped out of the car, and the piano chords rose ever louder into the starry night. More robed figures snapped out of their reverie. I wanted to run to my friends, but my body was fading into uselessness under the barrage of pain.

  Upon the platform, the music finally reached Cantona’s ears. His large eyes lost their glossed-over, empty look and now expressed utter panic, as if he were a passenger in a horrific car crash set upon by a crazed driver. With a cry of anguish, he fell onto his knees.

  “Cantona?” Tights called, approaching him tentatively.

  Cantona jerked up, causing Tights to jump back. But he was less stiff now—his movements had agency. His eyes gained focus and fell on the parang in his hands. Shock and confusion presided on his face. Upon seeing the abject pandemonium that had befallen the place, his jaws clenched and he gripped the parang even tighter. Cantona’s eyes met Tights’, and Tights knew instantly that his roommate was himself again. Shanti saw this too and ran to Cantona. The two entwined in an emotional embrace, each pouring out to the other their own relief, their emphatic joy in the other’s presence. They kissed, even as chaos flared and flowed around them.