Tights was the first one to point to me. Cantona and Shanti broke their hug. They looked horrified. I gave them my best smile, given the circumstances. The rod sticking out my shoulder must not have been a very appealing sight.
“Where’s Diyanah?” I called out. She was no longer on the platform, and neither were the three luminous-orange jinn that had guarded her.
Tights pointed.
On the other end of the platform, she was fighting them, free of whatever spell that had bound her in human form. She was that truly horrifying creature, red eyes and whipping hair and talons dripping jinn essence at the end of her slender wrists.
But another movement caught my eye. A truly horrific wendigo, its antlers an exhibit of mangled human flesh, had jumped onto the platform, stepping menacingly towards my friends.
“Hey!” I called, a word that came like a ball of frayed wire out my throat. The wendigo did not turn. Tights and Shanti stood on either side of Cantona, who held the parang before him. “Get away from them!”
But the wendigo ignored me, as insignificant as the bloody gristle that hung above his head. Cantona swung at it with the parang, a blind swing in the dark, hoping for the best. The wendigo swung a hand and easily pushed the parang away on its flat side.
I tried to walk towards my friends, but my legs gave way under the pain that had spread everywhere. There were screams, there were inhuman shrieks. There were cries of agony. There was havoc. The plateau’s natural green was now soaked blood-red. My hands pushed down into puddles of it as I crawled. Every moment was a faceted, fractious experience: one moment I felt completely numb, as if my nerves had taken their gamut and could no longer afford further signals. The next, my entire body felt like it was being sundered by brute force.
Back at the other end of the plateau, robed humans were running down the slopes of Bukit Halus, away from this truly macabre scene. The beings that haunted them followed, having seen the true extent of Durshirah’s ambitions.
But as this exodus occurred, there was an influx of people, too.
Screaming some unintelligible battle cry, a gang of humans was sprinting up the hill. They were led by Devas, who was aiming his shotgun at the wendigoes and pontianaks trying to intercept them before they could reach. I crawled my way towards the stairs that led up to the platform, keeping my profile as low as possible to avoid gunfire. It was difficult to do, however, for the metal rod kept scraping against the ground.
Shotgun discharges filled the air, and where it stopped, it was replaced with Devas heroically shouting, “Get away from my wife!”
I stopped to look around me. Humans and monsters were fighting each other. Some humans were helping fellow humans escape. Some were helping monsters, urging them to leave. Some monsters were helping humans fight off attacks from other monsters. On the platform, Shanti and Tights were cowering behind Cantona, who was fighting off the wendigo with the parang. Devas was sprinting towards them.
Floating above it all, Durshirah watched the madness unfold. His gnarled features suggested he was thoroughly amused.
I crawled on and soon reached the stairs to the platform. I tried to pull myself up each step, leaning on my left side, until a boot thudded just centimetres from my face. I turned, only to look down the barrel of Devas’ shotgun. He looked absolutely livid. I closed my eyes and prepared to return to the wispy aether where my father was. Several moments passed and nothing happened. I opened my eyes. Devas had lowered his shotgun, his features relaxed into an expression of sympathy. His eyes were fixed on the metal bar in my shoulder. Then, his eyes met mine. For a moment, it seemed he was about to help me. Then, the moment passed, and Devas bounded up to the platform.
I continued to struggle, one excruciating step after the next. Up ahead, the wendigo that was fighting Cantona turned towards Devas instead.
“Devas, watch out!” Cantona yelled.
But Devas, his movements fluid and athletic, was not perturbed at all. When the wendigo was close enough, Devas slickly sidestepped its antlers, spun, planted the barrel of his shotgun against the wendigo’s snout and pulled the trigger. The wendigo’s head exploded in an eruption of blood and chunks of supernatural flesh.
I climbed another step. The pain was overwhelming now. Every nerve in my body had had its fill of protesting, and chose, instead, to shut down. I placed my hand on the next step. Then, suddenly, my hand was not the only thing on the step. The unmistakeable elongated nails of a pontianak punctured the top of my hand. I felt it exit through my palm. I felt the wood underneath rupture against the nail. My body surprised me—it was able to feel more pain, aggregating the agony from the part of my skin that had split apart, from the flesh that had been dislodged, from the bone that had been bored clean through.
The pontianak hovered above me in a cloud of darkness, one hand extended downwards to nail me in place.
From behind the pontianak, a cry of anger.
A swift whoosh.
My assailant’s head was forcibly removed from her neck. Above her, Diyanah held her head aloft in claws stained with the remains of jinn, pontianaks, vampires and other parts whose origins I could not quite trace. She growled at the dead, useless thing before tossing it aside.
Diyanah then descended and pulled out the hand that kept me nailed to the wood. The thing before me was now human, with a face that was familiar and pleasing. It took some of the pain away. Some. Not all. Then, Diyanah was no longer before me. She was fighting other beings, swinging and slashing and growling.
On the platform Devas was approaching my friends, but Durshirah floated down, and hovered between them.
“What the fuck are you?” Devas asked, not hiding his disgust at Durshirah’s misshapen countenance.
Durshirah sneered and began chanting.
Pupus Tan’s spine and Shanti lifted into the air. Both floated about two metres off the platform, the spine pointed dangerously at Shanti. Shanti struggled uselessly against the supernatural administrations against her.
“Leave her!” Devas demanded, his voice wavering.
Durshirah, of course, was not amused at being told what to do. He pushed the spine towards Shanti—
Before the penanggal could drive the column of bone into his wife, Devas fired his shotgun at Durshirah. The penanggal evaded the shot, but a few pellets caught him in his face, and took a chunk off his cheek. Distracted, Durshirah relinquished his control over Shanti, who fell towards the platform. Cantona caught her.
The penanggal focussed instead on Pupus Tan’s grisly spine. With astonishing speed, the spine flipped and torpedoed through the air. There was the sound of crunching bone and crushing sinew as the column of bone punctured Devas’ chest. He flew backwards, onto the floor. The spine followed his movement, and went deeper still, penetrating out his back before embedding itself into the wooden floor below.
In all this, nobody noticed Tights, light as a feather, grabbing the parang from Cantona’s hands. He ran towards Durshirah. Just as the penanggal turned, Tights swung the parang downwards onto Durshirah’s wrinkled forehead.
Chapter Nineteen: Spinal Fluid Karma Cocktail
A thunderous, inhuman cry tore the night. From it bled disbelief and panic. The impact of Tights’ blow had dislodged one of Durshirah’s eyes, such that it hung loosely by a gristle from its socket. The other eye was rolling in horror, shooting up to look at the parang, and down, trying to catch sight of his other eye. Blood—black, putrid, unholy, inhuman—poured forth from the deep, skull-splitting gash made by Tights.
And then, with a dull squelch, Durshirah fell to the ground. Cantona began stomping on it, and the squelches filled the suddenly silent night.
Chaos erupted. With no head to unify them, the supernatural beings began dispersing, running with no direction, but unable to go far as their new covenants began to settle, binding them to this place. Their howls were for mercy, their screams were of agony, and their shrieks were bleeding with regret for following Durshirah, now a grotesque, misshap
en mass of cranial matter. Cantona’s sneakers were topped with the stuff, the whites of the canvas stained blood-red.
My entire nervous system fired up with searing, white-hot pain, like tiny needles being stabbed repeatedly into my skin. Time did not exist; only the pain did. My legs buckled under me, and I fell to my knees. Bracing myself up with my left arm, I tried to steady my ragged breath. But they came out in shudders, and I thought my entire body would be torn asunder under the rattle of every breath I took.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself back to my feet, and pulled myself two steps up the stairs, two steps closer to the platform. The movement caused my muscles to spasm and blinding agony erupted once again from my shoulder.
The more I moved, the more the pain crippled me. I found myself whimpering, helpless tears fell from my eyes. Once again, I wished that I was more of the man society expected me to be: stronger, tougher, much more impervious to pain and suffering. I was weak when my father died. I was weak each time Devas threatened me. I was weak now.
A sickening guttural moan interrupted my thoughts. I slowly forced myself up into a sitting position, all the while fighting the waves of pain from my shoulder. Not far from me was Devas, blood sputtering from his mouth, a long pillar of viscera spilling from his chest. My stomach lurched as I realised the spine that used to be inside President Pupus Tan, covered in evicted flesh and entrails, was lodged deep into Devas’ chest.
“Shanti,” Devas called out feebly. He was struggling to speak with a mouthful of blood.
Shanti was standing on the middle of the platform, surveying the carnage that had ruptured the night, that would very likely and very literally haunt this place for a long time. She turned sharply upon hearing her voice. She walked slowly towards Devas, her eyes never leaving her husband. I could not imagine the thoughts and emotions that were coursing through her in that moment.
Kneeling beside his ravaged body, Shanti gingerly picked up Devas’ hand.
“All my life, I did not want you to think I was weak,” he said, gargling blood. He spat some of it onto his chest.
Shanti grinned. “Well, you look weak as shit right now.”
Devas nearly laughed—he ended up coughing even more blood. “All I wanted was for people to see that I had a good wife,” he sputtered.
“I was a good wife Devas,” Shanti corrected him. Her words were cold, but a small nip of regret bled through them.
“I’m so sorry, Shanti.”
Shanti remained silent, her jaw visibly clenched.
“Please forgive me, Shanti.”
Angry droplets of wrath streaked Shanti’s face. She said nothing, and when Devas’ body went limp, she stood up and looked down pitilessly at his lifeless form. Devas’ eyes stared out blankly as his head lolled to the side. Blood poured out his mouth. Shanti wiped her tears away with the back of one hand.
Cantona and Tights, who had been standing off to the side all this while, took a few uncertain steps towards her. Cantona reached out a hand. She took his hand and pulled him towards her. I watched as the two of them embraced. Shanti buried her face into Cantona’s chest, adding tears to the perspiration that already drenched his shirt. Tights knelt by Devas and closed his dead eyes.
I tried calling for them.
It was Cantona who saw me first and called for me. His eyes then left mine and fixated on the length of metal that was still sticking out of my shoulder. My friends rushed to my side, looking horrified. Shanti had stopped crying, her tears drying up with fear. “What happened?” Cantona asked me.
When I could not answer, Cantona screamed, “Tights, help me!”
Tights put his arm around me and tried to hoist me to my feet. The pain returned and I could only scream out in agony.
“It’s gone right through!” I could hear the panic in Cantona’s voice as he joined Tights in trying to steady me. My vision was starting to blur, and I could not discern Cantona from Tights from Shanti. “Where’s Diyanah? Diyanah!”
“Where’s the car?” Shanti asked, her voice high-pitched. I pointed towards the other end of the arena. It was too much effort—I collapsed, and one of my friends caught me. This friend held me with an almost supernatural strength.
I looked up. Diyanah held me steady. Her smile was otherworldly. It calmed me. Diyanah had been through this. Death was simply another adventure, another epic journey from one world to another no different than our trip from the scraped skies of Singapore to the slightly less scraped skies of Malacca. “I am with you,” she said.
Somewhere from another world, Tights was saying, “You’re going to be okay!”
I felt another three pairs of hands carrying me. “Watch the bar!” I think it was Cantona who shouted that. Or was it Shanti? Voices were starting to meld together into disembodied, dull, throbbing sounds.
“Tights, get his leg!” I felt my legs leave the ground. I could not be sure if it was because I was being lifted. I could just be leaving earth. “Carefully! It might be broken!”
“Hurry up before he bleeds out!”
“We’re trying, Shanti!”
“Diyanah, clear the path!”
Diyanah’s hands left me and the pain returned, everywhere. It was an immense, inescapable pain. There was a sound like a massive amount of organic matter sliding against grass.
“Don’t drop him!”
“Oh my God, the blood’s everywhere!”
“Shanti, get the car ready!”
I could no longer make sense of their panicked voices. One by one, their blurred faces became nebulous clouds, rapidly losing what little colour and definition they had. One by one, the stars above blinked out. The space between the stars became infinite, and in doing so, ceased to be space. They became nothing—everything I could see and touch and know became nothing. The pain became nothing. I slipped into the existence behind the veil, in which the concept of friends, of matter, of self, of life had neither the time nor space to be.
They say your life flashes before you when you die.
They were wrong. Everything just faded away, and me along with it.
My final thought was of my love for Diyanah.
Desserts
It’s over, my brothers and sisters
We are those leftover
All we have left are just deserts;
No longer able to tell
grain from sand,
vulture from friend.
Chapter Twenty: Ice Cream Saudade
The first sensation I registered was the pain in my shoulder, though it quickly dulled into a soft, throbbing ache. I then tried to move my legs. One of them shifted slightly, while the other shifted slightly in a paroxysm.
The next thing I registered, when I opened my eyes, was the pale shadow blocking the light. Vague shapes were taking form now. The shadow gained definition and arranged itself into Diyanah’s familiar face.
I tried to speak, but all that came out was a parched wheezing.
Diyanah smiled. White teeth. Full, dark lips. Brown eyes full of life. Raven hair pulled to one shoulder. It was the greatest sight to wake up to.
My surroundings were becoming clearer, too. The walls were alabaster, and bright fluorescent lights illuminated the large room. There was an empty bed behind Diyanah.
I tried speaking again. “Where am I?” The three words raked at my throat.
“You’re at Mahkota Medical Centre.”
I tried to sit up, but that only brought shooting pains across my right shoulder.
I glanced down at my body. I was dressed, it appeared, in only a blue hospital gown. Under the gown, thick bandages wrapped my shoulder, while my left leg, immobile in a cast, was raised by a medical harness.
I was in a communal ward with two other occupants. Five more beds sat empty.
“Where are the rest?”
She did not have to answer.
“He awake! He awake!” Tights yelled at the top of his lungs from the ward’s entrance, ignoring the nurses who were shushing him ir
ritably. He ran over and drew me into a hug. He smelled fresh and clean, of citric-tinged soap and shampoo. Stinging pains emanated from my shoulder as he hugged me, but I also welcomed Tights’ warmth. I wrapped my left arm around his back.
I felt a newcomer to the hug—it was Cantona, who rested his head on my chest.
Shanti joined soon after. She was the first one to break the hug—only to put an arm around Diyanah’s shoulder and draw her into a group hug of five kindred spirits. We were laughing. We were happy.
My body ached even more under the crush of four bodies, but there was no way I could deny the pure joy I felt coursing through my veins. We were all from different countries, backgrounds, ethnicities and planes of existence, but we were family.
The nurse on duty made an angry, indignant sound, but we were too relieved, and too happy to be in one another’s presence, to care.
After we broke our hug, I asked, “What happened?”
They told me about everything—Tights killing Durshirah, Devas’ men scattering to the winds, the spirits who ran away, lost, unable to fulfil their covenants. Thankfully, none of them got hurt during our run-in with Durshirah and his kin.
They got me up to speed about what they have been up to since then—they were staying in a hotel nearby, and had spent their time exploring the city of Malacca.
Shanti asked me, “Is there anything we can get you?”
“I’m craving ice cream,” I rasped weakly.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Comfort food.”
“Fine.”
She and Cantona headed towards the door and stopped halfway. Shanti, bless her soul, turned and hissed at Tights to follow them.
The Minorities Page 25