Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction

by Dominica Malcolm

“Ooh. Was he cute?”

  “Kinda.” Yi Ling was hesitant. “Hey, uh, I’m just going to check out those stalls over there, okay?”

  “Yeah sure,” Amira said. “Knock yourself out. I’m getting some char kuay teow.”

  With that, Yi Ling walked nervously into the alley, which was dim and deserted. The only thing stirring were two or three feral cats, who miaowed in suspicion at Yi Ling as she passed.

  Yi Ling shuddered.

  The place stank. Piles and piles of old newspapers and scrap metal, next to overturned dustbins loaded with rotten food. What looked like human faeces was clogging up a drain. Graffiti was scribbled on the metal grilles and doors of the back of the shophouses forming the alley—most of it profane or political.

  Why was she here? Yi Ling couldn’t explain it. All she knew was she was suddenly filled with a morbid curiosity. There was something about that boy that intrigued her, and she knew she would not be at peace until she saw him again.

  One of the feral cats hissed and arched its back. Yi Ling noticed it had only one hideous yellow eye. It clawed savagely at the empty air.

  There was suddenly a voice. “Can I help you, miss?”

  Yi Ling jumped: she whirled around to see the boy from earlier, standing at the tinted-glass doors of a shop.

  But that shop wasn’t there before! She could have sworn!

  The boy smiled.

  “Why don’t you come in? There may be something here you’re looking for.”

  §

  The boy’s shop was dusty and crammed, filled mostly with rows and rows of shelves. A stuffed eagle hung from the ceiling, while a medieval suit of armour stood in one corner.

  Their contents of the jars on the shelves were unusual. One seemed to contain a shrunken head, while another held a wrinkled hand with six fingers. Another was labelled: ‘The Tears of Your Lover upon Learning of Your Death.’ Still another had what appeared to be a stillborn foetus submersed in a clear milky liquid. To Yi Ling’s horror, it seemed to be moving.

  Yi Ling had listened, half-bemused, half-scared, as the boy gave her a very strange offer.

  “But… how are you going to take my shadow? Can you?” she asked.

  “All you need to do is drink a special tea. It’s a bit sour: it is made from some very rare herbs, after all. Old Orang Bunian recipe. You heard of them?” the boy asked.

  Yi Ling nodded. The Orang Bunian, or ‘Hidden People,’ were right out of Malay folklore. They were a race of supernatural beings said to reside deep within the Malaysian jungle. Like the elves of Western legend, they were said to look like unnaturally beautiful humans, with access to magical powers beyond mortal understanding.

  She had heard stories about them as a kid from her old housekeeper back in Alor Setar. Mak Cik Fatimah, grey-haired, snaggle-toothed, saronged, had used them as bogeymen to influence her behaviour. According to her, the Bunian were a race of tricksters, who liked nothing more than causing havoc.

  “Adik, don’t go out too late,” Yi Ling remembered Mak Cik Fatimah telling her in Malay. “Or the Orang Bunian will catch you, and make you their slave!”

  Yi Ling had always thought of the Orang Bunian as a myth.

  Seeing this shop and its strange wares, however, she wasn’t so sure any more.

  The boy reached under the counter—he seemed to have an entire world down there—and pulled out an ancient-looking copper teapot, and a glass mug.

  He poured a murky brew into the mug. It smelled of smoke and old leaves.

  “How do I know this is safe?” Yi Ling asked. “How do I know you haven’t drugged it?”

  “You have my word that it is perfectly safe. All it will do is make you lose your shadow, and nothing more,” the boy said.

  “What about the getting smarter part?”

  “That will happen. In a matter of days, you will be the brightest student in the class. You have the word of the Bunian.”

  “Losing my shadow… it won’t hurt me, will it?” Yi Ling asked.

  The boy sighed. “What, do you think you’re going to get shadow cancer or something?”

  To her embarrassment, Yi Ling found her hands shaking as she picked up the mug. She pressed it to her lips, and said a silent prayer.

  Part of her wanted to fling the mug into the boy’s face, accuse him of scamming her. What he was suggesting was impossible! A violation of physics and biology and logic! Who knew what his real intentions were?

  But Yi Ling was desperate. What did she have to lose, anyway?

  She closed her eyes as she gulped down the brew. It was sour and burnt her throat, and Yi Ling forced herself not to throw up.

  The boy smiled as she slammed the empty mug on the table with a loud thunk.

  “That was awful,” Yi Ling said. “Do you have any water?”

  She stopped. For there was a hideous pain throbbing in her temples.

  Yi Ling tried to speak, but her words were stuck in her throat. There was vertigo, and her knees were suddenly weak. Her vision blurred, before suddenly snapping back into focus. There was an unnatural brightness to the world that warped her senses and made her want to throw up.

  Her head started to ache. Yi Ling clutched the counter for support.

  “I thought you said—”

  Yi Ling screamed. Her feet started to burn: it felt as if her heels were being forcibly ground by sandpaper.

  The boy grinned. In her vertigo, his features twisted. No longer was he very handsome; instead, with his slit eyes, overly pointed chin and gnarled forehead, he resembled a crone from a medieval painting.

  Yi Ling screamed in agony. Tears poured down her cheeks, smudging her makeup.

  She was suddenly aware of a dark shape forming behind her. A strange cloud of nothingness—how was it possible for nothing to have a shape?—which billowed into a human silhouette.

  Even through the burning pain in her feet, Yi Ling recognised the figure’s faint outline.

  It was her.

  The boy now had a small plastic jar. He raised it and shouted some foreign words, and the shadow grew ill-defined, losing its features as it turned into a cloud that floated, like smoke in the wind, into the jar.

  “You’re going to do very well in your studies, Yi Ling,” the boy laughed. “You’re certainly going to shine.”

  That was the last thing Yi Ling remembered before she blacked out.

  §

  “Hey. Hey, girl. Are you alright?”

  There was a stinging pain. Someone had struck her on the cheek!

  Yi Ling opened her eyes, blinking at the sudden infusion of light.

  Amira was standing before her, her brow furrowed, panic in her eyes.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I thought you were dead!”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know! I suddenly see you lying on the ground, muttering like kena rasuk, I was so scared—”

  She was lying on a bench. How she had got there, she had no idea. The last thing she remembered was a good-looking boy with a scorpion tattoo and a strange column of smoke…

  Holy shit.

  Instinctively, she glanced at the dark alley she had been to earlier—it was no longer there. The space where Yi Ling had walked earlier was blocked (or replaced?) by a wall.

  Somehow, she was not surprised.

  Yi Ling forced herself to get up.

  She was still in Petaling Street, on the road by the Chinese food stalls, where Amira had gone after she bought her Mockingjay pin. There were about a dozen curious onlookers nearby, all staring at them with a mixture of fear and amusement. A middle-aged Malay man in a football jersey was taking photos of her with his phone.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Yi Ling said, self-conscious.

  “Should we see a doctor?” Amira took her friend’s hand. “You don’t look good. Maybe we should—”

  “No,” Yi Ling said. “Let’s go home. I have an assignment to finish.”

  And at that, they walked away.

/>   §

  Seeing as the fainted girl was okay, the bystanders dispersed.

  The Malay man with the camera phone smiled as he went through his shots. They were both kinda pretty, he thought. Damn, I should have stepped in to help, got them indebted to me. Then ask them both out on a date, romance, threesome!

  As he went through his pictures, however, he noticed something peculiar.

  It was a bright sunny day: his shots had been very clear.

  The sunlight meant there were a lot of shadows. They were easy to spot: there was the shadow of the Malay girl on the ground. An Indian man and his son cast twin shadows on the nearby wall, with the shadow of a car nearby.

  The girl who had just fainted, however, did not cast one. On the patch of road beside her, where her shadow should have been, there was nothing.

  §

  That night, Kumar came home to a strange sight.

  Yi Ling was sitting by the table in the hall, a huge stack of files before her.

  She was furiously scribbling on a test-pad, her wrist moving so fast it was almost a blur. Sheets of paper were strewn all over the floor, all covered in Yi Ling’s semi-cursive writing.

  “Damn girl,” Kumar said. “You alright?”

  Yi Ling did not answer. Her eyes were glazed. Her lips were moving; she appeared to be muttering under her breath.

  “…acceptance,” she said, her voice a flat monotone. “In the case of Jaran v Gorsby, it was established that if consideration is adequate yet not sufficient—”

  She did not stop writing.

  “Yi Ling,” Kumar said. “Can you hear me?”

  “…the person making the offer must then revoke his—”

  “Shit girl, snap out of it!”

  Desperate, Kumar shook Yi Ling by the shoulders. Her body was unusually warm, and she was passive. Indeed, she didn’t even seem to realise she was being shaken. Her wrists kept moving even after they had been forced off the paper.

  Kumar was about to call an ambulance when she suddenly snapped back into life. The haze in her eyes disappeared, and her wrists fell limp.

  “What just happened?” Yi Ling asked, dazed.

  “You were in some kind of trance!” Kumar said. “Damn, girl, do you know how scary that was? Seeing you saying all that mumbo-jumbo like that—”

  Yi Ling however, was not paying any attention.

  She picked up the scattered papers on the floor, and slowly read them.

  A wide smile broke out on her face.

  “This is amazing!” she exclaimed, waving the papers in Kumar’s face. “This is bloody amazing!”

  “What is?” a baffled Kumar asked, but Yi Ling was in her own little world.

  “It worked!” she screamed.

  Kumar watched, bemused, as Yi Ling did a little dance for joy. He had no idea what was going on, but humoured her as she pulled him into an impromptu tango.

  “Girl be crazy,” he muttered as he retreated to his room. He had no time for this, he still had three more Physics chapters to cover, damn it!

  After finally running out of energy, the beaming Yi Ling opened the window, and took a deep breath.

  There was a full moon tonight.

  And in its silvery light, Yi Ling practically glowed.

  §

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Yi Ling asked as she stepped into Mr Ong’s office.

  It had been a week since her visit to Petaling Street.

  “Yes, I did,” her lecturer nodded.

  His desk was extremely messy, with empty pizza boxes and plastic drink cartons nestled amongst kitsch travel souvenirs and half-marked assignments.

  Even with the window open, the room felt stuffy in the sweltering heat.

  “Will this be long, sir?” she asked. “I need to go home soon, I’m not feeling very well—”

  “Sit down, Yi Ling,” Mr Ong said, motioning her to the seat in front of him.

  “I just want to commend you on what a great job you’ve been doing,” he said.

  He held up a test paper: Yi Ling recognised it as an assignment she had completed two days ago.

  “In all my five years of teaching, this is one of the best papers I have ever read,” Mr Ong said. “Not only do you mention all the relevant cases, but your arguments are mature and well-presented. Seriously, there’s a lot of stuff in here that’s PhD material.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Indeed, the paper was so well-written that well… how do I put this… at first, I thought you might have been… cheating,” Mr Ong’s voice trailed off. “But after checking with Turnitin, and some other sources, I came to the conclusion that you couldn’t have. A lot of your insight is fresh and completely original! No textbook in the world has them!”

  Mr Ong stared at her briefly, before quickly turning away. He blinked in discomfort.

  “Please excuse me for a while. I have sensitive eyes,” he said.

  He opened his drawer and took out a bottle of eye drops, which he quickly applied.

  “Right then, where was I?” her lecturer said. “Oh yes.”

  He cleared his throat again.

  “I’ll be frank: before this, I’d almost given up hope in you. You didn’t seem to be taking the course seriously… I mean, honestly, you were coming in late and sleeping! I figured you for one those spoilt rich kids, you know? The kind who cruise by courses on their parents’ money… I was getting ready to put your name down for my re-sit classes!”

  It was difficult to pay attention. Yi Ling’s head was spinning, and her body was burning with a terrible fever. But she forced herself to look interested.

  “Thank you for proving me wrong,” Mr Ong said. “It seems that academically, you’re a bit of a late bloomer, but when you do bloom, you bloom brightly. I have absolutely no doubt that you will do great in the exam, but I’ll wish you all the best anyway. And remember, should you want a letter of recommendation for a university or anything, I’ll be more than willing to write you one.”

  They shook hands.

  “Anyway,” Mr Ong said. “Forgive me for being rude, but… how do I put this? Have you done something with your skin?”

  “What?”

  “You seem… fairer. And your complexion… there’s something about it that I can’t explain,” he struggled to find the words.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yi Ling said.

  She left the office, not even bothering to smile or wave goodbye. One, she was feeling unwell, and two, with her new brains, it’s not like she needed to be nice to him any more.

  The last week had been crazy.

  Academically, Yi Ling had been excelling.

  Her lecturers had all been extremely impressed at the sudden increase in quality of her legal arguments. Indeed, during a recent Jurispudence lecture, one of her answers had apparently been so magnificent that her teacher had taken notes. It was remarkable!

  Her sudden boost of intelligence had been noticed by her classmates, who typically, had started sucking up to her. Yi Ling had to turn down countless requests to lend them her lecture notes or go with them for study group. Even Kenny was asking for her help, for God’s sake!

  She wouldn’t have been able to help them anyway. How could she tell them that the secret of her success was supernatural, that the answers just ‘magically’ popped into her head?

  Even more amazingly, Yi Ling found she was able to solve Kumar’s physics assignments.

  She was careful, however, not to let Kumar know this. Again, how would she explain it?

  And so, Yi Ling had tried to be subtle. Tried hinting to Kumar he was going about this the wrong way, he had misunderstood a crucial theorem, maybe he should try different calculations, but her friend did not seem to get it at all. His dull wits frustrated her. How was he so stupid?

  She was thankful for her sudden new talents. Exams started tomorrow, and she was not stressed. And all it had cost her had been her shadow. Which absolutely no one had noticed was missing
.

  Best deal ever.

  Yi Ling worried, however, that she was falling ill.

  It had started two days ago. She had been playing badminton with Amira when she suddenly felt an odd sensation in her chest. It had been bright and sunny at the time.