Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction

by Dominica Malcolm

  It had started off mild; a slight tingling. Yi Ling had shrugged it off at first. Maybe my sports bra shrunk in the wash or something, she thought. She hadn’t had the luxury of free time in ages, and it felt good to be active again.

  But the pain had slowly intensified, to the point where she collapsed in tears. Her entire body felt like it was on fire. A concerned Amira had brought her home. A thermometer revealed she had a high fever.

  Yi Ling had barricaded herself in her room with chicken soup and copious amounts of water.

  The next morning, she felt fine. But the burning pain returned periodically. Sometimes it was her chest, sometimes her head, her legs, her lower body, sometimes her entire being. It was as if someone had lit up a furnace in her soul, which was slowly roasting all her insides.

  Today, there was extra agony. The heat was almost unbearable. Not to mention the nausea and discomfort. Yi Ling had taken three aspirins, to no avail. She wondered if she had caught some sort of flu. Oddly, there was no sweat; Yi Ling remained as dry as a bone, which she wasn’t sure was good or not.

  She staggered out of the college.

  A friend waved at her, oblivious to her suffering. She did not have enough strength to reply. Yi Ling was glad she had not brought her backpack today. God knows if she could carry it.

  She would not be able to make the walk back to her place. That she was sure. Especially not in the hot weather.

  Yi Ling had never been what the Malays called a puteri lilin, or ‘candle princess’, a girl scared of heat, but given how she was feeling, she had to get out of the heat quickly.

  She hailed a taxi, begging the driver to turn the air conditioning up as high as possible.

  §

  “Keep the change,” Yi Ling tossed a 50-ringgit note at the driver, as she rushed back to her apartment.

  It took every ounce of strength she had not to pass out. Normally, Yi Ling would take the stairs, but today, she headed straight to the elevator.

  Her apartment was empty; Kumar had gone to a tutorial. Desperate, she pulled off her clothes and rushed to the bathroom, where she turned on the shower. Yi Ling closed her eyes and felt the water cascading all over her, delighting at the coolness.

  It was almost orgasmic. Hydrogasmic. That really should be a word, she thought.

  Her relief, however, was short-lived. After five minutes or so, despite the deluge of icy water washing all over her at full pressure, the overwhelming heat returned.

  To make things worse, there was suddenly steam in the bathroom. It was perplexing; Yi Ling looked around for a while, before realising it was coming from her.

  The water was boiling as it touched her skin!

  “WHAT THE FUCK?” she screamed.

  Trying not to pass out, Yi Ling rushed to the hall, where she turned on both the fan and air-conditioning. She thought about getting dressed, but decided not to. Yi Ling drew the curtains, and sat naked in the darkness. The cool air against her skin was refreshing.

  She pulled up Kumar’s laptop.

  Too much heat in the body, she typed frantically into Google.

  A million results; Yi Ling scrolled through eight or nine pages. Most of them were references to ancient Chinese medicine. Apparently heat was caused by too much yin energy in the body or something. She did not know how relevant all this was, but copied them down.

  Just then, the door opened, and Kumar walked in.

  “Holy shit!” Yi Ling screamed.

  Quickly, she grabbed the sofa cushions nearby to cover herself. Kumar yelled and covered his eyes.

  “What the hell?” Kumar turned to face the wall as Yi Ling ran to her room. “What did you do to yourself, girl?”

  “I… I was hot, alright?” Yi Ling had thrown on a bikini, with a thin sheet over herself for extra modesty. Even that, however, felt stifling. “I didn’t know you’d be home!”

  “Tutorial cancelled,” Kumar muttered. “If I’d known I’d have stayed for the show.”

  “I’m decent already, by the way!” Yi Ling shouted as Kumar headed to the couch, his hands still over his eyes. “You can stop doing that now!”

  “No, girl,” Kumar said. “I… I can’t look at you!”

  “What?” an indignant Yi Ling screamed, hitting him on the shoulder. “Look, I have been working on my diet, alright, and I know—”

  “No, no!” Kumar protested, covering his eyes even tighter. “You’re… you’re shining!”

  “What?” Yi Ling was perplexed.

  “I don’t know what you’ve been doing, girl, but it’s not natural,” Kumar said. He sat down on the sofa, facing away from her. “You’re glowing in the dark! It’s like fucking Twilight!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look.” Kumar took out his phone, and snapped a picture of her.

  “Make sure you delete that photo after this, I don’t want you saving it in your Wank Bank or something,” Yi Ling said.

  She looked at the screen, and gasped.

  The room had been in near darkness; the photo, however, looked as though it had been taken during a solar flare. It was badly overexposed. In its centre, Yi Ling’s body was literally glowing with an intense white light. It was so bright that it obscured all her features, making her look barely human.

  The picture reminded Yi Ling of pictures of saints she had seen when going to church with her mother in her youth, except for one crucial difference. While the people in those pictures had the light surround their figures, like an aura, in this picture, the light seemed to originate from the centre of her body, growing dimmer as it radiated outward.

  “Holy shit.” Yi Ling almost dropped the phone in shock.

  “What have you been doing to yourself, girl?” Kumar asked. “Are you on drugs?”

  “No,” Yi Ling said, trying hard not to lose her breath. “This… this is different.”

  She told him what had happened. Kumar was shocked, especially after Yi Ling turned on the lights to reveal her missing shadow.

  “Impossible,” he said. “You can’t remove shadows! They aren’t even… things! They’re just… just…”

  He struggled for words, before throwing his hands in the air.

  “I’ll look it up on Wikipedia.”

  He went to his laptop.

  “There! ‘A shadow is an area where direct light from a light source cannot reach due to obstruction by an object,’” he quoted. “It’s an area! How do you take away an area?”

  “Well, that guy certainly managed to,” Yi Ling said. “I think it was magic or something.”

  “Magic? You think this is Harry Potter?” Kumar was incredulous.

  “Well, what does your precious science say about this, Mr Engineer? Can it explain why I’m suddenly missing a shadow, and why the hell I’m suddenly feeling this stupid heat?” Yi Ling was trying hard not to scream.

  “Well,” Kumar paused. “I’m slightly baffled on the first question. But as for the second… when light is blocked by an object, it forms a shadow. Since you can’t form a shadow, the light has to go somewhere else…” He snapped his fingers. “It goes into you!”

  “What?” Yi Ling was shocked.

  “Can’t you see, girl? You’re absorbing all the light! That’s why you’re glowing like a lightbulb! That’s why you’re feeling so hot! The light that hits you cannot be converted into shadow, so it stays in your body!”

  “Is that possible?” Yi Ling felt even more faint.

  “I have to admit, it doesn’t make sense scientifically,” Kumar said. “But I think science went out the window long ago. Anyway, we better get this checked out. What’s happening to you really can’t be safe. I think you should go back to the shop. Get the guy to reverse this.”

  “I don’t know,” Yi Ling said. “The shop kinda… disappeared after I took the drink.”

  Kumar’s eyebrows raised. “Seriously? Like in a horror movie?”

  She nodded.

  “The fact we can see the glow means the light must be in
one of the upper layers of your skin,” Kumar said, stroking his chin. “Probably the epidermis. But since we’ve only noticed this recently, maybe the light was first stored deeper inside you, and then slowly accumulated ‘til… oh my God, this is crazy!” He decided to try another tactic. “Okay. So you can answer any question put to you, right? Have you tried… I don’t know… asking yourself how to solve this problem?”

  “It was the first thing I thought of! But it didn’t work,” Yi Ling said.

  “Shit. Well, maybe you should get to a doctor.” Kumar picked up his phone. “I know this guy you could try. I had a lecture with him once. He’s this German expat that specialises in odd scientific phenomenon. He lives in Bangsar. We can drop by tomorrow, and—”

  “Not tomorrow,” Yi Ling said.

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s the Tort paper! It starts at noon, and I really can’t afford to—”

  “Your exam? Is that all you can think of now?” Kumar was incredulous again.

  “I can’t miss it! My parents would skin me alive!” Yi Ling said.

  She stared at Kumar. “Would you risk missing your final exam for something like this?”

  Kumar barely took ten seconds to make his reply.

  “Fair point,” he said. “But immediately after the exam, we’ll go, alright?”

  He put his hand on Yi Ling’s shoulder. “In the meantime, you take care of yourself. Keep away from bright lights.”

  Yi Ling laughed.

  “Oh come on, Kumar, I know how to take care of myself.”

  §

  It was noisy outside the Weaver’s College Multi Purpose Hall the next afternoon.

  Students clustered in groups, many sleepy-eyed. Most carried textbooks or iPads with lecture notes. A tall Indian boy was chugging a flask of coffee, not caring about manners or decorum as brown streams of liquid flowed down his neck and soaked his shirt. Near the bathroom, about ten students were in a circle, eyes closed, head bowed in prayer; next to them, a boy was panicking. Apparently he had confused what paper it was today.

  Yi Ling paid little notice to all of this. Her chest felt like it was on fire, and her heart was pounding so hard she feared it would burst.

  A number of students instinctively turned to stare at her as she walked by, only to look away, blinking and rubbing their eyes.

  Yi Ling had taken another picture of herself this morning. She was still shining, although thankfully she was slightly dimmer now. The glow was less noticeable in bright surroundings, although it apparently still irritated the eyes. She hoped the person sitting behind her had brought sunglasses.

  It was a warm day. There were few clouds in the sky, and the sun was out in full glory. Yi Ling had worn the lightest clothing she could find: a spaghetti strap top and a cotton skirt. She had awoken an hour earlier to lather her skin with sunblock, and was carrying an umbrella.

  Despite all that, she was already feeling faint.

  Three hours. Just get through these three hours. That’s all it takes. Soon, this nightmare will be over.

  As she put her bag in the holding room nearby, Yi Ling noticed something unusual.

  The edges of her bag’s strap were singed.

  Yi Ling forced it out of her mind as she entered the exam hall.

  §

  Their seating positions were announced on a paper stuck to the hall’s door.

  Yi Ling noticed, to her dismay, that she would be sitting next to a window.

  She went to the invigilator—a grumpy-looking Chinese man with horn-rimmed spectacles—and asked if she could change seats.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “The seating positions have all been fixed.”

  “But I have sensitive skin!” Yi Ling said. “I’ll fall sick if I get too much sun.”

  “Do you have a medical certificate?” the invigilator asked.

  And that was the end of that.

  Yi Ling sighed. It is only three hours, she told herself.

  She took her seat with the hundreds of other students, and listened to the exam briefing. The papers were soon passed out, face down. When the invigilator gave the signal, Yi Ling turned it over, and smiled.

  Negligence! Defamation! Donughue v Stevenson! Nuisance!

  And not a single question on Vicarious Liability!

  Yi Ling smiled to see the reactions of her fellow candidates.

  Three rows from her, Amira looked as though she was going to cry. One boy was just staring at the paper resignedly. Another was asleep, his head resting on his hands, apparently given up all hope.

  The possibility of re-sits was looking extremely certain for them.

  As strange as things turned out, it’s lucky I took that bargain, Yi Ling thought.

  She started to write.

  Donughue v Stevenson is a landmark case which gave rise to an entirely new branch of law, namely, the law of tort. It all started when two women decided to purchase a bottle of ginger beer from a café in Paisley, Renfrewshire, only to discover…

  Her pen sped across the paper at near-supersonic speed. Facts, cases, statutes, all these tumbled out of Yi Ling’s mind so quickly she hardly had time to process them as they turned from thought to words on paper. In barely ten minutes, she had written two pages already.

  Outside, the sun shone on.

  §

  Two hours into the exam, students noticed a strange smell in the exam hall.

  The rough odour of flesh and fire; the scent of meat left too long on the barbecue.

  It started off subtle—a mere suggestion in the air, noticeable only if you took a whiff. Soon, however, it had intensified into a strangling, suffocating smell; a putrid odour that brought upon coughing and wheezing.

  Some students took out handkerchiefs and tissues. Some covered their noses and mouths with their shirts and blouses. A boy in the third row coughed loudly as he rushed to the toilet. The sound of his puking was audible even from within the hall.

  A vast majority of the students kept on writing, forcing themselves to ignore the smell. Come what may, they would finish the exam.

  The invigilators searched all over the hall for the source of the smell. One of them—a young woman in a kebaya—was poking at the bottom of the walls with a plastic ruler, hoping to find a dead rat or something of the sort.

  In her seat by the window, Yi Ling kept on writing.

  Twelve sheets of paper already. And that was for the first two questions!

  One more question to go. The rule in Rylands v Fletcher. Ooh, that had always been her favourite chapter!

  Her head was starting to spin, and the burning sensation in her abdomen was almost unbearable. Her wrist and palm were starting to throb. But Yi Ling gritted her teeth. There was still so much to write! She wouldn’t have been able to leave even if she wanted to. Her legs felt like lead, and her arm did not feel part of her any more—it was writing with a mind of its own, her brain spilling out facts like a faucet.

  She barely noticed the discomfort of the students around her.

  Just then, the invigilator from before, the one she had talked to, walked by her desk as he attempted to track down the scent.

  He sniffed loudly by her, and did a double take.

  The smell was coming from her!

  A pretty girl, deathly, unnaturally pale, in a writing frenzy. But what was this? There were wafts of smoke rising from her arms and neck!

  “Miss,” the invigilator said. “Is everything alright?”

  His voice broke the silence of the auditorium. Students from all over the hall craned their necks to look.

  Yi Ling did not respond, so wrapped up in her work.

  “Miss, I think you should come with me.”

  The invigilator placed his hand kindly on her shoulder.

  There was an intense pain, and he let out a scream as he jerked his hand back. It was like touching a boiling kettle! The invigilator stared in shock at the bright red burn that had formed on his palm.

  In five years of his
invigilating, he never had anything like this.

  The smell was beginning to get worse. At the front, the young lady invigilator had collapsed, and had to be brought out for air.

  And Yi Ling kept scribbling on.

  The invigilator knew that desperate steps had to be taken. He wrapped his hand in the sleeve of his jacket. Bracing himself, he grabbed the sheets of paper the girl was writing on.