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This story was written by Ivy Seow in response to the following prompt:
Random Sentence: Pick up the nearest book of fiction. Go to page 124. Read the fourth complete sentence on that page. Make that the first line of your story.
The book closest to Ivy was The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine.
by Ivy Seow
The hours passed and he neither slept nor died. Let the ceiling fan cut off my nose, he thought. He dragged his tongue across the roof of his mouth to soothe himself. A taste of salt, a whiff of metal, and now he was out at sea, sweating and reeling, watching Nina cry over the pail of fish.
'You spoil my fun Nina. Next time don’t follow me,' he said without meaning it.
'I want to,' she whispered.
He turned to face the water. 'You don’t have to look at them.'
'But see what we did!'
'Look, on this boat one person is doing something and the other person is sitting and crying.’
'We tore their mouths.'
'That's how it is Nina,' he muttered, curbing the urge to glance at the scar on her lip, ‘That’s why Papa will burn in hell.'
‘No, Papa!’
His eyelids parted; there was the vortex again. But now a pain pierced through the palate where his tongue tip rested, and his back was seared by the sun. Time stretched to the edge of the sea.
-
Mag received a phone call one morning from her father, who mentioned that his brother had moved into the hospice near her home.
“Oh, okay,” she said, licking the last bit of jam from the spoon.
At lunch she phoned him back to ask, “Are you planning to visit?”
“Not today. I have to run some errands, and then repot the cactus.”
“And it's two hours each way for you.”
“It was an FYI. There’s nothing that you have to do.”
“Yeah I know.”
If she hardly knew the man, why did she detest him? All day long she replayed scenes in her head. He would stride into the room and talk like he had swallowed an amp. There was venom in his words. Each time he talked to Mama he injured her for weeks. When in the same room, her father would adopt his manner. It made her retch. She could not bear to think what it was like for Nina, who had to live with him. Braggart, she muttered with revived feeling as she scrubbed the dishes, f_ck you and your f_cking swagger! But in the evening, she told her children she had to visit a friend and left them with a sitter.
She arrived with a cheap bouquet of flowers, pulse racing as she stepped out of the lift. Through the window of the ward she watched him laying on the bed. Go to sleep, she willed, shut your eyes so that I don’t have to talk to you.
“Looking for someone, Miss?” the nurse asked.
“Don’t want to disturb him.” Mag pointed at the bed in the corner.
Nurse raised her brows. “Your father?”
“No,” Mag shrugged, “a neighbour.”
She glanced at the flowers. “No one’s come but you.”
“That’s what I guessed.”
“Pity. Well go on in, dear. He might not be as lucid as before.”
-
The cotton sheets crackled like firewood against his skin.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he growled, ‘Light the bloody pyre!’
A shadow fell over him, and for a moment he was shielded from the shredding blades.
‘Uncle,’ she said.
‘Papa,’ he heard, making out the shape of her face.
‘I’m Mag.’
‘You’re back,’ he echoed, holding the sea in his eyes.
‘Something for you,’ she said, placing the flowers on the side table where he could not see it.
‘Nothing that I want,’ he said, without knowing what it was.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Don’t follow me,’ he warned, ‘you are not going to like it.’
Mag laughed. ‘And where are you going?’
‘Taking the boat.’
He fell asleep, became a fish, and Nina wept over him.
***
Here’s how Ivy Seow describes herself: Ivy enjoyed the Art of Clear Writing course, waves to you from her grubby window in Singapore.
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Art by Simahina, in a homage to Anselm Kiefer.
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