Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth

by Cassandra Khaw

  The flight attendant glances slightly away and waggles a hand. “Twelve, fourteen hours? Depends on the weather.”

  Click. “Oh.”

  Professionalism yields to compassion and she stretches up to pat me on the arm, smiling kindly. For one hysterical moment, I consider telling her that I cook people for a living, just to see if she can keep acting the saint.

  “It’s fine,” I declare at last, folding my travel documents into my pockets, the unhealthy impulse drowned. “Trust me, he’s done worse.”

  Another laugh, marginally less unrestrained, fishing for an explanation. I pull away, muttering appreciation, hoping to escape before she gets it into her head to interrogate me further. When it comes to topics associated with the Boss, the phrase ‘if I tell you, I’d have to kill you’ is pretty much literal.

  Kuala Lumpur International Airport swallows me in seconds. It’s big, too big. Not labyrinthine, in the way some places are, but just unconscionably vast, acres of wasted space pockmarked by overpriced stores, gray tiling and dull steel, a shrine consecrated to the small man’s need to compensate for small things.

  Getting through customs is easier than I expected. The bored security officers don’t waste time asking questions, barely glancing over my papers. Immigration is even faster: a quick two-step with a machine before I’m plunged into the departure hall. I glance at my cracked Seiko, minute hand wobbling dangerously. Two hours to go.

  ONE SIXTEEN-RINGGIT MEE goreng—a too-salty plate of noodly styrofoam that almost made me storm the kitchen in protest—later, I’m at my gate, clutching my bag to my chest and self-conscious in the face of the stares. Ang mohs in crisp navy suits glance over occasionally, gazing critically at my knock-off Levis and no-name hoodie.

  Or maybe the tattoos.

  Probably the tattoos.

  Hopefully not the tattoos.

  I glance at my forearms. The flesh is brindled with scars and ink, veins crawling in between, still decently muscular even if the skin’s already beginning to wear thin. Not that many ever notice, too riveted by the tattoos that line me from throat to toe. I inspect them carefully, every nightmarish polyp, every painted eye, every elongated limb, nails twining in double helixes, fingers crossed against every misfortune. Stillness, silence.

  So far, so good.

  I look up into the eyes of a tow-headed toddler, nauseatingly adorable and utterly fearless, mouth and eyes spherical with wonder. I flash the start of a smile, but his mother darts forward, ushering him away with a hiss of a warning.

  “I wasn’t going to give him candy, I promise!” I call to their retreating backs, slightly too loud. The kid turns, waves exuberantly, before his parent grips his arm and forces it down. She doesn’t turn, but the rest of the passengers do, scowling and shaking their heads, contempt in their expressions.

  With a shrug, I hunch into my chair and don earphones, play one of the podcasts that Minah had loved, a bizarre radio show about a town that doesn’t exist. My eyes shutter and I stretch out like a lump of dough kneaded flat. Then time skips, and somehow consciousness is returning, dispensed in increments by an obnoxious tap-tap-tappingon my shoulder.

  “Sir?”

  I dislodge an earphone, let it fall, Metallica blaring tinnily from the tiny bud. The world can stay on the other side of my eyelids just for a minute longer. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we are boarding.” A quaver of stress.

  I bolt up, startling the gangly flight attendant, and push the heel of a palm against my eyes. The world swims with halogen light, silhouettes and shapes muddling into a confused haze. Slowly, it resolves into milling bodies, clumped up between aisles, cattle being led to the roast, bags and children at ready. Up front, a plump woman shouts for all remaining passengers to board.

  “Sorry. Early flight. First flight. You know how it is,” I offer, gathering my luggage.

  His quizzical stare says otherwise, but he holds his smile nonetheless, too well-trained to object. “I hope you enjoy your flight, sir.”

  “Me too, buddy. Me too.”

  YOU KNOW WHAT they say about the best laid optimism of mice and men?

  Nothing.

  But they should say something. Because my obstinate hope for a decent voyage is quickly annihilated. Hell isn’t a place where horse-faced demons keep wardrobes of fraying human skin; Hell is twelve hours with no place to go. Hell is the endless drone of colossal engines. Hell is a middle seat in a row of four, with a single mother and her airsick son on one side, a screeching teenager on the other.

  It really should have occurred to me that something was amiss when the flight attendants shook their heads and apologized for the full flight. No free seats, they said, in funereal tones. I shrugged. Of course, I shrugged. I had no idea what they meant. But now? Now, I do.

  “Sorry,” the mother says for the fifteenth time, dabbing at her progeny’s lips. The boy beams queasily up at me. The paper bag in his grip sloshes.

  “It’s fine.” I pull my elbows closer, knees throbbing from repeated collisions with the seat in front. “Everything’s fine.”

  The teenager is the worse of two evils, I decide, patience slimming to nothing. I glance over to see him craning over the aisle, iPad brandished like a trophy, one leg jabbed into my square of space again. Briefly, I consider stomping his foot, partly because he’s encroaching on my territory, but mostly because I don’t like his attitude.

  High school preppiness and I have never agreed. Not when I was a teenager, and certainly not now, especially when it comes served in an ugly cardigan. I study the kid. He’s got the kind of jaw that didn’t start out pretty, but has since been tweezed and pulled into some kind of acceptability, the skin rubbery and bright from the cosmetic surgeon’s care. The perpetual scowl doesn’t help, minor underbite adding a caveman quality to his petulance. Probably never had anyone tell him ‘no’ in his life.

  A sigh escapes when his friends stampede from adjacent seats, pouring across the corridor to gawk at the tablet, its surface emblazoned with a close-up of tanned breasts. And all this would be okay, really, if he would just move his fucking leg.

  “Hey, if you could—” I prod the adolescent’s ankle with a toe.

  He ignores me.

  “Kid. Seriously.” Another push, more empathic than the last. “Kid.”

  That gets his attention. He rotates and we make eye contact, and I balance a thank-you on the tip of my tongue, prepared to gush over the kindness of youth. But nothing follows, no sorry, no quip, no belligerent comeback. Nothing. Only a continued stare of increasing awkwardness. Twenty seconds later, with enough pageantry to incite a round of laughter among his cohorts, he looks very deliberately away.

  Fuck it.

  I put my foot down. Literally.

  The teenager yelps like an injured Pomeranian, recoiling into a ball of limbs, knee pressed to his concave chest. “What the actual fuck, man?” he roars, pure upper-crust snobbery matching the crest hand-stitched onto his rumpled blazer.

  “Sorry.” I peer down at my feet, tone as mild as I can make it. “I didn’t see your foot in my spot.”

  “What the fuck—” he repeats, as though I said nothing at all, spinning about to address his peers, jabbing a finger at me. “Did you see? Did you see what he fockin’ did? I’m going to kick your arse. I’m going—”

  Feigning deafness, I lace my fingers over my belly and gaze forward. Unreasonable behaviour is a tango for two.

  “Did you see?! Did you—”

  “Sir,” a new voice interrupts, and we all look up as a stewardess sways down the aisle, the picture of concern. “Could we ask that you lower the volume? Other passengers are trying to sleep.”

  “He fucking stepped on my foot.”

  I shrug. “I’d been sleeping. How was I to know that he’d moved his foot there? I’m very sorry—”

  “Sorry? Sorry? You did that on purpose.” A gleam of teeth in the corner of my vision, the stink of whiskey adding character to the kid�
��s halitosis. “You fucking did that on purpose.”

  “Sir.” The stewardess again, her billboard-ready smile slipping, just a fraction. Nine hours is enough to unravel anyone’s facade, especially if it’s been picked at, one stitch at a time, by people like us. “There are children on board. I don’t think their parents would appreciate the use of foul language. And”—her voice drops, conspiratorial, even as she sinks to a crouch—“I don’t think you should be using that kind of language either.”

  The boy opens his mouth but shuts it again when a friend—smaller, somehow blonder—squeezes his shoulder and shakes his head no. Grudgingly, he capitulates, mouthing an insincere apology before flopping back in his seat. The stewardess flicks a glance at me. I nod, trying hard not to seem too gleeful, and don the airplane-issued headphones, pointedly cycling through a list of available media. Me? An accomplice to noise pollution? Perish the thought. I eventually settle on an inane sitcom about two first-world girls with too little problems and too many complaints, and stretch as far as it is socially acceptable, which is about two inches in each direction.

  Peace at last.

  Thump.

  Maybe not.

  I jolt up as the back of my seat is kicked again and peer into the divide between chairs. There’s just enough space to see the culprit: another teenager, this one less-obviously Caucasian, gelled-back hair streaked with green. His smile is acid, knife-thin and eager. And to no one’s surprise at all, he extends the one-fingered salute.

  I sigh. Swivel. Stare at the kid beside me who is now sitting with knees spread, fingers steepled and head slightly cocked, a warlord on a winning streak, Kublai Khan gone melanin-free. His sneer broadens.

  “Really.”

  Thump.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Thump.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Thump.

  “Yes, you do.”

  Thump.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “God”—he throws his hands up, sneer twisting into incredulous disgust—“what is wrong with you?”

  “I’m very good at taking vicious pleasure in what few small triumphs I can enjoy?”

  He gawks at me, silent, disbelieving. “You’re a fucker.”

  “No, I’m just exhausted. Can we please just call it a day? I haven’t slept in—I don’t remember the last time I’ve slept. That’s more a case of my life being what it is, rather than anything to do with this plane, but that’s beside the issue.” I flap a hand dismissively. “I’m tired. We’re all tired. Can we please be tired together and fall asleep?”

  “You a fag, then? You like being fucked in the—”

  I lash a hand out and twist his arm, exposing the veins. “Manners.”

  “What—”

  “Sssh.” It takes a single thought to sieve through the knot of somnambulant spirits and I rouse it with a reminder of overdue rent. (Don’t look at me that way. We all sell a part of ourselves to make ends meet, ang moh: integrity or epidermal housing or access to an orifice, it’s all the same.) The imp—a parasite worm, really, barely cognizant of ideas like punctual payment—squirms across my skin, exiting through a recent scar. At its first gasp of air, the newborn shrieks, acquiring depth and weight, sloughing off the flesh it fought so hard to borrow.

  “The fuck—”

  “Sssh,” I repeat, rotating his arm further until I feel the joint resist. And then I push harder, leaning my weight into the movement. “You don’t want to make a scene.”

  The worm is free now, carapace gleaming slickly in the dim cabin lights, and we both watch as it creeps up and onto the teenager’s arm. Before he can voice another complaint, it burrows into his flesh, sliding between muscle fibers like a ghost.

  “Sssh.”

  Every pretense of bravado vanishes, replaced by a high-pitched, hiccuping whine.

  “Now. Now, here’s how it’s going to go,” I murmur, as the worm investigates the breadth of his arm. Every now and then, the kid convulses in his seat, like he’s been plugged into an instrument of capital punishment. “You’re going to sit very, very quietly in this chair until the end of the flight. If you fuck this up, Bob Junior’s going to eat his way into your brain and ride you like the cuddliest pony in a carnival. Do you get me?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Good.”

  I TAKE THE worm out when we land, of course.

  Honestly, what kind of monster do you think I am?

  CHAPTER SIX

  “BUSINESS OR PLEASURE?”

  “Um. Neither?”

  The immigration officer—a sullen, toadish, disconcertingly pink creature with a nose that’s more nostril than structured cartilage—glares. “Business or pleasure.”

  “Contractual obligation?”

  “Mister”—he flips a page in my passport—“Wong, was it? I’m not sure if you understand, but you’re treading on dangerous territory. If you insist on this absurdity, we may have to take action.”

  “Sorry. Wisecracking’s a bit of a coping mechanism.” I sweep a palm over my head and tack on a smile. “No harm, no foul, right?”

  “Business. Or. Pleasure.” Apparently no more chicanery is to be tolerated.

  “Business. I guess?” Behind me, the crowd rumble its displeasure, a long shuffle of scuffed sneakers and rolling luggage, the miasma of unwashed bodies drifting overhead. “I don’t actually know?”

  That proved a worse answer than misplaced wordplay. Instantly, the man’s body language shifts, transitioning from irritation to outright aggression. He bloats with self-importance, and raises a scowl. “You don’t know.”

  “See, my boss asked me to—”

  A snort cuts my excuses short. Blatantly disinterested in whatever I have to say, the man begins rifling through my scant papers again, attention shuttling between passport and landing card and back. Occasionally, he raises one or the other up to the light, as though the cold fluorescence might reveal an incriminating truth. He purses his lips, disapproval vibrating in his chest. Hmmmm. Flashbacks to Hao Wen, a sak yant master that had wanted to see me resting in pieces, clenches my ribs. “You didn’t put in a length of stay either.”

  I can hear a threat gliding through the remark, a shark in the water. “Two weeks.”

  “Do you have a return ticket?”

  “Um. No. But”—I jab at my supine passport, a desperate smile at the corner of my lips—“look there. It’s a Malaysian passport. I get six months here, right?”

  “And I get to tell people like you that such privilege is at the discretion of the government and if you don’t comply with the rules, I can send you home.” He waves his hand as he speaks, the movement steadily angrier and more emphatic. At the final word, he closes his fingers into a fist and bangs the counter.

  “Okay.”

  My acquiescence, however deferential, seems to infuriate him. He splutters, half-formed obscenities melting together, every syllable tripping over the one that came before. It takes a moment, but he regains his composure, smoothing his expression into one of bland distaste. “Follow me.”

  A door in his glass-walled roost swings open, and the immigration officer waddles out, righteous importance in every heavy-footed step. I follow meekly, dragging my duffle across the floor by a handle. One of these days, I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut.

  “MR. WONG, I presume?”

  I look up, parched of conversation, throat raw from six hours without a sip to drink. The voice is beautiful. Like holy-holy-angels-on-high gorgeous, a celestial tenor, the kind to bring entire auditoriums to their knees. I shiver.

  “Master of Universes Wong, actually, but otherwise, yeah.”

  The new arrival framed in the doorway is lithe and self-assured, thin frame dwarfed by his colossal wheelchair. Dark curls spiral across a jaw honed sharp as an arrowhead, while blue, sunken eyes rest in otherwise Mediterranean features. He smiles, indulgent.
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  The youth glances down at the bulky creature that pushes up beside him and I tense immediately, reptilian brain shrieking. The dog is massive, a Rottweiler on steroids; broad angles, absolutely no poetry whatsoever, just power. This isn’t a killing machine. This is the End Times with a stubby little tail. Muscles strain under short charcoal fur as the dog dips its breed-agnostic head beneath my rescuer’s fingertips.

  It luxuriates in the scratching, eyes rolling up, but only for a few seconds before it returns to duty, fixing me with its brimstone-golden glare. Growls. I feel my bladder seize.

  “I was afraid you’d say that. I’d have hoped that our new chef would be able to keep himself out of trouble for at least a day.” A beleaguered sigh, too theatrical to be entirely sincere, as he scratches between the hellhound’s ears. “My name is Orpheus.”

  “I—” I clench a fist. The syllables gnaw like rats’ teeth, but they’re too small, too weak to eat through my fatigue. I know I know that name, but I can’t map it to a reason. “Nice to meet you.”

  Orpheus smirked, eyes dancing. “And you.”

  He wheels himself out without another word. The dog follows, cocking a quizzical look at me before padding noiselessly away. A few minutes’ meaningless waiting later, I get up and follow suit.

  I FIND ORPHEUS and his hound holed up in a coffee shop outside of the arrival gates, the former delicately sipping a chemical orange drink, the latter huddled under the table. Orpheus glances up as I shamble closer, lips flexing into something like a smile.

  “Drink?” The table is arrayed with six neon-colored beverages, each less appetizing than the last.

  “Sure.” I slump into a chair opposite, swiping one of the counterfeit slushies. Surprisingly, it doesn’t taste as vile as it looks: ginger-orange syrup with an aftertaste of iced tap water. “So, I’m guessing you’re the welcome committee.”

  “In a sense. We drew the short straw.” A noisy slurp, and he leans forward. “You’re not very good with Greek mythology, are you?”