Faridah looked back at the woman after finding Daus in the crowd. “And you, happy to leave your post? No more children to take care of, is it?” She walked away, not waiting for a response.
§
The house was quiet except for the occasional slurp of a noodle. Ria and her siblings finished eating their instant noodle soup with fish balls. As she sat lost in thought, her brother repeated his earlier question that went unanswered.
“When is mommy coming home?”
She reminded him that their mother would be late again as she had been every night for the past two weeks. Ria changed the conversation to distract her younger siblings. “Why don’t you go play your PS8 before bed? The electricity will probably be on for at least another hour. Hurry!”
Ria cleaned up the dinner mess by herself. She tied the trash bag tightly and headed outdoors to throw it away. The air was still but uncomfortable and foul. She had nearly acclimated herself to the acrid stench that sat atop the peninsula with the help of a cheap surgical mask she wore over her face anytime she went outdoors.
“Oh, Ria. How are you? Beautiful night!” It was the voice of her elderly neighbour, Ms Chu, who sat in a lawn chair outside of her front door each night.
“Hello Ms Chu. Fine, thanks. How are you tonight?”
Ria didn’t care much for Ms Chu. Despite living side-by-side since she had been born, their conversations had always been devoid of any substance. Ria preferred to just ignore people unless they had something significant to say.
“Where are you going so late? KL is too dangerous to go out by yourself.”
“No, Ms Chu. I’m just throwing out the trash. Not going anywhere.”
“Silly girl. Already how many weeks nobody to collect the trash? Look at your pile there. It’s rotten. Can’t you smell it? You have to burn it or take it to the Ampang Hilir lake gardens landfill.”
Ria looked at the mound of trash bags in front of her house. She threw the bag in her hand over toward the pile. “Later lah.”
As Ria started to go back inside, Ms Chu asked her about her family, likely trying to prolong the conversation out of loneliness, not because she would actually care about them in reality.
“And what about the One-Malaysia rice allowance? Did you collect yours already? The truck was here earlier, but I didn’t see you go and get it.”
Ria did hear the truck come by earlier but was not in the mood to queue in the hot sun. “No, I think my mother would take care of that from the office. She has a government job, you know. They get extra benefits. Did you get yours?”
Ms Chu laughed. “I am not eligible. But for the better, I think. The government’s rice gives me gas.”
Ria nodded and walked inside.
§
Daus held Faridah around her waist as they stood up against the wall. The room had gotten noisier despite the number of people who had already collected their lottery tickets and left the hall for the heavily-guarded buses parked behind the building.
“Faridah Hazmawi.”
Daus poked her as Faridah realised that her name had been called over the cracking intercom system. She let out a small squeal as they hurried up to the counter. Faridah produced her government ID card confirming her identity and scanned her thumb print for secondary verification. The clerk asked her to sign the form and enter through the side door.
Once inside, the clerk told her to hold onto the pair of tickets and guard them with her life. Faridah grabbed Daus’s hand and jogged off in the direction the clerk pointed to board the bus to the seaport.
§
Ria and her siblings laid on the floor of the living room with their pillows and blankets in the pitch dark. The electricity had been cut for the night. The kids were a bit restless as Ria tried once again to call their mother.
“When is mommy coming home?”
With all the repetition, Ria began to wonder if she had a younger brother or a parrot. “She isn’t picking up her phone, kiddo. So that means she is really busy with her work or maybe she is driving home now. When you wake up in the morning, she will be here. Just like every morning.”
“But I want her home now,” he whined.
Ria set her phone down nearby and rested her head on the pillow, hoping he would do the same. After a few minutes of lying with her eyes open, though, she grabbed her phone and tried to call once again.
§
Daus gently took Faridah’s phone from her as she tried unsuccessfully to fight back her tears. “You need to be strong,” he insisted as he turned off the ringing device. “Their suffering will end soon. Days? Weeks? I don’t know. But you can’t fall apart now. We have the chance to start a new life.”
“I know. I do want this. Us, Daus. But I didn’t think it would be this difficult to leave everything behind.”
“You don’t have to do this alone. I’m here. And you will have me until the day I die. But that won’t be for a long time. We will be safe in Australia,” he smiled, trying to be as optimistic-looking as possible. “The clerk said the boat will depart in about an hour. By the time the sun rises tomorrow, we will be past Java already, far enough away from the blast radius.”
“My kids…”
“Your kids would understand that there was nothing you could do for them. They won’t feel a thing when Toba blows. Tonight, I want you to cry yourself to sleep. A good cry. And tomorrow when you wake up, your life in KL will be far behind you. Your future together with me lies ahead. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Faridah held her breath before bobbing her head up and down. She embraced her lover.
* * *
About Kris Williamson
Kris Williamson is a publishing consultant and writer living in Kuala Lumpur. He is the editor of Anak Sastra literary magazine and has contributed short fiction, travel narratives, and poetry to journals, magazines, and anthologies. His first novel, Son Complex, was published by Fixi Novo in 2013. He can be stalked at kriswilliamson.com or on Twitter at @iramalama.
Target: Heart
Recle Etino Vibal
~ Philippines ~
“Hey, wake up lover boy.”
A shake on his shoulders interrupted Damian’s dreams. When he opened his eyes, white walls greeted him. His head pounded for a minute.
“Same dream? You were murmuring a name, I think,” Umer said.
Damian preferred a long sleep and wanted to wake up on his own accord. Getting his sleep disturbed in the middle of the night was common after he took the oath. At least twice a week, his fellow brothers woke him up—sometimes for night trainings, drills, field exams, or, like this night, a mission.
“No. A nightmare. I can’t remember.” Damian lied. The love and break-up had haunted him for more than four years. He lied to turn the bad memory into a common dream.
“I want to learn all about that nightmare and maybe try to psychoanalyse you, but a customer needs to be happy tonight. Better dress up first and get Y,” Umer tossed a sealed envelope to Damian. “I’ll be waiting for you downstairs. You have ten minutes.”
Damian memorised all the information about the target: his face, the specified place and time for the hit, and the instructions of the client. The client was a middle-aged woman, recently widowed, and had a son and daughter, both living and working outside the country.
This will be quick and easy, he thought.
Red flames, a sign of good luck for Damian, engulfed the file. Black smoke rose to the spot on the ceiling covered with soot. The only evidence about the transaction that remained was the white ash and black soot.
Damian took Y from his table drawer. It was common practice for agents to name their weapons. Damian named his slingshot for its shape.
Y was from a thick guava branch. The handle was long, thick, and sturdy enough for his grip. The cylindrical handle divided into thinner and shorter branches. Two arms extended, forming an approximate parabola. Time and frequent use turned the wood’s colour from a pale cream to a deep, dark brown.
A thick, red rubber band wrapped, coiled, and squeezed around each arm’s upper half to secure a black rubber tube at each end. A thick small elliptical leather pocket joined the rubber tube and completed the slingshot.
Testing it, Damian pushed the handle forward while pulling the leather pocket backward. The sling stretched up to its limit. The tension and resistance in the wood crawled up his arms.
Slingshots fascinated Damian since childhood. Cans and plastic bottles arranged in a row on top of a low concrete wall or on low benches served as good targets during practice. Soon, he got tired of hitting stationary objects. To remedy that, he took his cans and plastic bottles, tied it to a rope and hung the free end of the rope on his mother’s clothesline. Targets moved back and forth. It gave him the level of difficulty he wanted, but that got boring too.
Instead of plastic bottles, he shattered glass bottles with stones. His mother tolerated his slingshot fascination up until then. She said that the shattered glass flying everywhere should not be a part of Damian’s excitement.
Kids who also enjoyed slingshots invited him to try shooting down birds. Those creatures were not stationary, and their movement was unpredictable. The bursting of feathers or sputtering of blood was also more fun than the shattering of glasses.
Damian settled for inanimate objects and in his creativity to make shooting more challenging, he threw his targets in the air as far and as high as he can and shot it before it reached the ground. Sometimes he asked one of his friends to do it so the target’s movement would be more unpredictable. He avoided shooting birds lest he would have enjoyed doing it so much he might have resorted to shooting rats next, then cats, then dogs, and then humans.
Damian released the sling and the rubber snapped in the air in a split second. The pocket passed between the wooden arms and recoiled. His wrist jerked forward for follow-through. If he had loaded it with one of his smooth pebbles, there would be another one stuck on his wall. A dozen small stones clustered on one side of the room that he used as target to release frustration.
Damian’s pouch of ammunition was also in the drawer, small smooth stone pebbles, black, white and grey. One thing he liked about slingshots was that a stone is always ready to be a projectile. Any stone would do, but his job allowed him to be critical about his ammunition. Smooth, spherical stones have less air resistance to them during flight compared to sharp and irregularly shaped ones. The latter had a better chance of piercing skin and flesh with its pointy end. He could always let a stone pass through anyone or anything if he wanted, too. He had the skill and strength to do it, but it was not in his job description. Smooth stones and a mild force would do.
Damian placed Y and his load in the right side pocket of his jacket. A pack of cigarettes and his lighter went in the left.
“Man, what took you so long? I said five minutes right?” Umer waited down stairs, outside the building’s main door.
“No. You said ten.” Damian went down the stairs.
“Whatever. We just need to hurry up. We need to be there 10 minutes earlier than the agreed hit time. Remember protocol?” Umer ushered him to a white car on a No Parking Zone and occupying half of the sidewalk. “Get in.”
Sunet—the agency’s informant, contact, recruiter, courier, and driver, an old wrinkled brown man in his late sixties—greeted them as they got in.
“Where to, Sirs?” Sunet asked.
“Books and Brew Cafe, 76920 J.P. Rizal St. corner T. Buenavista St., Los Baños City.” Damian’s voice echoed within the car. Umer’s smile seemed to indicate both approval and mocking.
“That’s far away, Sir,” Sunet replied. “It’ll be a long ride. About an hour at least, two if we get caught in heavy traffic.”
“Make it at most an hour and half.” Umer said as he looked at his watch.
“Yes, Sir.”
“At least an hour? Great. I can sleep on the way. You wouldn’t mind right?” Sleep, excluding cigarettes and the job, was Damian’s only addiction.
“Sure. No problem. Sunet will keep me company,” Umer said.
The driver looked on his rear view mirror and gave a smile to both of them.
Excitement and doubt no longer filled Damian’s heart during the trip to the hit zone after 408 missions. He relaxed and went to sleep.
§
Across the street, the cafeteria’s neon light signs were off, and the sign on the door said, “Sorry We’re Closed”. The trees and bushes surrounding the parking lot hid them.
“You were tossing and turning again,” Umer said. “Better get that ‘recurring dream’ checked. Iñigo says he’s good with interpreting dreams.”
“I don’t need anyone to interpret my dreams,” Damian said.
The beer filled his stomach and woke his spirits. They arrived an hour earlier, so there was time for beer and dinner (fish balls, quail eggs, grilled blood, chicken intestines and barbecue).
“You can tell me what to eat, but you can’t tell me what to believe,” Damian said.
“We dream things we want to happen,” Sunet said. “Dreams incorporate the past. Dreams can be confused as memories and vice versa. When you start having problems deciding which is which, you should already ask for help. In my opinion, the need is aggravated when you start denying truth as nothing but fantasy.”
Sunet’s eyes looked at Damian as if he knew the agent’s secret. The old man recruited Damian to the agency, so he expected the old man did a thorough profile check. When one joined the agency, one gave-up privacy and personal relationships.
“But that’s only my suggestion, Sir,” Sunet added.
“And a good suggestion it is,” Umer winked at the driver. “Go see Iñigo. He wants some action, or anything interesting. It’s been a while since high profiled cases were assigned to him. Your dream may cure him of his boredom.”
“I don’t want anyone interpreting my dreams,” Damian said. “For all I know, it’s the only thing the agency can’t mess.”
“Okay man, suit yourself,” Umer raised his hands in surrender. “Five minutes to hit time. Can you see our client yet? She should be here already. Else, we can’t go on.”
“She’s here,” Damian saw the client emerging from the underpass. “She’s looking at the coffee shop.”
“Is that in the plan?”
“Not that she mentioned it. Maybe she just wants to make sure that it’s the right guy on the shift. She’ll leave if she wants to call the hit off.”
“That would be bad. There are no refunds.”
“Okay. She’s in position now, better take mine too.”
“Hide us, Sunet. Make sure nobody notices Damian pointing his slingshot.”
Damian focused his senses on the client and the target. Everything dimmed and hid in the shadows. Only the light from the cafeteria and from the streetlight entered his eyes. Three minutes to hit, his heart was pounding, and adrenalin rushed all over his body.
During Damian’s first few weeks in the agency, the excitement would always make him miss thrice before he hit the target. That was four years ago. Everything became natural to him, as normal as breathing. The anticipation of fulfilling the task only enhanced his focus and determination to finish it in one shot.
Damian took one pebble from his jacket’s side pocket. He kissed the pebble and kept it close to his lips while whispering an incantation. The stone’s colour was ivory, but it glowed red after he kissed it. With every word he uttered, the stone’s light intensified.
“In the name of love, I command you,” Damian ended his prayer. The stone turned into a burning ball, red light escaping through the spaces between his fingers. Two minutes to hit, the target was closing shop; the client, acting innocent, was still in position.
Damian, tilting his head to get a better angle and better snipe, was ready to shoot at will. He waited for the opportune moment. One minute to hit, the target finished closing the shop and started to walk towards the streetlight about a meter from the client.
Just give
the signal, Damian thought. Just ask for it and I’ll do it for you. Or call it off, I don’t care, just don’t make me wait.
Thirty seconds to hit, the target was in the right position, his heart unguarded and unaware. The client took her eyeglasses from her shoulder bag, wore it, stared at the target, and smiled. That was the signal.
The pebble tracked its trajectory. A streak of red light crossed the street. Sunet made sure no one else saw it except members of the agency.
The ray of light struck the target’s chest, never to leave his body again. The target held on to the streetlight to regain his balance. Shock filled his face, and his chest glowed bright red. The glow accumulated in the man’s heart. It formed a silhouette of his heart, blinking in unison with its beating. The light dimmed as it penetrated his heart. Damian saw the heart resisting the flame of emotion engulfing it. The client swayed her hips when she approached the target. Her smile caught the man’s attention.
Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction Page 5
