Whispered Rhythms

Short Story - Smeared Canvas

2009-09-03T15:20:00.000+08:00

He had always envisioned Death as a scarlet-winged creature, a heinous beast with grasping claws and bloodied talons, that swooped down to claim its victims victoriously. Its wings would beat heavily in tempo with the drums pounding in the distance and the victims would either plead for mercy or cry in relief. It would be the latter for him. That winged creature with gnarly fingers was his rescuer, his unwitting angel.

That was why he painted them not mottled and hideous as people usually described angels of death, but as reptilian birds with kind, smiling faces. The kind of face you would willingly hand your life over to. They resembled humans and had lovely features, yet they were not quite that. He did not believe that humans could ever look that way. No, humans were ugly. Their hearts were tainted, their souls marred, their minds addled with excess. Death was kinder than them. So in these angels of death, he filled them with violent, almost blinding hues of reds, violets and ochre. He burned shadows in the hollows of their cheeks and contoured their jaw-lines to soften their features. In some pictures, they were waiting before a huge black metal gate, arms akimbo. In others, they were reaching out, as though grasping at something outside the boundaries of the painting.

Then came their eyes. He put a lot of effort into getting the eyes right. Eyes revealed the purity of the heart – they almost never lied – and they told you all you needed to know about someone. He remembered the first time he dreamt of those evil-looking ones that kept visiting him subsequently. In the dreams, all they did was peer around, watching, prowling. He imagined a creature biding its time – although for what, he was not sure. Later, he spent hours translating that into his pictures while locked in his room because of yet another transgression that he hardly recalled now. By the time he was finally satisfied with what he had done, the sharp rap on the door ordered him out for dinner.

They never knew about his paintings. They must never know.

*

It probably did not apply to everyone, but she felt like growing old was like graduating from being locked in a cage of bones to a much smaller cage made of steel. Everything was squeezed so much tighter around you that you ached the minute you got up. You waded through tar despite pushing your body the furthest and hardest you could, and everything in you felt like they were on the verge of shutting down any moment.

Neil used to say there was nothing that could fight the effects of Time, so we might as well make it our ally, and that it was the driving force of life, and our impetus for living. Of course, it was easy for him to say. He was not the one who had to grow old.

Morning light was the best. They cast a soft glow upon everything, and while there was clarity, there was also that sense of not being able to see everything fully, the sense of something being left out, cast into the silhouettes of those we could see clearly. Tone was everything, and she would rip up the paintings where she had messed up the shade of pink behind the trees and redo everything all over.

Initially, when they first got married, Neil had voiced his dismay at her insomnia. You’re one of those people who stay up the whole night staring out the window, aren’t you? he had asked. But he always brewed a pot of Earl Grey tea for her before he went to bed.

She thought about how ironic it was that she had craved to just be alone all those nights, and now she would give anything to know that someone was sound asleep in bed, after having watched CSI and forgotten – again – to turn off the light in the living room.

It was easy to dwell on the past when you were old; it was a symptom and result of being old. After all, you had clocked a lot more years than you had left. What was there to look forward to when you were stuck at home almost everyday, waiting for night to come, nursing your aching joints after standing a minute too long over the stove cooking instant noodles and an egg?

She hated the word regret. It made her infinitely sad, if only because it implied that something could never be righted, a life lived wrongly that she had no chance of reliving. People with OCD could go mad just thinking about that. But she truly believed that her biggest regret in all her eighty years of living was to not have any children. At the very least, they filled up that strange vacuum in her home. Dying was probably like this. No fire, no light, no singing, no fanfare. Just a whole lot of nothingness that was enough to drive you nuts. Children would probably delay that effect.

That was how she chose to excuse her obsession with that boy living next door. A few years back, maybe ten, she had told Neil how beautiful he was. He was still a toddler then, and there was such radiant light cast upon his face she wanted to paint him. It was better than morning light. This was something special on its own.

As he grew older, though, she saw less and less of him. A glimpse of him getting off the school bus, a sliver of him at his study desk in his bedroom. And every time she saw him, he would have lost a little of that lustre she once saw in him all those years ago.

It’s a shame, she had bemoaned to Neil one day. I’d like to know what changed him. A bright-looking boy like him can’t have just lost his interest in the world all of a sudden.

And he had just told her to mind her own business. He never understood the point of gossip. But it was more than just gossip to her. She had felt a connection to that boy the moment she saw him. He had the eyes of an artist. Children like him did not come along so often, and she could spot the talent residing in him like a lamp. In a way, she felt responsible towards him, towards his well-being. He went home after school, lugging his bulging school bag up to the door, rang the bell and waited to be restored into the rightful hands of his mother. He would have a peanut butter sandwich and an apple, and head upstairs to do his homework. In the evening, he would play football with his father before dinner, and after dinner, he would be in his room again, studying. It seemed healthy enough, but she always felt as though the boy operated more like clockwork than a person.

She had never quite dared to speak with him, much as she longed to. Find out what he did in his spare time other than study and play football or basketball with his father, who his friends were, what he planned to do when he grew up, where he most desired to travel. She told herself it was because she did not know how he would take to her, an old lady next to whom he had lived his whole life suddenly plying him with questions. So she stuck to watching him from the safety of her house – watching him, watching over him.

*

“I hope you realise how much trouble you are in.”

He must not sigh, or roll his eyes, or do anything that any teenage boy would do when his parents said that.

“Haven’t we been through this enough? You are to come straight home after school if you don’t have practice.”

“The bus broke down along the way. It wasn’t my fault,” he ventured, and immediately recoiled. Blame-shifting was not tolerated in any way. The first time he did that was when he was five, and his jeans were soiled from wandering off alone in the muddy field. The ground was wet, he had said, and received a tongue-lashing for retaliating and offering a pitiable excuse for a mistake he should have known better than to make. He was later denied dinner, and locked in his room until morning so he could not sneak food from the fridge at night.

Her tone was frigid, a blade of ice drawing blood from his skin. “We’ll see what your father thinks about that.”

They played basketball before dinner. He was thankful for this brief moment of normalcy, for he knew what would come at dinner. Dinner was the most important meal of the day – it was when everyone was together and behaved like how a family should. He had begun to tire of these compulsory dinners with the family. It was not like he had anywhere to go, but for some reason, he always left the dinner table exhausted. It was worse that lately, his list of transgressions had grown longer. One strike for acting out, another for arguing, another for defying orders, and another for not responding when being spoken to and speaking without permission.

Most boys, he knew, would pack up their bags and just leave. They would get into a huge row with their parents, trying to assert their status, and go off in search of their identity and purpose in this world. But that was not the way it worked with him and his parents.

Drying his hair as he stepped out of the bathroom, he braced himself for what was coming. Already he could hear his mother reporting his offence to his father.

*

She sipped the broth to make sure it was tasty enough, and added more soy sauce. It did not quite matter what she had for dinner these days. Food had been sidelined over time by other more relevant issues. Like when she was actually, finally, going to die.

A door slammed, jolting her so that soup splashed down her front. Cursing, she peered out of the window while drying herself. There was someone squatting at the front porch, and another speaking quietly to him. Soon, the squatting figure was hopping down around the perimeter of the house while the other watched on. She was only reminded of what she was supposed to be doing by the urgent sizzle of boiling soup spilling over the rim of the pot. Hurriedly, she turned off the fire and went back to watching. Later, she wondered why it had not occurred to her to stop what he was doing. But right then, she kept on watching until the hopping figure finally stopped. She had lost count of how many rounds he had hopped around the house. The figure wobbled as he got up and went into the house.

She sat before her now-cold bowl of noodles, surprised to find a tear splash into it.

*

He had done it now. Now he would pay for it. It was not just the squat hops or the seizure of television and phone privileges. Those he could still live with. The worst punishment was the possibility of them discovering his tools, his works. He felt that familiar sense of fear grip him as it did every time they searched his room, determined to find something – anything – contraband. He had wondered, several times now, why he always felt himself at their mercy. He was bigger than his mother and almost as strong as his father – there was no need to fear them. But it was only today, at the supply store, that he realised what exactly was at stake. They will never understand his need to paint – that outlet for everything that was stewing inside him. When he was four and woke them up in the middle of the night because of that thing under his bed, his father made him sleep under his bed until he came to learn there was nothing there. Real men challenge their fears, he had told him, not cry and moan about it. They toughen themselves up so they can fight it, not just talk about how scary it is. By his logic, then, painting fell into the activities of weaklings because painting was not a way to toughen himself up to face his fears. How could they ever understand?

They began with the drawers. It was a methodical affair – his father would check his clothes drawer while his mother searched everything else, bookracks, study desk and bedside table.

His mother frowned, bending over to scrutinise a spot of yellow paint on the floor. “What’s this?” She scrapped it with her a ruler from his study desk.

“I don’t know.”

She looked up at him, and an interminable silence stretched into the night as he waited for it to be over. “Well, how did it get here, then?”

“I don’t remember.”

She stood up and stared at him. He tried to blink naturally. “When you’re ready to, let us know.”

*

It was probably all her fault; she had brought that unnecessarily unkind punishment upon him. She had seen that he was in a hurry, so why on earth did she stop him for a chat? Of all days to do so!

Still, she could not shake away that gamut of emotions she had experienced when she spoke to him today. There was delight and pity and so much else. That boy who caught the light every time he smiled was lost, driven deep into the mire of frosty glares and barked orders. His parents are strange, she always remarked to Neil. They never let him speak to anyone – not even me! As if there might even be any chance of me hurting him.

In the supply store, the boy had rushed in, headed straight to Aisle 5, the paintbrushes aisle, and clicked his tongue as he searched for the ones he needed. She had considered briefly if it was a good time to approach him, and decided now was as good a time as any if she were ever going to start.

“So, you paint?” It sounded like a stupid thing to say even to her, and he caught her in a grimace. Maybe he knew she already knew.

He nodded slowly.

“What sort?”

He shrugged. “The usual watercolour sort. I just do it for fun.”

“I paint too, but I deal with oil ones. So what do you usually paint?” She had sensed there was something he did not wish to tell her, so she went on, “I prefer painting people. People – they’re always changing, you know? The way the light hits them, the set of their jaw and the slant of their eyelids – nothing’s always the same. I used to like to paint my husband, until he got so tired of seeing his face on every inch of our house.”

“Don’t you sell them?”

She was delighted at him having posed a question. “Oh, never. It seems weird to put your work out there for people to see, you know, much less trade for money? It’s like selling part of your soul away.”

He nodded. She could tell he wanted to hear more, but was really pressed for time. So she stuck out her wrinkled hand and simply said, “Well, I’m Beatrice.”

He took it. His hand was warm, strong. “Sam.” For all the life she felt in those confident hands, she should have seen some of that in his eyes too. But she found none, not a spark.

“It’s been nice talking to you, Sam.”

“You too, Beatrice.”

As she watched him leave the store, after grabbing a flat brush and a pointed wash brush, she wondered if he knew she had been his neighbour for seventeen years.

*

It felt almost liberating. The idea of his parents not knowing a fraction – just that one fraction – of his life made him drunk. Finally, there was some part of him that they could not claim. Finally, there was some part of him that they had no say over, if only because they knew nothing about it.

That was probably the reason why he told them he had joined the school’s debating team and had to stay in school for meetings on Wednesdays. He loved the idea of being just next door at Beatrice’s house, exchanging pointers on stroke technique and texture, and his mother being oblivious to his activities. He loved sitting in her attic, watching the sunlight streaming in, as he and Beatrice painted away at their respective easels.

Beatrice, too, was strangely enthusiastic about him coming over. She prepared an elaborate tea for the both of them whenever he came over, and never failed to extend an invitation for dinner even though he always declined. Her concern for him puzzled him, and he wondered – more than once – how he could have missed her presence all these years. All he knew about her was that she lost her husband a year ago, and sometimes still spoke of him in the present tense, as though expecting him to come through the front door with baguettes in his arms like he always did. He knew he always bought supplies for her whenever he saw that she was running low on them, and that she would paint out the feast he cooked them for dinner, just for the hell of it.

He was sorry he could not tell her more stories about his life – not because his parents did not allow him to, but because there was nothing much to tell. As he racked his brain for something remotely interesting to regale her with, he realised how unquestioningly he had fallen into the routine set up for him ever since he was a boy. Who wanted to know what he was studying for Geography in school now, or when his next soccer competition was coming up?

But it seemed like she really did. She would pause midway through her painting and lay her brush down on the easel when he talked about his longing to backpack through Europe, Scandinavia, Asia – visit the Louvre Museum and the Colosseum, witness the grandeur of the Taj Mahal and the splendour of the Swiss Alps. She would stop painting and stare at him intensely while he spoke of how he saw those demons in his dreams, the angel-faced creatures that he actually looked forward to meeting at the end of everything, as though she had just discovered something so earth-shattering it pained her to not have anyone else to share it with. That was when he would stop.

Lately, he had been debating over whether or not to tell her of his master plan. The one where he would leave the house the minute he turned eighteen. His exams would be over, so it was not like he was being irresponsible or anything. He would steal out into the night and book it out of the country by daybreak. The mere thought of it made him quiver all over with quiet excitement.

He used his thumb to blend the navy-blue hues into the cerulean ones. The backdrops of his dreams were not golden and fiery-red these days – they had become blue, sometimes green. He recognised those colours; he understood what his subconscious was telling him. Those were not the colours of anger and hate. Those were the colours of freedom, the colours he had never quite dared to use.

*

He always stayed up till two in the morning, pored over his paintings in the corner of his room, aided only by the weak lamp at his study desk. It was shocking how much that boy could feel, could see, could dream. She had always known he was special, but not like this. Neil would have loved the boy. He always liked people who loved to travel, for he was quite a traveller himself before his knees put a stop to that.

If that was what having children was like, then to hell with living life without regrets – she wished she had been able to conceive. At least, she would not be left behind. Again. The boy was leaving tomorrow night. She thought she would have grown used to the cycle of having and losing by now, but the hurt was always fresh. How ironic was it that after seventeen years, when she had finally started to know the boy, he was setting out on his own voyage into the wilderness while she was left behind waiting for the night to claim her?

A flash of light made her snap back to the boy. He scrambled up from his chair, his fingers still stained with paint. They had found them. All his works. She was willing to bet his parents had stayed up to find out what he was up to. They had stepped up their inspection of him and kept a sharper eye fixed on him ever since they found that speck of paint on the floor. She understood then why he wanted to leave so badly. The boy was almost eighteen, for crying out loud! If his plan really succeeded, she would not feel sorry for his parents at all.

But that seemed unlikely at the moment. They were rummaging through his portfolio, pulling out each one, staring at them in outrage and disappointment, and then flinging them halfway across the room, making exclamations with flailing hands and mottled faces. It was the most agitated she had ever witnessed of them.

She did not think of herself as a particularly sentimental person, but what made her start crying was the look on his face. It was the look of a boy with his last shred of dream crushed, his only form of escape denied. He made no move to stop his father as he pulled out a lighter, held out the stack of paintings and set them on fire. His face was set in stone, his eyes shadowed with helplessness as a tear bled down his face.

As the flame curled the papers into frail black bits that crumbled eventually, she forgot how sad she had been just a moment ago. She just wished he would take off as soon as he possibly could.

*

He intended to travel light. And it was a lot lighter now that all his paintings were gone. He just wished he had managed to save at least one for Beatrice.

The door was locked, so he slipped the half-finished drawing under the door. I’ll come back to finish this with you, he had written on the back. They would fill it up with the colours they had learnt to use, fill it up with the morning light she had taught him to see, and watch as the sun lit up the dust in her attic. Some day, he will come back for that. Promises were better than goodbyes, anyway.

*

It was the first night in a long time that she had actually fallen asleep. When she woke up and blinked blearily around, she thought it had to be a mistake.

Everything felt different. Yes, she was at the kitchen table where she always sat. She must have fallen asleep there. And yes, it was morning and it was bright out. But there was something still about the air, as though everything was holding its breath. She got up from the chair, and found that her bones were not giving her the usual problems. In fact, she could almost swear she was floating, drifting along the floor.

There was the drawing of the house lying on her kitchen table, held in place with the bowl of instant noodles she had for dinner last night. The drawing was raw, but pure and beautiful nonetheless. She had read the message on the back so many times that she could remember the way his letters curved and arched and leaned against each other. It was a good thing he had not come to say goodbye – she would have fallen apart. Besides, promises were a hell lot better than goodbyes.

Footfalls pattered towards her. She could recognise them anywhere. Could it be?

She turned to look.

“Oh, Neil.” And there he was, in those ratty pyjamas that he loved to wear everywhere even though she bought him new pants every month.

“You arty types, always taking your time.” He glanced over at her still vessel lying asleep – forever – at the kitchen table, and then beamed at her, stretching out his arms. “It’s been a long while, Bea.”

“Hasn’t it.” As she rested again him, she turned to stare at the pink light that glowed behind the trees, willing the tears not to fall.

The Face in the Wind: a short story

2009-03-04T19:05:00.002+08:00

The finality of Death rang out at me in a discordant symphony of bells, as though sneering in my face with outright derision. I stared numbly, the chilly gusts of wind whipping my skin in lashes of fury. I knew this day would eventually dawn. It had hovered above us like a cloud of foreboding imminence, but neither of us had ever dared to venture into that topic. Nor had we ever thought of preparing ourselves for it, the final blow.

Ryan was strong and reliable, like a strong tree one could hide behind on a blustery day and not worry about it falling, succumbing to the wind. He was playful and serious, boyish but matured at the same time.

I was supposed to complete twenty hours of Community Involvement Project, starting out to just get it over and done with. It soon turned out to reach deeper into my heart than I had expected it would, and I started spending more time in Ward 136, by Ryan’s bed, chatting to him.

I had been drawn to the fact that the only family Ryan had was his little brother, even though he still had his mother and step-father. They never visited him and he rarely spoke about them, especially his mother. I reckoned he was too pained by the fact that her life was in jeopardy, being dominated by his abusive but affluent step-father.

Ryan poured out his soul, confiding in me and I returned the gesture mutually. Ryan, albeit being tormented by Tuberculosis since age ten, remained jocular about it.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Ryan had once told me casually as we took our daily stroll by the pond, “I’ve been dealt with a lousy deck of cards.”

I cried whenever he joked about his condition and he would hold my hand for a while, just gently stroking it while flashing me his goofy, reassuring smile.

He told me that he was a good weatherman, and could tell whenever a storm was coming. “So,” he had said with a certain conviction, “Whenever you notice the first signs of a storm, you’d see my face in the wind … just vaguely, but it’s there.”

He was trying to tell me that he was not going to be around forever, and wanted to let me down gently.

He had scared me out of my wits once, by pretending that he was dead. He had smeared a whole bunch of ketchup all over his bedsheets and bedside table and his mouth. When I arrived and saw him lying unconscious on his bed, my scream ruptured the tranquil hum of the hospital. Ryan had jolted awake and got up to clamp a hand over my mouth and calm me down.

We had laughed about it a few times after that, after my initial fury at his ill-conceived prank, and after bucketfuls of tears shed by me over that frightful moment of fear of losing him.

The second time he tried it was two weeks later.

Only this time, he was not in the mood for pranks anymore. I sniffed at the little pool of blood in his big strong hands, certain it would smell like ketchup. But there was no smell to it this time.

“Ryan?” I called out timorously, prodding him with a finger. Fear gripped hold of me, wedging me in an enclosed trap where I lost all energy to tear away from its vice-like stranglehold. “Ryan …” I murmured, holding his hand, willing his fingers to entwine mine. “Please wake up … Ryan?”

There was still no sign of his waking up and holding me in his arms to tell me that he was still alive. No, please, I prayed silently, trying to hold back my tears in hope of him waking up and laugh at my being pranked.

Nothing happened, however.

“Ryan, this not funny!” My voice had suddenly risen up several octaves, wobbling uncertainly and fearfully. “Get up now, Ry!” I screamed at him, my grip on his hands tightening till my knuckles turned white.

Ryan would have, by now, have gotten up to sweep the hair away from my face and wipe away my tears on his pajamas sleeve – had he still been alive. He would never have let me experience such fear and sorrow for more than a second. He would have chased it all away if he could, if it was within his power.

This was, apparently, not something within his power. And there was not a thing either of us could do to change that.

It had come silently, though, and innocuously enough. It had started out as a harmless prank to laugh over after it blew over. And Death had played a prank on him, as if in rebuttal, to punish him for not taking his life seriously.

I stood at an open plain now with Ryan’s little brother, reminiscing. Rain pelted our skins and the wind offered no warmth to our prickling-cold bodies. We were drenched head to toe, but I paid no attention to that. The skies have cracked open and were crying for me. My tears mingled with the raindrops on my face. For now, I just wanted to keep crying.

“Is Ryan going to be away forever?” Chris asked me, tugging lightly on my hand he was holding on to prevent himself from being swept away from the wind. He looked up at me with eyes wide and glistening with hope, watery from the strong winds blowing into them.

I had no answer for that. So I knelt down, hugged him tightly, and told him what Ryan had said to me before, “He told me he was a good weatherman, Chris. He said if you look hard in the wind that’s blowing at you, you can see his face.”

~ Joyce

Education and a Classless Society: an appraisal

2009-03-03T19:18:00.001+08:00

Education: Does it really promote a classless society?

The ideas related to education are largely radical and sweeping. They promise a greater step taken towards the improvement of our society, because it is generally felt that the more we understand about our environment, the better we can mould an ideal way of life that suits everyone and thereby raise our living standards. Some people view education as the harbinger of equality, one of the ways to eliminate social stratification. However, this has been proven to be a grossly misguided view. It also automatically assumes that a classless society is possible state to attain, which, considering human nature, is a great misconception.

Education may hail the importance of equality between all men and strongly advocate the idea of a classless society, in which every individual was given the same treatment and nobody was granted special privileges whatsoever. It certainly does appear as though education may be the answer to the social disparities seen in almost every country in the world. By educating the masses, idealists propound, people would then gain greater understanding of their rights and demand for everyone to be treated equally and presented with equal opportunities. However, even in developed countries with high levels of literacy, such as Sweden with a ninety-nine percent literacy rate, inequalities still exist in its economy, in the form of income distribution. Such is also the case for USA, Finland, Germany and Canada. In capitalist countries, inequalities exist in the economy itself, despite any government’s well-meaning attempts to reduce the income gap. Furthermore, education does not always endorse equality. Within the education system, inequality exists in the form of elitism. There is disparity between those who are able to get further ahead academically and those who are not, be it for financial or academic reasons. College-bound students are granted more opportunities and avenues in society, while those with a lower education level tend to be stuck in lesser-paid jobs with fewer opportunities in life, which then perpetuates the cycle all over again. As such, education seems to revoke the ideal that it may uphold or seem to promote.

Society is inherently unequal. To think that any society has the ability to become a classless one is to disregard the crucial factor of human nature. No two people can be absolutely equal, simply because of different perceptions of what is equal. While one may view having equal opportunities as a form of equality, another may feel that progress at one’s own pace, despite how everyone else is doing, is equality. Apart from that technicality, human nature prevents any society or civilisation from being truly classless. History has shown how leaders that start out creating a classless society morphed into tyrants or dictators and these one-man or one-party regimes imposed strict regulations upon the people. The people may be equal in that respect, but power is entirely in the hands of the ruling party. Is that not a greater inequality? Man has to be ruled by someone, or a group of people. This is the best form of civilisation Man has attained. Therefore, to think that education can change society to become one that is classless and equal is overly idealistic. A classless society is not even a possibility, much less a goal that education can help us achieve.

There is, of course, some form of equality in meritocracy upheld by some education systems, those that believe that opportunities should be given to those who apply themselves well so equality is maintained by the individual himself, depending on the amount of effort he puts in. Meritocracy, however, can also be viewed as a kind of inequality. Again, that depends on one’s definition of equality, because meritocracy inevitably leads to class differences. If a classless society means that everyone is able to progress without consideration of one’s background, then meritocracy is an example in which education can promote a classless society.

However, it still has to be noted that education is not the most equal of all social systems too. While it does try to promote the elimination of class differences in a society, the fact that not everyone has a chance to be educated negates its efforts altogether. Literacy rates are still dismayingly low in countries such as Bolivia and Mozambique. If not everyone is allowed the chance to education, then education has lost its intended purpose, which is to prevent anyone from falling behind while society progresses. Yet, disparities now are greater than before, when literacy levels were lower.

Despite all the efforts to eradicate social stratification, the chance to be educated still depends on a person’s financial capability. Whether the cycle of self-improvement spirals upwards or downwards ultimately takes into account the circumstances one is born into, even though education is said to promote greater equality. Therefore, not only is a classless society an illusion, education does not always practise what it preaches too. Inequality lies in the heart of any civilisation; to change that would mean having to change the intrinsic quality of Man.

~ Joyce

Idols: a short story

2009-03-03T19:09:00.004+08:00

Lindsay sat before her study table, at a loss of what to write for her essay. The title was ‘My Idols’, which was something she could usually handle, but somehow could not today. In vexation, she threw her pencil down and went over to her sister’s room.

“Hey, Chloe,” she shouted, pounding on the door. As usual, heavy, thumping music was blaring from the room, drowning out her calls. Lindsay was surprised her sister had not gone deaf by now, or the house had not collapsed. It seemed like there was never a moment where her ear was not glued to her Ipod or her room was not on the verge of exploding with the strain of containing the music. After a few more futile attempts to get her sister’s attention, Lindsay turned the doorknob and let herself in.

Her sister was doing a weird jig on her bed, playing air guitar, swinging her hair madly. She hopped off the bed, startled, when she saw Lindsay.

“What did I tell you about knocking?” she snapped.

“I just need your help with my essay. The title’s –”

“Do I look like I’ve got time to help you with your piffling problems, Linds?” Chloe said, trying to disguise her mortification at being caught off-guard with anger. “Why don’t you ask our university-scholar brother? He’s supposed to be the smart one, isn’t he? Now get out of my room.”

Tony’s room was the complete opposite of his teenage sister’s. Every inch was mindfully arranged, organised and careful, with no stray papers sticking out or CDs and books scattered anywhere but only arranged alphabetically on the shelves. Lindsay liked her brother’s room, but it was somehow a little too neat for her comfort. The walls were filled with laminated quotes of famous inventors, thinkers and politicians, while Post-It notes adorned the mirror.

“Hey, Tony,” Lindsay said. “I need your help with my essay.”

“Sure, Linds, what’s it about?” Tony said, taking off his frameless spectacles and massaging the bridge of his nose. He looked at his eleven-year-old sister with civil affection.

“The title’s ‘My Idols’,” she said, certain that he would have the answer. After all, Chloe was right: Tony was the smart one, the angel, while Chloe was the rebel. “I haven’t a clue how to start. What exactly are idols? What’s the actual definition of it?”

Tony rubbed his chin, thinking hard. What exactly were idols? For the life of him, he could not come up with a solid definition of the word, so he eventually said, “All right, Linds. You see, the thing is, idols take on different meanings when it comes to different people.” He paused. Lindsay stared at her older brother expectantly.

“Okay, say for example, your sister,” Tony continued. “Who do you think Chloe’s idols are?”

Lindsay thought for a while. “Those screaming people in the songs she plays on her stereo?” she guessed. Tony nodded agreeably. When he next asked his sister whom she thought his idols were, Lindsay gestured to his bedroom wall, where the laminated quotes of famous people were adhered to. Tony nodded again, sensing she was getting it. However, Lindsay was stumped when the next question he asked was whom she felt their parents’ idols were. She blinked blankly at her brother.

“Their idols are the money moguls, the business gurus and those people you see in The Financial Times magazine. You see why they’re almost never around?” Tony said, a flint of bitterness cutting into his voice. “That’s because they’re too busy slogging their guts out to fund our expenditure and have some spare cash to splurge on the material items they want.”

“Are you mad at them?” Lindsay asked, sensing the abhorrence present in her brother’s tone.

“There is nothing wrong with having idols, Linds, but when your whole life gets driven by it and you shut out everything else, you should pause and think if that is what you really want,” Tony said.

“So what you’re saying is …” Lindsay trailed off, trying to hop on to her brother’s trend of thoughts.

“What I’m saying, is that everyone has their own idols. You can look up to people who are smarter, prettier, nobler and richer, or you could just look up to someone in your family. It’s simple. Idols are maybe just people you look up to and want to learn from or, in fact, be.”

Lindsay left her brother’s room, her mind reeling with what she had learnt. Her brother was truly smart. Lindsay was already starting to have an idea of whom her idols were. She returned to her room and sat on her bed, pulling out a stack of old magazines from her bookshelf. The girls in school were read them religiously and Lindsay had also gotten hooked onto these magazines after she was introduced to her very first one.

In those glossy pages, tall, reed-thin girls with sultry faces and pouty lips flaunted their seemingly-weightless bodies. Some were sashaying down walkways, dressed in heavy-looking designer clothes while people stared up at them in the background; some were posing with male models, being and knowing that they were beautiful.

Lindsay pored over them, drinking it all up thirstily. An hour later, she kept them and strode over to her table, certain that she had found her idols.

~ Joyce

The Closed Sign: a poem

2009-01-17T11:23:00.005+08:00

In that sleepy diner round the corner
Their blank stares skirt around.
Catch a tear
You stayed up late at night
Now you need to get out of here.
The spinning wheels,
The scratches on the grooves
The quiet storm thrashes slowly
The waves that slide up to shore –
Licking foams that dress up the sand,
Coffee stains that dry like ink.
Stormclouds roll heavily over like fog,
As the light of the sun break through the grey.
When all the lonely souls left,
There were only coffee stains on the table,
Only stains on the table.
But the boy in the blue-grey t-shirt still sat there,
Nursing his cup,
Singing his song,
Asking for another one.
Sorry, we’re closed for the night.
And the warm presence left cold.
But he’ll be back tomorrow.
The storm will die by then,
It’ll die by then.

~ Joyce

The Midnight that Wasn't: a poem

2009-01-13T12:12:00.009+08:00

Midnight was a lifetime
That stretched into a road,
The kind that you could see
Nothing beyond the yawning peak,
Like a highway to the stars.

Midnight here was all I knew,
Surest and truest,
Like the pinprick of blood
That blooms like a budding rose
On the canvas of never-ending skin.

Midnight was the scavenger
That scoured the scene
In the quiet glow of twilight’s moon,
A raven’s wing, torn and drenched
In the crimson tears that crept down its back.

Midnight was the sound of screams
That shuddered through the air;
It was the rancid breath of fear,
Thirsty for my hands in yours,
Gasping for air.

Midnight was the colour of your eyes
Staring back at the lonely night –
Still, unblinking – yet
Searching for me,
Just not saying a word.

Hope you enjoyed it.

~ Joyce