Iris killed herself last night. Or so they told us. Things can happen in this small space, but nobody knows for sure if things really did happen. They like messing with our minds. You just have to trust your memory.
We sleep in a crammed up little room. There’s a gassy smell of oil lamps, damp blankets, human waste. It hovers like a mist in the room, so thick the odor seeps into our clothes and grows on it, like mould. I think this used to be a dining room. Did the owners listen to music with their meals? Iris was already gone when I woke up. She left behind an impression of her body in the mattress, a hollow space that used to be her, soaked in blood.
There were rumours that Iris was a model once. Her face had delicate angles, when light touched her skin, you could tell she might have been beautiful once. Cynthia said Iris tried to seduce one of them and failed. She would have been sentenced to death anyway. But old Maggie had a different story to tell.
She was pregnant, Maggie tells, the edge of her lips flaking with dry saliva. Cynthia holds a hand to her chest protectively, mouth parting with a righteous gasp as though she’s been insulted. Pregnant. It sent shivers down our backs.
It’s one of those rare days where we talk, only softly though. Our cracked lips healed together as one, now open again like an infected wound. Our throats crawl with phlegm and reek sour smells. Our tongues delighting in syllables, struggling over words we have almost forgotten how to pronounce.
Our eyes no longer wander. We see shadows, we see objects, and we dodge things humbly. We do not dare to stroll. Just soft cautious steps, lowered heads, controlled breathing, focused eyes. No curiosity, no trouble.
Cynthia huddles in the corner and bites her lip. Her lips are ripped in some places. There’s no nourishing oil to sooth the sores. There’s never any treatment. Danny had his leg broken, just above the ankle. They never did anything about it. They told him to go back to his room, the room with the damp smells, and go to sleep. Danny crawled back, his face slimy with sweat and drool as he cried from the pain. You can see the purple lump where the leg has snapped.
Old Maggie wound a torn shirt over it. Danny is better now. Only slightly. He still can’t walk. Or he won’t. He said he could no longer feel parts of his foot. But we don’t think about him too much.
We have other things to think about.
Tonight, the four of us push tasteless balls of food down our throats. My stomach tries to regurgitate it, but I summon enough will to keep it down. Better than no food at all. The stomach is a terrible thing.
Old Maggie has her back to us. She stares at the boarded window like she’s afraid of us. I focus on my food. If they find left-overs in our rusty tins, we’d suffer. Thrown into a room with a blazing light that would shrink our pupils; play horrible sounds that begin to rip our eardrums until we twitched uncontrollably and begged them to let us go. They like that, making us beg. They like to feel in control.
Old Maggie pulled all the hair out of her head when they played an ugly scratching sound. Her scalp is red and pimply all over now. Only a few white strands are beginning to sprout again. She looks comical. Like an old witch. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
Danny whines a lot in the corner. He rests his leg on a bundle of his rags. I try not to look at his black toe nails. He never says anything worth listening to though. Only croaking animal noises. I’ve long lost patience with him.
Cynthia scoops up the remainder of her food and presses it into her mouth then stands up slowly. She obediently leaves her tin can at the boarded wall they separate our room with, and climbs onto her mattress. She pulls a grey damp sheet over her body and closes her eyes.
Slowly we lay our tin cans at the door. Except Danny, who breathlessly whines at Maggie as she passes. Maggie helps him silently. No, not help. She does it for him silently. We don’t help here, we don’t choose. We only do for the sake of ourselves.
Maggie raps the wooden wall panels several times. A Protector parts the panel, avoiding eye contact with us, collects the tin cans and imprisons us again. Cynthia, Maggie, Danny and me and Iris’s ghost.
The stink of her death is the strongest smell in the room. Sweat and blood. Rotting particles of torn skin drying on the mattress. Did she die in pain? Did she suddenly feel regret and try to call out? I didn’t hear anything. Cynthia faces the wall and shudders. I can’t hear her cry. But I know she’s holding the sounds inside her chest, each sob imploding against her ribs.
I stand uncertainly at the foot of my mattress. My legs are shaky. It’s been a while since I’ve stood. My height suddenly unfamiliar to me. I brush my hair through my fingers. The oily strands stick together in place.
Tonight, they come for me. I don’t feel too much fear. They’re always after people for no reason. I’m almost excited. I want to see fresh faces. It’s a cleansing process, they told us. To cleanse our minds from bad things, from bad thoughts, from bad lives. The cleansing process hurts. My womb is gone. But we are lucky, because we still have time to correct ourselves.
I wonder what they will do to me. I stare at my palms. Which line dictates where I am now? I clasp my hand together in shock. Bad thoughts. Bad thoughts.
The boards creak, there’s a mutter outside then the panel parts again. An old man in a brown robe stands at its opening. He motions me toward him with a regal arch of the arm. There’s a long scar along his sagging cheek. Like a blind man, he makes no eye contact. He just directs me and signals me to move. Nobody says goodbye. The room is boarded up again.
There is only a hallway outside. All the other rooms are boarded up like ours. I wonder who lives in them. Are they lived in? But I am not to notice or think of things like that. I bow my head and follow the robed stranger.
We walk for a long time. He leads me through a maze of hallways, so we can’t trace our way back. Then he stops, and motions at the stairs at the end of the hall.
I go upstairs. I don’t look back because I’ve been taught never to do that. They strike our faces when we do. It’s hot and stuffy. The smells are even worse up here. Fleshy and private. Ten times Iris’s mattress. Two uniformed Protectors stand rigid at the top of the stairs. They too, stare at nothing. I don’t shake because it’s too warm and humid. My skin feels bloated, my stomach churns. I want to throw up. But I know if I bend over they’ll hit me. They’ll electrocute me, or whip me and then there’ll be a big ugly scar on my back.
A Lady comes to collect me. Only her eyes are showing, her eyebrows are hidden beneath a plastic cap making her face seem permanently shocked. I’m led into a bathroom. A small space of chemical smells. Maybe the owners had little pots of pot pourri once. Toilet mats, and cartoon toothbrushes. Sweet smelling shampoo bottles in the shower, a hair dryer on the bench, a heater plugged to the wall.
The Lady closes the door behind us but doesn’t lock it. She’s a trusted one here, I mustn’t falter. Numerous containers sit on the bench. All nameless. There’s no mirror here. Illusions, they call it. Self illusions, they said, were evil.
She undoes my buttons, her rubber fingers deftly exposing my body. I can’t see what she looks like under her mask and uniform. She sponges my dirty body with luke-warm water. The soft movements are something like intimacy. Then she starts scrubbing, introducing hot water that scalds my limbs. Hard soap feels like rubber over my skin, catching it, squeaking and slipping. I threw out half used blocks of soap once, simply because they had lost its former shape, becoming formless and ugly. Like wax melted into the holder, I had pried it away and replaced it with a new one, a fancy shape with indented running letters. It was vanity. No use regretting.
“Open your mouth, rinse,” she says suddenly, softly. A soft high tone I hadn’t expected. My tongue freezes with the cool touch of mouth wash. I spit the green water out into the white basin. I rinse again, spit and lavish in the cool tingles for a moment, tongue over teeth. Perhaps once upon a time, the tongue was used in intimacy, slipping tentatively between someone’s lips, savouring love.
Goosebumps run along my skin. A thin towel covers me briefly. The door opens. I am led out again. Naked.
“We are giving you a second chance at life.” The man says as I enter a new room. An old bedroom. Here, the smell of decay is the strongest. I panic. Turn and be hit or wait and anticipate? I stand rigid. “Lie down.” His irises are like ice hinting of a blue sky behind. A pendant hangs from a red cord around his neck.
I stare at the bed. A large four poster bed with a plastic sheet on top. I stare at the man, behind his dark robed figure is the wooden sigh of Kafa, a circle and a knife in the middle. The reliever of sin.
“Lie down.” He repeats again, indifferent.
I take a step forward and feel my head shaking. Two women suddenly grip me from either sides and push me down. I struggle. But the women hold an arm and a leg each on either sides. I scream. The man chant prayers. The shadow of the Kafa knife, like the old crucifix runs down my body. I calm down a bit.
The man pushes my legs apart. My first instinct is to flinch, then kick. But the ladies hold me down and skillfully tie damp clothes around my wrists and ankles, their hands now firmly gripping my knees. Spreading my legs, pulling my skin tight against stitches in the last operation.
The man whispers something, prayers in a language I don’t understand. I know he’s praying because his eyes are closed, and head slightly bowed. The women kneel on the floor beside me and pray too, bowing their foreheads to my sides.
Suddenly there’s a blow to my leg. The man is cursing. “You fool, you ignorant girl. You sinner. You have beheld the devil’s pleasure.” My leg screams with pain. I cry softly, teeth holding my tongue to control myself. He swings at me again, his hand hard against my thigh. I can’t move anywhere, the cloth binding my limbs now burning my skin. “You let a man have you. You let your hands seek the sin. You let yourself be taken.” And then he slaps me hard on the belly. I groan. My eyes stinging with tears.
He holds up a long silver needle, black thread strung through its eye, and weaves six stitches in the air.
I struggle.
“You shall become pure again.” He seals his promise with a prayer in a different language and sets the needle beneath the bed. For a moment I am almost calm. Hands hold down my knees.
I hear rubber snapping against skin. Someone has turned a lamp on, I feel the heat radiating against the inside of my thighs. The man masks himself with a white cloth, exposing only his glacier eyes. A terrible pain burns inside of me. I heave, but the women press me down. Another sharp pain flares between my legs. I cry out, something hard slaps me across the face.
* * *
I wake. It’s the old shabby room where Maggie is sitting with her face to the boarded windows. I know why she chooses to look there. To pretend she has a view when all she sees are dark panels of wood. I wonder what she imagines. Trees, Birds, Animals, Freedom?
There’s a dull stinging between my legs. My wrist and ankles burn with blisters. I lie there, silent. A virgin again. A fresh hymen that will never be broken. Or broken to lead to nowhere. There’s a mark on my arm. I feel it. I haven’t seen it, but I know it’s there, heavy on me. The mark of the purification process. The mark of rebirth. Into the world relieved from sin.
In the corner, I see Danny watching me. One of my legs is exposed. I feel a momentary excitement. Sexy. And then I remember. He too, has become sexless. He looks me in the eye and I see his hatred glaring at me. I shift my leg under the hot sheets again.
Cynthia doesn’t acknowledge my existence. I don’t expect her too. She lies in a foetal position, biting her lips, staring at the wall. Her small head drenched with sweat. She knows they’ll be coming for her tonight. To carve out her insides.
They took Iris’s mattress away, Maggie croaks, as though reading my mind. We can share her clothes now. Maggie looks at me for a moment, bitterly. But I guess you’ll be leaving soon. Then she stares at the window again.
* * *
There are dried piss-like stains on the ceiling, ruining the intricate patterns once designed for the eyes to enjoy. Did the previous owners have candlelit dinners?
Cynthia was dragged off tonight. She resisted. I’m afraid to see her in the morning. I won’t feel sorry for her, more annoyed. What torture would they plan for her? If they could do that to her, than they can do that to me. She’ll be another proof there’s worse to endure.
The dull lights abruptly turn off. There’s a shuffle in the room, and everyone is silent.
The wooden boards groan. There are soft footsteps somewhere. Maggie mutters to herself. We’re afraid Iris has come back. But she wouldn’t want to haunt us. It’s they who need to worry.
We’re not in prison, they tell us. Nonetheless we came here for our sins. Shame on us, we say in unison, shame on us. That’s when everyone in this complex comes together in a great big hall, when the stench of unwashed bodies reek the strongest. With our light we will guide you, they say, guide you to guide others, and spread our word of truth.
The only light in the room comes from a narrow slit just below the ceiling. Blue light streams in, but even that has bars slanting across it, as though the moon is projecting our stories on the wall for us.
Are the bars separating us from the moon? Or separating the moon from us? I try to remember what the moon looks like; a round mirror suspended in the sky reflecting the sun; a glowing pearl on the surface of a still pond.
I want to sleep so I can dream. Dreams are my release. Dreams are my reality because reality is now stranger than dreams. This is normal though now. Dreams are absurd. If they found out what I was dreaming off, I’d be thrown out to fend for myself.
They’re training us for the world outside. We’re the lucky ones to have been caught. Pockets of people are still out there destroying themselves. Destroying the future.
Better here?
I don’t want to ask myself that question, it’s frightening. They’ve taken away my ability to choose. I can’t choose, not even in hypotheticals, it’s too threatening.
I wrap the blanket around myself and fall asleep. Pretending I’m in someone’s arms.
* * *
Cynthia’s face is bruised when she comes back. Swollen skin pushing her eyelids down, an expression of tragedy. She limps into the room. I don’t want to know why. Maggie ignores her. Danny grunts and turns away.
Our eyes meet briefly, but then she stares right past me. I don’t think she even sees me. The Protector motions at me. I think he must be mistaken. Maggie also notices and crosses her brow.
No one has ever requested for Maggie. Only for torture when she did something wrong. Maggie sometimes looks at Cynthia and me, and I can sense envy because of our age, because we can somehow improve ourselves beyond her.
He motions at me more impatiently this time. I know better than to ask. “You must cleanse your mind,” he says when we’re outside.
“How?”
He doesn’t answer and blind-folds me.
The wooden boards are cold beneath my feet. I shiver slightly. His hands are holding my arm gently. It feels nice, secure. For a moment, I think we’re bonding. Bonding because we’re here, locked up in this place. Inside, there’s an impulse to grab his hands, and beg him, lets run away, run away and be together, in secret sects with the old customs. I promise I can love you and we’ll be happy together.
The texture is different beneath my bare feet now. Smooth but not lacquered. “Don’t move until I tell you to.”
“Where am I?”
“The black room.”
“What’s - What’s happening?”
“Remove the blind fold in two minutes.”
I feel air rush in between us, I don’t want him to leave. His hand warmed my arm. I’m not ready for him to let go. I reach out, but I feel a surface blocking me. I rip the blind fold away. Everything is black. I can’t see anything. Am I blind? I rub my eyes. Nothing. There’s nothing.
“Help!” I scream and try to trace a door along the wall, searching for seams with my fingers. Nothing. I follow the wall, there’s a corner, another corner. I’m in a box like room. But there is a single source of light, a yellow globe, hanging from the ceiling. But its rays aren’t strong enough to penetrate the dark. I put my hand out and feel the wall again. When I move my hand, the darkness tumbles away from me. So close, yet so far. Distanceless. How long am I to stay here? I look down and panic, crouching quickly to feel the ground across my fingers. Am I falling? There seems to be nothing around me. No bottom, not top, no sides. Yet if I step forward, the wall blocks me. I scream. The walls absorb my voice. I place a hand against it, I can see my skin glowing pale from the yellow light, but no shadows slant across the walls. There is no depth in the room. I can’t see my shadow against it. Only against myself, in the folds of my skin, the curve of my arm. Everything else seeps into nothingness.
I huddle in a corner and close my eyes. But my eyes might have been closed. Why can’t I see anything? I’m not in the dark, there’s a light globe here, burning bright, but I can’t see anything at all except myself. Except myself.
Except myself.
Hours might have passed. My back hurts. I spread myself out against one wall, making sure I’m touching it, so I know where I am. No, so I know there are still solid things around me.
Justin hit me once, and I threw a mug at him. It crashed on the floor and shattered. The white mug with my star sign printed on it, telling me I was creative, optimisitic andindividual broke in two large pieces with several flaky pieces in between, the edges were raw and sharp. He knelt down and picked up the two larger pieces, throwing away the side that said individual first, and then optimistic, then went to sleep that night, with his back to me.
I cried because he hurt me so much. What were the things he said? What were they? Regret, he regretted living with me. We were so blind. They were already affecting us then. No use thinking. No use remembering.
Regrets will take you nowhere. Mum’s voice echoes from a time past. Just don’t do anything stupid, and you’ll have none. I thump my head against the floor.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know.
What you don’t know won’t kill you. Yeah right. I try to hit my head harder against the floor, but I’m scared it’ll hurt. Always such a coward. How can anyone will death? Did Iris struggle at all? Instincts for survival takes over. We didn’t evolve over so many thousands of years to be able to will death.
Rubbish, evolution doesn’t exist.
Justin clutched my hand excitedly. “I know this will cramp your style, but this is all we can afford right now. This is going to be good, I’ll move in the fridge, get some beers, and it’ll be sweet.”
The apartment was beautiful. Brown carpet, its pile worn flat like a million flattened worms on the floor. An old couch from a garage sale, smelling of its old home, old food odours embedded in its weave, memories of someone else. And a coffee table that Justin had made himself. It wobbled because one foot was a centimetre longer than the other three. But it was beautiful.
The table balanced cups of coffee throughout the day, coffee for him, and hot chocolate for me.
The first disruptions were threatening phone calls. We laughed and took the phone off the hook for two days. Then they used blood.
We laid on the couch watching TV in our spare time, snuggled in each other.
What did we watch? We dodged the serious stuff. Only snippets of social affairs reached us, media reports on some religious order, making fun of it, mocking it, criticizing it. We turned back to the silly little love stories, dramas with issues we understood, intriguing love affairs
Love - now we would be punished for it. Now we are being punished for it.
I’m out of love. No, I am unloved. Unloveable and unloving. I stare at the vast emptiness this little room exudes. Just like the soggy matter caged by my ribs. The insides are cold, washed out by the tears we’re forced to swallow, the salt searing into the wounds.
It began with a dark red circle painted on our door. Lambs’ blood. They were marking us. Identifying us. Condemning us.
And then came the ghostly quiet days. They disappeared suddenly. The eerie calm before the storm.
Don’t take things for granted, they say. They tell us we must thank them. Thank them for saving us. Thank them for cleansing our souls, cleansing our minds. We were tainted by evil. We must not blame them for using violence. They’re using poison against poison, flushing our bodies and souls clean.
I run my finger over the mark of purification. A little lump of the skin they burnt on my shoulder. It’s still sore.
Justin used to massage my shoulders, his fingers that were fine and gentle working away the strains in my muscles, trailing forward to my neck and scooping my face up to him. Then our lips would connect.
Soft, delicious.
I hit my fist on the ground. Please, let me out.
I slump against the wall and shiver. Cynthia, Maggie, Danny, where are you? I want to be back with you. I want to be back with somebody.
Suddenly, part of the wall opens. The guard steps in. I run towards him, but he holds me back. I calm down. I remember who I am. He’s more pure than me. I cannot taint him. “Food.” He says then lowers his voice so it’s almost gentle. “Here, a blanket.” I hold the tray, and he drops the blanket by my feet. I look down for an instant and when I look up, he’s gone again. Only darkness.
“What’s the thing you’re most afraid of?”
“Being alone, without you,” I whispered, placing my leg over his. “And being alone in the dark.”
“Don’t be silly. You’ll never be alone.” He says to my cheek reassuringly. “You’ll always have me.”
And now look where I am.
He was born with exquisite features, delicate and charming. His lack of vanity gave him the ragged combination I loved. I want to erase his image, but I cling to it, fearful of what he might be now. A fallen figure like Danny perhaps, or something more frightening like the Protectors? Memories are haunting me. The dark makes it worse, a blank space I can project memories upon.
They tell us, without memories we do not imagine false futures. Without memories, we are immune. But they are the only things that belong to me.
I frantically lay out the blanket the guard gave me on the ground. Now I don’t have to feel like I’m standing on nothing. The food is soft and mushy. It is tasteless. I dip my fingers into it and smear grey streaks along the black walls. Finally, the light has something to reflect off. There, a sense of depth, finally.
I touch the scarred flesh along my shoulder again. Happy was desexed, that little mongrel at home. He’s a big dog trapped in a little dog’s body, our neighbours said. Mum used to let him run around the house. Once he made a mess behind the sofa, and she laughed joyfully, collecting his shit and spraying deodorant on the carpet. That’s what our lounge smelt off, mum’s underarms masking Happy’s crap.
We’re dogs here. Some of us desexed bitches. My science teacher called it an evolutionary dead-end when something can’t reproduce. Rubbish rubbish. No such thing as Evolution!
I’m not an evolutionary dead-end.
I don’t want to believe.
I stand and try to find my shadow along the walls and on the ground, but it all gets absorbed into the blackness of the surfaces. It’s an illusion of space. An illusion! Shadows create dimensions. Without dimensions, we see darkness rolling forever while shielding our eyes at the same time.
Let me out. I scream, almost grinning. I don’t want to live in a place of illusions!
The glass is hot against my hand. I stretch to get a firmer grip. I want to get out of this place!
The glass shatters inside my palm.
* * *
We sit quietly in our white gowns, praying. Dorl sevas su, we repeat, thumbing glass beads through our fingers. I am clean now. Freshly bathed. I do not have to sleep in a room with rags and damp smells.
We clean our bodies’ daily, our linen is regularly washed. Everything must be immaculately white. Stains represent our resistance to dirt. We are whipped for carelessness. We’re not immune to violence yet. That may come later.
I see Cynthia in the congregation, kneeling with two Protectors on either side, her head bowed, clasped hands to her lips. She’s trembling. Danny sits awkwardly with his useless leg tucked under him, he kneels on the edge, towards the back for everyone’s convenience. Maggie is some rows behind Cynthia. Maggie looks more bitter. She stares at me openly, but I’m not threatened. She will be sent away soon. Better you than me, Maggie.
Cynthia’s battered face recovered badly, her nose is crooked and her eyes no longer symmetrical. She still has the nervous habit of biting her lips. She sees me staring at her, and she responds with a little bob of her head, pressing her torn lips deeper into her knuckles. But I look away and focus on my prayers. She must suffer to be cleansed. She still has vile thoughts.
I am to be careful. I can still dirty myself.
When you sit facing the Impures, you must resist all temptation. Father Grant said I can be an Angel yet if I try hard enough. I must be completely pure, and have a strong heart. Pity is your greatest vice, he said. Pity is as bad as greed. If you pity someone, you give yourself away. You allow their evil spirit to taint you. I nodded and accepted his words.
There’s a hush, and a young girl is pushed to the altar. It’s Cynthia. The Protectors hold her. Father Grant holds a knife in his hand. I watch. Cynthia’s stifled sobs crack into agonising screams.
The congregation looks on. Maggie lifts her head to watch, eyes glaring down. “The girl has destroyed herself.” Father Grant says quietly. “She has committed the sin… in our sacred house. She has broken the rules. Our teachings are wasted on her. We can only expel her.”
I hold the glass beads tighter in my hands, rolling them through subconsciously. Focus. Focus. Her screaming is almost unbearable. Father Grant raises his voice.
“We sacrifice her as a lesson to you all. She will then be unable to taint you. And she will suffer for the sins she has committed.”
The protectors hold Cynthia between them. She doesn’t stand but hangs from their grips, clear drool stringing down from her mouth in heavy suddenly soundless sobs.
“N….no.” She struggles, her face red with plea. “I-I-I- didn’t-”
Father Grant put his hands together. “May we pray.”
I close my eyes. Cynthia is screaming loudly now. I know someone is watching the congregation. I sense eyes, to see who flinches, who sympathizes. I finger the beads calmly, blocking out her screams.
“NO!”
Father Grant has Cynthia dragged closer to him. The two impassive Protectors have black cloths folded over their foreheads. Father Grant approaches one at a time, and pulls the cloth over his eyes and ears. To protect them. From Cynthia.
“You are pregnant.” He says to Cynthia, “while you are Impure.” I look away for a moment. The sin was unforgivable. To conceive a soul from a tainted soul was pure evil.
When I turn to look, I see Cynthia’s mouth open and screaming, her face turned my way. She lunges in my direction as though I could help her. Father Grant raises his knife. At the apex of his gesture, he mouths a prayer.
Danny Flinches.
Cynthia is overcome by sudden stillness. Her veins in her temples and neck throb, sticking out against her frail structure. Father Grant lets his hands come down, pushing the knife firmly into Cynthia’s chest.
A gush of blood begins to spurt. The Protectors though blinded cover her efficiently as though they’d been through many rituals. Her face is last covered, eyes open, staring in my direction.
I can’t do anything about it Cynthia, I can’t.
Father Grant wipes the blood off himself with some water in a pitcher, a broad laurel leaf floating inside the reddening water.
I bow my head and mutter prayers.
The fittest for survival. Even if evolution doesn’t exist, the theories are good. Reason… I must trust my memory.
But I must not care for it. My ambition now is to be an Angel here.
Only then will I be safe.
Only then will I be safe.
Dorl evas em.
Stories are original works written by Jennifer Huynh.
All written works published here is subject to copyright and may not be used without permission
