escapeWhat is your story? What is it that you would like me to know about you?What is your heritage; who are your people? Are you happy person or anunhappy person? Have you made it against all odds, or were you bornwith a silver spoon in your mouth? What are the struggles you endured tomake you who you are today? Are you a spiritual person or a materialist?Do you like heavy rock music or are you into classical? Maybe you just likesilence? Are you right-wing, left-wing or down the middle. Or perhaps youare angel-winged? Tell me your story…If I know your story I know what to expect when I am with you becauseour stories define our behaviour. At least, we think we know what toexpect because there is no guarantee that any of us keep to our ownscripts, especially in times when we let go of ourselves! But it should bea good approximation, an insightful blueprint we all at least try to followin moments of ordinary consciousness. And if we find ourselves actingout of character now and then, our belief in the objectivity of stories isso strong that we will invariably modify the story if we have to rather thanconclude that stories themselves cannot be relied upon.In silent collusionBetween you and meTwo fictitious charactersMeet and greet,Shadow puppetsSpinning lies of identity.We spin lies about our identity, because, if truth be told, we have none.But we live in a society where everyone is encouraged to be a somebody.Indeed, to be a somebody is regarded as a prerequisite to having ourneeds met. Nobody cares about a nobody. 53
escape54
escape
escape56
A COLLECTION OF FICTION STORIES 57
escape LOST IN THE COLORFUL MAZEOne thing about my blog is that I always give places and people a new name. For one thing,it provides anonymity and for another, the new names describe the places and people in fargreater detail than their original name ever could. (Or at least i like to think so). They are notjust words on a piece of paper – a tourist’s guide book or a birth certificate. They are the namesof the things in my world.In my world, Taipei is called ‘The Colourful Maze’. It’s a city of colour. Everything is vibrant;streets of rainbows and pick ‘n’ mix sweets. When everything around you is so amazinglybright and beautiful, it’s incredibly easy to get lost. I’m used to making mental markers with theexciting things I see. Perhaps it’s time to start remembering the bland and boring – here thesethings are few and far between.Life in Taipei so far is like a dream. It’s better than I ever could have imagined, a surprise, adiscovery or an adventure waits around every corner. I realised how that rainbow just keeps ongrowing and growing the further you travel. At home I knew every food in the supermarket,how it tasted, how it felt in my mouth, how it made me smile or squirm. Now all the shelveshave been restocked, I’m wondering around the aisles blindfolded, but all my other senses aresuper strength. I’m happy to be lost in the colourful maze.Every five minutes, someone pops out from a side street to help me on my journey. It’s alwaysa friendly Asian face. Even the people are colourful. They beam with happiness and do itwith such grace. I want to be jealous of the women – they’re the most strikingly beautiful anddelicate individuals I’ve ever seen. It’s their innocence and elegance with prevents me frombeing envious and instead I just want to cuddle them all. Or steal their beautiful children.One thing which I dislike is that when I’m surrounded by all of these gorgeous women I justlook like a fat ogre. I wonder how I am going to find clothes or shoes to fit my fat bum andflipper sized feet. On the other hand, it takes me an hour to eat one grain of rice. I still haven’tmastered the art of using chopsticks and by the time I’ve worked my way through half a bowlI’ve forgotten that I was ever hungry in the first place. Maybe in a year’s time I will have shrunkto the childlike figure of an Asian woman. That’s very wishful thinking and still doesn’t solvethe problem of the gigantic feet. The Taiwanese can eat an entire banquet in what seems like amillisecond. This is very puzzling. 58
59
60
escape THE VOICES OF A CITYThe scorching heat was felt in every remote street in the neighborhood. The walks to school,shopping or the simple chores in the loud and cramped city where unbearable, I felt the heatand the humidity slipping deep through the skin. With every step, I felt I was suffocating,attempting to find some relief from the sun amongst the few trees.The intense heat penetrating the membranes of my nose was a reminder that it was a sensationlike no other. The moist breeze stroking my face making me blush with a settled attempt to drythe drops of sweat from my forehead, it seemed to be whispering that I belong.The locals were warm and dreamy; with customs that seemed to come out of a utopia, theutopia where everyone desires to be a part of.The incredible scenery, friendly people, rich history; from the picturesque colonial sugar beachas I called it, the flat land with hidden underground caverns ... all so dreamy.A legendary and majestic city, keeping secrets in every corner, secrets with untold stories, secretdreams and desires that are engraved on the walls of every door, window, every stone in thepavement. Unexpected Dreams of every pedestrian, obscured by the noise of vehicles, voicesand bustle of a typical day.I heard that overwhelming and solemn voice shouting at me wherever I went. I realized themap of blood had no boundaries. How is it possible not to feel nostalgia every night when shesings in my ear, will I ever forget the sunrise?The city smells like a musty coffee and sugar, leaving an eternal and unique drunkenness. 61
escape AN UNWAVERING OMISSIONA dark library, barely illuminated by the lantern, gives refuge to a young dreamer–dreaming of anold lover despite the passing years–rested her head on the pillow of a known bed and scent. Aftera moment she stopped and observed the way the old lover removed the bags, a few minutes toolate, from the steaming cups. She knows she should withdraw her interest. After all, it’s only as realas a dream.Helena Feignier, with her sleepy eyes, and a hint of amnesia waited for the woman to slip under thecovers. She waited and waited until another figure appeared at the edge of the bed. Now there arethree women in the library, but only one is real. Helena rubbed her eyes and tried to remember. Thewoman making tea exists. The woman on the bed…her presence is comforting.“Who is she?,” asked the woman, the tips of her toes touching the floor.“Someone I remember.” The words flowed from Helena’s lips to the gnarled fingers on her lap.“Someone I miss.”The woman moved away from the edge of the bed. She placed one finger on Helena’s knee anddrew it down with ease. “Why is she so special?”“I can’t remember.” At enunciating those syllables Helena’s mouth trembled. Some memory wasforcing its way back into her mind. Grainy images of a college campus, the tall trees and passingfaces. Her mind searched for a way to place the memory, to categorize its carried emotions.As the woman handed over the warm cup, an old energy was triggered and there came the storylines, their personal narrative. Heartbreak. Humiliation. The tenderness had gathered to form alarge, bruised mass with thorns sliding along the edges. The woman had made tea as she alwayshad–before those summer months of silence. She’d gone to Mexico to study. To forget.But Helena knew the timing was right. How else would she mend her broken heart?Helena placed the tea on the table and rested her head on the pillow. The reverie would give her atleast a few more hours before changing. She could continue to pine over lost time or settle in nextto her lover and willingly embrace the illusory tendencies of the dream. 62
63
escapeMargarida CSSophia Baloolal 64
escape
escape66
67
escape69
escapeINCREASING CHANCES A Short Story by Sky Zhang 70
escapeHe pulled the bell once, twice, but the bus didn’t even slow down. Waving an incredulous hand, hestumbled over to the driver asked to be let off. The driver peered at him through the side of an eyeand, with a well-practiced but lazy movement of a hand on the gear, halted the bus in the centreof the street, which was so narrow that it was pulling over to the side would not have made muchdifference. The bus door opened with something that sounded like an ejected sigh.He stepped off into the cold air and his sweat instantly turned into stabbing icy spots of moistureon his forehead. The bus continued on. It was a long time until the sound of its engine’s drones diedaway completely, and when it did, the cooing of pigeons, which seemed to come from somewherein the distance and from right above his head at the same time, floated to the surface. The roadwinded away in both directions, following the slopes of the mountain, and where his vision wasn’tobscured by the trunks and leaves of pines, he could see sections of its naked, grey emptiness. Hewent over to the side of the road, stepped over the metal barrier, stumbled to the nearest pine andhuddled into the crook between its base and the leaf-covered ground like a baby huddles into thecrook of its mother’s arm. The weight of his backpack was pulling him off-balance so he shiftedhis weight onto all fours and crouched like a praying Muslim. Now backpack’s was crushing into hisbody, and the weight was comforting.Gradually, sorrow gathered again, in the pit of his stomach, in his head, behind his eyes. Soon hewas sobbing, crying out her name. He was going to find her again. *When they were here together at this place five years ago, it had also been winter. Her cheeks were red from thecold- her tender skin, which was so thin that one or two tiny red veins could be seen through it. She was looking atsomething. The whites of her eyes were clean and pure, like polished white marbles.“Look at that,” she point to the distance, where a tiny yellow house sat on the side of the mountain, about three-fourths of the way to the top. “Isn’t it pretty?”He was surprised that she could see the small building hidden amid so many trees, some that are evergreens and somethat are all bare branches. He was surprised that she could see that it was a house. “Let’s go to it,” he said.This wasn’t very easy to do. The winding road led them in multiple directions, and the house was only rarely visible.They found it when they were just about to give up, at sundown. The house seemed to have been abandoned. Therewere no cars or bicycles on the small courtyard overgrown with weeds, and the windows were dark. It was even smallerthan it had looked from afar, square, non-symmetrical, and looked like it was made of beeswax. The setting sun’srays seemed to be gradually turning it into amber. The leaves of the nearby pines were also being tinged with gold.They had found it! 71
escapeBoldly entering the house through the unlocked door, they discovered a neatly furnished décor, not elegant, notpretty, just simple and relaxed. Hungry, they ate the instant ramen and canned peaches found in the cabinets.They remembered Goldilocks, remembered the existence of psychopathic home-owners who made sudden returns,remembered the possibility of haunted houses.Giggling with fear, they set down where they were, on the kitchen floor, too cold to go outside again and too afraid toexplore other rooms. They slept like kids, huddled into each other.The next morning, she said, “This yellow house is ours now. It will always be. If we ever lose each other, if we areever separated, we’ll find each other again, right here.” *It didn’t take him long to find the small yellow house again, standing like a block of beeswax. Itwas early afternoon, but the grey sky of that morning had by then fully matured into heavy, sullen,grey clouds. Snow was starting to fall. This was the very spot where years ago he and she had stoodtogether, and even though things have changed, the landscape had shifted, the mood was gone, itwas still easy to imagine her there, still standing with him, still with him. But she had left him. Hehad always thought that the bond between them was so strong that it could never be severed, butshe had simply wriggle out of whatever was tying them to each other. “We’ll find each other again,right here.” These words were empty. He knew he had always been too sentimental, and once againhe punched his own thigh as punishment. And once again, he remembered that he had already beenpunished enough for it.He stood on the first porch step. The house was different than he remembered; the golden,translucent magic about it was gone and instead, the greyness of the sky seemed to immerse it. Heturned his back to it. Sighing white steam, he rubbed the soles of his right shoe on the edge of thestone step, and then his left. Even when all the mud had been accumulated into two half-moonshaped mounds on top of the step, he kept grating the soles against it, as the physical manifestationof his inner conflicts. Why had she never tried to contact him, the seven years since they split up?Why hadn’t they stayed friends like they had always planned to do? Were the both of them reallysuch proud people, in the depths of their hearts? Maybe she, like him, had also come to this place,looking for something. Perhaps not out of hope for the chance to run into him again, but ratherout of curiosity, for the excitement of being reminded of something that one used to treasure. Or,maybe she had come to this same spot and made the same rose-coloured promise: “This yellowhouse is ours now. It will always be. If we ever lose each other, if we are ever separated, we’ll findeach other again, right here”, but to a different man, a different love, a different life, she herself adifferent woman.He dug out his sake bottle from his backpack and took a sip. The warmth in his throat and stomachburned him instead of comforted him. She wouldn’t be here. She had not come here lookingfor him, and she would never come, because if she had wanted to see him again she could havesimply called. But it simply had been too long. The only thing he could do was to come here in thevain hope that he could see her again, begging fate, fully realizing the extent of his own stupidity. 72
escapeWistfully, he thought: I’ll just go inside the house, and then, I will move on and forget everything.But when he tried the door, it was locked. WWHe lowered himself down into the thickeningblanow next to the front porch of the yellow house. The snow was getting to his brain, the swirlingsnowflakes becoming bigger and bigger and falling faster and faster, like a hypnotist’s trick. The skywas rapidly becoming grey. He tried to pick out one particular snowflake and focus on it as it madeits descent amidst the millions of others, but whenever it crossed path with another snowflake hewould lose track of which one he had been originally following. He gave up, staring wide-eyed upat the metallic sky, into space. A snowflake landed on his eyeball. He closed his eyes as fatigue anddisillusionment won the battle against cold and discomfort, and fell asleep. *She didn’t immediately realize the significance of the mountain that she was on, until she saw ayellow house. Something leapt to life in her memory- it was this place! This was the mountain onwhich she and he – her first love, had spent one of their most bonding times together, and thiswas the little yellow house, the curious little building that looked like a wax cube, into which theyhad ventured, some forty years ago. Recalling these memories made her feel suddenly very young.She took a quick circuit around the house. Something seemed different, though- perhaps it wasthe replacing of an ornamental stone, the growth of surrounding trees, or even changes in thelandscape. It still didn’t seem as though anyone lived here, but she was with friends and they seemedkeen to move on, so she didn’t go inside.After a short trek, she encountered another yellow house, identical to the one she had just seen.Had they walked around in a circle? But no- it was a different house, sitting amidst denser shrubsand trees than the previous one, facing north instead of west. It was only identical to the first onein terms of shape and size, and the simultaneously mysterious and droll quality. No one seemed tolive here, either.By the end of the hike she had seen at least two dozens of these yellow houses, scattered all overthis mountain. She felt extremely strange-she was certain that the time when she came with him,there was only that one yellow house- or at least there had not been so many that several couldbe discovered in one day. She considered the possibility that all these houses were part of somedevelopmental building project, and that the one she and he had went into was simply the first oneamong many to come. This thought made her sad.On the way down the mountain they took a bus. She asked a man who worked on the mountainabout the yellow houses, and he didn’t seem to be certain about what the houses were for. But, hesaid, there was a rumour that they were all built by one old man who, every year, ordered a newyellow house to be built on the mountain, in replication of one original house, in which he and hisyouth-time lover had promised to one day reunite. He speculated that the purpose of building somany was so that if this man’s one-time lover got to the mountain, it would be more likely that shesee one and then remember him.“Way too romantic for an old man,” the man on the bus said. 73
escape74
escape75
escapeCERTAIN PEOPLE Edith WhartonThere’s no wireless in the desert, sir; not like London. But perhaps she had only stopped to push back a strand of hair as she passed in front of a mirror. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. His respectful tone tempered the slight irony. The smooth slippery floor of the hall seemed to Nora to extend away in front of her for miles. Fastidiously he wiped a trail of grease from his linen sleeve. And the minutes were slipping by, and upstairs the man she loved was lying. Loyally, Christopher always pretended that she didn’t; talked of her indulgently as poor Jenny. It was odd to have feared so defenseless an adversary. The silence, the remoteness, the illimitable air! I ’ope that Perrier’ll turn up tomorrow, sir. He IS interested in tree moving, isn’t he? The water is sure to be boiling, because the nurses’ tea is just being taken up. He sent me such an interesting collection of pamphlets about tree moving. The man, who was young and muscular, with a lean Bedouin face, stopped and looked at him. There’s no wireless in the desert, sir; not like London. The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part. And not a single old reliable among them? She started up and pushed her way out of the train. Christopher is so devoted to his friends. But when he’s here he needs me for himself; and when he’s away he needs me to watch over the others. 76
escape77
escapeTHE WHITE MONKEY John GalsworthyMichael put his latchkey into the lock of his you want to. And suddenly, dropping Ting-front door. Such things had been said to her a-ling, she got up and began to walk aboutbefore; but from Wilfrid it was serious. Isn’t the room. Why, for instance, do wethe Snooks Club meeting rather exciting? continually run ourselves down?The most distinguished Conversation ever A smile twisted his lips and eyebrows whichheld between the Dead. The furniture had resembled spinney’s of dark pothooks.come to a sudden standstill. There Hugo and the rest could see her taking her place in the English restorationFleur let her hand stay against his hot lips. movement. When those three came in sheFleur’s pen resumed its swift strokes, already was sitting before a red lacquer tea-table,becoming slightly illegible. A possibility; but finishing a very good tea. She avoidedsuppose he wanted to play them something unnecessary greetings or farewells.recent? In the present epoch, no Early VictorianismHe came back to the hearth, and said: survives. Consorting delicately withUgly, isn’t it? It was all frightfully amusing, iconoclasm, Fleur never forgot that her feetfrightfully necessary! She avoided were in two worlds at least.unnecessary greetings or farewells. Theymight, she always felt, disapprove of The little dog’s prominent round eyes gazedwomen smoking in public halls. Would it back; bright, black, very old. Desert saidbring him or would it put him off ? slowly: The moment I believe that, I shall go East.By Jove, that’s a mot, or is it a bull; and arebulls mots or mots bulls? He’ll read one In Fleur’s involuntary smile was the wholespecimen of every author and say: Oh! secret of why her marriage had not beenReminded him that the state of love was a intolerable. The vice of our lot is, they say itgood stunt for poets. pretty well, but they’ve nothing to say. The little dog’s prominent round eyes gazedAnd suddenly, dropping Ting-a-ling, she back; bright, black, very old. With circulargot up and began to walk about the room. movement of her squeezed hand, she said:Ting-a-ling was licking the copper floor. Draw up.Fleur said coldly: You know very little; IAM fond of Michael. It also tells you howyou may distribute copies of this eBook if 79
escape80
escape81
escape82
escape83
escape84
escape85
escape86
escape87
escapeesc 88
escape89
Search
