Winfred Wong: Son of the Tank Man

“Kriss! I think it’s stuck!” I yelled anxiously when I saw a batch of stern-looking soldiers marching toward us on the beach.

“Hey! Kriss!” I shouted in panic and looked back at her.

But the seat was empty. I was tremendously frightened. It occurred to me that she had abandoned me for a split second.

“Idiot! Don’t you see there is a red button beside your left foot? Press it down with force and hold until I tell you to let go!” Kriss, at somewhere on the boat out of my sight, shouted back, her voice made me feel glad to have her with me.

By the time I found the red button, bent down and jabbed it down with my middle finger, a mixture of vrooming engine sound and clanking metal sound appeared out of the blue.

“Are we good to go?” I asked aloud, my body shivering out of fear, while crouching.

“Wait! Don’t let go.”

Sensing the finger-numbing vibrations transmitting from the moving metal chain through the button to my finger, “Okay now?” I thundered even I knew the anchor was still on the move, because yelling was a good recipe to ease my mind.

“Be patient!”

As I was about to shout out loud again, the clanking metal sound and the vibrations both ceased at the same time, and before long, a high-pitched, continuous noise produced by the rotating turbine blades rolled across the night sky. The boat started off with an amateur forward lurch that made me fell down before steadily sailing ahead fairly well. I stumbled clumsily when I tried to stand up, though, as to what I could see, the waves weren’t really strong. So I deduced my stumbling was partly due to the relief that prompted me to let my guard down.

At my second attempt to stand up, I hunched over with my hands on the floor, leaned my body against one side of the boat, doing it all in one motion, and stood up when I was ready. Then when breezy wind began ruffling my hair, I looked back at the beach, which was already too far to be discernible. So I laughed triumphantly, feeling on cloud nine. But my blind happiness didn’t last long as I soon realized I was the only one feeling good about the escape, so I pulled a scrutinizing gaze at Kriss when howling wind was racing past my ears.

“Kriss?” I said, my voice muffled by the strong wind.

And she didn’t answer. She was just sitting quietly, with both hands on the outer edge of her thighs.

“Are you all right?” I continued, weighing her up, but not a word would slip out of her tongue.

She was only about two feet away from the windshield so I could understand why her hair wasn’t flipping around like mine was, but her strange posture, her head resting on the top of the seat kept swinging left and right as the ship moved like a dangling rope, triggered my suspicion. Thus, I scampered to her.

And as I was close enough to see the front part of her torso, I gawked vacantly and had no choice but to sit down on the assistant seat in order to avoid a bad fall. She was stabbed to death by a kitchen knife that pierced through her heart, blood oozing out from the wound all over her chest, staining her clothes, and I could be certain she was dead just by her pastel-colored lips.

Knowing there were only she and me on this boat, I dug deep into my recollections and tried to come up with one single thing that hinted she was becoming suicidal, yet there wasn’t even a single trace. So, for an instant, I was actually convincing myself to believe her suicidal thoughts must had something to do with her bafflingly fickle emotions, but after giving it a second thought, I came to a conclusion that it’s very unlikely she would commit suicide just because she felt gloomy suddenly. The main reason for that was if she would, she would’ve already done that a long time ago.

And then I deduced it was mainly because of the unbearable heaviness of the deaths of her friends; every one of them, like Mack, Ciara, Jack, were either captured or killed after all. But I cast away that thought right away as I happened to see she was holding something shiny in her right hand. And I became curious again. It occurred to me it must be something she desperately treasured for her to be clenching it even after she killed herself.

So I prised her hand open cautiously and placed it on my palm for inspection. And I was surprised to recognize it as the cumbersome-looking photo pendant I had once seen in Kaylen’s car, though the tarnished look on the cover of it made me wonder if it was the exact same one I had seen before or it was another one. There was no way to know. But this discovery alone had further boosted up my curiosity. Then, I had for a hard time vacillated between teasing out a clue about what’s under the cover and putting it back into her hand but not for long, as my spirit of enquiry prevailed very soon.

Sneakily, I upturned the cover like I was pickpocketing, angled my head to peep into it before it was fully opened and started suddenly. What came into my view was very shocking, so shocking that I knew I could have never guessed it right by chance. It was a picture of me.

Of course, I am now aware that she killed herself because she would rather die than to fall into the soldiers’ hand; she knew there was no getting away on her return trip after dropping me off on that island that I’ll come to later. And it’s clear to me that she got that picture of me from her father, who had received it along with a watch from my father just before he passed. And I remember how Kriss explained this to me by the pond side, and this is what she said, “Your father was so worried about you and your sister that he had to give my father that pendant with your picture on it and another one with your sister’s picture on it to Kaylen’s father so that at least someone in the country would be able to recognize you and tell you to get out of there if we happen to come across you strolling down a street someday. And for that to happen, we did make sure every freedom-pursuers would be able to recognize you when they happen to see you. But anyway, when I first heard about this from my father, my first thought was it was kind of stupid for him to do so, because even if you have gone back there, the possibility that we would meet is close to zero. But after all, he’s your father and he was just afraid that his children would somehow return to that place and get caught, and I can understand his feelings now. Anyway, somehow you did return to that place. But luckily – do you still remember the Chief of Police? That man in a red coat? On that day we met, I was there to assassinate him, and I was waiting for him to show up. But luckily, I saw you. And I immediately recognized you, that photo pendant had been with me all my life after all, and you looked very much like the picture.”

And then the three of us talked on and on about everything like, how too golden the hotel was, what happened to Kaylen’s team, why did I go back there, but at a point, when I could no longer hold back my urge to ask her this question, “Why were you holding a grudge against me back then?” they both went silent as if I had gone too far by asking that.

After a minute or two, Kaylen finally said, “Do you remember the headband man who was killed in front of you?”

I nodded.

And he continued, “He’s Shaman, her boyfriend.”

Then I remember I could only stare at Kriss for another minute or so while recalling how the headband man had stopped because he had recognized me before saying this, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

And perhaps this is why I have proposed to her directly instead of asking her to be my girlfriend on the other day. But the conversation didn’t end there.

Seeing Kriss was in a deep thought, Kaylen then continued, “What about the man who was tortured and killed somewhere near the hotel? Did you hear his screams?”