O Chin: Now That It's Over

AI LING

The body lies on the quiet beach, its long hair wild and brittle, streaking across the face and back. It has floated for a day on the waves, before finally being deposited on this stretch of fine, pristine sand, the shoreline of a tiny island that lies nine kilometres southwest of the coastal town of Phuket, Thailand, one of over four hundred such islands sprinkled all over the Andaman Sea. Until the body arrived, the only presence on the island has been a family of crabs that found refuge there—digging holes in the sand, multiplying in great numbers—as well as the occasional seagull that would pause and rest on its way to or from Phuket.

In its wake, the body—a woman in her mid-thirties—has brought along a school of dead fish, mostly red snappers and garoupas that the fishermen in the vicinity hunt for their livelihood; the decomposing piscine bodies litter the beach, their silvery corpses sparkling under the sun, already starting to reek.

A seagull flies down and lands on the lower branch of a coconut tree. It eyes the sea with a weary, suspicious stare, and then scrutinises the woman’s body, as if waiting for her to stir. But she remains motionless.

It had been Ai Ling’s idea to go to Phuket for a vacation.

“It would be a nice change to our usual year-end holidays,” she told her husband Wei Xiang over breakfast. “The price of air tickets is cheap, thanks to the promotions going on for the December holidays. It’d be easy to get tickets to Phuket.”

“It’s already November, isn’t it too late to plan? What about work?” said Wei Xiang, looking up from the newspaper. “And you were in Thailand just last month.”

“I’ll get someone to cover for me,” she said.

For the past four years, Ai Ling had worked as a preschool teacher in a childcare centre, taking care of children aged one to five. It was the longest job she’d had after graduating from the National University of Singapore with a Social Sciences degree. The job market was in a bad shape the year she graduated, and for years all she could find were temporary contract jobs that only lasted from two to six months. Fortuitously, she was able to find something more permanent, as a secretary at a mid-sized air-con repair company—a job recommended to her by Cody, a close friend from university—which she held onto for a year before quitting out of boredom. She hated the idea of taking calls, making coffee and scheduling her boss’s calendar as a long-term career, even though the pay was decent enough and her boss treated her well. When she told Wei Xiang she wanted to quit, he tried to reason with her: the job was stable, regular hours, no overtime, good salary. But with her mind made up, there was nothing he could say to change it. The teaching job at the childcare centre came along just a few months later, reinforcing the belief that she had made the right decision.

Once Wei Xiang agreed to the Phuket trip, Ai Ling went about checking the prices of tickets online and borrowing Lonely Planet guidebooks from the public library. Cody had visited Phuket two years before with his boyfriend Chee Seng, and over coffee one afternoon, Ai Ling asked him to join them on the trip.

“It would be fun, just like old times. God, how long has it been since we last travelled together? Since our university days?”

“Yes, years ago,” Cody said. “To Bangkok, for our secret getaway, where I broke your heart, and then you married Wei Xiang after. Do you still remember that trip?”

“Asshole, still dare to say. Lied to me and dragged me into the mud with my little crush.”

“You were too blind to see it, so obvious to everyone else. I made it very clear to you, but you didn’t pick up the hints.”

“How could I know? It’s not as if you had a sign over your head screaming ‘gay’,” Ai Ling said, mock-punching Cody in the arm. “So how, you want to join us?”

“I don’t know. Does Wei Xiang mind if we tag along?”

“He’s perfectly fine with you guys, you know that. He won’t mind at all.”

“Let me ask Chee Seng then, see whether he’s interested. He hates when I make any decision without asking him first.”

A few days later, Cody called and told Ai Ling to go ahead and book the tickets for him and Chee Seng. His voice over the phone was upbeat but somewhat restrained, as if he were carefully mulling over his words. When she asked if anything was wrong, he said, “There’s a lot of shit going on in our lives right now. So I think we really need a break to get away, you know? To sort things out.”

When Ai Ling pressed for more details, Cody became cautious and vague in his replies. She gave up trying after a while and put the whole matter aside; she’d take it up later when the time was right.

Fortunately, there were still available seats on flights to Phuket during the Christmas period, after she checked with several budget airlines. It would be a good idea to spend the holidays away from Singapore, she convinced herself, to leave behind their busy lives, even for a short while. Good to take things easy, and maybe then she could drum up the courage to break the news to Wei Xiang. She did not think she could keep it from him any longer.

So Ai Ling bought the tickets. They would fly to Phuket via a nine o’clock flight on the morning of Christmas Day and come back four days later.

CODY

Your eyes snap open as the television suddenly flares to life. First there are only faint voices, a static buzz of broken, disconnected vowels. Then images appear on the screen, wavy and distorted. Disoriented by the intrusion of light in the dark hotel room, your thoughts scatter in every direction. You peer at the television screen from your position on the floor: the patches of darkness floating on the fuzzy sea of white have slowly assembled themselves into vague shapes and forms. You stare at this ghost of a ghost until your eyes hurt.

The images resolve into a hazy shot of a middle-aged Caucasian man in a tailored suit, sitting behind a desk. The man is nodding his head, his mouth moving, the sound of his words breaking up in stuttering bits. The image jumps and scrolls upwards. You can’t make sense of it. In the corner of the screen, a video is playing within a rectilinear frame: shaky images captured with a mobile phone of the waves sweeping in to shore, toppling huts, smashing into trees and buildings, swallowing everything in sight. The image shifts, now showing the wall of water approaching, with people in the foreground, unaware: food hawkers milling around, a bunch of skinny children drawing in the dirt with their sticks. The video is cut off mid-scene, and the man behind the desk appears again. You pick up the remote control next to you on the floor and switch the television off. The hotel room returns back to tight silence, broken only by the rasp of your breaths.

How long have you been lying here?

As long as you keep breathing, time is immaterial. There is nothing else to consider; every memory or thought is held at bay. The only thing you can feel is a debilitating heaviness, seeping into every part of you—it is a deeply familiar sensation, from a time long ago. A distant memory surfaces: the death of someone—but whom? Your mind is blank.