wrote a short story: City Nocturne, No. 1

Elga tossed her hair in the mirror and looked at her red evening-dress. It still frightened her sometimes, how she was alone in a hotel room, far away from home. The porcelain bathtub was a nice touch – had her mother ever seen a porcelain bathtub in her life? How far beyond her mother's soft lap she had flown! – but it radiated no warmth once the water went cold. She had bought a little plushie from this country's National Oceanarium, a penguin, that she put next to her pillow. It'd be her companion for the remaining five days.

Taking a deep breath, she strode into the bar, where a waitress in red lipstick and power blazer stood to attention. “Table for one, please. I'm fine by the bar.”

Mamood tossed restlessly on the wooden floor. This abandoned shophouse laid next to a busy road, and the incessant vrooms of motorbikes, and honks of overloaded trucks, ate into his thoughts whenever he tried to focus his mind.

It was no good. He couldn't think properly, at this rate.

And what other matter was exerting more pressure on his thoughts than the fact that his employer had withheld his salary for the fifth month straight? Mamood felt a deep sense of helplessness. If he complained to the Labour Force, something might happen to get the money flowing again into his meagre bank account, but then his employer would be sure to find out that Mamood was the one who snitched, and who could tell what his employer would do after that? Blacklists were common in this industry. Once an employer set his mind to bar your way into any other company, you were as good as a dirtied (disposable) paper cup: into the trash bin you go! I'll look for the next paper cup to use, out of my stock of a million paper cups.

It was no good. He felt smaller and smaller each day, working without salary. But his unease found no outlet.

He flicked on his VisionBoard and looked in his Search History – where were those nude photos of that fair-skinned beauty? His friend had sent him those photos from don't-know-where – and Mamood didn't know her, and neither she, him -

“No money, no honey”, it is just as they say, Mamood thought ruefully. I have no money to buy beer, but a Vision is better than nothing.

Mamood tried not to think of the singularly pretty girl in his home village, who, he knew, had never even deigned to so much as glance in his direction – she only ever had eyes for the muscular baseball captain -

anyway, back to this Vision...

The next day a heavy downpour started within a few minutes of the warning that was a grey darkening of the bright daytime sky.

Elga hadn't expected it to happen so fast; she wobbled in her high heels; how could it rain on this day of the Final Lap of the International Motorsports Competition? It wasn't fair!

And yet, rain it did – and how!

Elga had no choice, she hadn't brought a raincoat out to the grandstands; she watched as the three teenage boys next to her whipped out umbrellas.

Everyone who had paid for a ticket to the front-row seats in the grandstand were still glued to their seats. It seemed as if they had decided that getting drenched was part of the experience – though the ticketing agent had conveniently omitted inclement weather from the shiny advertisement pamphlet, back when she had bought the tickets in her mother's city.

There was a strange kind of solidarity as all her fellow spectators sat still in the grandstands and felt the full force of a tropical rainstorm bear down upon them.

“This isn't rain,” Elga muttered to herself. “This is a curtain of water.”

Mamood's yellow boots were filling up wetly. His socks were squelching.

“Hey there! Move faster!” His fair-skinned Boss screamed at him, in the downpour.

Boss was holding an umbrella. Mamood rested his gaze on the bright yellow umbrella for a moment, wishfully, and then went back to hauling the metal pipes on his shoulder, as the rainwater pelted his scalp.

Plop, plop, plop.

How blunt and stern, these raindrops! How very much like how his mother used to rap his head, whenever he had played soccer in the grass fields for too long.

How many times have I told you, Boy, come back before sunset! Do you know how worried your Mama was?

Mamood suddenly felt something warm trickle down his face, amidst the cold rain that ran down his oily scalp in rivers and torrents. To his surprise, it was tears from his eyes.

“Faster!” Boss.

“Yes, Boss.” Mamood.

Suddenly someone screamed. The worker in front of Mamood pointed to the far end of the construction site.

There! A concrete wall had collapsed under the weight of the rainwater and the gusty wind. As if on cue, a bunch of workers – light-reflective vests shining in the gloomy rainstorm – ran to the wall.

Was someone trapped under it?

Mamood glanced at Boss, whose eyes were open and round with shock.

Oh, Mama. Has someone died in front of me?

Elga packed her luggage bag for the fourth time in the same morning. The penguin wouldn't fit inside.

“Don't worry! You're coming with me in the airplane cabin,” she sang.

Yip had won the International Motorsports Competition. Again. Elga had always known Yip could do it. She had a hundred, no, a thousand, photos of Yip, stored inside her VisionBoard.

There was Yip overtaking Yong, two years ago... Here was Yip popping a massive bottle of champagne and spraying his team-mates with the bubbly...

What fun! Wasn't Yip the best? Elga had always known, somehow, that Yip would win again this year. Elga felt a sense of pride swell up, within her bosom. Yes, Yip, I'll always be your fan. I hope you'll notice me one day.

Flicking her VisionBoard open, Elga called for a taxi driver. “To the airport, please. Okay, I'll wait fifteen minutes”.

Elga's next stop: a beach, somewhere else in the archipelago, where her friend had apparently just visited. “Wish you were here,” her friend's VisionCard had read, together with a picture of a buggy vehicle that chugged its way up a sandy coastline slowly.

“Mamood.”

“Yes, Boss?”

“I am sending you back home now. I have no money to pay you.”

Silence.

“But, Boss, what about the past five months? You always said you would pay me after I finished my work.”

Boss slammed the table.

“When I say I have no money, that means I have no money! Now get out of my office! You're going home tonight, I've booked a flight for you already. My secretary will pass you your airplane tickets. Get out!”

Mamood froze. This was happening so fast. His socks hadn't even dried from yesterday's freak-monster of a rainstorm.

Something dull and red pulsed, deep inside Mamood.

“Your tickets, Mamood.” Boss's secretary. The fair-skinned woman, chubby and bespectacled, peered over at him from her desk, a cruel smile in her eyes. “Pack your bags and we'll send you to the airport in a taxi.”

“Okay, Boss. You say, I do.”

Mamood quickly flew to his untidy bedside upstairs. His heart was thumping in his chest. His eyes darted all over the plastic bags and unfolded clothes. There! In a book titled “Migrant Workers' Poetry”, he found a slip of paper.

With trembling fingers he flicked open his Vision Board and punched in the digits.

“Hello, Labour Force? My name is Mamood. Can you help me?”