It’s funny that cold metal can leave a burning sensation even when you just reimagine it. I uncap the insulin pen and jab it into the soft flesh below my ribs. The relief comes in silence, as if I’ve bled out something invisible. I lied to Elise, of course. I lied to everyone, even you if I wanted to. The truth about my scars is not from street fights, it’s from many lessons Aunty Three has taught me. Only pain makes you remember. Only fear makes you thrive. Her voice rings in my head even now after she’s gone. Oops, I shan’t tell you that. My matron won’t like it.
The door slams shut behind me, muting the storm’s roar to a muffled, insistent thrum. I’m in a new tiled cave. The air is thick with the smell of damp concrete, stale disinfectant, and the sharp, clean tang of ozone. The ghost of lightning strikes imprints on the atmosphere, flickering fluorescent lights cast a sickly, pulsating glow on the grout-lined walls. I’m alone for now.
I saunter to the row of porcelain sinks, their white surfaces chipped and stained with rusty veins. My reflection in the mirror is unimportant. I rarely look when I’m alone, unsure if the old me will resurface, skin pale from malnutrition; skinny like a walking skeleton; and eyes so hungry with feral intensity of a stray cat. I brace my hands on the cold, enameled rim, the chill seeping into my bones, a counterpoint to the feverish heat under my skin.
The interview. Brooke. Why hasn’t Elise pressed on the topic? Her office has been a trap of calm. Every soft chair, every muted colour, a setup designed to lure my defences into lowering. And for a moment, they have. I’ve talked about the sanctioned, sterile version of my life. But then she tilted her head, her voice soft as falling snow. She has quite a voice similar to Brook, but deeper, and I can’t see the resemblances. I’ve to admit I like Elise a lot and it’s a dangerous feeling, even self-harm. Ah, self-harm, that’s what I’ve been doing with my life, still taking sugar with diabetes; still hanging around with the Jade Dragon while planning my escape; still developing a crush with a girl out of the feeling she will hurt me later. Gather yourself, Harry.
Leaning against the cold sink, I pull my second phone from an inner pocket. It’s a cellular phone only used for text and call with a custom sim tray. It’s done but two hours late, Uncle Long. Ancestral house, 9pm, Uncle Ty. I reply to uncle Long but not Ty. The latter doesn’t like a reply, he only likes to have the final say.
A counterpoint buzz from my primary phone. An email, confirming my accommodation agreement in Missouri. For a moment, I let the digital promise of a future eclipse the gang’s cryptic threats. I splash my face with cold water and let it wash away my anxiety so the perfect student Harry will surface. The door closes and I step back into the fury of the storm. It’s no longer drizzling, but driving, a horizontal barrage that stings on the wall, the glass, then soaks through my blazer in seconds. At this damned rate, I’ll drown before making it to the parking lot.
I step back under the porch as my hands and knees shake mildly. Bloody diabetes, I curse under my breath. The motion detector light turns on, welcoming my present. It’s orange color, a warm barrier to the gale that chases behind me. A far, another gale howls across the deserted campus, whipping tree branches into a frenzy and sending abandoned flyers cartwheeling into the gloom. The sky is a dying furnace, the last vestiges of twilight choked out by boiling, bruised clouds. As I stand so still and so long the light turns off again, and I bleed into darkness.
A burlap sack, reeking of old rice and damp earth, is thrown over my head. I pivot as the world goes darker—knee up, arms spread wide. Then I lose my footing. What the fuck? I fall hard on the marble. The pain jolts from my shoulder to my neck. Before I can wriggle myself another kick lands on my stomach. I can grab the feet if not for this fucking sack. A damn weak kick but the boots make the impact on the soft of my torso almost unbearable. I grit through my teeth, not letting the air out of my lungs. The gang jumps me? Possible but not likely.
Scenario runs through my head as the assailant tightens the top closure around my waist. The competitive gang? Kidnapping me in the middle of a campus? Possible and likely. I’ve seen the 4WD-truck parking on campus where I left my bike. A brilliant, silent fork of lightning splits the sky. For a fraction of a second, a ghostly, orange-tinged light bleeds through the rough weave of the sack, illuminating the blurred texture of the fabric and the dark marble beneath my attacker’s feet. Only one man, and not a big one at that.
I drive my heel backward, aiming for the man’s leg. My fingers slide up my blazer’s pocket, searching for my paper knife. I know that man, and it subverts my logical train of thoughts.
“You killed my daughter!” Uncle Tam grunts. Another lightning splits the sky, and he is drawing his knife under the incandescent sky.
“No! It wasn’t me.” I kick out but hit nothing.
Uncle Tam grabs my leg and punches my calf with the knife’s hilt. I pull back, trying to pull him to my level. He comes prepared and just lets go of my leg. “Officer Hung said you were with my daughter the night she died. It’s you!”
“It wasn’t me. It was Aunty Three. Help!” The sodden burlap clings to my mouth, my nose, my eyes.
A new voice cuts through the wind and rain. It’s Elise. “Hey! Get away from him! I’m calling the police!”
“Aunty Three?” Uncle Tam says, seemingly a question and a realization.
A cold calculation runs through my head. I can frame Elise and get myself out of this shit. No. I’m almost there, my fingers have just touched the knife. “Run! He has a knife,” I yell.
“You,” Uncle Tam rasps, the sound barely human. “You killed my daughter. Now I kill you!” The plastic screech against the floor, followed by rapid thudding of his sprint.
I wriggle harder, my knife clangs as I slide the blade up. “Not her. It’s me you want,” I scream. You must confuse a confused man.
“Get off him!” Elise’s voice is closer now, sharp with alarm, swallowed almost immediately by the thunder’s roar.
I cut faster through the sack, inch by inch. “Get off her!” I yell. Then I hear the scuffle. A grunt, the slick sound of shoes on wet pavement, a sharp cry of effort. Elise screams, short but loud, then someone falls. My worst fear, Elise, with her rough hands lying on her own blood. I hope she is wearing those practical shoes, not the heels. I finally rip the sack from my head and spring to my feet. The scene is a grim tableau illuminated by the storm’s intermittent strobe. Uncle Tam is on his back on the glistening pavement, one hand clawing at his own chest, fingers crawling like spiders. A few feet away, Elise leans against the wall, one hand clamped over her opposite forearm. Blood, shockingly vivid even in the twilight, wells between her fingers. On the ground between them lies a cheap, wicked kitchen knife, glinting in a flash of lightning. The motion detector light has not been turned on. Did Uncle Tam cut it before jumping me or the electricity is out? I hope it is the latter.
I slosh through the water to her first. “You’re cut.” Something inside me stirs. This woman bleeds for me. No one has ever bled for me, not Brooke, not even Aunty Three, and my mother is just a distant memory I can’t remember.
She shakes her head, her face pale but her eyes wide and clear. She nods toward the writhing man, her voice shaking as another gust of wind and rain hits them. “He’s having a heart attack! Or his heart is giving out from the stress. We need aspirin, now! It thins the blood.”
I look from her bleeding arm to the dying man at his feet. “What do we do?” But inside me, Aunty Three is screaming, let him die.
“My office, aspirin. It might help. And we need to call an ambulance.” She fumbles for her phone with her clean hand.
Before I can turn to run, her blood-slicked hand shoots out and catches my wrist, her grip surprisingly strong. Her eyes, wide and desperate, lock onto mine. “Who is he?”
I look down at the wheezing form of Brooke’s father, then back at her. I shake my head and clench my jaw, making my face mask of convincing confusion as the rain hammers down on them both. “I don’t know.”
Wow this is intense. Your descriptions of the rain, the lightning, and the atmosphere are so vivid that I could practically feel the chill.
Here you start of right away!
"Only pain makes you remember. Only fear makes you thrive."
Great chapter, mate!