The Apex Book of World SF 2 (12 page)

The
air smelt of ozone. Chen grabbed in front of himself with his hands. Nothing but
air.

"Stop!"
He rushed out, running in the deep tunnels, stumbling. The scenes in front of
him started to flutter and blink as though he were wearing the filters of his
tenants again. The escaping human form suddenly became himself, then a
stranger, and then swiftly faded away like a ghost. The cave walls started to
flow, forming a shimmering picture.ran with all his strength in front of the
picture but could not advance a step. His shivering legs finally dragged him to
the ground, where his body, devoid of all strength, collapsed, just like the
dying Mrs Shi, Wei, Mr Wang…those tenants who had gone missing one after
another, with just their naked brains remaining in this world. Only the useless
Wei died intact.

He
kept on chasing.

 

On
the bluish ground, the waving shadows and the hurried steps chased each other,
fighting, intertwining, and finally tangling into a shapeless mess.

 

Chen
fell down with a thump, two bottomless eye sockets staring at the counter and
beyond.

"I
just wanted to try your filter! I just wanted—" he sobbed. "—to see, see the
real world. I can see nothing but this…"

His
sobbing bounced back and forth in the cave, pounding on the doors of the empty
rooms. It seemed as if no-one had ever come, and no-one had ever left. A tomb
of his own.

The
voice died out far away. That's the entrance, but not the exit.

 

Author's Notes:

 

[1]
Tathagata:
see
The Diamond Sutra, Section V, understanding the ultimate principle of reality
.

 

 

[2]
Cult of Satan: Satanism first emerged in the 12th century. The main ceremony is
called the Black Mass.

 

 

[3]
Blink reflex: an involuntary defensive neural reflex to protect the eyes.

 

 

[4]The Burrow: from Franz Kafka,
Der Bau
(
The Burrow
).

 

 

[5]
Anton's Blindness: Also known as Anton's syndrome or Anton-Babinski syndrome,
discovered by Gabriel Anton in 1899. Patients who suffer from it are completely
blind but deny that fact, and often experience hallucinations.

 

 

[6]
Anton Szandor Lavey: founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco on April 30,
1966, one of the most important branches of Satanism.

 

 

The Sound of Breaking Glass
Joyce Chng
 
Singaporean writer Joyce Chng
is the author of online serials
Oysters, Pearls and Magic
and
The
Basics Of Flight
. Her novel
A Wolf at the Door
, featuring werewolves
in Singapore, is published by Lyrical Press.

 

Now

Well, this is it.

 

I see. It looks old. Sure it's the right place?

I double-checked. Unit 1-10.

Wonder if he's in or not.

Nobody's answering
the door.

Is he seriously
crazy? A bit siao. I mean, all the junk outside. Some of it is positively
ancient. A fire hazard, definitely. All the newspapers are yellow!

He's just a little
eccentric, that's all. I mean, he's harmless.

The neighbours say
that they keep hearing the sound of breaking glass at night. That's why they
called us, right? They don't want people to get hurt. He's obviously a hoarder.
Not sure if he's violent—

The neighbours also
say that he likes hanging wind chimes made of glass bits on the black wattle
trees outside the apartment block. Colourful glass bits, mind you, made of
broken glass bottles and fishing string.

Okay, the door is
slightly open. Want to go in? We are volunteers, right?

Ladies first.

It's so dark and musty.
And what's that? Wait. Glass bottles. Look, Cedric, just look at all these
glass bottles. Different colours. Green, blue, red, transparent. He must have
collected them from the coffee shops and the dumpsters. So many bottles.

Ouch! There are
glass shards all over the floor! Oh, wow. He really polishes them, doesn't he?
All the sharp edges gone. So smooth, like pebbles.

He must have been a
glass smith or something when he was a young man. Just look at these wind
chimes. They glow in the light. Peridot-green, sea-blue, ruby-red. And the
music they make. Magical.

One of the
neighbours told me he hangs them out to entertain the fairies. Or spirits.
Either way. Really weird stuff.

They are just wind
chimes, Cedric. Very charming. I mean, he's obviously talented. Why doesn't he
sell them or something? Why does he want to remain a karang guni man?

Maybe he just wants
to remain a rag-and-bone man to collect weird things and entertain fairies as a
hobby?

Cedric, you are so—
Wait, I see something. Oh, God, Cedric, come over here. You have to see this.

Shit. I think he
must have been dead for at least a day. I'm going to call the police.

I think he tripped,
Cedric, and couldn't get up. There is dried blood on the floor. Head injury.
Oh, God, this is so—

Calm down, Ling. I
called the police. They should be here in about five minutes. They're bringing
the ambulance, too.

It's already too
late, Cedric. Too late.

 

Outside the unit,
the wind chimes stir in the breeze, twinkling in the twilight, inviting the
fairies and other spirits to sing with them.

 

The music the chimes
make is not the sound of breaking glass, but a gentle tinkle, almost like
laughter born of a light heart freed from sorrow and bleeding hands.

Then

He found the fairy
entangled up in wire netting designed to trap birds.

 

It was a quiet
afternoon, warm because it was the hot dry season, and quiet because he lived
in an apartment block filled mostly with men and women of the same old age as
him. The sunlight was an uncomfortably-bright orange, coating the brick walls
with a golden glaze. The trees rustled—fruit trees: starfruit, belimbing and
jambu. He knew it was warm, because even the mynahs that feasted on both ripe
and unripe bounty were conspicuously absent.

He was coming back
from the neighbourhood coffee shop, carrying his load of used aluminium cans
and glass bottles. He had not been working for a long time now, preferring
instead to collect newspapers, cans and bottles, all the disposable detritus of
modern-day living in Singapore, in order to supplement his meagre income. He
received about fifty dollars per month from all the collected objects, enough
to buy himself simple daily essentials. The volunteers from the Moral Home
Society would bring him food in the form of Khong Quan biscuits, Milo and
instant noodles. Sometimes, the good-hearted Malay lady who fed the stray cats
would bring him vegetables and fruit.

Lugging his full bag
of cans and bottles, he made his way to his unit. It was a small abode, filled
with stacks of newspapers and used appliances, not yet exchanged with the
companies who made money taking in recyclables. He had decided to live here,
ever since his wife had passed away and he chose not to live in an old folks'
home. He did not want to waste away in such a place. He no longer cared about
his grown sons who had conveniently forgotten about him, except for in the
Lunar New Year when they made a big show lavishing him with mostly useless
gifts.

At first, he thought
it was a bird—a mynah or a sparrow—caught in the thin wire nets strung up by
the town council to deter any pests. They often did so, after receiving
complaints from irate and tidy-minded people. He sighed, dropped his bag and
walked towards the nets. He loved birds.

The winged creature
was struggling itself into a spin, thin leg caught in the net. Birds often died
that way and he buried them under the trees. It made no noise though, just a
determined flap-flap-flap of wings.

He reached out to
hold the bird…only to find that the bird was actually a little girl. Or that
it looked like a little girl, clad in a peach-pink gossamer—like spider silk,
he thought, amazed—dress. She had brown sparrow-like wings.

For a moment, he
gaped, then backed away. Jing. Evil spirits. He was brought up with stories
like that. Fairies and spirits were not often benevolent and kind-hearted in
the myths and stories. They were chaotic little beings, mischievous at best,
but more often capricious.

But he did not like
seeing living creatures—jing or animal—suffering. Indecision warred with compassion.
Compassion won—and he gently removed the thin wire netting from around the
fairy's ankle. The fairy rubbed her ankle, soothing the abraded skin, a pained
expression on her thin face.

"Wait here," he
heard himself saying. "I will get some Tiger Balm for you." And so in he went
into his little dim housing unit, grabbed the half-used container from the
broken shelf and hurried out, thankful that the fairy was still waiting for
him. She leant wearily against the lamppost next to the bird trap. Her eyes
were closed.

He dipped his little
pinkie into the pungent minty ointment, scooped up a fingernail-sized amount
and applied it, ever so gently, to the reddened skin. Even fairies get hurt, he
thought, as the fairy evidently relaxed and gave a soft wince of relief. She
exercised her sparrow wings and cocked her head to regard him. Like a bird. She
looked vaguely Chinese.

"Thank you," she
said in a sweet piping voice, speaking fluent Cantonese. He blinked, surprised
to hear his native tongue issuing forth from a little…fairy.

Before he could
speak, uncertain of what to say, the fairy had already darted away,
disappearing into the distance, a flash in the sunlight.

He certainly could
not sleep that night, his mind filled with Cantonese-speaking fairies who looked
like sparrows. Pulling himself out of bed, he began to sort through the
bottles. He had a plan.

 

He had been a glass
smith once, way back in the forties and fifties, when he was a young man, fresh
from Guangzhou. He had apprenticed himself to a glass smith working in
Zhujiang, then a rural area, now a thriving industrial town known for metal and
steel work. He liked the look of glass, how it melted under extreme heat and
how it would form into various shapes. How it shone under the sun.

 

He did not have the
tools of the glass smith now, only a rusty hammer he had found discarded at the
foot of the stairwell near his unit. With it, he began to break the glass
bottles. He hoped the fairy and her friends liked the colours red, blue and
green. He had rejected the Guinness Stout bottles because the colour of the
glass was too dark, not bright enough.

Without the proper
tools, his hands grew raw, cut by the sharp shards. He had to use sandpaper
(salvaged from a carpentry shop) to smooth the vicious edges and even then, his
fingers bled.

Then he used fishing
string (again, from the same carpentry shop—the boss liked to do a fair bit of
fishing) and threaded the glass pieces with it, looping and tying them so that
they stayed secure. It was delicate work. The fishing string was thin, like the
bird trap wires. He rued his clumsy fingers, no longer nimble for such fine and
delicate crafting.

In the morning he
hung the first wind-chime up on the jambu tree, where he spotted yet another
bird trap. The wind-chime tinkled in the morning breeze, glittering
red-blue-green-transparent on the low-hanging branch.

"Uncle." A boy
stopped in his tracks, his bicycle squealing to a halt. "What are you doing?"

"Entertaining the
fairies," he answered, watching the wind chime sparkle in the sun.

For every bird trap
he discovered, no matter how discreet and well hidden the officers of the town
council had meant them to be, he made a glass bottle wind chime.

 

One evening, when he
was about to make some broth out of instant noodle soup mix (the Malay lady had
not visited him in some time, as she was busy with her family) the fairy
appeared with another fairy. They carried, with some difficulty, a plastic bag
filled with fried chicken wings. He stared as they placed it almost reverently
in front of him before they flew off, laughing gaily. He cautiously peeled open
the bag and the delicious aroma of freshly fried chicken plumed forth, bathing
his face in oily fragrant steam.

 

The fairies
continued to bring food every week. They carried in pok choi, string beans,
chye sim and assorted root vegetables like muang kuang and sweet potatoes (his
personal favourite—steamed or boiled). He did not know how they managed to
collect all these vegetables. Perhaps they salvaged them from the wet market
that sold fresh vegetables and produce. He was grateful for their kindness, for
their generosity. In return, he made more of the glass-bottle wind chimes. His
hands bled but he did not care. He woke one day to find that the fairy had left
him a small tube of cream for cuts and bruises

 

The wind chimes
seemed to capture the attention of the apartment dwellers. Children often
stopped and watched the glass bits stirring in the breeze. Sometimes they stole
the wind chimes, and yet he did not get angry. Instead, he made more wind
chimes, breaking the glass bottles at night and tying the glass shards with
fishing string.

 

Some parents became
concerned and they wrote to the town council about the weird and violent old
man who broke glass at night. Please send down police, they requested urgently.
Or people from the IMH. We are afraid he might hurt our children with his
broken glass.

Trying to placate
the residents and wanting to be seen to be doing its job, the town council sent
officers to knock on the old man's door and slip warning notices through the
gap, hoping he would read them. But he simply threw them away and went on
making the wind chimes. The IMH—the Institute of Mental Health—sent in
volunteers, too, but they were ignored by the old man.