Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction (16 page)

“What?” Yi Ling was shocked.

“Can’t you see, girl? You’re absorbing all the light! That’s why you’re glowing like a lightbulb! That’s why you’re feeling so hot! The light that hits you cannot be converted into shadow, so it stays in your body!”

“Is that possible?” Yi Ling felt even more faint.

“I have to admit, it doesn’t make sense scientifically,” Kumar said. “But I think science went out the window long ago. Anyway, we better get this checked out. What’s happening to you really can’t be safe. I think you should go back to the shop. Get the guy to reverse this.”

“I don’t know,” Yi Ling said. “The shop kinda… disappeared after I took the drink.”

Kumar’s eyebrows raised. “Seriously? Like in a horror movie?”

She nodded.

“The fact we can see the glow means the light must be in one of the upper layers of your skin,” Kumar said, stroking his chin. “Probably the epidermis. But since we’ve only noticed this recently, maybe the light was first stored deeper inside you, and then slowly accumulated ‘til… oh my God, this is crazy!” He decided to try another tactic. “Okay. So you can answer any question put to you, right? Have you tried… I don’t know… asking yourself how to solve this problem?”

“It was the first thing I thought of! But it didn’t work,” Yi Ling said.

“Shit. Well, maybe you should get to a doctor.” Kumar picked up his phone. “I know this guy you could try. I had a lecture with him once. He’s this German expat that specialises in odd scientific phenomenon. He lives in Bangsar. We can drop by tomorrow, and—”

“Not tomorrow,” Yi Ling said.

“What? Why?”

“It’s the Tort paper! It starts at noon, and I really can’t afford to—”

“Your exam? Is that all you can think of now?” Kumar was incredulous again.

“I can’t miss it! My parents would skin me alive!” Yi Ling said.

She stared at Kumar. “Would you risk missing your final exam for something like this?”

Kumar barely took ten seconds to make his reply.

“Fair point,” he said. “But immediately after the exam, we’ll go, alright?”

He put his hand on Yi Ling’s shoulder. “In the meantime, you take care of yourself. Keep away from bright lights.”

Yi Ling laughed.

“Oh come on, Kumar, I know how to take care of myself.”

§

It was noisy outside the Weaver’s College Multi Purpose Hall the next afternoon.

Students clustered in groups, many sleepy-eyed. Most carried textbooks or iPads with lecture notes. A tall Indian boy was chugging a flask of coffee, not caring about manners or decorum as brown streams of liquid flowed down his neck and soaked his shirt. Near the bathroom, about ten students were in a circle, eyes closed, head bowed in prayer; next to them, a boy was panicking. Apparently he had confused what paper it was today.

Yi Ling paid little notice to all of this. Her chest felt like it was on fire, and her heart was pounding so hard she feared it would burst.

A number of students instinctively turned to stare at her as she walked by, only to look away, blinking and rubbing their eyes.

Yi Ling had taken another picture of herself this morning. She was still shining, although thankfully she was slightly dimmer now. The glow was less noticeable in bright surroundings, although it apparently still irritated the eyes. She hoped the person sitting behind her had brought sunglasses.

It was a warm day. There were few clouds in the sky, and the sun was out in full glory. Yi Ling had worn the lightest clothing she could find: a spaghetti strap top and a cotton skirt. She had awoken an hour earlier to lather her skin with sunblock, and was carrying an umbrella.

Despite all that, she was already feeling faint.

Three hours. Just get through these three hours. That’s all it takes. Soon, this nightmare will be over.

As she put her bag in the holding room nearby, Yi Ling noticed something unusual.

The edges of her bag’s strap were singed.

Yi Ling forced it out of her mind as she entered the exam hall.

§

Their seating positions were announced on a paper stuck to the hall’s door.

Yi Ling noticed, to her dismay, that she would be sitting next to a window.

She went to the invigilator—a grumpy-looking Chinese man with horn-rimmed spectacles—and asked if she could change seats.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “The seating positions have all been fixed.”

“But I have sensitive skin!” Yi Ling said. “I’ll fall sick if I get too much sun.”

“Do you have a medical certificate?” the invigilator asked.

And that was the end of that.

Yi Ling sighed.
It is only three hours
, she told herself.

She took her seat with the hundreds of other students, and listened to the exam briefing. The papers were soon passed out, face down. When the invigilator gave the signal, Yi Ling turned it over, and smiled.

Negligence! Defamation!
Donughue v Stevenson
! Nuisance!

And not a single question on Vicarious Liability!

Yi Ling smiled to see the reactions of her fellow candidates.

Three rows from her, Amira looked as though she was going to cry. One boy was just staring at the paper resignedly. Another was asleep, his head resting on his hands, apparently given up all hope.

The possibility of re-sits was looking extremely certain for them.

As strange as things turned out, it’s lucky I took that bargain
, Yi Ling thought.

She started to write.

Donughue v Stevenson is a landmark case which gave rise to an entirely new branch of law, namely, the law of tort. It all started when two women decided to purchase a bottle of ginger beer from a café in Paisley, Renfrewshire, only to discover
…

Her pen sped across the paper at near-supersonic speed. Facts, cases, statutes, all these tumbled out of Yi Ling’s mind so quickly she hardly had time to process them as they turned from thought to words on paper. In barely ten minutes, she had written two pages already.

Outside, the sun shone on.

§

Two hours into the exam, students noticed a strange smell in the exam hall.

The rough odour of flesh and fire; the scent of meat left too long on the barbecue.

It started off subtle—a mere suggestion in the air, noticeable only if you took a whiff. Soon, however, it had intensified into a strangling, suffocating smell; a putrid odour that brought upon coughing and wheezing.

Some students took out handkerchiefs and tissues. Some covered their noses and mouths with their shirts and blouses. A boy in the third row coughed loudly as he rushed to the toilet. The sound of his puking was audible even from within the hall.

A vast majority of the students kept on writing, forcing themselves to ignore the smell. Come what may, they would finish the exam.

The invigilators searched all over the hall for the source of the smell. One of them—a young woman in a kebaya—was poking at the bottom of the walls with a plastic ruler, hoping to find a dead rat or something of the sort.

In her seat by the window, Yi Ling kept on writing.

Twelve sheets of paper already. And that was for the first two questions!

One more question to go. The rule in
Rylands v Fletcher
. Ooh, that had always been her favourite chapter!

Her head was starting to spin, and the burning sensation in her abdomen was almost unbearable. Her wrist and palm were starting to throb. But Yi Ling gritted her teeth. There was still so much to write! She wouldn’t have been able to leave even if she wanted to. Her legs felt like lead, and her arm did not feel part of her any more—it was writing with a mind of its own, her brain spilling out facts like a faucet.

She barely noticed the discomfort of the students around her.

Just then, the invigilator from before, the one she had talked to, walked by her desk as he attempted to track down the scent.

He sniffed loudly by her, and did a double take.

The smell was coming from her!

A pretty girl, deathly, unnaturally pale, in a writing frenzy. But what was this? There were wafts of smoke rising from her arms and neck!

“Miss,” the invigilator said. “Is everything alright?”

His voice broke the silence of the auditorium. Students from all over the hall craned their necks to look.

Yi Ling did not respond, so wrapped up in her work.

“Miss, I think you should come with me.”

The invigilator placed his hand kindly on her shoulder.

There was an intense pain, and he let out a scream as he jerked his hand back. It was like touching a boiling kettle! The invigilator stared in shock at the bright red burn that had formed on his palm.

In five years of his invigilating, he never had anything like this.

The smell was beginning to get worse. At the front, the young lady invigilator had collapsed, and had to be brought out for air.

And Yi Ling kept scribbling on.

The invigilator knew that desperate steps had to be taken. He wrapped his hand in the sleeve of his jacket. Bracing himself, he grabbed the sheets of paper the girl was writing on.

“Young lady—”

“Give that back!”

Yi Ling screamed. She lashed out at the examiner, snatching the paper again.

Suddenly, there was an intense agony; Yi Ling screamed, and stared at her arm in shock. The sudden movement had caused her arm to literally
catch fire
.

Students started screaming.

Yi Ling screamed in agony as she beat her arms against her table, the wall, the window, hoping to extinguish the flames. This movement, however, only seemed to make things worse; the fire was spreading to her entire body. The heat was excruciating; so hot, it almost seemed cold. Her clothes were slowly consumed by the enveloping heat, and her skin blackened as if it were being roasted.

As agonising as the pain was, however, she saw something that really filled her heart with anguish.

A spark had spread to her exam papers, which were now ablaze.

“My papers!” she screamed. “Not my
fucking
papers!”

Around her, students were panicking. Many of them were running in terror, although one or two of them produced camera phones to record the incident. A loud fire alarm blared.

“Where is the bloody fire extinguisher?” the grumpy invigilator screamed.

Just then, he gave a strangled cry. He nearly wet himself as he saw the burning girl walk up to him. The smell of burnt flesh was overwhelming. There was barely any skin left on her, her face was a bloody mess of bone and tissue, and her hair was gone.

She shouldn’t still be alive! And yet, she moved towards him.

There were a bunch of charred papers in her hands.

“I’m done, sir,” Yi Ling said. “I hope I pass.”

The flames had lessened. There was little pain; most of her nerves had already been burnt away.

Yi Ling pressed the papers into his trembling hands, and collapsed. Her body was almost completely blackened bone.

The invigilator screamed. His knees wobbling, he staggered to his feet and fled the hall.

His shadow was long and crooked against the walls.

Language Translation

char kuay teow - a popular local rice noodle dish

kena rasuk - Malay for ‘gotten possessed’

About Terence Toh

Terence Toh writes newspaper and magazine articles by day, and fiction by night. He is a merry wanderer of the night, constantly searching the world for fulfilment, inspiration and affordable plates of pasta. His short plays have been performed at the Short and Sweet Theatre and Musical festivals in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. Most recently, his short stories have been featured in the
KL Noir White
anthology published by Fixi Novo, and read on BFM Radio.

No Name Islands

Kawika Guillermo

~ Indonesia ~

The cargo ship in the bay was covered in such a heavy grey rain that it appeared like a whale, hovering still and alone, barely visible except in the occasional flash of lightening.

My sister Putri and I stood on the docks, waiting. We were used to the rain, having worked for over two years on that unnamed island, one of many privately owned islands in the Casr archipelago of northern Indonesia, a free economic zone where companies constructed biome plumes that produced weather catered to certain crops or animals. On the island of rain, the clouds unleashed a perpetual torrent of rainfall that grew enhanced stalks of rice like monsters swelling in pride. For two agonising years Putri and I worked on those rice terraces, high above the plains, high enough to see the smoke plumes linking to the sky like chains.

The man from the cruise ship arrived. Rain puttered on his wide yellow hood. “The captain will let you on,” he said. “You can cook, right?”

I nodded.

The man looked to Putri. Her dark hair covered her eyes from beneath a transparent umbrella. “And her. Your friend. She can wash dishes?”

“She’s my sister,” I said.

“Really?” The man turned toward Putri, and then back to me, and my much lighter complexion. We had already given him nearly all of our two-year savings, so I saw no harm in placing some extra rupiah in his pocket.

He shrugged. “Whatever you say, chef.”

§

On the ship Putri and I shared a cabin with a large window to the ocean. The janitors and deckhands stared at us, marking their suspicions with turned eyebrows. It was obvious by our skin and hair that we were not really brother and sister, though she called me Ar-ta, “brother” in her native tongue. Thankfully, our lives were hidden behind the iron walls that separated the kitchen staff from the rest of the ship.

The cruise ship turned out to be the best gig Putri and I had since our expulsion from the island Aoro, Putri’s native homeland. Like all the islands of the Casr archipelago, Aoro was set to be terraformed for a new crop, but first had to be scorched with clouds that rained fire to clear it of unwanted ecology. I was not supposed to be on the island. I was a light-skinned tourist with a penchant for traveling to unknown places, claiming land with every camera flash.