10:40 (Full Novel / A5 mobile edition)

10:40

By Kelvin P. Bik

10:40 Synopsis: Learned and self-controlled, a teen awakens to find himself inexplicably lost in a barren land. He is alone, or so he thinks. Many things are planned for him: by enemies he does not know and by friends he cannot recognise. How then is he to find a way home without knowing who he is or where he must go?

Text copyright © Kelvin Bik, 2014. All rights reserved.

Cover design copyright © Kelvin Bik, 2014. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Quotations designated (NIV 1984) are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc®. All rights reserved worldwide.

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For my Father in heaven Hallowed be Your name forever.

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If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,� even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

Psalm 139:11-12

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01 It was the silence that stirred Joshua.

He woke with a start. Dazed, even confused, he wondered where he was, even who he was.

His father used to tease him about the mind fog every time Josh woke up.

“Your spirit takes forever to come home,” laughed David as he scrubbed his son’s palm-sized face. Even the pain of the facial scourge did little to awaken Josh; like his father said, it was as if Josh had somehow drifted away whenever he slept, and nothing, save perhaps time, restored his soul.

It happened so frequently that as a child, Josh had once insisted – to his mother Evelyn’s horror and to David’s amusement – that he would never sleep again. That night, Josh had adamantly rubbed his eyes till they turned red, and pinched and punched himself when bedtime came, so that sleep wouldn’t come again to steal him.

“Don’t be stupid!” Ma cried in frustration after the “scene”, as she called it, went on for half an hour. “Nothing is gonna hurt you. You just sleep and you just wake up like a normal person!”

Josh bit his lower lip and gazed at her, his calf-like eyes stinging.

Couldn’t she understand that he didn’t want this? That he wanted to be normal? But he wasn’t.

Even Pa didn’t understand. He just smiled like everything was a joke.

Nothing mattered really to David. Oh, he tried to be nice to Josh, but most of the time, his “niceness” made Josh wonder if it would take a

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real-life monster screeching and threatening to kill tiny Josh before David would take his “silly” concerns seriously.

Then again, David would never have a chance now to change, would he? **** Josh struck his right temple with his fist. “Wake up, oh wake up!” he prayed.

Bus. He was on a bus.

But why the silence? Why weren’t they moving?

Then again, why the deadness in the air? Where was the growl of the engine, the hollow venting of air from the air-conditioner?

Josh struck his head again. Something was wrong, something stranger than usual.

“Am I at the station?”

The thought stung him. He scrambled to pack everything into his backpack, his philosophy book, for instance. (“Was I even reading?”)

He stumbled down the steps of the double-decker bus, his glance toward the back registering that he was alone.

Below, the lights were somewhat dimmer. (“Were they always this dim?”)

No one.

The bus lights made tiny metallic flecks on the floor shine, and unbidden, a quote, perhaps a quote, came: “We all are but stardust.”

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The doors were open. Josh glanced at the driver’s seat. No one. No sound. No motion.

He made his exit, leaping almost off the bus, as if something drove him with an unearthly panic. He stumbled. A sharp pain contorted his ankle and twisted his face. For a moment, he appeared like the mad spirit in Edvard Munch's The Scream.

He thrust his hands forth to break his fall. His backpack swung off his right shoulder. It flew out of his control.

The ground was gritty. Josh could taste blood on his lower lip.

“Don’t pick him up, don’t pick him!”

He looked up, dazed, expecting to see someone.

No one.

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02 Joshua couldn’t tell how long it took before his mind returned. He adjusted his glasses, which were crooked.

He felt the roughness of the ground with palms that stung. (“Did I fall?

Did I?”) The light that bathed him was orange, the lazy yet comforting hue of street lamps. Beyond that was darkness. Josh could make out the shadowed outlines of the bus. The lights within had gone out.

He was neither at the bus interchange, nor at a bus stop. In fact, the road looked unfamiliar, a thought that disquieted him. He had always been quite certain of where he was; the bus route home passed through some quiet streets but the landmarks were always…

Josh shook his head. The landmarks were…

He couldn’t remember. He ought to recall, but nothing was there.

He reached for his bag, nearly invisible since it was black but still as solid and comforting as ever. Josh grabbed hold of it like a life preserver and picked himself up. (“Wasn’t someone coming after me?”)

His legs felt sore, but it was his right ankle that made him wince.

Trying to stay balanced, he dug out his old-style smartphone from his pocket.

The screen glowed to life.

“10:40 PM,” it read.

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Josh might have been concerned. He had left school at least an hour ago. By normal standards, his bus would be close to his neighbourhood by now, not that strange place.

Instead, his mind seized on another phone message: “No network”.

“Shoot!” he exclaimed.

He rebooted his phone, knowing it was faster than the miserable “scan for new network” command which took ages to search the airwaves and even then, was never guaranteed to work.

Clasping the resurrecting phone, Josh glanced around, wiping his bloodied lip with the back of his other hand.

“Hullo!” he shouted. There was no answer. In fact, for some reason, Josh couldn’t hear anything besides himself. No crickets, no traffic, no wind.

“Hullo!” he cried out louder that time. His voice sounded hoarse and jarring to himself as it penetrated the wilderness.

Some faint memory stirred within, a story his Pa once told him as a child about how someone took a bus at night, fell asleep and woke up suddenly to find no one, not even the driver.

But with Pa, of course, a punchline was to come: “So he got off and looked. Then suddenly, the bus jerked. Wah, like a zombie! Haha. Then that poor guy, he heard some breathless voices, ‘Come help us… come join us.’ He nearly wetted his pants, man… So he ran, and the voices went, ‘Eh, don’t like that leh, come help push.’

And it turned out that the driver and the other passengers were behind the spoilt bus, trying to push it off the road!”

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Josh cracked a smile. Ma had disapproved, he recalled. It was “too morbid”, she had pronounced. “You’ll give him nightmares!”

Pa looked exceedingly sheepish and bowed his head like a naughty schoolboy, but when Ma looked away, he had quickly given Josh a wink.

With a grin, Josh limped to the back of the bus, but nope, he was alone.

Then again, he might have freaked out to find humans labouring in the dark.

His hand glowed pink and alien-like. The phone he held was stirring back to life.

“10:40,” it read. “No network.”

“Shoot!”

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03 Joshua sat down on the kerb. He seated himself in a pool of lamppost light, and if anyone were around to see him then, he might have thought that Josh looked like a lost child.

At 18 – almost 19, if you asked him – people still asked if he were say, 12 or at most 14. He was tiny in stature, his face exquisitely small, but perhaps it was his eyes that most worried people. He had, as he has been told several times by friends and strangers, eyes that stared into others’ with a child-like interest, a wide-eyed adoration, a look that disturbed some but strangely, attracted others.

Josh privately thought that he might one day be beaten up for “staring” at others. He had read with increasing perplexity about local fights in recent years, all seemingly triggered by teens accusing strangers of staring at them. Words led to arguments, and then to blows, sometimes fatal, always ugly. Was that necessary, he had wondered?

What were they so angry about?

To be safe, he had chosen to rein in his behaviour, but even then, he found himself often staring at people and objects around him, the play of dappled sunlight on tree leaves for example, or the way that the wind would swirl and dance with yellow leaves in some obscure design that Josh sensed but could not fully explain, much as he wanted to.

Those queer moments – queer because others thought so – had often stopped Josh in his tracks and brought a smile to his odd, almost sad countenance.

His father had been a Christian – well, at least he returned to being one before he died – and though Josh wasn’t one himself, he had privately thought that Pa was probably right in saying that Someone designed the world and the strangely fascinating things in it.

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Josh made sure, however, that he kept that thought to himself. Ma would get upset if he mentioned God. It was hard enough hiding certain mementos of Pa from Ma’s eyes, and Josh wanted – with increasing desperation over the years – to keep some form of peace so that Ma wouldn’t get agitated, or at least too agitated. **** He was… alone.

Why? It made no sense to Josh that the bus driver and the other passengers would abandon the vehicle. (“Was there anyone on board when I fell asleep?”)

Even if it had broken down, wouldn’t someone had climbed to the upper deck to check if anyone was still there? Why would they have abandoned him? Was he so tiny that they couldn’t even see him properly?

And wasn’t the driver supposed to abide by his vehicle at all times during service? Wasn’t he supposed to radio or call for help from the interchange or something? Then why was Josh alone? Where did everyone go? (“Aliens, maybe aliens, took them all. Or zombies.”)

Where was he?

He looked up and then around him, staring past the light into the darkness.

The road he was on was definitely alien, and Josh felt certain – well, mostly certain – that he knew most, if not all the roads and streets that led home. If his phone were still working properly, he could use the

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GPS to pinpoint the exact street, or at least help him gauge where he was, maybe even ascertain what had happened.

He looked up into the night sky. A few stars shone weakly, overcome by the artificial street lamps. He wished he could navigate via the stars, but he could at most recognise Orion’s belt or the Big Dipper. None of those constellations seemed visible though, much less provide any direction, not that he would know how to use them even if he could find them.

If only things stayed constant, he thought, or at least remained visible, then he might have a chance of finding his way.

The air smelt faintly of haze, as it had for the past few days. It was also slightly cold. “My jacket,” he thought, unzipping his bag to find it. The sound seemed louder than usual, tearing through the night. It wasn’t there, his windbreaker.

“Sarah,” he thought to himself.

He had passed it to his course-mate earlier when they were in the freezing editing suite. They were crazy, said the studio technician who mumbled about how students should just go for a proper vacation instead of coming back and working late in the first week of the semester break.

Then again, the man had been kind enough to stay late to lock up the studio, though he dismissed it, saying that he had to maintain some of the much abused devices.

Then again – yes, Josh was trying hard to kick his habit of using the expression – perhaps it was only Sarah and Josh who were fanatic about starting early for their final year in the polytechnic.

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Trusted seniors, long graduated, had warned them to begin the race even during the holidays. They wouldn’t have expected though that the young couple – pair, Josh corrected himself – would start that early.

Sarah had asked for his windbreaker, Josh recalled, and he had hesitated mostly because of his size; he had feared that she wouldn’t feel comfortable in it. But it fitted her snugly. Recalling her thankful smile, Josh felt a slight flush that warmed his cheekbones. He pushed aside the feeling.

“Is she safe?” he wondered. Catching himself, he smiled. What was he thinking of? He was the one who was lost in that bizarre, God-forsaken place.

Absently, Josh rubbed his ankle to relieve the pain. His hands felt better now, though they stung still. It was his ankle that throbbed, as if someone had struck Josh.

“How am I to go home?” he asked himself. “Walk? With this ankle?”

He looked toward the end of the bus, straining to see any vehicular lights approaching. “Surely, there must be some car or taxi somewhere,” he thought.

Yet the silence disturbed him. It reminded him of the long Chinese New Year breaks he hated when most shops closed their shutters and even the roads became deserted.

Even then, Josh thought, the streets were never as dead as that particular road.

If there were some distant hum of traffic, he would feel so much more assured, he felt, but that silence, that inexplicable quietness, stirred some hidden fears in Josh, such that he shuddered suddenly. He 10:40

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subconsciously wrapped his arms around himself. “It’ll be okay,” he told himself. “Everything will be fine.”

He, Joshua Chan, was a survivor. He would pull through. He must.

“Would Ma be worried? If only I could call home,” thought Josh.

Then again, Ma might be asleep already. Josh was never certain these days when she would sleep and rise. She had grown so tired of late, and so absent-minded. Sometimes, like tonight, Josh would go home late due to projects, but Ma hadn’t realised he had been out the entire day. His grandma, whose flat Josh and his Ma lived in, might wait up, but – Josh shook his head – most probably not. She had work early tomorrow.

Josh had offered to take up more part-time jobs to help support the family, but Po-po, as Josh called his grandma affectionately, had disapproved. The 60-year-old matriarch had already been displeased when Josh started giving tuition to kids when he was in secondary school.

“You are a student,” she said in Cantonese. “Your job is to study. Your Ma and I will take care of money.”

He wanted to obey, but the sight of his grandma, a tiny, wrinkled figure in her stained but always washed, neatly pressed cleaner’s uniform, as well as his Ma with her pallor and dark eye rings saddened him. He had studied hard after Pa died, earning bursary after bursary to help fund his studies as best as he could, but everything, as Po-po liked to complain, was so expensive these days.

If only…

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Josh stopped himself. Nothing would change. Nothing could change.

Pa was gone. They could only move on without him. They had to.

He had to.

He picked himself off the kerb, and strapped on his oversized backpack.

He would walk home.

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04 Joshua lost count of how long he hobbled along the roadside pavement. He was accustomed to telling time with his phone, and had long forsaken his ancient watch which still lay with its strap cracked from overuse in his bedroom desk drawer. Being ever careful, Josh kept his phone always charged, but with no power outlet along the path, it had long given up the ghost.

The sun had risen some time ago, yet the journey never ended. The road rolled indeterminably forward, up and down hills that Josh had never seen. He found himself looking back, hoping to catch a glimpse of a vehicle coming along — “The wheels of the bus go round and round,” he hummed – but no one was on that road, save him.

The growing day’s heat was a blanket that Josh could not throw off.

Though he walked in the shade of roadside trees whenever he could, most of the time he was forced to soldier on in the glare of the sun.

Dead grass and leaves were everywhere, he noticed. The authorities had said days earlier that February, the past month, was the driest in Singapore since 1869 – yes, curious how the oddest figures and facts embedded themselves in Josh’s mind, David used to jest – and that no change could be expected till later in the month.

Was it really yesterday that he had been in school with Sarah? “Ash Wednesday,” Josh recalled. He had looked it up on Wikipedia after Sarah showed him her church’s devotional journal for its congregation.

Ash Wednesday marked the first day of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and prayer till Easter Sunday; that year, it fell on March 5, but for some reason, Sarah’s church started its count a week later on March 12 instead.

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Sarah hadn’t known why, but Josh had found out – through the almighty internet, haha! – how the Catholic Church’s Lent was actually a 46-day period that excluded in its final calculation the Sundays, which were regarded as feast days. “So yours must be a Protestant church,” posited Josh cheerily.

Sarah had frowned a little. “I think so,” she said hesitantly.

She was beautiful even when she frowned, thought Josh. His own brows furrowed, as if mimicking her expression for an instant. He smiled then, a wide, silly grin that he chose not to squash. No one was around to catch him after all.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Josh said as his feet landed inevitably on the heaps of death-white and yellow leaves everywhere.

Stepping on the leaves made strangely satisfying crunching sounds, and though Josh was exhausted and in pain, he could not help but make deliberate moves to crush the leaves, as if by so doing, the noise might drive out the surrounding silence.

“I never knew,” he spoke aloud, “that silence could be so unnerving.”

No, wait. He smiled wearily, recalling his initial experience in his school’s radio studio. His radio production lecturer had pushed him and his course-mates into a claustrophobic recording room, where the cushioned walls soaked up sounds and smothered the teens into an awkward, tinnitus-inducing silence.

“Only in this environment can you hear for yourself your real voice.

Every nuance, every enunciation, every single breath,” said Mr Barnabas Wong who was always commenting cheerily about how wrong they were about the true qualities of their voices.

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Barney the Dinosaur, as the class called him behind his back, had pulled Josh aside once and in earnest, advised, “Listen to yourself, young man. Can’t you hear that your voice is quiet but warm?”

He continued, “Yours is a voice I’d put on a late night programme so that those night owls will call in and talk about their pain and needs.

It’s like one of those Christian fathers calling people to repent and be loved by God.” They had both laughed at that, he remembered, Mr Wong like a sad but cuddly clown and Josh with his typical snorts.

“So please, please, PLEASE, stop recording those pop voiceovers. Just be who you are,” Barney – Mr Wong, Josh meant – ended with a smile.

Josh had not known if he should nod or shake his head at that advice.

Quiet but warm? Christian pastor? Ha! That didn’t cut it in the world.

It didn’t with his classmates, most of whom listened to RnB and Korean pop. And oh, all those bizarre songs about “getting it on all night”.

Josh didn’t consider himself a prude, but some of his mates did. They always joked about Josh’s “holiness”, albeit mostly – Josh hoped – in a good-natured manner.

“Wah, you’re more ‘Christian’ than those Christians,” they said.

“Those Christians” were a small clique of about five students in their mass communication course. Josh didn’t have anything against them.

Neither did the others really, that was as long as the Christians “kept their values to themselves” and “didn’t yak about their faith all the time”.

But it was strange how often that group gathered in some quiet corner of the campus and prayed for God knew what. It was curious too how 10:40

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they seemed to speak another language with terms and phrases known only to them and their kind, as if they were secret rebels plotting to overthrow the world.

Of the five, one person stood out for Josh, at least in the beginning.

Sarah Wong – no relation to Barney – wasn’t the leader. Neither was she “chio”1 as the guys put it. She wasn’t ugly, to be fair, but Josh had seen other girls far more conventionally beautiful, especially in their course which was known on campus for hot chicks, sizzling hunks and over-the-top fashionistas.

Sarah wasn’t silent too, just not as loud and vocal like the others.

Whether with friends or by herself, she seemed quietly joyful, as if she knew something that the rest didn’t.

Josh wondered at times what her secret joy was. If only he could find out, then he could show it to Ma and perhaps she could finally smile again.

And perhaps, just perhaps, he too might finally get to rest.

1

Singaporean/Malaysian slang for hot, sexy or good-looking

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05 Joshua had found himself looking at Sarah more than once, ever since he saw her at a writing lecture in the first week of school. He had caught himself though, and pulled his gaze away before Sarah, or indeed anyone, saw him.

It wasn’t lust, he analysed countless times. It wasn’t love too. It was just… a liking. It was too pale even to be a crush.

Seeing her in some of the tutorials made him smile. Lectures, even the dreary ones on marketing and advertising, could be endured when he caught sight of her and her swinging retro ponytail, sitting a few rows ahead with her BFFs2.

Josh had been ridiculously happy when he found out that they were in the same workshop for radio production in Year Two. Without any significant plotting on his part, somehow they had even ended up being assigned to the same group for various projects.

Sometimes, Josh wondered if Barney – he meant Mr Wong – had anything to do with these fortuitous arrangements, but he didn’t dare to ask for fear that someone else would find out about that… thing he had for Sarah.

It was during those long hours spent in the editing suites that Josh grew to admire Sarah for her determination. She never gave up on anything. True, like the others, she tended to leave things to the last minute before rushing for the dreaded deadlines with double-capitalDs. Yet, she pushed herself and took on, more often than not, her fair

2

Slang for “Best Friend(s) Forever”

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share of the work, so that others could focus on dozens of other assignments.

(Demons! That was what the lecturers were, with their death cries of industry standards, multiple projects and real-world deadlines. To survive, one must endure one’s cross daily and focus on the final goal, while juggling a million and one demands for one’s time and energy.)

Josh had found himself inspired to compete with Sarah, goodnaturedly of course, to see who could produce the best work without collapsing. Yet even more than her determination, Josh was impressed by how unlike the others, Sarah seldom, if ever, bad-mouthed anyone even in the worst of times.

Take, for instance, the time when that idiotic what’s-his-name accidentally wiped out her saved files, testimony to hours upon hours of her tweaking and adjusting sound effects.

Sarah had stood up then, Josh recalled. She was furious, her face flushed and brows raised. Josh braced himself for a shouting match.

Yet she said shortly, “I can’t do this.” She walked out of the room.

Somehow, that had more impact than if she had screamed at the idiot.

Josh, after a moment of hesitation, went after her, not to comfort her for he wasn’t sure if she wanted any, but to watch from a distance to make sure she didn’t hurt herself.

When he finally found her, she was seated at a stone table under a massive flowering tree in a quiet campus on campus. Her hands were clasped as in prayer, not quite hiding her face which was stained with tears. Josh didn’t approach, not wanting to disrupt her moment, but she looked up. Then she smiled wanly and brushed her cheeks dry with her fingers.

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At a loss, Josh puffed up his cheeks and pressed his lips against each other tightly, pretending to be a cherubic angel or some overgrown – correction: undergrown – cheeky kid.

Sarah smiled wider.

Josh gathered up his courage and sat next to her.

“Sometimes,” she said after a moment, “this course feels like 40 years in the wilderness.”

Catching herself, she started to explain what she had meant, but Josh raised his right hand to forestall her.

“Israelites. Exodus. Yes, this course is all senseless wandering in the desert,” he said with a goofy grin.

Sarah’s eyes lit up. “You’re a Christian?” she asked, her eyes lighting up as if she discovered a delightful secret.

Josh shook his head, noting with a pang how Sarah’s eyes dimmed as he did so.

“My father was,” he explained, scratching behind his ear. “I used to read his bible to him.”

Sarah looked quizzical.

“He couldn’t see very well, towards the end especially. And he always had to wear something to help him breathe, be it this nasal cannula or an oxygen mask,” Josh gushed on, not knowing why. “So my dad couldn’t really wear his glasses properly.”

Stopping abruptly, Josh looked down at his hands stroking the rocklike table. He hesitated to look at Sarah’s face, fearful that she would look upon him with pity. David’s death was in the distant past, a closed 10:40

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book in Josh’s mind, but he still winced whenever someone reacted to the information, whether out of embarrassment or socially acceptable goodwill.

“So,” said Sarah gently, “he has fallen asleep in Christ then?”

Josh looked up, surprised. He hadn’t heard that expression in years.

The last time was at the funeral when a preacher from Pa’s previous church presided over the service. Ma had been adamant about a Christian funeral “to honour my husband”, as she put it. Yet throughout the wake, she had sat upright near the casket, refusing to be comforted by anyone and presenting herself to be the perfect hostess, the dignified widow, to anyone who came to pay respects.

But Josh knew the truth. When, and only when, no one was about did he watch her wipe away streams of tears from her porcelain face.

After the funeral, Evelyn had packed away David’s bible and few Christian possessions in a shoebox and kept it on the highest shelf in the store room. David’s other belongings though stayed where they were, in their shared bedroom – David had used to sleep in Joshua’s room for some years – on their dressing table, and within the wardrobe.

Even when they had to move to Po-po’s flat, Evelyn had carefully packed David’s belongings in two of those translucent rolling drawers.

They slid under her bed, and were there to that day. The shoebox though had been abandoned downstairs, next to the trash container.

Yet without her knowledge, Josh had saved the box and kept the contents hidden – with much difficulty – in his room.

“Yes,” replied Josh, with a shadow of a smile. Then he sighed. “My father died.”

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“When?”

Josh did a mental calculation. “Eight years ago. I was nearly 10 when he died. He was 40.”

“I see,” she responded, and for some reason, Josh felt she did see when few around him did. **** Joshua felt a twinge in his nose. It was the wind, he thought, as a warm breeze wrapped itself around the young man like a shroud for the dead.

Then in surprise, he felt tears run down his cheeks. He wiped them off almost immediately.

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06 “This is madness!” shouted Joshua.

He plunked himself down on the concrete kerb once more, making sure he was under the shade of yet another nameless tree. Hours earlier, he had stripped off his tee shirt, looking around habitually, senselessly, to make sure no one was around to see his browned skin and bones. Wringing his shirt, he had tied it like a bandage to compress his now splendidly bruised and magnificently swollen ankle.

Splendid! Magnificent! Wonderful!

“Shoot!” Josh cursed.

At least, Josh comforted himself, the swelling suggested that it was a normal sprain, not the dreaded high ankle sprain that would take ages to heal.

Panting heavily, he swiped his grimy hands across his forehead and temples. The salty sweat stung his hands a little, but cleansed them somewhat. Again, he thought of using the collapsible umbrella in his bag, but then shook his head resolutely. (“Fool. I’m already half-naked.

What then is left for them to judge? Who is even around to judge?”)

Looking critically at his scratched and scarred extremities, and catching a whiff of a growing body odour mingled with the remains of his 48hour anti-perspirant, Josh felt like cursing again.

It always amused the others in school how Josh refused to use the Fword or even an insignificant “shit”. In a generation that was used to worse words – what worse words, Josh wondered. Bad is just bad! – he stood out like a sore thumb. (And yes, Josh knew all the vulgar hand and finger gestures. He just refused to use them.)

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Sarah had smiled the first time she heard Josh swear with his quirky “Shoot!”. He had flushed but managed to hide his blush from her.

Was it his mother who trained him not to swear, or at least not with vulgarities? Evelyn was not above cursing herself, but she always seemed adamant that no son of hers would taint his mouth with obscenities.

“Ma,” thought Josh. He bit down the guilty thought that he hadn’t remembered her in hours. Surely she would be panicking by now. It was noon, or some hours after it, by Josh’s estimation of the sun’s position. The lack of clouds and the intense blueness of the sky ought to make it easier to judge, but they distracted Josh instead.

And Po-po, thought Josh, what about her? Did she realise he was missing? Would she miss work because of that?

Josh scratched behind his ear in irritation. He didn’t like worrying them.

Maybe they would have called the cops by now. Would they even accept a report less than 48 hours after a person went missing, a point that American crime procedurals always emphasised to heighten the dramatic tension? He had read somewhere that the Singapore system wasn’t quite the same.

Or maybe the cops made an exception for kids. Then again, Josh was not a kid. He was a man. Okay, a nearly grown man. Okay, a teenager who could use desperately a few, well, a lot more centimetres in height.

If only he wasn’t like Ma, he thought, staring at a stunted withering tree across the road. If only he looked more like Pa. Josh pushed the thought away. Again, his nose felt queer.

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Perhaps he was getting sick too. There was a foul taste at the back of his throat, as if a flu-related nasal drip was developing. Drip, drip, drip, all that phlegm. Cough, cough, coughing. Like Pa. Josh shook his head. Enough.

His stomach growled. When was his last meal? He couldn’t recall precisely – strange, he usually could – but he did recall it was a teriyaki chicken sandwich from the school atrium. He had bought one for himself and one for Sarah. They had eaten those outside the studios, automatically following the rule that no food and drink should be partaken inside.

He tried to reject the money Sarah had returned him for the sandwich, but she insisted.

Perhaps she knew that he couldn’t afford much, not even a measly sandwich unless he ran out of alternatives. Perhaps she had noticed how Josh always picked the cheapest food in the canteens, and whenever possible, packed his own food from home. Perhaps she…

Josh pushed that thought away more firmly than the rest.

He unzipped his backpack and pulled out his huge water bottle, which thankfully he had filled up at the school’s water cooler before leaving the compound. And yes, everyone made fun of his bottle as well.

“Overcompensating eh?” teased a mate as he looked suggestively at Josh from head to toe and back up again.

Josh had resisted the impulse to retort or to run. Instead, he stood his ground, gave an overly bright smile with lips pressed close, and blinked repeatedly like a crazed android at his so-called friend. Josh won. The friend mumbled an apology and started joking about other matters instead.

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Taking a sip and then two to quench his thirst and hopefully, stall his hunger, Josh swirled the liquid within his translucent bottle, watching as a mini-whirlpool formed. He could do with more water, he thought, but he seemed far from any shop or even any household. (“I must be getting desperate if I’m even thinking of asking strangers for water.”)

His stomach growled again.

“Yes, yes,” muttered Josh. “I’m hungry too.”

Behind his left eye, a dull ache was gathering. Josh wished it wasn’t his migraine. He had painkillers with him in his bag, but even then, sometimes the pain grew so bad that he would start vomiting. He rubbed his greasy left eyebrow and temple firmly; the pressure seemed to relieve a bit of the pain, but wasn’t enough to drive it out.

Think. He had to think.

Josh gathered his thoughts slowly. He had seen no one since he woke on the bus. He had been walking for hours – well, perhaps hours – on a desolate road that he was increasingly sure that he had never seen before in his life. He had heard nothing, neither crickets in the night nor annoying cicadas in the day. Indeed, he had not seen a single living thing since he woke up.

That is, except he himself: Joshua Chan En Zhe. The ache in his head began to bloom into a pain that Josh recognised as his dreaded enemy.

No. Think, he pushed himself.

He had no phone network, not even for emergency calls before his phone died. Yet the lampposts were lit. That meant that the power grid functioned, but then how could the phone companies fail all at 10:40

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once? Then again, he rationalised, it could be that he had somehow damaged his phone when he fell. (“I fell, didn’t I?”) Josh pulled out his smartphone and caressed it as if it were a favourite toy. Po-po had secretly bought it for him when he entered the polytechnic two years ago, a gift she said for her favourite, superintelligent grandson. Josh smiled. Ma had frowned and tried to get Josh to return it, but Po-po insisted.

“Everyone uses a smartphone now,” she said in Cantonese. “Your son has been using your old phone for years. Even the screen has cracks!”

Ma had given way then, but she had been firm about using the cheapest data plan. Then again, it was Ma who insisted on buying his notebook computer. Since the polytechnic required it for lessons, Josh had suggested renting one from the school, given their finances, but Ma had silenced him with her usual reprimand: “Don’t be stupid”.

It was a good thing he left the computer at home yesterday. (“Did I?”) If it got damaged like his phone, he didn’t know what he would do.

Josh cradled his phone in his tiny hands, like a child cooing another child to sleep. Then with a sigh, he slipped it into a pouch in his backpack to keep it safe.

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07 Descartes.

Joshua rolled the unfamiliar name in his mouth, as if savouring a rare treat. “Day-cart,” he repeated the syllables slowly.

Descartes was one of the philosophers covered in the novel Josh kept in his backpack. Barney – Mr Wong – had lent it to him, with a caveat.

“Learning is good. Asking questions will sharpen your mind. But an inquiring spirit and a philosophical mindset must not become your religion,” said Barney as he passed Josh a much-thumbed English translation of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.

The whimsical book had devoured Josh, for in it, he found to his surprise, were questions that he always pondered but seldom voiced.

What joy it was to realise that he wasn’t as abnormal as he thought he was, that all through the ages, others like him wondered and questioned.

Questions like who he was and who humans were.

Like what the world was for.

Like what meaning life held.

Ah, but surely these were existential, angst-ridden questions all teens wrestled at some point in time, said some older, wiser, far more worldly author whom Josh once read and adored. Yet even then, Josh had argued with his imaginary idol, should these questions not be asked? Should they be silenced just because they irritated and annoyed those jaded with their pursuit, those who had “moved on”?

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Surely, Josh believed, some questions must be asked, even if those answers might not come in time or could remain eternally unresolved.

Surely people of any age, gender and faith should seek the truth, even if some believed that the truth was and is never within reach, that it is always subjective, that it is a mere delusion that evolves with each questioning. (“But am I not being just as condescending as others in assuming that I, and only I, care about the truth? What Truth?”)

Josh must confess though that upon a second reading of Sophie’s World, his questions had grown again and refined and redefined themselves instead of quietening down.

Descartes. Of all the philosophers the novel discussed, Josh was most drawn to René Descartes. French philosopher. Father of modern philosophy.

What questions did that poisonous gadfly of a philosopher have for himself?

Why, he had merely questioned the reality of reality itself. What evidence, Descartes had asked, did he have to prove that the world was real, not merely a realistic dream?

His final, elegant answer had been “Cogito ergo sum”, which was Latin for “I think, therefore I am”. In short, after finding no indisputable way of proving that the material universe existed outside of himself, or even that his own body existed, Descartes had surmised that the very act of questioning one’s own existence proved at least that one had a thinking mind.

Josh had reserved his thoughts about Descartes’ other conclusions and their repercussions on society, although he had considered carefully – even painfully, with his miniscule, angst-ridden teen brain – the 10:40

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philosopher’s controversial follow-up argument for the necessary existence of God. Indeed, after reading about Descartes last December, Josh had wandered almost in a dream daily, questioning once more everything he saw and heard, watching the blue and white Christmas lights streaming down shadowy trees in his neighbourhood, and wondering if like these lights, the silent stars above were but man-made illusions.

That reverie had lasted till school deadlines came and again choked him, like thorns strangling a weed that strained for the sun.

Then came Ma and her curious lapses in memory. Her boss at the tuition centre had not looked kindly on her when she seemingly slipped up on the simplest tasks. Since Po-po spoke little English, Josh had to make time to accompany Ma to the polyclinic where prices were much lower, an inverse correlation to the scheduling and waiting times for any appointment.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Josh felt like grabbing hold of Ma and shaking her violently until she woke from her stupor, from that sudden ghost of an existence. Even her violent mood swings in the past and her regal reprimands would be better than that suspicious silence.

But Ma had merely spent hours staring at walls at home and in the clinic, especially after her boss had let her go. Or she would sleep the day away and wander about the three-room flat at night. The generic anti-depressants the docs fed her seemed to make her worse instead.

Most maddeningly, Ma would gaze at Josh from time to time, her head tilted like a puzzled feral mongrel, looking as though the son she had reared these 18 years was a total stranger. Whenever that happened,

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it took nearly all of Josh’s humour and self-control to wrestle his frustration into submission.

Looking around at the alien, dying land, Josh again felt that frustration.

What good was it that he thought, and therefore, existed? What good was it if he remained caught in that place?

“For surely, SURELY, this world is not my original world, the one with Ma, Po-po, Sarah and Barney. Surely, this world isn’t the one where Pa had died at the ridiculously young age of 40 of a ridiculous Stage IV lung cancer when he hadn’t smoked in years and years and years!”

Was he perhaps trapped in a dream? A nightmare? He reached forth and touched the gritty greyish bark of a nearby tree. Surely that was real. But it couldn’t be. If then it were a hyper-realistic dream, surely he would wake from it soon. He must.

Or did someone from school – Joel, or Sarah, even? He imagined with a sudden grin the young lady pulling out some sci-fi jugular vein injection device and creeping up behind him in the editing room – did someone drug him and send him into a virtual reality simulation? Ah, yes, that might almost be a scene in the novel Divergent3, thought Josh, except he was certain – well, almost certain – that he wasn’t a Dauntless trainee who had volunteered for such fear confrontation simulations.

Or worse still, what if like poor philosophy pupil Sophie, he found himself to be a character trapped in a book by some tormented author belabouring to prove a point? (“Then surely, the weirdo must be a philosophical fanatic or perhaps just an old fool.”)

3

Debut dystopian novel by Veronica Roth

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Josh looked up at the impossibly blue skies and waited. Would he perhaps see a studio light fall like a burning meteoroid from heaven?

A boom mic even? Would there be lightning and storms sent by God, or as in the book of Exodus, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night?

Josh laughed, a dry chortle that broke off into a violent cough. He could taste blood for some reason. In fact, it wasn’t just his nose and throat.

All over his body, on his chest, arms, legs and face, were scratches and bruises as though he had somehow gotten mangled in an accident.

Surely though he would remember if he had been in an accident. He had been…

Yes, yes, the bus, and the fall. But surely, these injuries didn’t… weren’t…

Even his memory was starting to fail, as the throbbing pain behind his left eye, his dreaded migraine, grew. Yet, perhaps it wasn’t a migraine.

Didn’t the other parts of his head hurt too, albeit dully instead of sharply?

The heat from the afternoon sun had drenched him in perspiration, but Josh was no longer certain if that was the sole reason for all the sweat.

“Why is this happening to me?” he questioned.

Surely, surely, there must be some answer, thought Josh even as he keeled over and started vomiting a mixture of bile and saliva.

“Father,” he thought. “Am I dying?”

Then the second thought, the forbidden thought, came.

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“If only I were dying. If only I could see you again.”

A breeze came and kissed him on his forehead.

Tears welled up in Josh’s eyes, tears he no longer had the strength to wipe off or to dismiss.

Then it came: a bird song, eerie yet familiar from some distance yet unseen.

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08 “That is truly ugly,” said Joshua.4 His eyes squinted at the black bird that perched on a tree, almost hidden by the foliage. If it weren’t for the thinning branches and yellowed leaves on top, and that the brown ferns had swathed only the tree trunk as with feathers, Josh doubted he would see the bird as clearly.

The bird song came again. It was a familiar song that Josh had heard in his neighbourhood, the one that went “kooo-el, kooo-el, kooo-el” endlessly. It was also the song that drove Ma mad on recent mornings.

It made her slam things such as doors and windows, although she knew it wouldn’t affect the distant bird in the least.

Privately, Josh was glad to see some signs of the woman she used to be, so he found himself praying secretly that the bird would nest nearby and sing daily.

Po-po was placid about it. “Noisy bird,” she remarked as she went about her chores. The bird never caught her in bed, it seemed, for Grandma sometimes woke before sunrise for no reason at all and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Again, Josh circled the tree, avoiding its heavy roots, yet being careful not to draw attention to himself and drive away the bird. It was, after all, the first sign of life that he had seen in that dying land.

He had dozed off after puking earlier. When he rose, dazed as usual, he had sacrificed a little of the water he had to wash himself. He couldn’t stand the stench and the sight, though in truth, he couldn’t 4

Cf. Isaiah 53:2

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smell distinctly. His nose seemed clogged up, and even his hearing was a little muffled.

Yet even his affected hearing didn’t stop the bird song from piercing through his consciousness like a cool breeze. Josh had been startled.

Then gathering up his belongings, he had limped towards the source of the music.

A Koel, he thought.

Koel, Koel, Joel, Joel.

Joel Leong had introduced him to the bird. Joel, a lanky, spirited 18year-old, was Josh’s junior in mass comm. Though the same age, Joel had entered the polytechnic a year later since he went through “five laborious years in the Normal (Acad) stream, hidden away in some obscure, little school in the deserted, alien land they call – Jurong West Extension”, as he had explained with guffaws.

Joel loved proclaiming such strange expressions, which was one of the reasons Joshua enjoyed his company.

Joel was also the leader of the “Christian Five”. Sarah had objected to the name, but Joel had insisted that there was “a certain charm to it”.

Joshua had pretended to puke at that comment.

“A Koel,” enunciated Joel carefully as he assumed the persona of a British newscaster, “or more precisely, the Asian Koel, is a brood parasite. A member of the cuckoo family, it likewise lays an egg in other birds’ nests, so others bring up its child instead.”

The trio had heard the bird on campus that morning, which caught them by surprise. Joshua, always a sucker for quirky bits of general knowledge, had interjected.

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“You mean, the baby would kill the other babies, the ones that really belonged to the nest, by pushing them off?”

“Ah,” tut-tutted Joel. “No, no, no. The Koel is unusual in that aspect. It merely co-exists with others not of its kind, but of course that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a parasite.”

He had then gone online on his phone and showed Sarah and Joshua photos of various sub-species of the bird. “Ugly” was Josh’s verdict although he couldn’t draw his eyes away from it. Sarah thought it was “exotically coloured”.

Standing below the tree now and observing the Koel, Josh couldn’t distinguish the details, but judging by the black body, he thought it was a male. Unlike the brown, mottled female, the male Koel, he recalled, had glossy blue-black feathers, with grey legs and feet and a pale beak that was bizarrely grey-green.

Yet those colours weren’t why Josh thought it ugly, even creepy. It was the red irises. Red like blood, the eyes sent a shudder through Josh when he looked at those photos. Those eyes made the bird appear like some creature from a nightmare land, a foul messenger that had fled the flames of hell.5 “Maybe this is proof that I’m in hell,” mumbled Josh.

The bird song ceased abruptly.

Josh held his breath.

The bird took flight.

5

Cf. John 1:10-11

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“No!” shouted Josh. “Don’t go!”

He limped after it, his panic unreasonable yet choking him in all its fury.

He didn’t want to be alone any longer.

Yet the bird was faster than he was and soon escaped from sight.

Josh reluctantly gave up, panting furiously. His head still hurt, though the pain seemed less now. Even his ankle felt better, but the rest of his body felt sore. He coughed, again tasting some kind of blood and then a piece of grit. With his fingers, he removed the grit and examined it in the dim light. It looked like a fragment of tooth.

Startled, Josh used his tongue to feel the edges of his teeth, and then switched to using his index finger. His right front tooth was chipped.

Josh cursed silently. Did that mean he had to waste money on the dentist too?

Then he snorted in laughter. When he got out of that hell, if he got out, then perhaps he could worry about the bill.

Somewhere ahead, the Koel sang again.

Joel’s eyes lit up. He made his way forward cautiously. Vaguely, in passing, he wondered if it were evening or morning. He couldn’t quite tell.

When he finally saw the Koel again, the bird was seated on the top branch of a strangely shaped tree, a species that Josh had never seen before. The grey-green trunk, if it could be called a trunk, and its massive roots were contorted, as if someone had grabbed the tree by its crown and twisted it. All the way on top, the bird sang incessantly, as if he was the proud owner of the ugly tree.

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Josh nearly slipped on something as he circled the tree. It was some kind of fruit, its light purple exterior cracked with red pulp spilling on the ground.

Josh stared at it for a moment, not knowing what to do. His stomach growled again.

He looked up at the bird, as if for guidance, and saw it hop to a lower branch and peck at a cluster of fruits.

“Surely if he’s eating it, it should be safe for me too,” thought Josh.

Adult Koels fed mostly on fruits, he recalled, though they could be aggressive when defending their food source. Yet he also remembered vaguely that animals sometimes fed on food that would make humans sick.

Josh decided to be cautious despite his hunger. He took some of the pulp on the ground and rubbed it on his forearm. When some time passed and Josh could see no skin irritation, he placed a small dab of the pulp on the tip of his tongue. His stomach protested, but Josh waited.

The sky grew brighter. “Morning then,” thought Josh.

He tested a small piece now. The fruit wasn’t unpleasant, just odd in taste and somewhat gritty.

Josh kept an eye on the bird, but it showed no interest at the human invader.

Finally, Joshua started picking the fruits and eating properly.

The Koel, silent for some time, began to sing once more.

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09 Joshua dreamt. At least, he thought he did.

In the dream, or was it a memory, he was back in Joel’s room, stacks of books, magazines, DVDs and Blu-rays everywhere and a much-used guitar propped lazily in a corner. Joel’s laptop wasn’t in his room, to Joshua’s surprise, but then Joel said candidly, “Ah, well, I don’t trust myself alone with computers. Too many temptations.”

He winked and then laughed. “Better to have it out in the living room, than to take a chance. I know myself!”

Besides the mess, which Joshua expected but would never permit for himself, there was a bed that seemed too small for Joel. To prove the point, Joel had stretched himself out on the electric-blue bed sheet.

His head was barely an inch from the metallic edge while his enormous feet scraped the other end.

“We got it a few years back. My parents didn’t think I would shoot up any more, but I guess they were wrong,” chuckled Joel.

He bounced up and sat cross-legged on the bed. Looking over, he spotted Joshua looking at a wooden plaque above a cork board. The first line read, “Joel.” The second gave its definition, “YAHWEH is God.” Joel grinned. “It’s great to know whom I belong to.”

Joshua looked over, searching for any sign of sarcasm but found none.

Joel was one of the most forthright people he knew, although that candour was mingled with lots of humour and over-the-top drama.

While Josh preferred to reserve his thoughts and emotions to himself, he felt drawn to the radiant teen, though he must admit that Joel sometimes scared him with such authenticity.

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“You’re so…” said Joshua hesitantly.

Joel raised a bushy eyebrow.

“So sure of yourself,” ended Joshua. That was lame, he thought.

“Nope,” said Joel. “I struggle a lot too. I just don’t talk about it much… except maybe to a few guys in church.”

Joshua wanted to say it couldn’t be true, but suppressed the thought instead.

Joel seemed to know though. He frowned and hesitantly, almost stammeringly, continued, “I do struggle, you know… like when I found out I had Type II diabetes.”

Joshua looked up amazed.

“I know, I know, I don’t look it, no? I’m the perfect male specimen,” Joel joked, as he flexed his biceps. He worked out, Joshua knew, or at least, Joel tried to since the dumbbells near the guitar appeared scratched from much use.

Joshua pretended to cough, a little louder than normal to show that he got the joke.

Joel slapped the spot next to him. “Ah, don’t just stand there, Joshua.

You’re not a statue, okay?”

Joshua sat, albeit on the edge of Joel’s mattress. Joshua didn’t like people sitting on his bed at home. It wasn’t for hygienic reasons. He just didn’t like people intruding on his private space.

If Joel noticed, he said nothing. Instead, he went on, again strangely hesitantly, “I was so pissed off. I was 14, for heaven’s sake! Most

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people have it after 40. And I wasn’t even sedentary or obese! Look, I’m skinny, right?”

Joel pulled his tee shirt up. He was lean, with perhaps some abdominal muscles developing. Joshua thought privately that he himself was skinny; Joel on the other hand was normal, better than normal actually.

Standing next to Joel, sometimes Joshua wondered how anyone would even spot tiny old Josh.

“You’re okay,” said Joshua shortly. He didn’t want to give the slightest hint that he was envious of Joel. Not that he was. No. Certainly not.

Joel smiled rather wanly and went on.

“Then I got so upset. I remember reading the gospels, and commanding the illness again and again to just leave me. That didn’t work.”

“Those are just stories,” interrupted Joshua who felt a flame of anger licking his insides.

Joel looked at his friend, doubt flickering past Joel’s countenance.

“Well,” he said slowly, “they weren’t written as stories. More like historical facts. Yup, I know, I know, all those miracles. I can lend you books on why miracles are not illogical or unscientific, if you want…

But I digress.”

Joshua smiled, his anger somewhat swept away by Joel’s sudden warmth.

“Like I was saying, I got so… you know. I even cried, and you know me, you know I can’t stand crying.”

It was Joshua’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

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“I’m working on that,” laughed Joel though he sounded as if he were in pain. “Even Jesus wept, and though my crying was nothing like his, I’d like to think that He won’t like me to despise others for crying.”

Joshua smiled a little more. It puzzled him how Joel and Sarah could be so flippant and cocksure that Jesus – if He even existed to that day – cared about them like a BFFL6.

“Anyway,” said Joel in a quiet voice, “it took me quite a while. I prayed and prayed. Then I finally realised that even if I don’t deserve this illness – and it’s for life, okay? I’m just thankful it’s for this life only – even if my parents and I hate it, even if I might get complications if it ever gets out of control, God is still in control.”

Josh wanted to argue. God in control? What kind of God was He if He let His children get sick, like Joel, like Pa? But he didn’t. He didn’t want to upset Joel further. In fact, he was even feeling a little happy that Joel would share a personal struggle with him. Then he bit his lower lip. He shouldn’t be happy. He should feel sorry for Joel.

“God is in control,” repeated Joel softly. Joshua wondered if Joel was trying to convince himself again.

“Then again,” Joel went on, “I’m praying very, very hard that I won’t end up losing my feet to nerve damage and gangrene. I like my legs.

They are a bit hairy, but I think they’re quite sexy, no?”

He thrust his legs out and kicked Joshua unexpectedly.

“Hey!” Josh protested before they started laughing for no reason at all. ****

6

Slang for “Best Friend(s) For Life”

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Leaning against the curious fruit-laden tree – Koel-less for the bird seemed to have left for yet another appointment – Joshua held an electric-blue collapsible umbrella. He brought it with him everywhere, a safeguard (against freak storms only and never the sun) that was stored securely in his backpack’s side pocket.

Joel had bought the umbrella for him when Joel and his family went to Hangzhou in China for vacation.

Joshua ran his thumb over the brand inscription at its base. The raised Chinese characters said, “Tian Tang” which meant heaven, although the English inscription said “paradise” instead.

Joshua smiled crookedly, a subconscious imitation of Joel. He had protested at the gift. “You do know it’s not right to give a Chinese an umbrella as a gift, right?”

“Eh, I’m also Chinese, you know,” said Joel with overbright eyes, as he knocked Joshua’s head lightly with the umbrella. “San, san, san. The Chinese character for umbrella sounds like “san” as in “san kai”, splitting up. Superstition, no?”

“Culture,” said Joshua firmly, but he had accepted the gift nonetheless, though he was somewhat puzzled that Joel had bought gifts for just him and Sarah.

Very few people gave gifts to Josh. Then again, maybe it’s because he had relatively few friends. People found him strange, he knew, but most people liked him for inexplicable reasons, although Josh didn’t open up to them.

Maybe that was what Joel was hinting at. Open up, man, open up!

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Secretly, Josh wondered if he could. It was easier to keep to himself.

Easier too to press on, to keep his head in the millstone – nose to the grindstone, Josh corrected himself – to keep on working so that others wouldn’t pity him. Ma was very firm on that. She couldn’t even stand her brothers offering help.

“You have your own families,” she insisted.

If not for the fact that they needed to sell the old flat to pay for Pa’s medical bills and funeral, Ma wouldn’t have agreed to move in with Po-po and become yet another burden.

“What burden?” protested his grandma in Cantonese. “You’re my daughter; Ah-Zhe’s my grandson. Stop thinking you’re trouble. We are a family.”

So they had moved in. At first, Josh and Ma stayed in one room, while Po-po stayed in the other. Yet when Josh hit puberty, Po-po insisted that Ma moved into her room.

“You’re a big boy now,” she explained to Josh. “You need your own space.”

Ma needed more persuasion but gave in finally. Grandma, it seemed, was the only kink in Ma’s armour. Not even Pa could influence her like that, though he was much older than she was.

Still cradling the umbrella, Josh absent-mindedly ran his thumb yet again over the characters “Tian Tang”.

It was silly, he thought. (“What is silly? That my father will be in heaven?

That heaven exists?”)

“I meant,” Josh rebutted himself, “it’s silly to have an umbrella with me when there won’t be any rain.”

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(It was sillier still to never use it under the scotching sun, Josh thought in passing, but he had been too well-trained by Ma.) Though the unbecoming tree sheltered him and its roots nearly embraced his tiny figure, the grass just beyond the shade was dead.

Even further, other trees looked like partially shaved soldiers, almost obscene, scrambling to retain what was left of their crowns. Ferns, those ubiquitous parasites on the trees’ branches, were messy wigs of brown and grey.

It was hopeless, thought Josh. The place was dying. No rain would ever come.

Then a voice – perhaps Joel’s – whispered within. “God’s in control,” it said.

Josh snorted, but caught himself. Joel had been sincere. He might be sincerely wrong, but at least, being his friend, Joshua shouldn’t mock his faith.

“God is in control,” Joshua mouthed the words silently.

Joel’s voice drifted in. “I prayed and prayed.”

And in Joshua’s mind, an image arose of a younger Joel, furious and sobbing, kneeling in his messy room and shouting, “Abba, Father.”

The image segued to Sarah below that flowering tree on campus, praying at the stone table, face scarred with all her tears of frustration.

Josh’s eyes welled up. Damn!

He caught himself.

Darn it, he thought. Why was he crying so much these days? What was wrong with him?

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“I prayed and prayed,” a voice whispered inside.

Hoarsely, Josh uttered, “If You are real, God, if You can really answer prayers, then let it rain.”

He blinked away his tears.

After a short silence, he mouthed the word, “Please.”

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10 It didn’t rain.

Of course, it didn’t.

Joshua wanted to laugh about it but couldn’t.

He also wanted to pack Joel’s umbrella away in his bag, but found that he didn’t want to. It was a comfortable weight in his hands. But more than that, it reminded him that he had friends in the real world: Joel, Sarah, even Barney the Dinosaur.

Josh counted the fruits on the tree. He wasn’t sure how long they might last.

Again and again, he looked at the asphalt road. It beckoned him to continue, but to what end? Josh asked himself.

Did it matter what he did in that land? If he were only dreaming, then surely he could just hang himself on the tree and wake up to reality.

The thought coiled around him like a rope, and Josh found himself looking around absently for some vine.

No. Josh pinched himself fiercely. He wouldn’t.

Not even in that world, and definitely not in reality.

“But why should I press on?” his mind insisted. The rest beneath the tree – Josh wasn’t sure how long it had been – had relieved his sore muscles. Even his ankle was so much better, so Josh had unwound his grubby tee shirt and tied it to the handle of his backpack.

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Examining himself, he had found more wounds and bruises all over his body, injuries he didn’t recall sustaining.

“What’s happening in the real world?” he wondered. “Is that reality somehow correlated to this reality, this seeming dream that never ends?”

“I could just stick to this routine,” Josh considered. Resting under the tree, picking fruits, eating, sleeping, and getting up again. Over and over. Like a senseless mule. (“Like with school and with Ma.”) Lord, he would so love to shower. His crotch, he was sorry to say, itched, though in truth, he was itching all over. (“Poor Barney,” thought Josh briefly. With his eczema and a body swollen from taking oral steroid medication, he must have suffered greatly in the recent dry spell.)

If only Josh had fresh water. If only he had any water. (“I do. Just not enough for a shower. Or even a proper face wash.”)

He regretted not packing a bottle of talc in his backpack. Curious, he didn’t recall unpacking it. Soldiers going on field camps took powder baths, he knew, though he wasn’t sure how that helped. He himself packed a small bottle but only powdered the insides of his sneakers so they wouldn’t stink as much.

Joel probably never thought about such stuff, being the man he was.

Then Joshua caught himself. Was it really necessary to compare himself to Joel?

After a moment, Joshua laughed. He suddenly recollected all the colognes, deodorants, and hair sprays and gels in Joel’s room.

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Ah, well, no wonder the older generation thought teens these days were vain, he grinned.

“Should I, or shouldn’t I move on?” reconsidered Josh.

The road might lead home.

Then again, maybe he had been walking in the wrong direction. Maybe he should have walked toward the… what was it? The… yes, the bus.

Back towards the…

Josh rubbed his left eyebrow and temple again. He could live without a shower, he thought, but please, PLEASE, he couldn’t live without his memory.

School. Right. School!

But he was so far from it. (“Am I? How far have I travelled?”)

It made more sense to continue in the same direction, he figured.

Taking a sip from his bottle, Josh began gathering what fruits he could from the tree and stuffing them into his bag.

“Home,” he thought. “I MUST go home.”

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11 “Keep on walking, keep on,” Joshua told himself.

The perspiration just kept pouring down his face, his chest, everywhere.

“A fool I am,” groaned Josh.

Keep on walking, keep on asking.

Asking?

Josh shook his head slowly, for his mind and strength were sapped by the infernal heat.

Asking? Keep on asking? Ask and keep on asking. Seek and keep on seeking.

Some memory struggled within Josh. It was a quote from somewhere.

“Ask who?” he snorted.

His eyes drifted to the bright blue umbrella he stubbornly grabbed in his right hand still.

“God?” he laughed mirthlessly.

Then his face fell. Did God even answer prayers? Didn’t Pa pray? Didn’t he die still in the end?

Josh coughed a little. Like his Pa. He was dying. Perhaps he was already dead.

“Perhaps it’s only my soul that’s forced to walk eternally on this ‘earth’.

This hell.”

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Punishment.

Josh stopped and closed his eyes. **** “Don’t talk to me about God!” shouted Ma. “What’s happening?” thought Josh.

The boy hid himself and snuck a look.

Pa and Ma were talking. Or at least, Ma was snapping at Pa who was wearing his nasal cannula again. Hospital. Right, he was in a hospital.

“If it weren’t for this God of yours, your dad wouldn’t have kicked you out years ago,” said Ma coldly.

Pa didn’t answer.

“And you know what your dad said when I called them?” Ma pressed on.

Josh felt like plugging his ears to keep her voice out. “No, no, I don’t want to hear this,” he cried silently.

“He said, ‘My son died years ago. I’ve no son,’” laughed Ma bitterly.

Pa looked at her. “Ying,” he said softly. “My dad, he’s like that.”

They were silent for a moment. The only sounds in the room was the oxygen concentrator and Josh’s heartbeat which seemed too loud not to be heard.

“Did you get to speak to my mom?” asked David.

“Ying?” he asked again when Ma didn’t reply.

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Right, thought Josh absently. Pa always called Ma “Ying”, short for her Chinese name Siok Ying, instead of Evelyn. She had only taken on a Christian name for work purposes. Ying. How could he have forgotten?

Ma visibly softened.

“Your ma,” said Ying slowly. “She wanted to come. To see you. But…” “I know,” said David softly.

“Know what?” thought Josh. That Grandma, his Ah-Ma, couldn’t even cross the causeway to see her dying son? That the Straits of Johor might as well be the impassable gap between the living and the dead?

“You have me,” said Ying. “You’ll always have me. And Joshua.” **** Josh opened his eyes in a daze. Was that a dream? Already, it was slipping away from him.

Curious, he thought, how a dream could squeeze its way into the tiniest gap of micro-sleep.

“Which is the dream?” thought Josh. “That one? Or this walk, this land?

Or that other world?”

He had no answers.

“Ask and keep on asking.”

The quote slipped into his mind again.

“If I asked,” questioned Josh, “if I keep on asking, keep on seeking, will You answer?”

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He gripped the umbrella harder, which promised eutopia, or was it utopia? “Rain,� Josh gasped.

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12 “I’m lost,” cried Joshua silently.

He sank down to the dried carpet grass.

Hours earlier, he had been surprised.

The asphalt road had split into two roads: a larger path that led downhill with plenty of trees, and the other, a grotesque one-lane street barren of all life.

Josh had struggled with the decision. It seemed that somewhere, somehow, he had read something about that. Was it Joel who shared it with him? Sarah?

He shouldn’t struggle, reasoned Josh. Any fool would pick the wider road. It led downhill, DOWNHILL, for goodness’ sake. It was a godsend for someone with aching legs and dwindling food and drink.

Yet he had felt confused.

To choose the path less chosen. Was it a poem? His mind was failing, Josh despaired. What he had feared was coming true.

Turning from the narrow path, he had walked along what he believed was the main road, the perfect path.

But now, hours later, while the road still led downhill, albeit at a steeper gradient now, the trees seemed deader than ever. They resembled black and grey skeletal arms thrusting through the earth and pleading for mercy from the heavens. Even their crowns had been savagely chopped off by some unknown hand, such that the further Josh went, the fewer branches and leaves remained, until at last, the trees had only large, stumpy branches left.

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“I’m lost.”

The thought echoed in Josh’s head, mocking him.

“Whatever I choose is wrong. Meaningless. Hopeless,” came the arrows slashing at his mind.

The burning air was still. It suffocated him.

“Even the wind has abandoned me,” cried Joshua. He heard cackling, and then realised it was himself. He couldn’t make sense of his laughter even.

Cradling his tiny face in his hands, he screwed his eyes shut.

Cast aside, his umbrella fell and careened on the uneven ground, finally stopping as though dead.

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13 How long was it then that Joshua stayed in that place, in that position?

No human knew. Josh surely didn’t.

Night had dropped on him, like a smothering swaddle blanket. Still, no wind came.

Josh curled himself into a foetal position. Surely, he would die there.

Surely he should have died from birth, his mother said. Ma had said…

Josh choked. He wanted to cry but even his tears had abandoned him. **** “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?7” Josh read hesitantly. The words made no sense.

The boy heard a noise. Looking up, he saw Pa crying.

“What’s wrong?” Josh cried. He leapt from the chair and rushed to his father’s side.

“Nothing,” stuttered Pa. “Nothing.”

Josh wasn’t convinced. Did he do something wrong again? Ma would surely slap him.

Pa stretched out his hand. He had grown so thin now that he seemed like a skeleton from Josh’s night terrors.

Still, Josh girded his loins as he sat closer to Pa on his hospital bed and allowed Pa to ruffle his hair.

7

Mark 15:34 (NIV 1984)

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“Read on, son,” Pa said hoarsely.

Josh looked puzzled. Surely, Pa didn’t want to hear that again. Ma always said Josh was too noisy.

Then again, Josh’s teacher had praised him that week, saying that Josh had one of the best reading voices in class. Privately, Josh thought she was wrong, but he had read with more pride in that lesson.

“Read, my son,” said Pa again. “Even when I’m… even when you’re alone, you must always read His word.”

Josh’s face became scrunched in confusion. “‘Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.’ Joshua 1:88,” recited Pa from memory.

“But I didn’t write that,” cried Josh.

“No, not you, silly,” smiled Pa. “But in the bible, there is another Joshua. Be strong and very courageous, my son. That was why I named you Joshua when you had to be born. So that you’d see things and people for who they truly are. So that you may be brave. So that God Himself will walk with you wherever you go,” said Pa slowly.

He coughed again. Josh tried his best to pat and soothe Pa’s back, but his arm was too short.

Pa knew. He patted Josh’s arm lightly.

8

NIV 1984

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These days, Pa laughed less, joked less, and did everything less. Yet in Josh’s eyes, Pa seemed bigger and taller than before. It was crazy, Josh thought. Pa was only a skeleton now. Then Josh caught himself and strangled that guilty thought from existence.

“One day,” said Pa as he leaned his back against some propped up pillows, “you’d know, Joshua, that no matter how old you are, no matter how small, you will always have a Father who loves you, who wants you.”

Josh didn’t get it. Of course, Pa would always love him. Pa wanted him, right? But he kept his thought to himself.

Looking at Pa, he could see Pa’s lips moving silently. He was saying, so it seemed, “Father, help him.” **** Joshua stirred. **** “Joshua, this is Joel Leong,” introduced Sarah.

“Joel, this is Joshua Chan,” she added.

Joshua, slightly confused, shook his hand. It was large, so large that Joshua’s hand felt like a baby’s hand in Joel’s firm grip. He halfexpected Joel to squash it, but instead, Joel grinned, gave a hearty shake and let go.

Josh didn’t like Joel. Joel was too… sunny. Too cheery. Too happy.

Sarah stood quietly, watching the two young men.

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Josh gave a polite smile which seemed overpowered by Joel’s ridiculously happy, toothy grin.

“Joshua,” said Joel. “‘YAHWEH is salvation.’ Your parents must love you.”

Josh frowned a little. “Too presumptuous,” he thought privately. “You don’t know anything about my family.” But he was careful not to voice out his thought.

Joel looked straight into Joshua’s eyes. It was a gaze that matched Josh’s finest moments, and for once, Joshua understood completely why others had found Joshua disconcerting. He himself felt exposed under Joel’s scrutiny. It was too long, too knowing, and almost too intimate.

“Sorry,” said Joel. “Bad habit.”

He pointed two fingers at his eyes, though the swift gesture had Joshua thinking for a second that Joel was going to stab himself blind.

Joshua couldn’t help but smile at that image like a silly kid.

Joel grinned wider, if that were even possible.

“And sorry about the name thing,” said Joel. “I’m completely, totally, entirely engrossed by the subject.”

“Why?” Joshua blurted before he could stop himself.

Joel raised a bushy eyebrow. Too hairy, Joshua criticised to himself.

Too tall, too skinny, too big… too much of a man.

“It’s like a prophecy, a name. It declares and proclaims what a family hopes to see in a child. Then again, sometimes, the parents get it all wrong,” Joel smiled a little weakly.

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“Like Sarah, for example,” Joel tossed out after a pause.

“Hey, keep me out of this.”

“Sarah means ‘princess’ in Hebrew, or more precisely, ‘woman of high rank’. Then again, maybe her parents just wanted her to be a woman of great faith,” said Joel.

“Which I am, thank God! And leave my parents out,” said Sarah, laughing and jabbing Joel in the waist.

Joshua felt uncomfortable again, as if he was missing the point and intruding on some private moment. There was some other emotion, but Josh drove it under, not wanting to overthink that.

Joel looked again to Joshua, smiling.

Then as if touched by something, Joel explained, “Sarah’s my cousin, you know right?”

Joshua shook his head. He felt like someone just punched him. Then again, why was he starting to smile like a fool again?

Joel beamed. “Ah, yes, Joshua. Joshua Chan. A good name. A very good name indeed. It suits you somehow. Be strong and…”

“Very courageous,” added Joshua involuntarily. He smiled, then laughed as if it were all good. Joel laughed too, and then Joshua fancied he heard Sarah laugh as well.

Yes, strong and courageous. That was who he was.

That was who he must be.

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14 Joshua struck his right temple with his fist. “Wake up, oh wake up!” he prayed.

Surely he had done that before, thought Josh. He shook his head but couldn’t shake off the sensation of déjà vu.

He heard or perhaps felt a flutter, then a scratching sound, as though some tiny feet were scraping the ground.

Sitting up properly – for he had been inexplicably lying on a bed of dying grass – and adjusting his glasses for they were crooked, he saw a bird.

It was an extremely ugly bird, blue-black feathers that had an almost oily sheen. Grey feet and legs. Grey-green beak, bordering on white.

But it was the eyes, or more precisely, the irises that startled Josh.

Red. Not just red, but red like blood.

A memory stirred. Shouldn’t he know that creature?

El? A throbbing pain speared through Josh’s left eye socket and out through his nape. His migraine, thought Josh. Oh, hell.

For an instant, a face flashed inside Josh’s head. A large, crooked smile, almost too radiant. On a face that was rather pale and crinkled, with eyes that seemed to know almost too much.

Josh closed his eyes, trying to pin down that face, but it was gone.

He knew that man, or was it some teen?

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The bird made more noises, its voice coarse to Josh’s ears that were too sensitised due to the growing migraine. It jarred him, making his nausea worse.

“Hey there,” Josh whispered. He thought in passing that he was being ridiculous. Why was he sitting on the ground talking to a dumb creature?

He smiled although that made him wince. Pa always said he was silly.

Ma didn’t like it, but then Ma didn’t like Pa being silly too.

The bird tilted its head and looked directly at Josh.

“Oh, surely not,” said Josh. He must be imagining things.

The bird took a hop, then some steps, and another hop. Closer and closer it ventured to Josh.

Josh’s eyes widened, fascinated by its swift, almost elegant movements. He always liked watching things. Ma… hmm, surely he had forgotten something… right, Ma didn’t like him to stare so much.

But it was fun, thought Josh. How leaves would come flying off trees in a gale and swirl like magic all around him. How Pa would take his hand, and Ma Josh’s other hand, as they walked in the park.

The bird stopped.

For a moment, the young man and the bird looked at each other.

“How strange,” Josh thought. “It’s almost human.”

Perhaps it was the trick of the sunlight, but Josh fancied that the bird’s eyes were welling with tears.

“It’s okay,” comforted Josh.

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A thought drifted into Josh’s clouded mind. The bird felt sorry for him.

“I’m okay,” whispered Josh.

Then he added softly, “You’re here for me, aren’t you, my friend?”

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15 Joshua looked at the crossroads: one path was wide and led downhill, while the other was narrow and seemed to lead to desolation.

“I should know this,” whispered Josh. “Have I not been here before?”

On his back was his backpack, which had a few fruits in it. They weren’t of a kind Josh recalled: light purple shell, with gritty red pulp. They tasted pretty pleasant, but then again, Josh felt he might be too hungry to know properly.

His bottle had been inside, though there was barely enough water for say, ten sips, as were his painkillers.

Also inside was a novel that Josh wasn’t quite sure belonged to him.

“Sophie’s World,” it read on the cover. The synopsis on the back looked interesting though. He would read it if he had the time.

He had found a smartphone inside too, though sadly, it had gone flat.

Did he have a phone like that one? Surely his phone was an antique with cracks on the screen, but he had searched his pockets and the bag in vain for it. Ma would be angry, he sighed.

One last thing was in the bag. It was an electric-blue umbrella.

Warmed by the sun, it had lain near the spot where Josh had woken up. The colour made him smile, or perhaps it was the inscription on its base. “Heaven,” it said in Chinese. Anyway, it looked vaguely familiar.

The bird had hopped to it, turning its head as if prompting Joshua to pick it up.

Josh did it to please the bird. Certainly, it sang a thrilling snatch of song when he took it up and examined it before stowing it in the bag for safekeeping.

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The bird had hopped, walked and flown ahead of him until they reached the crossroads.

“Hmm,” said Josh. Turning to the bird – and feeling just a tad silly – he asked the bird, “What do you think?”

The bird hopped towards the narrow path.

“Hmm, are you sure?” asked Josh. His instincts told him to choose the wide path, but then again, his head was feeling so queer he wasn’t sure he could make the right choice anymore.

The one thing on his mind was to get home, and although he wasn’t quite sure about the name of the road he was travelling on, he had a weird sensation that the bird knew more than he did.

Speaking of which, the bird had taken a few more hops along the narrow path.

“Oh well,” sighed Josh. He followed.

Good thing it was evening, he thought. He wouldn't miss the sun, not at all. Already, his body was brown from too much tanning. A cool breeze blew at him. Curious, he thought, as he untied his tee shirt from the handle of his backpack, and pulled it on. Didn’t he usually hate going bare-chested, especially out in the open?

The trek through the night was mostly uneventful.

At first, Josh had been concerned that he couldn’t see well without adequate light, for the street lamps were unusually far apart for his liking. Yet the bird seemed to know every bump in the road. It made what sounded like warning chirps. After stumbling a few times – thankfully, without hurting himself too badly – and realising that the bird could somehow see in the dark, he paid more attention to its voice.

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Then he had rested a while, ate some fruits and slept a little. Josh vaguely recalled that he used to have problems sleeping. Or at least, he didn’t want to rest back then. But the bird had stopped suddenly and hopped near him, as if it wanted to rest too.

So Josh did so. He fed the bird with a bit of the fruit although it took just a few pecks before settling down to sleep. Curious how it seemed to sleep so peacefully. His eyelids grew heavy, and he curled up near the bird and followed suit.

When Josh woke again, the sun was up but he noticed that the sky was no longer unbearably blue. Instead, mountains of clouds seemed to have blossomed out of nowhere. The wind was warm and whipped leaves around him. Yes, leaves. For somehow, in the night, the path had slowly widened into a proper road once more, with trees, shrubs and grass on the kerbs.

True, the vegetation was mostly yellow and white from lack of rain, but Josh looked at the clouds. They seemed promising.

Josh fancied he saw designs in the clouds. There, that looked like a man, a winged man. Another looked like a lion, rather majestic looking.

A third reminded Josh of an ox and a fourth was like an eagle soaring towards the sun.

He smiled like a child and walked slowly on.

The bird could no longer be seen – Josh felt a pang at not seeing his friend – but he could hear it sing somewhere ahead. It was as if the bird was spurring him to move on by staying tantalisingly out of sight.

“Cheeky,” thought Josh with a grin.

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Another image popped into mind: him puffing up his cheeks to cheer up a quiet, but to be honest, heart-wrenchingly beautiful girl.

Her name seemed to elude him though, and after a while, the image faded as well. Josh felt his cheeks blush.

Must be a dream, he thought. Must be a dream.

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16 The rain came.

A few drops first, and then a pause. Then with one mighty howl of the wind, almost like the flap of massive wings and the roar of a lion, the rain poured down.

Joshua ran into the storm, laughing with his arms raised.

Thank God, thank God, he cried.

He didn’t know why, but it was as if something had broken inside him.

Joy. So that was joy!

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17 Joshua huddled under his umbrella, although it offered meagre shelter.

Thankfully, there was no lightning, just distant rumbles.

Joshua was well aware of the folly of hiding under a tree during a thunderstorm, but in the current situation, he was sorely tempted to.

Still, he stood steadfast under the umbrella. It was small, but comforted him.

Too much rain, he thought as the gales splattered his tiny body with water. Surely, one storm was enough.

But for some reason, perhaps way above his feeble understanding, the storms kept coming.

Josh sighed. He had already filled his huge water bottle. In fact, he had drunk his fill and refilled the bottle several times.

Then in a fit of madness, he stripped off all his clothes, even his underwear, although he scanned the surroundings before that in case some chance passer-by – HA! – would scream and shout, “Pervert!”

In the rain, Josh washed his grubby clothes and then his whole body, noting again how full of wounds it was.

Had he been in an accident? He vaguely recalled a bus, a doubledecker bus.

“Argh!” he shouted. “Curse this memory.”

“Curse this rain!”

Then he broke out in a silly grin.

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Surely, he had only just given thanks for the rain not too long ago.

“Men!” he thought. “Too little and we complain. Too much and we rage.”

The irony struck Josh all at once.

“Naked we come, naked we go,” he proclaimed at the top of his voice, as he ran around, whooping as his hands and arms stretched to the skies.

And without a warning, Joshua began to ring out in laughter.

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18 Joshua dreamt. At least, he thought he did.

In the dream, he couldn’t see anything, except a strange whiteness which was not light.

He could hear though, machines that beeped and hummed and squeaked. Hospital, he thought. Like Pa. He couldn’t move. He was so, so tired.

Strange how he felt so tired in a dream.

Then he heard a female voice saying wearily, “Pray for him. Please.”

Then voices came, soft and comforting, like clouds, fluffy, feathery, ticklish ones embracing him.

A young girl was choking out, “Daddy, help Joshua.”

A man said, “Abba, Father…” Then that voice trailed off and turned to wrenching sobs.

Another man, someone older, spoke, “Even Your foolishness, O Lord, is wiser than men. Lead him home.”

And there was darkness. And there was light. **** Joshua woke.

The sunlight fell on his face, washing it with radiance.

For once, he was not dazed.

He remembered.

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Or thought he did. **** Joshua sat somewhat dazed in the light.

He wasn’t certain what had happened.

Yes, he was still in that alien land, trapped, it seemed, with no way of going home.

The thought ought to send him panicking, but the fear seemed to have lost its sting.

He touched his various wounds, which hurt still. His head was throbbing with pain.

But pushing these aside, he clung onto the voices he had heard. Sarah.

Joel. Barnabas.

He spoke each name aloud, savouring each syllable. To be honest, he couldn’t quite recall their exact faces, but he knew. The conviction of their names and friendships couldn’t be driven out.

The one thing that troubled him was the first voice.

It felt… rather, it ought to be more significant than the rest, but he couldn’t place it.

Had he forgotten something else yet again?

Joshua closed his eyes and searched within. Still, nothing.

He sighed. Perhaps it would come to him eventually.

He picked himself up and began to move slowly.

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Ahead, the Koel sang.

Josh smiled wanly. He wondered when it would stop playing hide and seek.

As he followed the bird, he became aware of fruits on the ground. He recognised them as much smaller versions of what he had – used to have – in his backpack.

He ate them cautiously. The fruits were just enough to satisfy his hunger, one day at a time.

On and on, he followed his guide.

Whenever he could no longer hear the bird, he would stop and set up camp under a tree, forcing himself to rest to conserve energy.

It wasn’t the easy rest he had that night when he had slept next to the bird on the narrow path. He kept hearing vague sounds, as if just beyond his hearing, some people were discussing matters in low voices.

Still, some rest was better than no rest.

Thankfully, whenever he woke up, it didn’t take long before he heard, or thought he heard, the Koel calling again even further ahead.

How long the trek went on, Josh wasn’t certain. It seemed endless; he had even lost his temper several times.

Yet he pressed on.

He would not give in. He was Joshua Chan. He was strong and very courageous. That was what his father meant him to be.

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The slopes and kerbs were verdant again. Even the trees had rallied after the storms, competing to push out flower after flower, forming a riot of colours: yellow, pink and even red.

On the downside, Josh noted, he and the clothes on him were turning filthy again. Then again, who but God knew when another storm would come? He would remain hopeful.

Then at long last, on a morning when the Koel seemed so far ahead that he questioned if he was only imagining its song, Joshua found himself stopping.

Before him next to the road was a massive tree, far greater than any he had seen before. It reminded Josh of the quirky, twisted tree that had appeared and fed Josh after his first sighting of the Koel, but this particular tree was ten times bigger than its distant cousin.

Joshua picked up his pace and entered the tree’s shade.

Disappointingly, there were no fruits on the ground. Josh circled the tree slowly, trying to take in both the ground and the branches. He could barely make out a few fruits that were high, too high, for him to reach.

Then he saw a fruit on the ground, almost hidden by the tree’s huge roots. Josh quickened his steps, stooping as he reached for the fruit.

“Get away from that! It’s mine!”

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19 Joshua started. He pulled back from the fruit faster than he thought possible. Hands raised to ward off any danger, he backed off, squinting to see who said those words.

From behind the giant tree came a girl, or at least what seemed like a girl. She looked, Josh thought, like someone from a disaster movie, or one of those war victims on the news, all smudged with mud and dirt – or was it blood? – dress tattered and grubby. Hell, she looked like she survived hell.

Sunlight piercing through the foliage caught his own hands outstretched before him, and he stifled a laugh. With his wounds and filth, he was no better than she was.

“What are you laughing at?” barked the girl.

Josh bit his lower lip and straightened his face with difficulty.

“If you laugh at me again, if you move, I’m gonna kill you!”

She waved what looked like a rock in her hand. It looked ridiculous, the sight of one so tiny waving so pitiable a weapon, but Josh pushed the thought aside and concentrated on keeping a serious, if possible non-aggressive countenance. She meant it, he thought, looking straight into her eyes. She would attack if she needed to.

In the back of his mind though, a thought struggled, as if through deep waters, and surfaced suddenly: “I’m not alone again. I’m not.”

“What the hell are you staring at?” shouted the girl.

Josh looked down, quick to avoid confrontation. He tensed his body, ready to dart if she went berserk.

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“What the hell are you doing? Back off… it’s mine. The food is mine!”

Josh wanted to look up. That was so ridiculous that he felt like laughing again. She was the one who told him not to move.

But suppressing the urge to laugh, to even smile, he moved very slowly away from the fruit, noticing that it was on the verge of rotting as he did so.

The girl waited. Then she dashed forward, grabbed the fruit with her free hand, and backed off out of his reach.

There was a moment of silence. Yet Josh became aware of her ragged breathing, as if the exertion took more effort out of her than she pretended. He could hear the slight rustling of the grass beneath her.

Then there was the smell. She stank like perspiration and refuse all rolled into one burden. But he smiled suddenly. He was no better, he thought. He would probably induce vomiting if he could smell himself properly.

“Who are you?” she said, spacing out each word and throwing them out like heavy knives.

“Look at me when I ask you questions!” she shouted when Josh didn’t answer promptly.

Again, biting down the urge to smile or to retort, Josh looked up and met her angry stare squarely. Then a breeze touched him and he softened inwardly. No, not just anger, he thought. She was frightened, terrified even. “Of what?” he wondered.

Speaking slowly with deliberate evenness, he answered, “Joshua. My name is Joshua. Joshua Chan En Zhe.” Her eyes widened. Did he say something wrong?

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“How…” she stuttered, “how come you know that?”

“What?” Josh replied, furrowing his brows. “My name?”

“Your name,” she said breathlessly. “Your full name.”

Josh wanted to exhale loudly. In his mind popped an anime image of a puppy waving above its head a placard that cried “?!”. He pushed the silly thought aside; he was familiar with these comical, mental interruptions in his daily life, but now was not the time.

He looked deeply into her eyes, trying to capture any sign of insanity or lying, but found none.

“I,” he said, choosing his words slowly so as not to push her over the edge again, “I just do. Can’t you?”

She stared. Then she looked away, as if battling inner thoughts. She looked up again, this time with suspicion.

“Which ‘En’? Which ‘Zhe’?”

She wanted to know if he were lying, thought Josh. “‘En’ for ‘En Dian’. Grace,” he explained his Chinese name. “‘Zhe’ for ‘Zhe Xue’. Philosophy.”

Her eyes widened once more. Her lips mouthed his name, as if trying to swallow something too vast for her comprehension. Then she scrunched her eyes, as if in pain.

“Are you all right?” asked Josh gently.

Her eyes flew open. “You’re not lying?”

But before he could answer, she muttered to herself, shaking her head.

“You’re not, you’re not… I don’t understand. How…” 10:40

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Josh felt an impulse to squat, to lower himself as if trying to comfort a child. Yet, she wasn’t a child really and she might get scared again.

“Do you know your name?” he asked softly.

She looked again into his eyes, her head tilted dog-like to one side.

“Eve,” she said in a trembling voice. “That’s all I remember.”

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20 For the next half hour, they sat down under the tree and talked.

Eve, last name unknown, age unknown, origins unknown, knew with some degree of certainty that she had been in that landscape for quite some time, though she was unable to tell precisely how long that was.

She had tried to keep a record by scratching symbols on a tree, or perhaps it was a wall, somewhere, but she couldn’t find the record anymore.

In fact, the more she tried to push herself to recall, the hazier everything became. She had scavenged for food and drink as Josh had, but unlike Josh, she had no apparent injury, at least not visible ones on her body.

Josh nodded his head in understanding. He too had struggled with his lapses in memory.

Eve had seen no one. Heard no one. She had staunchly believed that somehow, the world had been wiped out except for her, but when pressed, she admitted she didn’t have evidence, only the fact that she was alone. Correction: she had been alone.

She gobbled the fruit as she talked, the red juice smudging the filth around her mouth. When she nearly choked, Josh offered her a drink from his bottle, but watched in alarm as she gulped everything down.

She must be really thirsty, he reasoned, but still, all that water was gone in one shot and he couldn’t shake off the worry that he… that they might not find any more.

Eve had tried to get Josh’s story but she didn’t, perhaps couldn’t, focus except for moments when she expressed disbelief, especially when Josh could give details about the empty bus.

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But it was the mention of the Koel that seemed to stir rage in her.

“There is NO bird,” she insisted. “I’ve been here longer than you have.

If there is one, and if it can really sing, I would have heard it by now.”

The more Josh tried to explain, giving even details of what the bird looked and sounded like and how it led him to food, the greater her fury became.

“NO!” she finally shouted, jumping to her feet. “You’re lying! You’re freaking crazy!”

Josh instinctively reached out to help her keep her balance, but she waved his arms away angrily. Unbidden, Josh felt his anger rising too.

He knew what he saw. It was not his fault that she didn’t see or hear the bird. It wasn’t his fault that it didn’t help her. It wasn’t.

They stood, silent and separated by the palpable anger.

Then Josh heard her. She was crying. Crying as if something had broken inside her and all the pain, all her fears, all her loneliness stormed through the breach. He reached out to pat her shoulder, but hesitated, fearing she would push him away. Then he felt his own pain within, called forth by hers, and though he tried not to cry, his eyes welled up.

Clumsily, he patted her shoulder.

“It’s going to be all right,” he spluttered. “We’ll be all right.”

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21 It was easier with a companion. Not that Eve was that pleasant a person – she seemed in turns confused, angry, grieving and mocking – but having her around took the sting off being alone, and Joshua felt he found some new meaning in that forsaken land, having to care for another person.

Eve had initially refused to budge from the tree.

“There’s fruit here,” she insisted. “If we move away, we’ll die. Don’t be so stupid!”

That stung, though Josh was more concerned that something sounded wrong, something it seemed that he ought to remember, or perhaps someone. Eve reminded him of someone. More than once, he caught himself cradling his head, the heels of his hands rubbing his forehead, hoping that the memory would return, but it didn’t.

Eve, if she noticed Josh’s pain, didn’t react, but Josh imagined she seemed less insistent than before. Or perhaps, it was reason that changed her, as Josh took her around the giant tree and slowly showed and explained that the tree had few fruits left, perhaps enough to last one more day if they rationed themselves.

“But there’s nowhere to go,” she whined.

Josh wanted to say, “There’s the road to follow,” but caught himself.

The road by itself could promise nothing; at times, he even suspected that someone with a sadistic sense of humour constructed it in that alien world, so that hungry humans like the two of them would trudge on and on, with the illusory carrot of hope flogging their dying bodies to continue.

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But what alternative was there? To sit below the tree and wait for death? Oh God, if only he knew what to do.

The wind rose again, tickling his ears. Then his eyes widened. He looked down the road, hoping to see the source of the sound. Yes, sound. A bird song. His guide.

The Koel was back!

He could see nothing as usual, but even then, he hustled Eve to move, fearing just a little that the bird would stop singing. Josh chose not to tell her what he heard. Perhaps he was delusional, though he believed he wasn’t. If it were real, she could hear it herself when she got closer.

“Trust me,” he pleaded. “Come with me.”

They stumbled down the road, Josh first leading, then cajoling and finally supporting Eve as they moved towards the song. Josh kept expecting Eve to say something, or at least to react to the singing which seemed louder now. He even asked hesitantly, “Don’t you hear something?” But when Eve mumbled wearily about the sound of their feet, the wind, and even her heartbeat, he finally understood.

She couldn’t hear it.

With that, Josh’s brows furrowed even more. She truly couldn’t hear it. It’s not “wouldn’t”. She couldn’t.

Was he then wrong? Was he hallucinating? Had he been hallucinating all along? But – at that, he looked up and strained his ears – it was real, as real as he was, as real as Eve was next to him.

“Ah, but are you sure if anything is real?” his mind whispered. “So sure, are you? Surely not. I’m just stupid. Crazy. Hopeless.”

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Josh shook his head, trying to eject those foreign yet familiar thoughts.

The song, the song, he thought. He focused on it, and then he came to himself. The bird with those blood-red eyes had led him before; it would surely do so again for him.

“For you?” his mind spoke softly, as if it were dying. “Why you? Who would do anything for you?”

Josh bit his lip so hard that he tasted blood. Blood. Those blood-red eyes looking at him, with what he believed was compassion.

“I must go on,” he thought. “We must follow.”

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22 The journey took two, perhaps three, days. By then, both Joshua and Eve could no longer talk, their throats hoarse with thirst, and their lips parched and torn.

“Surely this is madness,” thought Josh more than once. “Surely I had led us out to die.”

Yet the song drove him on. It came in snatches now, sometimes louder, sometimes so faint that Josh panicked. It stayed out of reach, out of sight, but always just within Josh’s hearing.

Eve had fallen more than once, and though Josh was hardly any stronger himself, he forced her to climb on his back as they pressed on to what only Josh could hear. If anyone could see them then, they might wonder when Joshua, the tiny man-child, would collapse, with his backpack strapped to his chest and his friend barely hanging on his back.

Josh considered discarding his bag, but who knew what was to come and how would he carry his bottle and food, if they found anything ahead? “Fool,” his mind hissed. “Leave her then.” But Josh pushed that thought away; he would not.

Eve was beyond arguing. If Josh were not there, she would have lain down and waited to die.

Yet, it was Eve who first felt it. She stirred suddenly, her hands clawing.

Then she gasped almost inaudibly, “Cold.”

Josh couldn’t think, his head pounding and his attention focused on taking one step at a time while hanging on to Eve’s tiny arms draped over his chest and backpack.

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Eve tensed again. “Cold,” she forced out.

Josh stopped, bewildered.

Then he felt it: the coldness of wet air – wet! – blowing in from somewhere ahead, the kind of wind you felt when a storm approached or some body of water was nearby. Water!

He tried to pick up his pace, but could not. Yet buoyed by hope, he moved on. The road had led uphill for some time, and Josh counted his faltering steps as he reached the top.

“Lord,” he mouthed as he looked down. He tugged Eve’s hands till she stirred from her stupor. Dazed, she looked up and let out a gasp.

Water. Not just a puddle, not just a pond even, but a lake with trees all around. Flourishing trees planted by the gently rippling waters. The wind rose again, embracing them with wet, cold air.

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23 The water was too murky, Joshua observed as he sat on the lake bank.

The grass was scratchy. The fallen white flowers on the ground were too muddied.

Josh smiled wanly. Criticising again, he thought.

It was true that the lake he was at was not as splendid as he hoped it would be. It was not like the lakes and catchment areas he would pass by while on the MRT or the bus. Those had an allure, a picturesque perfection, but only from afar.

In reality, thought Josh as he stared at the rippling waters that stretched about thrice the length of the running track at school, he did prefer the neat splendour of nature captured in portraits, in Facebook photos and in Instagram snapshots.

He wrapped his skinny arms around his raised knees.

He did prefer things to be organised and precise, able to be documented and filed so that they could be enjoyed at his leisure and pre-determined safe distance.

Wincing as he stretched his tense neck muscles, he bowed his head and watched the details of the grass blades all around him.

What a jolly mess of contradictions he was, Josh considered.

Then again, life was messy, he reasoned. Things happened out of the blue. For all he tried – and he did try his darnest – he could not change an iota of what might happen. The only thing he could do was to walk on, hoping that things would somehow settle, so that he might be permitted to rest, to be happy even.

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Josh coughed a little. He felt rather feverish. It must have been the recent trek with Eve, he thought.

He turned his head to check on the young woman.

Eve was still sleeping. He couldn’t be sure when she would wake.

After they had reached the lake, Josh had placed her and his backpack gently on one side and quickly refreshed himself with the water. Then using his bottle and his filthy tee shirt which he stripped off, he had first helped Eve to drink and then washed her face as well as her exposed extremities with the lake water.

He was careful not to touch more than he should, though he wanted to laugh. What a silly prude he was. They had survived hell together; he had even piggybacked her for what seemed ages, and now, he was fearful of normal physical contact.

Still, he kept it within confines. Unbidden, Joel’s face floated in front of him. What was it Joel had said? “I know myself.”

It wasn’t as if Joshua was attracted to Eve. She was too small and slight.

But she was a woman, or at least she was growing to be one. Josh knew he was often attracted to women. They fascinated him, though he always tried not to show much interest, or to indulge in what felt like inappropriate fantasies.

Yes, perhaps he was a prude, like the guys said. Perhaps he wasn’t normal.

When they had talked about porn in school, and exchanged salacious details about their exploits, Josh often left the room. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t interested. It was because he was too interested. But grounded in him was a belief that sex was sacred, that women were 10:40

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human beings who deserved to be regarded as precious. For which parents would gladly see that their daughter got used and thrown away like refuse all in the name of “love”, he thought.

Picking up an as yet unsullied white flower, Josh twirled it carefully with his fingers.

Such design, he thought vaguely. All these details on what lived for only a season. Surely, some divine hand had crafted that flower. Surely if a flower were so exquisite, then men and women who far surpassed its design should be regarded as precious.

Josh shook his head softly. Such silly things in my head, he thought.

He looked again at Eve. She was still resting.

He was glad for some unclear reason. If she rested, perhaps she would be well, or at least better. Perhaps she would start remembering what was most important to her, or maybe who was most important.

Josh winced a little. He laid the flower aside and rubbed his forehead and temples carefully.

“If I could rest,” he thought. “But who then would be left to guard Eve?” Josh heard a flutter of wings.

He looked up expectantly, but it wasn’t the Koel.

It was another bird.

That was the curious thing that Josh had found when he reached the lake. He was no longer alone. Birds were in that land, birds of every kind. True, they were not as numerous as those in his neighbourhood, cackling and fighting for any food. But here and there, mynahs,

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pigeons and sparrows dodged in and out of the trees and shrubs, chirping and playing.

Josh smiled. He liked birds, or at least he liked observing their wobbling walk and their sudden flights. They had a certain grace, as Josh himself did. Being tiny wasn’t always bad, he thought.

Still, Josh wished the Koel would appear. It – he, Josh corrected – meant more to him than all these other creatures combined. (“Even more than Eve?” he thought vaguely.)

Josh suddenly found himself wishing he could show the Koel the lake, for the waters reminded him of a psalm he had partially memorised.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. / He makes me lie down in green pastures. / He leads me beside still waters. / He restores my soul. / He leads me in paths of righteousness / for his name's sake,” recited Josh slowly.

Psalm 23, thought Joshua. Joel had tricked him into remembering it, pretending that it was for church and Joel was struggling with its memorisation.

“You?” Joshua had queried. “You can remember all the details about a Koel, and you can’t memorise scripture?”

He stared at Joel, who tried to dodge his sight, but surrendered at last.

“Sorry!” exclaimed Joel. The tall chap had scratched the back of his head, looking rather embarrassed. “I just wanted you to remember it.”

“What for?” Joshua had thought. But he was glad that Joel tried. The psalm was something Joshua had once read to his father. Pa liked it especially and even said that the man who wrote it was, like Pa, named David. A man after God’s own heart, Pa had added.

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Was that what Pa wanted to be too?

“It doesn’t hurt as much now to think of Pa, not like during the initial part of this journey in the wilderness,” he thought.

Perhaps he was becoming normal again.

In a distance, out of his sight, Josh could hear cicadas singing in the bushes. More life, thought Josh. Smiling as he scratched his legs absently, he joked, “There had better not be any ants.”

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24 Eve looked half-dead.

True, she looked cleaner since she had a wash by the lake. She had taken the fruits that Joshua had gathered, nearly choking as she did while Josh soothed her by saying that they had enough and she could have everything, even his share.

Still, as Josh observed her porcelain face, she looked as if something had struck a mortal blow in her, and inwardly, out of any man’s sight, she was bleeding and dying.

Josh pushed the thought away. He and his imagination!

He looked up, startled by the sudden absence of sound from Eve. She was gazing at him, a markedly softer look than before, as if she was recalling some fond memory.

They sat there, gazing at each other.

“You have his eyes,” said Eve unexpectedly.

It took Josh a while before he caught the significant word.

“His?” he asked.

Eve didn’t answer. She just looked into Josh’s eyes.

Then she grimaced and cradled her head in her doll-like hands.

“If only,” she began. “If only I could remember.”

Josh didn’t interrupt her. He wished he knew how to help her. O Lord, he wished he could.

Eve shook her head dejectedly.

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Looking up again, she smiled.

“If only you were better looking,” she said with what sounded like a brief laugh.

Josh pointed at himself with exaggerated amusement. “Me?” he cried.

“Why, I’m the perfect male specimen!”

Eve smiled even more.

Then she blinked very slowly and repeatedly, her smile fading again.

“That’s him too,” she said.

Josh wanted to ask about the man Eve was referring to, but didn’t want to agitate her.

So he waited.

“He was funny too,” said Eve so softly that Josh had to strain to catch her thoughts.

“That was why I liked him,” continued Eve as though she was alone.

“That and how tall he was. How sure he was about what he believed in.”

Josh felt the strangest impression that Eve was speaking of someone he knew too.

“They laughed at us. ‘He’s 10 years older than you are!’ But I didn’t care. He was good to me.”

Then Eve shook her head again, firmer that time.

“No, he was just good, not just to me, to everyone,” said Eve. She made a sound as if she were mocking herself.

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Rubbing her left eyebrow and temple, Eve said faintly, “If only I could remember his name. If only I could see him again.�

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25 “Stop that!” shouted Joshua.

Again, he had caught Eve trying to stone a sparrow to death.

She was dissatisfied, as she had told Josh a while ago.

“Why should we starve? Why must we live on fruit alone? Why can’t we have meat to eat? Why must we share with these robbers?” she had yelled.

Josh tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t listen.

In truth, Josh too would like something other than just fruit and lake water to fill his stomach, but the thought of killing these playful creatures had stirred disgust in him. They were like Eve and him, refugees in that dying land who had chanced upon the oasis.

“Perhaps the Koel too had led them here,” thought Josh to himself.

Blocking Eve but not physically touching her, Josh tried to save the sparrow.

Eve stomped her feet like a petulant child.

“Joshua Chan!” she cried. “Don’t be so stupid!”

Again, Josh felt stung.

“No,” he said, standing his ground.

“Joshua Chan,” cried Eve in exasperation. “It’s them or us!”

“We don’t HAVE to kill them,” pleaded Josh. “We have enough to eat.

There is enough for everyone!”

Eve laughed. “They are god-damn birds!”

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Josh winced. “They are just as precious to Him,” he replied shortly.

“Who? God? You think God would freaking care? We are here to die!”

Then gathering her wits, she shouted, “Didn’t your God say, ‘Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’?”

Josh shook his head. The quote felt familiar, to be fair, but he didn’t think it meant what Eve was twisting it to say. He wished Joel or Sarah were here. They knew, or at least they would know how better to respond to that challenge.

Eve grew flushed with anger. Throwing aside the stone she had in her hand, she yelled, “Fine, Joshua Chan, be a good Christian. Be whoever you want to be, and get the hell out of my sight!”

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26 “Is she right?” Joshua asked himself. “Am I just a fool?”

Josh wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked himself lightly, as if he were trying to comfort himself the way he used to do when he was younger.

“But I’m not even a Christian,” he snapped at himself. “So why must I even…?”

He shook his head in exasperation.

“Am I wrong to want a miracle?” he thought after a moment. “Is this what it’s all about? That by doing good, I’m hoping that somehow, God would be good to me and my family?”

But he wasn’t, He wasn’t. He wasn’t good, thought Josh in confusion.

It was what had sparked the first major fight between Joshua and Joel: whether God is truly good.

“I don’t have all the answers!” shouted Joel, as he stared at his friend, arms akimbo. “God is God. Sometimes, most of the time, I don’t know why evil things happen. I don’t know why people die! I don’t know why we get hurt and sick and ripped to bits. But I know, I KNOW, God is good.”

Joshua had been too angry to even reply.

Joel was angry too, but it was another kind of anger, Joshua perceived on hindsight. It was as if Joel was genuinely grieved by Joshua’s stubbornness.

They had stood there, two young men as physically unalike as they could be. “Why are we even friends?” thought Joshua more than once.

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Just because they both liked discourse? Just because they shared a crazy sense of humour?

Joel was on the verge of crying, for some reason. Joshua could see the tears welling up in Joel’s eyes. He felt for a fleeting moment a sense of guilt, because Joel could never stand crying, especially not in Joel himself.

They didn’t speak, not for a very long time.

When Joel finally spoke again, he sounded spent.

“When I was young,” he said in a tiny voice, “I thought my parents were crazy. They spent so much time doing so much work that it was like I was transparent to them. It was always, ‘Do this, do that, brush your teeth, wash your face, go and pray.’”

“I hated them,” confessed Joel. Startled, Joshua looked up to see Joel staring blindly into the distance.

“I really, really hated them,” choked Joel. “They had time for everything, even church, but they never seemed to have time for me.

I hated God, I hated church, I hated Sunday School, hated, hated, hated!”

Joshua had never seen that side of Joel. “How could this be?” he thought. It couldn’t be, not Joel who was as Christian as… in fact, the most “Christian” person he knew personally.

Joshua, after hesitation, said his doubt out loud.

“Being born in a Christian family doesn’t make you a Christian,” replied Joel softer than before. “Doing good things is good. But doing those things isn’t what makes you a Christian.”

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Joel paused, as if trying to gather his thoughts.

Then shaking his head with its slickly styled mane – for it was a mane, no matter what Joel tried to tame it – Joel said slowly, almost unsurely: “A Christian, a true Christian, knows that he or she is weak. That without God Himself holding our hand, we can’t go on… He shows us the end of our selves, that we may turn and know that He Himself is God. That the only goodness, the only perfect, constant and unchanging goodness, is He Himself. It is not by good works. It is not by what we strive for or what we desire.

“I keep reminding myself: faith is a gift from God. His sheep know His voice. And when I heard Him… all those years ago at a church camp that Sarah dragged me to, when I HEARD Him, then and only then did I realise that He died for me, for every single sin, every single evil word or thought or deed I’ve ever committed… that He loved me enough to die for me so that God Himself could scrub away my wretchedness and then…”

Joel choked. Joshua looked at the tall young man whom he looked up to. Surely Joel was crazy, he thought briefly. But Joel wasn’t. He was good and kind and smart. But here he was, saying that he wasn’t good.

“You are good,” Joshua insisted.

Joel looked at Joshua stricken.

“Have you read the gospels?” Joel pleaded. “Even the smallest, most ‘insignificant’ thought – of lust, of anger, of envy – is sin. God is holy!

He is perfect!”

Joshua felt like laughing. “No one can be clean then.”

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Joel smiled, though in truth, it looked so painful that Joshua wished he hadn’t.

“Exactly,” said Joel. “With Man, it is impossible. Only in God and God alone, only by grace can we be cleansed.”

Joshua fell silent, trying to grapple with the concept.

“It doesn’t mean that Christians won’t sin after they believe in Jesus.

We do,” Joel gently continued after a while. “It just means that once we have believed and God Himself cleanses us, we are transformed day by day into His Son’s likeness. We may stumble in sin still, but we don’t live in it. Our eyes are focused on God’s grace, which is ridiculous to most men and women.”

“How can you believe in such…?”

“Foolishness?” said Joel with a wan smile. Then he recited from memory: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.9” Drawing closer, Joel laid his large, curiously warm hand on Joshua’s shoulder.

“Brother,” he said. “I know it’s not easy being you. I know you’ve questions about who you are and why your family has gone through

9

1 Corinthians 1:27-29

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so much. I know you’re trying to be strong, trying to be the man in your family.

“But bro, there will come a time when God will let you know that you can’t do this by your own strength. That even if you tried your best, it will seem hopeless. On that day, when God Himself shows you that He loves you and will carry you, I pray that you’ll recognise Him…” And with that – to Joshua’s great amazement – he saw tears streak down Joel’s cheeks.

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27 Joshua woke up, dazed. Something was wrong.

He looked around him. It was dark. Eve had decided that she didn’t want to sleep under a lamp post, so Josh had given in and followed her into a thicket of trees.

Eve, thought Josh. Where was Eve? He heard a rustle in a distance. Josh picked himself up and went towards the sound.

Eve, her face pale in the moonlight, looked dazed as well.

Josh gripped his fists, willing himself to wake up completely.

“What’s wrong?” he uttered.

“I’m…” said Eve hesitantly. “I’m just thirsty. I’m going for a drink… by the lake.”

Josh nodded, but something prodded him. There was something alien in Eve’s countenance, as if an unearthly shadow had touched her. He shuddered.

“Eve,” said Josh hesitantly.

She did not reply.

“Eve,” pressed Josh more firmly. “Are you telling me the truth?”

A wild look came into Eve’s eyes. She began panting as if a pain writhed inside her.

“Eve?” Eve groaned. Then she started babbling.

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“Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I KILL myself?”

Josh, startled, took a step forward but Eve stepped back.

“Everyone, EVERYONE is gone. They have all gone. They have all left me! ME!” “Eve!” “WHY?” yelled Eve. “He is GONE! Joshua, he is gone!”

“Who?” cried Josh urgently.

“I don’t know,” moaned Eve. She clawed at her temples in a frenzy. “I can’t remember him. I can’t, I can’t. I can’t even remember his face anymore! Oh God, oh God, why can’t I remember?”

Josh inched closer to Eve. He had to stop her. He didn’t know how.

“God, help me,” he prayed.

Eve’s breath grew more ragged.

“I’ve to be with him now. I have to. He’s lonely. I have to be with him.

I’ve to kill myself.”

Unbidden, the words came to Josh.

“He’s with God now. God Himself is with him,” said Josh.

Eve looked at Josh, her eyes wet with tears.

“He is?” she said querulously.

Josh bobbed his head.

A wind arose, stirring the leaves and branches all around. It wrapped its arms around Eve. Her agitation faded and died.

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She sank down to the ground. Josh quickly stepped forth, knelt down and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“He’s safe,” whispered Josh. “You’re safe.”

Eve didn’t answer. She had begun crying softly.

That night, while Eve slept, albeit restlessly, Josh kept watch.

“How long, O God,” he pled silently. “How long more can I guard her?”

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28 For the next few days and nights, Joshua kept a watchful eye on Eve. He was tired, almost unbearably so, but even then, he soldiered on.

He took to cajoling Eve to join him as he foraged for fruits, so that she wouldn’t have the time to ponder over her inexplicable worries and fears.

Eve lost her temper at Josh more than once.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone, Joshua Chan?” she yelled. “I’m a grown woman. You’re nothing but a child!”

But Josh persisted. She was ill, he knew. He found himself mouthing prayers more fervently than before.

“God, let her not harm herself. God, let her come to her senses. God, help!” he prayed silently.

That particular morning, Eve had been more trying than usual. She had decided that she couldn’t stand all the noisy birds in the area and had wanted to go elsewhere.

Josh couldn’t stop her, but managed to guide her slowly along the banks of the lake instead, searching for a quieter spot that nonetheless had enough shade and food for the two of them.

As Eve trudged on, kicking at stones and leaves, she started singing offtune some old love ballad. Josh wished he could plug his ears or even better still, stuff her mouth with his smelly tee shirt.

“God, help me,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Will you not love me?” wailed Eve in Chinese. She spun around so abruptly that Josh almost smashed into her.

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“Will YOU love me?” she sang, sticking a bony finger in Josh’s face.

Josh almost laughed, but settled for a smile instead.

Eve grinned too. It was startling how different she looked when she was happy.

“You have a girlfriend?” cooed Eve. “Erm, no,” said Josh uncomfortably.

“Ooo…” said Eve dramatically. “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, you’re gay!”

She laughed wildly at her joke.

Josh frowned a little. He didn’t like people joking about sexuality.

Besides, some of his course-mates, male and female, were openly gay, to the disgust of others. Though he didn’t want to take sides, and didn’t know quite enough about all the scientific, historical, social and religious arguments about the issue, he privately thought that beyond struggles, besides sins, God has always loved every individual as a human being.

Perhaps he was wrong, as he had been about many things, but then again if he lacked wisdom, he should just ask God for it, like what Sarah had told him once before.

Eve had spun around again to face the front and began swinging her arms about.

“I am gay! I am happy!” she laughed.

Josh shook his head, but smiled at her silliness.

It took him a while, thus distracted, to suddenly realise what he had been hearing in the background.

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It was his Koel.

Rushing forward, he passed Eve, eager to see where the bird was.

Eve grabbed his arm.

“Hey, don’t. I was just joking,” she cried.

“Don’t you hear it?” said Josh before he could stop himself. “The Koel!”

Eve frowned.

Josh frowned too. He had forgotten that Eve somehow couldn’t hear his guide.

Eve sneered.

“What Koo-el? You’re mad!”

She spun her finger, round and round her right temple, to show her disgust at Josh’s foolishness.

Josh tried his best to contain his anger.

Eve laughed again.

“Okay, so even if it exists, what about it? Will you go and kill it?”

Josh stared at her in disbelief.

“I’m hungry!” declared Eve exaggeratedly. “Surely I’m worth more to you than a stupid old bird?”

Josh didn’t answer.

Eve’s face grew red.

“Fine!” she yelled. “Keep it! I can live on my own!”

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29 “Eve, what have you done?”

Joshua had run among the trees, even as Eve dodged and hid everywhere.

“Nothing!” she cried when Josh finally caught up. “It wasn’t me!”

She threw away the stone she had in her hand. It landed with an unusually loud thud in the dead woods.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she yelled. “It wasn’t me! He made me do it!”

Josh felt angry and confused. There was no one but him and Eve in that land.

“I was only trying to scare it,” Eve gushed on.

“Scare what?” asked Josh. He found himself panting more than ever, as if a grave illness was coming upon him.

“The bird!” she cried. “It was staring at me. Its eyes, God, its eyes. They were so red!”

The Koel, thought Josh. “My Koel!”

“What did you do to it?” yelled Josh, louder than he expected.

Eve cowered.

“Nothing! I just… I just threw a stone at it. It flew off. It did! It did!”

Josh felt someone had punched his stomach. He couldn’t breathe.

“Then everything changed,” cried Eve. “The skies, the wind, everything!

All the birds, all the insects, they all went away!”

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No wonder, thought Josh. The land felt dead again. The only voices he could hear was Eve and his own. Everything else, every creature, had deserted the lake once more.

Josh coughed suddenly. Somehow, even the air smelled evil with a stench as of carrion and sweat. **** The sickness, when it came, flooded them with all its fury.

Eve kept crying and vomiting. She couldn’t keep anything down, neither fruit nor water, not that Josh could find much fruit even.

He himself had a pounding headache and what seemed like a fever that wouldn’t release its grip. He shuddered, feeling unbearably hot, yet trembled at the slightest breeze.

He drank what he could to fill his stomach, giving the lion’s share of his scavenging to Eve, but even then, the water tasted foul, as if an evil force had crept into the land, polluting and corrupting everything his hands touched.

At night, Eve would cringe in the darkness. They could no longer stay in the woods now. They camped always near the brightest lamp post they could find, but even then, the light seemed sickly and Eve would scream at every flickering shadow as if something were hunting them.

“A lion, a lion!” she yelled once and threshed about as Josh tried to calm her down.

Josh had strained his ears and heard nothing, or perhaps nothing. He himself wasn’t sure. He reasoned that the sickness was causing Eve to become hysterical and maybe even have delusions.

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He had leaned his forehead against hers, the way Ma used to when he was a child so as to check for fever. Then again, he himself felt too feverish to be certain if Eve was burning up too.

“God, help us,” he prayed desperately.

Overhead, the sky was overcast with clouds. It grew darker as Josh heard thunder rumbling in the distance.

“Please,” he cried, “let it not rain.”

He dug out his umbrella and passed it to Eve so that she could shelter herself when needed, but Eve had yelled when she saw the umbrella.

“No, no!” she cried as if Joel’s gift burned her.

Joshua couldn’t make sense of it all.

The rain poured down, lightning flashing all around them. Eve had to be dragged from the lamp post.

“We will die!” she wailed.

Josh choked. On and on, he dragged Eve away from the lamp post and the trees, from anything tall that might conduct electricity. He crouched next to a whimpering Eve, his open umbrella held low and shining unnaturally bright in the gloom.

With his other hand, he grabbed hold of Eve’s trembling hands.

“O God, forgive us!” he cried.

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30 “Meat, I need meat.”

The thought obsessed Joshua.

Eve had woken briefly earlier, her eyes overly bright against the pallor of her sickly face.

She had asked – no, pleaded – for meat.

“What meat?” thought Josh. He couldn’t find any more fruits. All they could survive on was the water from the lake, which seemed to taste more horrid as the days passed. Frustrated by his constantly rumbling stomach and stricken by how death-like Eve appeared, he had even considered feeding themselves with grass, since even the flowers from all the trees around them had ceased to exist.

“Where can I get meat?” cried Josh as he gripped the ground, his hands becoming stained with mud.

Eve had been so insistent, as if having meat were the one thing that could cure her. Madness, thought Josh, madness! But he too was infected. He craved meat too, craved it from somewhere deep within his soul, as if it were the only thing that would satisfy.

A column of sunlight broke through the grey clouds. It slanted through the air and landed somewhere close. Something glittered in the field ahead.

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Josh picked himself up and stumbled towards it. It was a shard of glass, as if in an ancient past, some drunkard had passed that way and shattered a beer bottle.10 Taking it up cautiously, Josh realised that it might be a fragment of a broken mirror instead, all smeared and darkened so he could hardly make out his own face staring back at himself.

“How sharp it is,” he thought as in a trance.

A curious thought came into his mind. He could cut himself with it.

“Why should I?” his mind whispered.

“Eve,” came the strange answer. He could carve himself and give himself for Eve to eat and to drink.

Josh laughed faintly at the suggestion. Yet he could not shake it off.

It began to obsess him once more.

“Surely this was meant to be,” he thought. “Finding Eve, finding this glass.”

All he had to do was to slice himself, and then Eve could eat something and be well.

Surely, surely, his mind cooed at him.

“Sacrifice,” whispered Josh.

Was it not written that the greatest love of all was to lay down one’s life for a friend? Surely it was, surely, seduced the voice within his head.

10

Cf. Jeremiah 25:16

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Josh’s nose stung. For some reason, he felt like crying.

“And when I’m dead?” he asked softly. “Eve will be all alone.”

His mind darkened again, a flurry of faces fluttering past, like ghosts of a forgotten past.

He held the cold shard more tightly and positioned it against his forearm.

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31 “Koooo-el!”

Josh started. Then his eyes widened in amazement as a bird landed in front of him.

“You!” he cried.

He felt like laughing and crying all at once.

“You’re safe!”

Good, his mind hissed. Then kill it.

Josh looked up in shock. He was almost sure that someone had spoken that aloud, but he was alone with the Koel.

“Surely not,” he said to himself, but the shard of glass in his fingers burned as if it had suddenly been steeped in dry ice.

He glanced down at the makeshift blade.

“Surely, you can kill it,” said the voice. “Surely, you and Eve are more important. Eat it. Drink it. It’s just a damn bird.”

Josh’s eyes widened yet more. He tried to dispel the thought, but it grew louder.

“Kill it,” it hissed, slurring the words. “KILLIT…” Then startling even himself, Josh yelled, “No!” “Go away, Koel, go away! I don’t wanna hurt you. Please, go away!”

His tears began falling as he waved his arms trying to shoo the bird, his friend, away.

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It tilted its head, sang a snatch of song, and hopped even closer.

“No, NO! Go away!”

The bird was staring at him, almost human-like. For an instant, Josh couldn’t tell who was the beast, the bird or him.

Then the bird took flight, its wings almost fanning Josh’s face with grace.

Josh dodged, wincing as he did.

It was safe, he thought crazily. At least, the bird would be.

But then, a sound made Josh look up.

High overhead, the bird changed its mind. Its flight path turned abruptly, almost gracefully.

Then, as Josh watched in horror, the bird dashed itself towards a tree in front of Josh.

The blood, cried Josh. Oh God, the blood. So much blood.

He threw away the glass.

Mouth agape, eyes once more welling, Joshua picked up the bird and cradled its broken body in his hands.

It was dead. Dead, dead, DEAD! Its blood covered his hands, his sinful hands.

The tears broke.

“WHY?” he cried. “Why have you done this for me?”

Rocking back and forth, like an abandoned child, Joshua wept.

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32 Joshua couldn’t tell Eve what he had done.

She had merely driven the Koel away, if that was the truth, but he, wretched man he was, had murdered his best friend in that land.

Even as he fed Eve with the flesh and the blood, he couldn’t stop crying.

It was grotesque, he screamed within. He should just bury the Koel.

But within him, a voice, soft and strangely calm, said, “His death is not in vain. Eat his flesh. Drink his blood. Live.”

Overcoming his disgust, albeit painfully, Josh had done so.

He would have found a way to… to cook it, he choked, but the sun had left the world, it seemed. The heavens were dark, and even as he tried to make a fire by replicating as best as he could, what he had seen scouts do on TV, his hands trembled and the twigs and leaves wouldn’t catch fire.

The smell of the blood hung in the air. It clung to his hands, his face, everywhere.

At long last, he gave in. Cradling the body gently, almost too weakly, he took the bird back to Eve. Its blood was so warm still. But nothing would ever be the same.

After feeding Eve, he wanted again to bury what remained of the bird, his friend, but again, the warm voice in his mind spoke: “Eat my flesh.

Drink my blood. Live!”

So he followed.

And cried.

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The tears would never end, Josh said to himself. “I will never be the same again.�

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33 It seemed strange how fast Eve was recovering. The fever had left her, and even her voice had seemed stronger.

Even Joshua himself, much as he tried to be rational about it, felt a tad stronger, as if healing had begun in him.

If Eve knew she had eaten meat and blood from the bird she feared and despised, she did not say anything.

Instead, she had asked for a drink of water, and Joshua lumbered mutely to the lake with his bottle.

He washed his bloody hands there, before moving a short distance away to fill the bottle. Surely, Eve wouldn’t want to drink all that blood again. Surely, he himself wouldn’t.

Josh felt like crying, but the tears had dried up and wouldn’t come.

He looked upon the lake. Curious. The water seemed clearer now. It mirrored the skies which were mostly grey, but the water seemed to glisten. Curious, thought Josh again. He gazed unthinkingly at the water, watching the fascinating design that the faint light seemed to draw upon the water. The lake seemed alive again.

Josh bit his lower lip. How could he? He felt a little angry and more than a tad guilty that he had forgotten about the Koel and once again, enjoyed the world and its fascinating sights.

The wind picked up and tickled his ears. It smelled wet yet refreshing.

Josh licked his parched lips.

Would his friend had wanted him to mourn eternally?

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No, he replied, but surely he should mourn at least for a while.

For how long, his mind questioned.

Josh didn’t know. Months perhaps, or years, he finally answered.

“How long did I mourn for Pa?” That thought confused him. Josh couldn’t recall. How long was it before he began looking around himself again, watching all the curious designs in the world? How long was it before he had realised that Pa would have wanted him to go on living?

He remembered Pa’s hands, withered as Pa’s body lay in that cold, claustrophobic room where the nursing home staff had brought him that final morning. Josh recalled it had been Wednesday, February 23, 2005, the 15th and final day of the Chinese New Year that year. Pa had fought so hard. He didn’t want to die during the New Year, Pa had said, but he failed.

Pa had not wanted Josh and Ma to come visit him on the 9th, which was the first day of CNY. “Go, enjoy yourself,” he had gasped.

But how could they?

So the family had spent the Chinese New Year together, his Pa shrivelled, his Ma pale and Josh unnaturally cheerful.

Ma had been too tired even to scold Josh for being inappropriate. After all, she had insisted that Josh wore his new and bright red shirt that day. It was far too rich, thought Josh, and it made him look like a red packet, but he had relented. He was glad he did, for Pa’s eyes lit up when he saw the shirt.

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Ma then left the room, to heat up the somewhat festive soup she made for Pa. Pa had waved to Josh to draw closer. Then Pa whispered that not only was it the first day of Chinese New Year, but it was also the first day of Lent.

Josh had smiled overly bright, pretending he understood why Pa was still so fascinated with his religion. Pa had wanted several times to tell Josh, but Ma threw tantrums and Pa eventually stopped trying.

Pa smiled now, almost too knowingly, and patted Josh on his head.

“So big now,” Pa had whispered hoarsely. “So tall.”

Josh wanted to laugh and say Pa was lying. But he didn’t.

Then Josh said, almost too loudly, that Pa’s birthday was coming up less than one month later. March 4th, he said brightly. Pa would be 41.

Did he want anything for his birthday?

Pa shook his head after a while.

Then he nodded his head again.

Josh got confused.

“When I’m gone,” said Pa with his ragged breath.

Josh had shaken his head firmly. “You’ll be here,” said Josh resolutely.

Pa smiled.

“Only God knows when and how I will fall asleep in Christ, my son,” whispered Pa. “But when I’m gone, don’t be sad on my birthday.”

Josh didn’t understand.

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“I wasn’t a faithful man,” continued Pa, coughing as he did so. “I haven't walked with God faithfully, especially these past 10 years. I was David through and through.”

Josh frowned. He was 10, well almost 10. It was less than five months till his own birthday in July. Was it then his fault that Pa lost God? The thought troubled him but he dared not say it out loud.

Pa coughed again. Josh wondered if he should help Pa strap on his oxygen mask. But Pa shook his head.

“If only… Joshua, I do love you. You ARE a blessing. I’m sorry, so so sorry,” coughed Pa. “Yet by grace, I lived. And by grace, I will live on,” said Pa after a while.

His eyes were too bright. Then again, so were Josh’s, though he couldn’t understand why.

“I was born again on my birthday,” whispered Pa. “I was 19 then. Who would have known?”

Again, Josh fought to understand.

Pa strained to sit up in bed. Josh hurried to help him.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me11,” Pa recited softly, almost inaudibly.

Josh began to cry, though he tried not to. He brushed away his tears crossly. Ma would be angry. “No crying,” she had warned him. “Don’t upset your Pa.”

11

Psalm 23:4 (NIV 1984)

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But Josh hurt. It hurt so, so much.

Pa choked. Then laying an arm around Josh, and looking up at Ma who had returned to the room, Pa shook his head and said, “There is a time for everything… a time to be born and a time to die…. a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.12” Josh heard a stifled sob. He lifted his head, and to his horror, Ma was crying too.

12

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2; 4 (NIV 1984)

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34 As the sun set, the sky deepened into a shade of blue that Joshua couldn’t name precisely, but it comforted him. The lake too shared its hue, such that he wasn’t sure where the lake ended and the sky began.

Josh noted how some pillars of wood, aged by the sun till they became pale, almost ghostly white, stood in the water. He wondered vaguely if a wooden bridge once stood in these waters, and why it had been left to fall apart.

Some fair distance above the horizon, the clouds there were salmon and magenta. The sun must be beyond the clouds, such that they were touched by such warmth in colour, he figured. It was just that where he stood, he couldn’t see the sun at all. He wondered if anyone could, a pilot perhaps, or maybe a bird, an eagle even.

The Koel might have known the sun there too, in that faraway world above the clouds. Perhaps he himself was there, singing his heart out in worship.

Josh picked up his heavy bottle and set off into the thicket behind him.

The air smelled damp, but not disconcerting. The leaves on the ground crackled faintly; the recent storms had sullied most of them, though new ones had joined their fallen compatriots.

A few drops of rain, perhaps dew, dripped down. Josh was startled by how cold they were, as they fell on his head and nape, as though someone were baptising him.

“Eve,” he cried, as he neared the spot where he had left her.

His smile vanished. There was no one.

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His backpack, almost lost in the impending darkness, lay forgotten near a tree root. Eve, who was supposed to be lying next to it, was missing.

“Eve!” he cried again. He would not panic.

“EVE!” Josh ran round and round about the trees. His bottle fell to the wet ground, but he didn’t notice it.

Josh wanted to scream. His neck felt choked as though someone had grabbed him by the throat.

There was no answer from Eve. Returning to the original location, Josh noted how no trace remained even at the very spot where she had lain for so long.

“The lake!”

The thought came to him in a flash. He ran, his legs stretching and protesting at the effort.

Had Eve… did Eve? No, she wouldn’t, Josh cried desperately. Was it all a diversion, a ploy to get him to go for some water, just so that she could do what she had wanted all along? To, to, to… Josh fought the thought. “No, please, don’t. You have me! You do!”

Then again, he had just been at the lake. Surely, he would have seen her.

No, no, no, no, no!

Josh scrambled to a stop at the bank of the lake. Other than ripples caused by the breeze and an occasional leave falling on the water surface, Josh could see nothing.

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“Eve!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Eve, where are you?”

All around him, the trees were silent. The sky darkened to a midnight blue.

Joshua was alone once more.

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35 Throughout the night, Joshua was quiet.

He could not cry.

The water looked deceptively gentle. “Is Eve inside?” thought Josh angrily. “Have you killed yourself and left me behind?”

He wasn’t sure what to think or to believe anymore.

First, the Koel, and now, Eve. Gone. All gone.

Hopeless. All hopeless.

The word hissed in Josh’s mind.

Yes, yes, all hopeless. All meaningless. All friendless.

“Surely, surely, I should die,” Josh thought as he gazed into the water.

Again, images in his head flickered, like a film reel gone wrong. Pa, Ma, Eve, Sarah, Joel, Barney, Po-po, everyone. All gone now.

His body felt so heavy. Like a millstone, he thought. He should sink himself in the lake like someone with a millstone around his neck, except in his case, he himself was the stone.

He should, he should, his mind cajoled him. So easy. So, so easy.

“There is a time for everything,” thought Josh in confusion. “Perhaps it’s time for me to die.”

He pushed himself off the ground. Just a few steps, just a few more steps, and everything would be over.

He wanted to die. Surely.

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“Father,” he thought briefly. “If only I could see you again.”

A breeze touched him. Josh trembled. He could taste blood in his mouth again.

Josh stood there frozen, like a child lost in time and space.

His father had died. He had touched his father’s hand and his body heat was deserting him, abandoning him.

His eye lids grew heavy. They fell shut.

Then in his mind, he remembered suddenly how the clouds had looked hours earlier at sunset. They shone in his mind, a mute testimony to how the sun still shone somewhere out of sight.

“No,” mouthed Josh silently. “I shall not die. I can’t.”

He trembled again, and opened his eyes.

Then he drew a quick breath.

Somewhere beyond the lake and its trees, illuminating the night sky, was a fire.

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36 Joshua ran, then walked and finally stumbled towards the light.

He somehow left the vicinity of the lake and found himself on the road again. Standing on top of yet another slope, he could tell that the fire, if it were a fire, was on top of a tower. It reminded him of one of those incinerator chimneys which he could sometimes see from his flat.

Not understanding why, and perhaps not even wanting to ask why, he made his way towards that light. Maybe someone would be there, maybe even Eve. Maybe it was yet another false hope. But Josh didn’t care. What had he to lose?

Slowly, he began to notice a change in the landscape. Traffic lights appeared, except all of them were malfunctioning, flashing a ceaseless amber. Buildings began appearing on the roadside, but they were unlit, as though they had long been forsaken. Once or twice, Josh passed a field that looked as though some people might have once played football on it, but the fields were now overgrown with grass that smoked as if someone had lit some hidden flames at the roots.

The air choked Josh a little, so he found himself covering his mouth with a hand. It was then that he realised with dismay he had left his backpack behind at the lake. He debated going back for it. Of all the things in it, the umbrella was of the most sentimental value to Josh, he realised not without astonishment; he would have thought Po-po’s phone meant the most to him.

Then again, what if – just what if – he turned and went back? Would the fire ahead go missing? Would the road again change? For in a surprising flash of insight, he realised that the road had never been constant. Detours could lead to death; what seemed foolhardy was in fact the right choice.

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Thus, Josh walked onward, though not without regret. He would say sorry to Joel, to Po-po and even to Barney for losing the umbrella, the phone and the book. But for now, Josh must go on to see his journey to its bitter end.

The sun rose again. The sky turned pleasantly blue, though no cloud could be seen in its azure reaches.

There were no more distractions, just an empty, treeless road and an ever-growing building straight in front of him.

The fire was on top an unfinished building, a tall, perhaps 40-storey stone-grey concrete structure with tattered netting wrapped around its failing wood and metal scaffoldings. The blue netting billowed, flapped and undulated in the wind, like a vast yet vertical sea.

Josh found himself gulping. He was not that fond of heights, and since the building was not completed, its one and only stairway had no railings. He walked cautiously, keeping one hand pressed firmly against the wall.

As he scaled the building, the wind grew stronger. Josh saw a sudden image of himself blown astray and falling like a star down the side of the man-made monolith.

Stopping to catch his breath, he found his legs quivering.

“I must go on,” he pushed himself. “Even if nothing is on top this building, maybe I can see what is beyond.”

His steps became slower, and though he faltered, he drove on. Joshua Chan, he told himself, was strong and courageous. His father would have wanted him to go on.

39, 40, he counted.

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He had reached the rooftop, although from what he could see, the contractors had yet to cap the building fully.

He noted with some surprise that there was no fire. Where then was all the light coming from?

Standing gingerly on the roof, he looked, and behold, a man, or at least a figure like a man, stood near the ledge. He was dressed all in white, radiant in the sun.

Then as if Josh had made a noise, the man turned around.

It was his father.

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37 “This can’t be happening,” thought Joshua as David came forward and enfolded him in an embrace.

“Not this,” screamed his mind, “not this.” Josh felt a sharp pang in his nose and began to sob. David smelled like soap and cologne, as in the old days, before medicine, bleach and bodily fluids took over and became the norm in the hospital and the nursing home.

“Father, father,” he cried silently within.

“So big now,” whispered David, “so tall.” Josh could barely hear his father beyond his noisy wails.

“You have suffered so, so much, son,” said David. “You’re so tired, aren’t you?”

Josh nodded.

“It’s okay now. Let it go. Let yourself go.”

Josh cried and sobbed and wailed and raged, like a lost child holding every fear in and finally breaking at the sight of a returning parent long thought gone.

David soothed Josh’s unkempt hair with his left hand, even as his right arm snaked around Josh in a tightening hold. Then leaning closer to Josh’s ear, David whispered, “You don’t have to go on now. You’re so, so sad, aren’t you? So let go. Son, you shouldn’t stay on. Not like this.

This is too much for you, son.”

His soft voice slipped into Josh’s mind, an almost welcome relief to the grief that Josh had struggled with these lonely years.

“You don’t have to live, son,” said David sadly. “You can choose to die.”

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Something deep within Josh’s spirit stirred.

“Son, you can choose to leave. Just surrender…”

Josh’s eyes widened. Choking back his tears, he tried to back out of David’s embrace, but David grabbed Josh’s arms in a vice-like grip.

“Son,” said David, “what’s wrong?”

Josh stared deep into David’s eyes. He squinted his eyes shut, squeezing the last tears out, and shook his head violently. Then eyes flying open, he stared again at David.

“You’re not my father,” cried Josh.

David’s smile curled his lips. In a light, mocking tone, David teased, “Son, you’re sick. It’s me. Who else can I be?”

But Josh shook his head once more. “You’re not,” he insisted. “My father, my Pa, would never tell me to give up, to kill myself.”

David broke into a goofy grin as of the days of old. “Silly, silly boy. I never said anything about suicide. You just have to let go, just surrender.”

Josh’s head throbbed. The wind whipped past his ears, howling but failing to drive out the cloud within his mind. Did he hear wrongly?

Surely that was his father. Surely he was.

Yet, the more he looked into David’s face, the more unfamiliar it grew.

First, the eyes grew faint and seemed to become a smear across a caricature. Then it was the nose and next, the mouth that shimmered as if these features were mirages in the desert heat.

“Listen,” David said again in an insistent tone. “Son, my silly son, stop.

Stop this. Surrender.”

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The pain caused by David’s grip on his arms slipped past Josh’s shoulders and up into his head, spearing through his temples. Josh’s breath grew ragged, snatched away by the growling wind that carried the stench of haze.

The two men stood in silence, David towering over Josh.

“You’re hurting me,” stammered Josh. “Let me go.”

David smiled, but Josh noted that David’s eyes seemed cold and watchful.

“Let me go!”

The release, when it came, was without warning. Josh struggled to regain his balance even as David took one step back.

“Son, why are you hurting me like this? Why must you do this to me again?” said David, his eyes suddenly welling up with tears. “We never wanted you! You’re always disappointing me and Ma. How can I trust you with the family?”

Again, Josh felt the pang in his nose. He fought the impulse to cry again, but his chest heaved as if a demon was clawing its way out.

“Son, I know what you’re thinking. I know everything,” said David.

“This can’t go on. You know you can’t go on.”

Josh shook his head.

“You know,” insisted David. “Why do you think you’re here? You’re dead. Your body is dead. Your soul is here with me. There’s no other explanation, is there?”

Josh stared at the man who ought to be his father, who should be his father. All of Josh’s previous speculations segued in his mind. He was 10:40

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dead. That was why he was alone in that silent land. All alone, except now, with his father. Surely that was the truth.

No, wait. Eve. What about Eve? But before Josh could voice her name, David whispered, “Evelyn was only an illusion, someone you made up to share your existence. She didn’t exist. She never wanted to exist. She never wanted you…”

“She was real,” cried Josh.

David smiled. He drew closer and blew lightly at Josh. “What’s her name then?” he said softly.

Josh’s eyes widened. Her name? What was her name?

“See, you can’t recall. She wasn’t here. She never existed.”

Josh struggled in vain. Not only was the woman’s name lost in his mind, but also her face and figure grew faint, dissolving as if she was nothing more than a wisp of smoking, dying grass to begin with.

David blew again at Josh.

It wasn’t just what’s-her-name who faded to ashes. Strange figures appeared and disappeared within. A wrinkled woman in a cleaner’s uniform bearing a box, a gift. A tiny girl looking thankful in Josh’s windbreaker. A lanky boy-man laughing and kicking playfully with his hairy legs. A portly man listening intently to his headphones.

David smiled, wider now.

“See, you can’t recall their names. They weren’t there. They never existed.”

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Softly, David added, “There is nothing. No one to live for, no one to love, no one to love you, no one except me…”

Yes, thought Josh, he had no one, except that man who must be his father. His eyelids grew heavy.

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38 The wind stirred again, warm as if somewhere beyond, some place out of sight, a fire blazed out of control. It touched him feather-like on the nape, triggering an involuntary shudder and a warmth that spread like fire.

Fire. Fire red. Blood red. Pulsing. All that blood.

“There…” stammered Josh. “There was a bird. He died for me.”

David’s countenance became stern. “What bird?” he mocked. “You’re sick, son. You’re imagining things. You’re alone with me. You have only me, surely.”

The voice, soft and sibilant, wended into Josh’s ears. Yet even as Josh felt his lips unconsciously mouthing the word “surely”, he watched his scraped hands clasping and unclasping each other, as though the blood was still present.

“Surely,” said Josh. “Surely, he died and his blood covered me.”

Josh looked up, bewildered as if he had once again awoken from a long slumber. “Where is God?” he asked softly.

David stared at Josh in disbelief. He began to say something, but Josh interrupted him.

“My father fell asleep. God is watching over him,” said Josh slowly as if pulling things forth from a nearly forgotten past. “If you’re my father, then where is God?” One corner of David’s mouth curled as if to smile.

“There is no god,” he said. “They were all lies…”

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Josh shook his head obstinately.

David’s eyes burned into Josh’s.

“There is,” said David, “no god.”

“Look around you,” he continued. “If he really exists, then why did he let you come to this place? If he’s real, then surely you wouldn’t have nearly died from thirst on the way here, would you?”

Josh looked down. Again, David’s words like a soporific song meandered around Josh.

Josh shrugged. Yes, yes, He couldn’t be real. God couldn’t exist. He was so, so tired. He had to rest. Had to sleep. If only he could rest.

A drop of perspiration fell from Josh’s chin to the ground. Josh watched it fall. A memory stirred. Water. The lake. The fruits.

“He leads me beside still waters13,” whispered Josh.

Looking up slowly, he was amazed to see how David’s face had turned purple.

“If your god really exists, if he loves you,” hissed David as he took one more step back and spread his arms wide, “then surely you can ask for food now. Or rain, surely you can ask for rain.”

Surely, thought Josh, it must be true. He could just ask. Yet even then, a faint voice spoke within his mind: God’s help would always come at just the right time.

“Come on!” shouted David. “Command!”

13

Psalm 23:2b

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“He will provide,” said Josh quietly. “I won’t command Him. God is in control. He is my master, not my slave.”

David snorted, as if he stifled a laugh.

“Really?” he mocked. “Is he now your lord? Then surely, you have nothing to fear.”

At the mention of fear, Josh found himself suddenly wanting to back away. How could he have ever thought that the man was his father?

Pa would never say such things about God. “Surely then,” screeched the stranger, “he will always provide you a way out. Surely he has promised. All you have to do is jump off this rooftop, and all will be well. He’ll cradle you and deliver you home.”

As if in response, the wind picked up and became a gale, such that Josh struggled to remain standing.

“If you really believe in this god, jump!”

Josh began to cough and choke. He couldn’t, mustn’t, shouldn’t stay in that hell with that madman. The ledge beckoned to him. He had to escape. All he had to do was to give up struggling and let that howling storm thrust him off the roof. Surely, he must.

“Jump!”

Just give in. Just give up. Josh’s mind screamed at him. He clutched his head again, striving to squash the confusion out. Even as his fingers clenched and clawed, he smelled blood. Whether it was his own, or came from elsewhere, the blood stung him.

“No!” yelled Josh. “NO!” The wind died.

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The stranger stood there, watching Josh with an indecipherable expression. All dressed in white, stark and splendid against the filthy surroundings, he looked unearthly, like an angelic visitor.

He smiled.

Then very gently, as though he was cajoling a stubborn child, he said, “Then there is only one other way out.�

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39 Joshua stood, quivering.

His mind was on fire, his body even more scorched and scotched by sharp pain and dull throbs. Somewhere in the distance, just beyond his hearing, were voices he couldn’t distinguish but spoke in such urgent tones that he knew the final hour was at hand.

The man who was not David smiled. It would have been an attractive face, but Josh could only see how cold and reptilian the eyes were.

“So silly, isn’t this?” said the man. He stood at the very edge of the roof, stretching wide his arms. “So clichéd even.”

“What is?” asked Josh.

“Even if you can return to that world, what would become of you? All that pain, all the disabilities to come. Poor, poor boy.”

Josh shuddered. The man was lying. He must be.

“Lying, am I?” said the man.

Josh started. How did the man know what Josh was thinking?

“Of course I know. I can read you like a book. I’m very, very good at this, you know. Now, tell me, do you really want to go back? I know how you love to think about things, to read, to learn, to know. How will you learn with a brain that is eternally damaged, my son?” said the man softly.

“Then again,” he said with a knowing smile, “how will you look at things? Will you be able to see clearly again? Or what about your ears?

What good are you to anyone with one busted ear?”

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Josh felt his heartbeat accelerate. What was the man talking about?

But before he could think things through, images flashed in his mind: the road at night, dim with orange street lamps. Josh, eyes heavy, was on the verge of dozing off on the upper deck of his bus. Then came that sound. A ripping, a sudden crack, and suddenly, the glass window shattered.

The man smiled, more radiant than ever.

“Do you now remember?” he cooed softly.

Josh felt his eyes well up with tears. He blinked them away furiously.

He would never cry again in front of that creature.

“And what of your Ma? Your Po-po? How much will they have to pay?

Already, they are struggling with your poly fees. Do you really think they can cope with your medical bills?”

Josh bit his lower lip till he could taste blood once more.

“And oh, how about your precious little Sarah? Do you really think she could love someone as crippled as you are?” smiled the man. He clasped his hands as if in prayer. “Or what about Joel? Silly, silly boy.

Praying so hard. What will happen when you wake up and he finds out that you are broken, body, mind and soul? What will happen to his little… faith?”

He spat out the word “faith” as if it were an obscenity.

Josh stood his ground. He knew not why, but he must not crack before the man.

“Come now,” said the stranger. “Let us be reasonable. Let us make a deal.”

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Josh did not reply.

The man stared into Josh’s eyes, smiling.

Josh fought back. The man’s eyes were hypnotic, poisonous even.

“You can’t read my mind,” cried Josh inwardly. “You’re lying. You must be. God, help me!”

“Thinking of your Pa again?” said the man. “He can’t help you. He is beyond your reach. It was so, so easy to take him.”

Josh’s eyes widened suddenly. He didn’t know what just happened, but the man didn’t know Josh’s thoughts. He didn’t. Josh felt like laughing and whooping, like the day he ran naked in the rain, but he quashed the euphoria. The battle was not yet over, and the man – whoever he was – was far more powerful than Josh was.

“What deal?” asked Josh shortly. He needed time. Time for what, he wondered.

The man unclasped his shining hands. Then stretching his arms out wide, as if he were being crucified, he said, “Worship me.”

Josh could not answer. He didn’t know what to answer.

“Worship me,” repeated the man seductively. “This world has been given to me. I can do what I will with it. Worship me, and I’ll heal you.

Then you can go back to your Ma and Grandma, to your Sarah and your Joel, to all your friends.”

He smiled, radiant like a sun that Josh couldn’t stare at for fear of becoming blind.

“Worship me, for that is all I ask of you,” said the man.

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The wind began to rise again.

Joshua smiled. It was a child’s smile, innocent almost with a touch of gravity.

Unbidden, an unfamiliar answer came to him.

“It is written,” Josh spoke softly but clearly, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’”14 For a moment, time stood still.

Then with a roar, the man ran forward, his face contorted in rage, his arms in sudden flames and raised to strike Josh.

The teen stood his ground, eyes widened as though senseless. “Abba!” he cried.

14

Matthew 4:10

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40 The light, the true light, when it came was so radiant, so splendid that Joshua wondered how he could have ever thought the man to be shining.

For even as that enraged spirit charged towards Joshua, a wind like a flame of fire suddenly descended with what seemed like a great lion’s roar, like the flap of wings far too great for anyone, far less any angel, to resist.

Joshua watched as the man – or what had been a man – screamed, its eyes widening impossibly as if it faced a fate worse than death.

Then the fallen angel was gone. **** Far overhead, a bird called.

Josh could not believe his ears.

He looked up into the impossibly blue sky and there it was, his one, true guide.

Tears began rolling down Josh’s cheeks like streams of living water.

Yet the bird looked different. It had grown somehow. Its plumage was no longer black and blue, but whiter than snow itself, if that were possible.

And as Josh watched it in astonishment, he saw how its wings and one of its sides were touched with red, as if wounds that had once poured forth blood and water still remained.

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The bird soared, circling and circling in the sky, rising higher and higher as the wind bore it aloft.

Then even as it rose, and Josh cried in true worship, he heard a voice say softly yet clearly, “My sheep know my voice. Come, follow me.�

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Selah15 A songbird sings, not knowing the seasons, that death has struck again and the mourners who creep and cry in muteness are startled by the joy.

When asked why he sings where storm clouds have closed in, he says the sun is shining still above the shroud of grief.

The mourners can't cease their moans for the dead are wailing their dead but the bird can't cease its foolish song for he sees still the sun above.

15

The Hebrew word Selah occurs often in the biblical Psalms. Of uncertain meaning, it may denote a pause or an interlude for readers to reflect.

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41: Epilogue Joshua climbed the steep stairs slowly, gripping the rail even as the bus careened.

The upper deck was empty, save him.

He made his way to the front of the bus, and sat down gingerly.

The bus was quiet, not dead silent, and Josh gave thanks for being able to once again move about freely and for being able to travel by bus without fear.

Evelyn, his mother, had wanted him to rest more at home after the accident, but he had spent over 10 months resting and undergoing therapy.

Josh still walked with a limp; his right ankle was somehow broken after the bus crash. It was a miracle that he made it alive, said the doctors and nurses, especially given the kind of head trauma he had. Then again, it was curious how a dry branch, dead from the drought, would fall at night and smash into the moving bus, right where Josh was seated.

The media had reported how the bus driver and other passengers were mostly untouched, save some bruises and sprains. Tabloids, in particular, splashed Facebook photos of Josh and gave many ghoulish details about his family’s tragic past, even dubbing them in Chinese as “the orphan and the widow”.

Everyone had watched as Josh laboured in a coma for close to 40 days, the medical staff, his family and his friends. Some had given up hope that Josh could wake again. Even his Ma had at one time cried to the staff to just let Josh go so that he wouldn’t suffer.

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Joel, Sarah, Mr Barnabas Wong and others from school had visited, and while Evelyn initially resisted, she was the one who finally gave in to Po-po’s pleading and asked them and her husband’s church friends to come and pray for Josh.

Even then, when Josh finally woke, with tears pouring down his tiny, dishevelled and heavily bruised face, he had faced grave challenges in recovery. His memory for instance was often patchy for months; he had to ask repeatedly about what had been told him just moments earlier. His eyesight became worse such that new glasses had to be made, and Josh had to get dental implants for his broken teeth.

Yet, Josh was thankful that his hearing was undamaged, not in the least.

In fact, he seemed to hear more distinctly than ever.

What worried Evelyn the most was the change in Josh’s temperament.

While he was still the son who became more sensible and thoughtful after David’s early death, Evelyn had expected the teen to be more frustrated or even more sullen about his undeserved injuries.

Yet, Josh had spoken up more with an unusual assurance that all things would eventually work out for good, even terrible things such as the accident and the possibility that his head and leg might never fully recover.

Josh had tried to share with Ma what he had seen, heard and felt during his sleep, but Evelyn had shaken her head and dismissed it as only a dream. One day, thought Josh, she might encounter God in His chosen way, but until then, Josh was willing to pray and to wait.

Po-po, he was glad, took Josh’s testimony quite seriously to the extent that she had started visiting Sarah and Joel’s church. Joshua felt like laughing when Joel had reported with over-the-top gestures how he

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had accompanied Po-po to the Cantonese congregation, instead of Joel’s usual English service. While the old lady thoroughly enjoyed herself, Joel had struggled through the exuberant worship, surrounded by many older people, some of whom were even more candid and joyful than Joel was.

It was Sarah who had wept at Josh’s tale.

“Father,” she had prayed with Josh. “I don’t know why this accident happened and why Josh must endure this physical suffering even now.

But I do know, Lord, that You are wiser than we are. You are a sovereign and loving God who can transform the worst circumstances into something that would bless us and those around us.

“I ask that You would lead Josh through this pain and this recovery.

And I thank you, O Lord, that even when he lay dying, beyond the reach of human help, You revealed Yourself to him in his most desperate hour and delivered him from evil. Daddy, thank you for going after Josh and for leading him home. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.”

It was Joel, however, who led Joshua through the sinner’s prayer one July morning, as they sat side by side in the sunshine in the hospital’s courtyard, and heard in a distance the Koel calling for love.

Joshua smiled as he squinted at the landscape that led him to school.

He was unused to the sunlight, but slowly, his vision was becoming clearer. Besides, Joel, who was now his Christian brother proper, would be waiting at the school bus stop for him. While Joshua would miss graduation with his peers, alongside Sarah, at least he had been moved to the same year as crazy old Joel.

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Many things were yet unknown, thought Joshua. He didn’t know for instance, if one day, he’d be a couple with Sarah. To be honest, he would like that very much.

But till that day when he got attached, and even past that day, Joshua knew that there was One who would always be his love, a Love that would pursue and protect him even beyond the ravages of time, space and even death, for Joshua knew: If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

Psalm 139:9-10

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The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

Mark 1:12-13

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