thornside.

I will tell you of affluent Mr. Patel. He's average. He has a rather big nose and his skin is brown, like all the other Patels. He's quick witted, mostly in debate and business. He's savvy and works at a clinic.

Mr. Patel bought his first concubine in high school. He was not good looking. He did not attract the multitudes of white girls who passed him in the hallways daily. Mr. Patel was lonely. He fell in love with the first concubine, beautiful porcelain skin and green eyes. Long brown hair. She was the ideal of a white girl.

This girl has no name in this story. For the sake of reference, she will be called First. First is a renowned concubine. She takes her job very seriously. One week, she spends time with one man. Next week, another. It's a process, an art, a study. Mr. Patel begged her to be his concubine. First is very beautiful and graceful. But either way, she has always been and will be a concubine. She accepts, but it's not as if she could say no.

First had no interest in Mr. Patel. She belonged to someone else. She passes time like idiotic butterflies flying with no place to go. Mr. Patel realizes that she is not his. He reluctantly sells her off. But her ghost remains passively around him. The sweet scent of green eyes and porcelain skin. Who could forget?

Mr. Patel buys a brown girl. This is relatively shocking, since he has always bought pretty little white concubines. But the brown girl is extremely beautiful. She is not a concubine, and I will not refer to her as one. She is a beautiful princess, a priestess, a young girl of great potential. Then why does she accept this sordid position? Why does she stain her clothes to fill the gap? She closes her eyes and lets herself seep into him.

Blood and bones mean nothing to Mr. Patel. He aches for soul and spirit. He yearns for flesh and the meat, the chewy texture, the soft bitten heart. He sinks teeth, here and there, a big great moan. And the beautiful girl acquiesces.

Mr. Patel eventually buys the brown girl permanently. It's a shame though. The girl is already dead, been bitten too many times and the seeping blood has already been sacrificed. The tender heart that used to skip a beat for him remains like a museum exhibit. It's lifeless but fascinating.

Mr. Patel tells the beautiful girl to sit here, yes right there. Sit here all day and wait for me to come home. Take your clothes off when I come. That's all you may do. She was number one in her class, she remembers. She wanted to be a teacher or a lawyer. Or a great businesswoman. But why does she sit here? She stares at the couch in front of her, the simple patterns. Her ghost sits in front of her, staring around the place in horror. First's ghost is here too. She is laughing very, very loudly. She is mocking the brown girl. Stupid girl! Don't you know the rules!

Days pass and the routine is embedded in their lives. Mr. Patel works hard during the day making a grand fortune. Tired and demanding a reward, he comes home like a war hero. Takes his undressed wife and pretends she is his spoil of war. Sleeps like a baby, curled up in fear. His wife goes outside and becomes a ghost, forever.

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Sometimes when I would hear the people on the beach, laughing, eating, and loudly calling, I imagine myself when I was younger.

I had a twin, Ayumi. I say 'had' because she left me a long time ago. Ayumi and I were best friends, and we both saw it fitting for us to always be together. We never annoyed each other. We were the same. Eerily, sometimes we thought the exact same thing. We felt what the other was feeling. We would tell stories of our day at school and often complete them, even though the other never met each other during the day. It was very peculiar.

If there was one difference, I would say, Ayumi had a strange attraction to needles. It may have been the sewing class that the library offered many years ago. In any case, she loved the feeling of needles between her pale lithe fingers. I once caught her trying to prick the soft flesh of her finger with a silver tip.

Ayumi mentioned one night that she had always wanted to try acupuncture. Now, we were almost sixteen and we couldn't drive by ourselves yet. Our parents would never approve of it, or pay for it, for that matter. Most importantly, there were no acupuncture clinics near where we lived.

"Jin, I really wish I could try acupuncture. Imagine, so many needles in your body, all at once, and not feeling the force of pain."

"Mm."

"It's like having a million little things buried inside of you and not minding at all."

I really liked that line.

---

Ayumi killed herself. It was a stupid thing. She had failed a major final exam for Sciences and did not cry at all. It shocked everyone. Ayumi and I were decent students. Perhaps Ayumi was smarter than me, and I wouldn't be surprised. She read more. We had never failed a course, or made a teacher angry. So Ayumi's failure surprised her friends, her teachers, our parents, and especially me.

That night, Ayumi was so strange. She ate without really talking to anyone. She smiled a lot though. It was not a usually happy smile that emitted casual contentment. It was overbearing, superficial. She was the star of this loony show we didn't even know was airing. The host, the main attraction. The everything. Absolutely everything.

We had twin size beds in our room, side by side with a small aisle and a nightside table in between. Often Ayumi's books were stacked there, for a good reading night. We both went to bed, and about two hours later, I heard the quiet rustling of someone leaving a bed.

I can't remember much that night. I was half asleep, mainly because I had been cramming for a quiz the next morning. After I heard the hushed noise, I opened my right eye and tried to figure out what was going on. Ayumi, in her white nightgown, got up and tip toed outside the room.

Even more surreptitiously did I leave my bed and follow my twin sister. Our parents were deep sleepers so I could afford to be a little more noisy.

My eyes followed strange Ayumi, all the way into our bathroom. It was a regular two sink bathroom with a toilet and bathtub. The theme was blue, so the toilet seat cover and shower curtains were light shades of blue. The toothbrushes were a navy blue. The soap holder was a dark blue.

We kept a small radio near the sink, for mornings when we were really tired from cramming the last night or just to hear something while we brushed our teeth. I suddenly heard a faint song being played. There was a lot of static since it was so late at night.

The song had no words. It only had an orchestral feeling to it, the sound of many instruments that were all crying together. Mourning something horrid. It had no words, but it was a distinctly sad song.

It's all such a blur now. The song had no words but I could hear rivers upon rivers, moving but so placid, elated beach shrieks upon mourning hyms. Mobs sobbing away rushed against the warmth of summer. It made no sense.

I watched Ayumi pull out a drawer. Inside there were many needles, something that I was never aware of. She grabbed a handful gently, and threw them into a now full bathtub. It was getting warmer in the bathroom. I was still conciously huddled against the wall adjacent, peering in unnoticed.

Ayumi threw in the last batch of needles. And then like a glorious angel placed her naked body inside the water. She sat comfortably inside the tub of hot water. The needles floated around her unassumingly. And then she did it.

With a pale lithe finger, she took a floating needle and with some force, pushed into into her arm. She immediately relaxed. She closed her eyes and did it again. And again. And again.

Her arms were like weak fountains that ran red. They dribbled and drooled, and her eyes remained closed. I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. I felt demons inside that bathroom.

And again. And again. And again.

Arms, legs, breasts, neck
and slowly I felt
the hot water gurgle hot blood

Needles and Ayumi's corpse in this nice little tub.

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I live in a floating box, above my school. It's colourful on the outside, it gleams when the sun is out. It's always afloat and its cube like structure makes everyone curious, at first.

Before the box was born, I was pregnant with it. I found this out many years ago, when my parents would yell and yell and yell about me, to me, concerning my grades, my future, my life, my career. Everything. So I went into the bath and tried to drown myself. The water willingly entered me, and I became pregnant with it. No one knew, and no one needed to know.

It was a painful pregnancy. I remember barely crawling out of bed the the tingles along my back and around my stomach, the swelling of my belly. I can't remember how I even managed that, but it passed by and I gave birth. The box naturally floated upward, and when I went to school, the box floated down and swallowed me whole.

When you look at it, it looks beautiful. Like a piece of art, vibrant colors and lines, all flowing. You can't miss it. It's a large floating cube! You can't see me in inside. I grow numb inside that box, and I let the colors eat me alive. It takes getting used to. I use to love the color orange and now it nibbles at my thigh. Once school ends, the box vomits and out I appear, brand new.

I sometimes watch my schoolmates as I am being eaten. It's a funny thing to watch. They are struggling, laughing, writing, stressing...and I am being eaten. It puts everything into a good perspective. My schoolmate longs to be a doctor. She works hard, never has time to think about strange thoughts like colorful floating cubes. She's a tough virgin, strong and sweet.

What do I long to be? Nothing! How silly, I am already dead. Though the cube is the only thing to acknowledge my existence, everything and everyone passes me by, a ghost. But I can't help but feel real when it devours me. Maybe this is why I still let it swallow me.

Some weeks later, I woke up from my box's supper and it had already puked me out. My schoolmate is there, walking past me. She doesn't see me, she walks through me in a hurry, but she turns around. I wonder if she notices the faint outline, the almost translucent silhouette. She squints and then shrugs. Nothing. She briefly looks up at the colourful box in the sky. It used to be such a sensation, that box. Where did it come from? Why is it there? SO many attempts to tear it down, to investigate it. They gave up when they couldn't do anything with it. It was just a stone in the sky, nothing significant. No reason, no purpose.

So many years pass and my schoolmate has already graduated. Why am I still in this box? Why can't I leave this school? The colours consume me, slowly at first, then violently, like lovemaking. I sometimes think that me and the colours are making love, everyday, without a sound. It's quiet and it leaves me breathless. When I'm done, they have already eaten everything. How greedy they are. This box that has no purpose or reason.

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Three days ago when I was cutting stars from paper, I saw Alice with her eyes open, reading a book. It was an old story, one that my little brother and many boys his age liked. I put my scissors down gently and stared at her with a curious expression.

"What are you reading?"

She doesn't bother to speak, because we both know she has a hard time with speaking. Her words come out jumbled, too excited, too Vietnamese. She's a tumultuous river, up and down, yet very, very quiet. She simply hands me the book, right after she memorizes the page she was on.

I didn't bother reading the title, I already knew the story and what it was about. I handed her the book back, and she continued to read.

"How was art class today?"

Again, she tacitly opened her generic backpack and handed me a page sized canvas. It was in pencil, but it had good shading. It was a small rabbit, with grass in the background. It was obviously nighttime in the picture, and the rabbit had its head slightly bent. Like it was just sitting there, staring at something that didn't exist.

"It's nice." Alice nodded quietly and murmured something and I assumed it was a thank you. She put the canvas away and pushed up the bridge of her glasses. Her lips mouthed something else, I couldn't tell.

------

Despite what I thought initially, Alice was so blindingly Asian. The stereotype of this ugly girl, with tiny slits that were buried in books. And you would think she would be amazing at school. She fared decently, better than average, but certainly far from the best. Clean fingers, and a tiny, tiny body. Pimples and facial blemishes crowded her yellow face like a busy street.

I wish I could tell you that I've never gotten mad at her. I really took a liking to her. It was the way she seemed so blind to this flashy world of white girls, blonde hair, rap music. Holes in jeans, Facebook, and iPods.

I often thought that Alice's body was still in Vietnam. Her body, her mind, everything. And here, we had a substitute, a plaster model that came to our school and studied here, but would immediately crumble to the floor when it was over. And the corpse in Vietnam would suddenly shudder and she calmly pick up a book and read again.

One day when I came to school, I saw Alice with a rabbit in front of her. It was odd looking, even though it looked perfectly fine. Was it the fur, a little too short? Was it its open mouth, gaping? I looked again and saw that the rabbit looked very tired. It was curled up and exhausted.

"Is that yours?" Alice nodded.

I quickly remembered that I had forgotten my book in my locker for that class, and in five minutes I returned back. The white rabbit was gone.

"Where did it go?" Alice must have not heard me, because she was reading again. I sat in my seat and stared at the sky. I saw a small rabbit, jumping in the blue sea of sky. Shocked, I looked at Alice and she continued reading. I stared at the rabbit, it jumped higher and higher and farther away. And the rabbit disappeared. I stared at Alice again. She was just reading, and again pushed up her glasses. She was very still for a second, and then adjusted herself in her seat.

I had a daydream that the rabbit was Alice's soul. It was white and untouched, and it jumped into the sky. I ran back and forth from Vietnam.

Everyone likes a rabbit because they are quiet, they don't speak. A rabbit has no ambition, he is content with a grass and being a rabbit.

Alice tried so hard to join her soul and jump into the sky, like the best could. Her soul could soar but her body was stuck on Earth. It was the lifeless bodies that she struggled to move, their rotting flesh a dead weight on the dirt. Rabbits are cute faced but they have nothing else great about them. No great roar or brilliant beaks or tender gills. They just sat in the grass and wished to soar in the sky.

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