Fiction: Group 4
Eternal Effulgence
Good Hope School, Law, Maggie - 15, Fiction: Group 4
stared out of the window. Everything I saw was dusty.
I had begun to get used to living in this barren city but I couldn’t help longing for the life I
had before. The glamour of our cosmopolitan city was now just a memory.
The entire Pearl River Delta was catastrophically polluted. Severe pollution first struck Guangzhou.
It then spread to Zhuhai, Macau, Shenzhen, and eventually Hong Kong. The large number of vehicles and
manufacturing factories, mostly run by Hong Kong manufacturers since 1998, filled the air with particulates,
sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, ammonia…… It was so intense we had to wear masks
outdoors. Worse still, the tap water was yellowish.
Did this kill us? No. Did this drive us mad? Yes.
The detrimental substances in the contaminated water and air attacked the frontal lobe of the
cerebrum of the human brain. Some people went crazy, succumbing to emotional turmoil and madness.
My mother was one of them.
Sometimes she screamed and threw things at the wall for hours. Sometimes she curled up like a ball
and hid herself under the covers. Whenever I saw her like this, needles unceasingly pricked my heart.
“Maia?” A voice jerked me back to reality. “Are you alright?” asked Nathan, my best friend since
I was young. His parents and my father died in a traffic accident five years ago. My mom had let him move
in with us since then. I remembered us clinging to each other, bawling our eyes out.
I shove the haunting memories into the dark, silent place in my mind that was getting deeper and
more crowded each day.
“I’m worried about my mom,” I mumbled.
He nodded with empathy. “Perhaps we could go out for a walk?”
Once we stepped out the door-case, the howling wind slapped me across my pale face. My mask
made me feel a bit claustrophobic. My breaths were always shorter here outside, as if my lungs were
desperate for oxygen. My eyes stung a little from the dust. The swirling fog of dust enveloped me. I could
barely see anything more than 5 metres away. Even sunlight couldn’t penetrate the cloud of dust. A gloomy
shadow engulfed this alien city.
My foot hit something. I looked down. A dead body lay with his eyes wide open and his mouth
gaping.
I screamed, tumbling backward. Feeling lightheaded, I doubled over and threw up my breakfast
until I dry-heaved.
Nathan took me by the elbow and gently steered me away from the grotesque scene. “There’s a
ParknShop ahead. Let’s get you some water,” he tried to console me, rubbing circles on my back.
“We’re running out of food at home. We should get some,” I reminded him when we were inside
the store. Since my mom got sick, we had been solely dependent on our savings so we tried to be as frugal
as possible.
My throat was so acidic from my vomit that it felt like fire burning. I gulped down the water so fast
that I almost choked. “I’m okay. Let’s go,” I croaked, cradling the vegetables and meat in my arms like
invaluable treasures.
While we were walking, my mind floated million miles away, the image of my mom tearing a
blanket into sheds replaying over and over in my head like an endless cassette tape. “Let’s recite a poem,
Maia,” Nathan sensed that I got carried away by my thoughts. He always did. In this insane world, we
recited poems and clung to the beauty of words, keeping ourselves sane.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,” I began.
“Old age should burn and rave at close of day,” he went on, smiling. This poem never failed to
give us renewed vigour to endure, even during dark era.
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
“Though wise men at their end know dark is right—” We walked side by side and immersed
ourselves in the poem. Suddenly I felt someone bumped into me. Hands gripped the groceries in my arms
and pulled them away from me. Instinctively I tried to pull them back and kept a death grip on our food,
our source of life.
I
