Fiction: Group 4
He spun around and grabbed my shoulders so fast I shrieked. He dragged me across the living room
and pinned me to the couch.
“Nathan, what’re you doing?”
He looked stunned and oddly shaken. I could feel him quivering.
He stared into my eyes, “Maia, I want you to be as calm as you possibly can, okay?”
“What? Why?” I managed to force out. I had never been so bewildered and flustered in my life.
My heart was beating so hard I thought it would bounce out of my mouth.
He inhaled sharply and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were darkened with
dread. “Your mom committed suicide.”
I froze. My stomach sank. The ground was pulled out underneath me. “What?” I let out a shaky
breath. I must have heard him wrong.
“I’m so sorry, Maia.”
He must be joking. He had to be.
I couldn’t breathe. Gasps and wheezes escaped my throat. “I…what…Mom!” I screamed and
wanted to dash to her room but Nathan held me in place.
“Please Maia. You wouldn’t want to see that.” Nathan looked pained.
“Mom!” I twisted under his grasp but he didn’t budge.
I slammed my fists into the couch in frustration. Something had shattered in me. Tears cascaded
down my cheek like water surging through a broken dam.
Shock, desperation and gut-wrenching grief suffocated me. My whole body trembled. I’d never
felt so stricken, so insecure, so fragile. I had an almost irresistible urge to hide in a closet and curl up in a
ball. To shut off my eyes and brain and just lay there until nothing existed anymore.
Images swam within my eyelids. I saw my mom and me at Ocean Park, shrieking at the top of our
lungs on the roller coaster. I heard my mom comforting me when I wept over poor grades. I felt my mom’s
touch on my forehead when I was sick. I smelt my mom’s perfume, the one from Dior. I tasted my mom’s
homemade cupcakes, with chocolate sprinkles on top.
My mom was gone.
Life drained out of me. Reality punched me in the stomach. Bitter memories sucked out my soul,
until I was left on a barren land. The darkness around me thickened, and I gagged on anguish and sorrow,
gasping to breathe.
Nathan pulled me to him, tucking my head under his chin and stroking my hair over and over
again.
Since my father died, I had painstakingly bandaged the ulcerated wound in my heart. Now I felt
the bandage being ripped off. Blood incessantly spouted from the raw wound.
Madness killed my mom. Humans destroyed the earth, and the earth destroyed us. We’d devoted
ourselves in technology, development. Now the quest for excellence was all for nothing.
I didn’t know how long I wept. Night eventually came, and the darkness drew me under.
***
Nathan had already buried her body in the garden when I woke up the next morning.
Days passed but I barely realised it. Numbness spread over my body and I seemed to be
experiencing everything through a sheet of glass.
I stood before her burial site. Enormous raindrops rattled on the roof of my umbrella, forming a
continuous, fast-paced rhythm. Every now and then, raindrops splashed on my arms and legs, sending a
shiver down my spine. A sudden gust of wind plastered my damp hair to my face. I quivered uncontrollably
from the cold.
“Maia, you’ll catch a cold here. Get in, please,” Nathan pleaded.
I followed him to the house like a zombie. “The world I knew is broken,” I winced.
He looked thoughtful. “You know, John Kennedy’d said, ‘when written in Chinese, the word
‘Crisis’ is composed of two characters—one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.’
Perhaps at the end of this bleak tunnel, we will see light.”
“‘The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.’” I quoted.
“‘Happiness is nothing more than a good health and a bad memory.’” These words lifted my spirits.
A flicker of purple caught my eye in my peripheral vision. I whirled around but there was nothing
purple.
I blinked. A flicker of green spotted my vision.
