Fiction: Group 4
New Tales of the Pearl River Delta
Island School, King, Amelia - 14, Fiction: Group 4
, Selim Alvarado had stood in the middle of the destroyed and bloodstained, factory territory of the
Pearl River Delta. A gun in hand, and my own crimson liquid spilling out from my other shoulder
down to the ground, where lay the body of a Asian man, in his late forties, a spear protruding from his
throat. I couldn’t help at cringe at the sight. The pain and torture that these innocent people had witnessed
for who knows how long, there isn’t much to say but I wish I had never tried to help them.
How did this all come to be? Why did this even have to happen?
Of course, it’s all because I stepped foot in this very location. That I knew I couldn’t turn back to what was
about to start.
It was around three weeks ago when I had arrived in the Guangdong province for a small mission.
I stood in a small village near by a large riverside with small wooden houses built over the waters of the
river. Whilst small huts rested on the sandy beach, I scanned around the area, to see a group of what looked
like villagers sitting next to the riverside, large, heavy pots in hand, well more like on head. This place was
beautiful, but something felt a bit off, the water was filthy, there was dead fish floating above the waters and
the crops were slightly withered.
I wandered about the area for a while, walking across the side of the riverbed, dark eyes of the locals staring
right through me as I passed by. It’s like they have never seen a foreigner before. Even though I had heard
that this area was very popular for tourists to visit. “
Was I in the wrong location? I couldn’t be. Maria said
that this was the right location!”
I pondered to myself, not noticing that I had bumped into a local woman.
She had let out a yelp and fell back, the pot on her head falling off, and making its way down to the ground
where it shattered into millions of pieces. “Sorry.” hah, sorry, how smooth Selim. That’s what I would have
said, if it were not for the woman in front of me standing up and pointing her finger at my face, yelling in
Cantonese. I couldn’t understand a word that she said; then again I wouldn’t want to find out.
Her scolding lasted a few minutes, until I had interrupted her by holding my palm up. “I’m sorry,” I said,
giving her a polite bow. Just my luck, 40 minutes in China and already a local woman who just wanted to
collect water was already yelling at me. She then couldn’t help but wave a finger at me before storming off
in a second.
There wasn’t much that I could do to solve the problem. I let out a sigh and reached my hand into my
pocket, curling my fingers around a sheet of paper, pulling it out of the pocket and unraveled it. Scanning
my gaze over the un-neat scribbles that remained on the sheet of paper.
“When you see a hut, much larger tan the others. Go there and knock. There should be a woman in her
late fifty’s there to answer. Enter the house and TRY to be polite. This isn’t America, Selim.”
~Maria
I couldn’t help but chuckle, soon shoving the paper back into my pocket and rolled my eyes. Beginning to
make my small walk, a somewhat little quest to find a house and speak to an old woman. Just like one of
those RPG games, where you get to go on a quest and fight monsters to get to the Oracle.
I’m starting to get off topic again. Apologies.
I had looked around the area for around eight minutes, matching houses by width and height, until my eyes
had set upon a large hut built in the center of the little ‘town’. I was taking an obvious guess that; this was
the home where I was supposed to approach. So I did.
I
