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This is our foreword: home is sick. With these fictions, paint over what has been done. We found all these things in grandpa’s old suitcase—he died a slow and cruel man. He never let us take that train to the city. But now we’re free to roam, and we already bought our tickets home.

Grandpa died a sly and nonsensical man, but he was all we knew. He fed us, dressed us, housed us—even when he or we didn’t want it. “Nevertheless…” “Nevertheless…” That was his phrase. But now we’re free to stage our case, and in his legacy relay and forgive what he last said:

Hear me—

MOTH A

Buried in light, I was losing my breath. I had with me a frozen bottle of water. Two pillboxes, a bag, a phone, and nothing more. Sitting on the other end of this bench, I felt, on my face, the wind, the cold, and nothing more.

My head was weighing heavier, so I had to set my bag aside and lean on the backrest. My neck bent over backwards—I felt a breeze scrape against my throat. My eyes looked straight up, and I saw an empty winter sky. No stars, no moon—a dark pond of squirming blues fenced in by the spikes of a grey concrete jungle—my city, my Seoul.

The streets around me beamed a dizzy red and yellow. I had to clench my eyes tight to keep those lights outside. Oh, and a single raindrop tapped the middle of my forehead. I cannot remember any of these facts as being otherwise. Surrounded by these truths, I was thinking about why I’d run away.

I cared too much and cared too little; that’s why. I bore this pain and lowered these shutters.

But left in the gutters, I felt only frailer. For your rules and your fools, I stripped myself in layers.

Now I’m left bare, gasping for air. Prayers unanswered, favors unthanked.

Mutter this and mutter that—so on and so forth…

Enter a man, or a boy. He seemed somewhat my age, but taller. His hair was dark and long; his arms swung through the air like the sticks on those old metronomes. He was drunk, so I rolled my eyes back upwards and waited until he passed by.

He didn’t pass by. He sat on this end of the bench and leaned on the backrest the same way I did. You’re ruining my monologue, I thought.

Somehow, he heard it. His face creaked towards my general direction, and he whispered,

“You must be thinking I ruined your moment.”

Yes, but I wasn’t going to admit it.

“Are you drunk?” I replied instead.

“Do I look drunk?”

“Yeah. And you smell drunk as well.”

“Well so do you.”

“But I’m not—”

“Drunk?”

“No.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“What I believe in?”

“Belief in general.”

“I don’t believe I’m drunk.”

“Then I don’t have to explain.”

I was about to reply with something that makes more sense, but I stopped. I knew this pattern. I knew this scheme. I was being swept into his pace, this strange creature. If I were to talk to him any longer, next thing I know, I’d be having a whole conversation with him. Even worse, one that’s under his terms and his terms only. He spoke a recognizable language. I didn’t want to speak it anymore. That’s why I ran away.

So I ran away. I picked up my bag and broke into a sprint. I was scared. The delayed realization that I was talking to this complete stranger, alone, pushed me into a painful pang of panic. Then I felt my legs give up. My high sprint deformed into a low crawl.

The lights blurred into soggy yellow stains, then rushed into my lungs. I had to keep myself sane, so I carved my senses out with the jarring breeze. Wheeze after wheeze, I sunk into the cement below. Leap after leap, I breached my city alone.

I slid into a nearby playground, needing to catch my breath. I crawled up its biggest slide and sat down on its highest platform. The lights were dimmer here; in their place, I heard the noises of children: their laughter, their cries, their feet crunching the gravel below…

The chill of iron pierced my skull as I set it down on the platform, and my back stiffened as I curled into a cocoon. I kept my eyes open as they circled my knees. As they shrunk into twigs, I whispered to them a rasp apology. There was no one else but us.

Nothing more than a slab of steaming meat—I found myself pleading to breathe. As my vision thinned into a tame grey, I found myself lost in a field of snow.

I looked around, then saw behind me an endless line of “me”s. In single-file fashion, they shivered in each their own frequencies, and all their pitch-black eyes and dark brown beaks pointed towards one, precise location: me.

So, I decided to wander around for a bit. They followed me around like a tail.

White, then grey, then another shade of white. The monotonous plane robbed me of any sense of direction. Above it hovered a black fog. Wading through it, I took in deeper and deeper breaths.

I assumed a whole day had passed by the time I saw a faint, red bulge in the distance. Immediately, a swarm of lukewarm blood rushed into my veins, kicking my walk into a light gallop.

A burning igloo, about the size of a two-story building, emerged from the horizon in front of me. Waves of heat whooshed through my body as I approached. I raised my arms sideways as if to embrace it.

My fingertips grew numb as the fire grew louder. My wings began to singe, and my feelers flared ember-orange. The igloo’s roaring breath encroached me as I nudged myself into its flames. Hotter, then hotter, I sunk into its grace. I closed my eyes again. I felt my mind disintegrate.

But a sudden whirlwind swept me backwards, and the world became a darker grey. I opened my eyes to see a familiar monotone. Black fog rushed back into my eyes and lungs.

MOTH B

Enter a man, or a boy. His feet were lodged above my head, and his eyes were looking down on me. I couldn’t see through the shadow cast on his face. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling, or frowning.

“What are you doing, lying on the ground?” He asked.

I didn’t answer him. Instead, I gasped in pain, feeling a sharp migraine. I felt the gravel of the playground press into my spine, but I couldn’t get up. I thought about getting up, about moving my limbs this way and that way, but they didn’t budge.

This all felt like a dream, the one you don’t want to write down in your diary, the one you hold your breath in just to see if that’ll wake you up. But I didn’t wake up. In fact, I didn’t feel myself breathe at all. All I could do was to stare back at the silhouette in front of me with all my newborn contempt—and refuse to talk back.

“I know you’re not drunk. You’re not that type.”

I felt my left eye twitch.

“Get up.”

…

“Get up. It’s already too late.”

I wedged my head deeper into the ground.

He let out a quiet sigh, and, surveying his surroundings, landed his eyes on the platform I (I think) used to be lying on. He walked over there, crawled halfway up the slide, and reached for my bag. As he carried it back to me, he opened it and looked inside—again, looming over me.

“How many did you take?”

…

He took out and held both of my pillboxes in one hand, then shook them.

“I don’t even know anymore.” He murmured.

Then, he sat down next to me, crunching the gravel and letting out a low groan. I took my eyes off him and turned them towards the sky. For a while, we stayed that way: me looking upward, him forward. The sky was still dark; the playground, empty.

We began to hear birds chirp around us. I know he heard them too, because he mentioned them somewhere in the middle of his speech.

“The sun’s coming up.”

…

“It always does, doesn’t it?”

…

“It doesn’t care. It doesn’t care what happens down here, ya know? It always does what it always does. Up and down. Down and under.”

I decided not to dwell on whatever he says anymore.

“They’re not coping so well. They never did.”

…

“I know you’re not believing any of the things I’m saying, I know. I’ve been there, and I know. Believe me, you don’t have to explain anything. I know.”

…

“Come back.”

No.

He told me that he was getting frustrated. After what seems like the end of his patience, he broke. He stood straight up and began yelling—I didn’t listen to a single thing he yelled. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t have to. I already knew the words to that song. I heard it too many times. That’s what made me run away.

So I ran away. As soon as his arms rushed in to get a hold of me, I broke into another sprint. As soon as I did, I heard his voice drop silent. Now the noise of my footsteps alone breached the city’s silence. I ran towards the streets, through their yellow lights and through the glares of a newborn sun.

By the time I could catch my breath again, I found myself caught in the middle of a moving crowd. My legs were too exhausted to fight against it, and my mind was too faint to find a way through it, so I followed their steps and mimicked their walk. Their feet were light and quiet, as if they were sneaking past a sleeping child. Everyone had something in their hands: books, bags, bottles, the hands of others.

After a while, I saw the people in front of me go through a set of glass doors. I soon made sense of what that establishment was, and I pulled myself out of the crowd. From outside, I saw the procession continue. The line seemed to extend backwards indefinitely, only for its front to be absorbed through these doors into this single point in space.

A two-story building. I knew this one. I made my way around to its other side and leaned against its concrete wall.

Enter a man, or a boy. He seemed somewhat my age, but taller. He tiptoed towards me and leaned forward.

“Brother,” He said.

“Pastor,” I replied.

“Ended up here again.”

“It’s a place where people do that.”

“Nice weather, isn’t it?”

“It’s getting a bit cloudy.”

“It’s nice weather. I like it better that way.”

“Well I don’t.”

He took out a red pack of cigarettes from his back pocket gave its head a few light pats.

“Not that type, right?”

He picked out and lit up a cigarette.

“I don’t think so.”

As he sucked on the white stick, his eyes drooped towards the ground. I watched its grey fumes dissipated into a greyer sky as I waited for him to finish it.

“How’s he treating you now?”

“Pastor,”

“Brother,”

“I’m being chased by a man, or a boy. Someone bad and someone scary.”

He kept his eyes glued to the ground.

“I believe you.”

“Pastor, I really am—”

“Brother.”

…

“I believe you.”

…

“You don’t have to explain yourself.”

I kept my mouth shut as he lit up a second cigarette. I saw a couple drops of rain fall on the back of his head.

“Service’s starting soon.”

“I saw the people.”

“Wanna come back?”

“I don’t know, Pastor, I—”

“Brother.”

He breathed out a jagged bulk of smoke.

“Brother, neither do I.”

…

“But I believe.”

…

“Maybe I’ll buy you a meal too, next time.”

“What kind of meal?”

“The meat kind.” He said, as he gave me a light pat on the back and headed back inside.

I strolled around the building for a bit. The sky was again a uniform grey, and the high spikes of the city were buried in a thick fog. The noise of cars began to grow clearer and clearer, until they became another confused mess.

I decided to walk away—to put it kindly, but as soon as I saw the streets divide, I tripped and fell. I heard a voice, so I looked around. I saw the line. I heard the noise. Rain began to pour. I saw them walk through the deluge. I stood up and turned my back on them. I heard them laugh—the kind of laughter that made me run.

So I ran.

I ran towards the yellow in the grey.

Why? God.

Do you fight? Your nod;

Has it not come to light, no thought,

At your cowardice of plight? For naught.

Do you save us? In arms salivating

Salvation, Damn us, too, to

Burn us for sins our heirs bear.

In fire; Inferno; kindled by whom? You

Plead, Bleed, yet seed pregnant twilight due, too,

And reign King, stand bearing thrones of ore?

Yet. Your feet. They’re cold. Through days—old—long—gloom—

Red eyes beat. Prayers told in blue rot, too soon.

Set your greets ’way where souls sin, rue, do woo.

Rest now, Rest.

Rest.

(Rest.)

(Rest.)

Hear me—

I want a cigarette, so I grab a tootsie pop.

‘I want to write—’

“You’ve been on that all night.” I hear a voice, ahead, from the driver’s seat.

‘Who are you?’

I feel the car hit a speed bump, and a bulge works up through my throat. I gulp it down. Then, we stop.

‘You want one?’

“Cherry.”

My tongue flings the sweet core around, plunging it against my cheeks. I hear it grind against my braces.

‘Who are you?’

I hear a chuckle, and my back stiffens. A name. A crack of laughter. Something about a party. The tires’ groans. A cackle. An insult. A wheeze—a headache, then nausea.

The car accelerates, and my world blurs out of focus. I lean my head on a window and whimper.

‘I want to write.’

“… Have you been writing anything lately?”

‘I’ve been trying.’

A yellow beam zips by. Its engine, I heard, growled at me, deafened me.

“Damn, must be a supercar or something. You caught that?”

My back slouches back again. A familiar sore resumes its climb up this spine of mine.

‘2012 Ferrari 458 Italia Base. Tuned…. (maybe).’

Another chuckle.

“You got your car-smarts straight. I’ll give you that.”

Then silence.

“You know how much i—”

‘No.’

A chuckle, “Fair enough,” then silence.

I recognize a neon smudge creep across the window slate (familiar, but they all look the same). The sweet core breaks between my crooked teeth, its debris scraping my tongue. With it, the nausea crawls away. Only a sharp migraine remains, latched onto my skull. My surroundings regain definition, and I feel the rough asphalt below me make my car shiver.

I open my eyes wider and stare into the driver’s seat. A black leather jacket. A washed-down baseball cap. I see their reflection on the windshield too, but I meet no face. I see black leather gloves. I smell dead cigarettes.

“Almost there.”

I stare outside at the procession of yellow streetlights. I look up, looking for the limelight, or moon. I give up as the car screeches to a halt.

A strange face turns towards me from the driver’s seat. I can’t see its eyes in the shade of its cap, but I hear it mutter “out.” I spot a pair of lips shiver, a white stick protruding from between them.

‘It’s cold.’

“Get out.”

I stare back with my lips clasped, teeth grinding, and my back stiffens up again.

“Go home.”

‘…’

“Out.”

I comply, but I look back at the car door before it clacks shuts. There’s a scent of familiarity to it.

I see a window slide down. From it, pops out that shaded face.

“You really live here?”

I still can’t see its eyes.

‘I think so.’

A sigh. I see it vaporize. The window slides back up, and the car crawls away. Along with it, the familiar silhouette of my car.

Two hands crash into my pockets—empty. I feel a shiver crawl up my spine, but a pang cuts it off—an aged headache, then nausea.

This head droops down, and my eyes meet a dry, dark sidewalk. I turn my back against the asphalt as I pull the head back up, and we confront a familiar building.

This mouth is dry, and I feel the braces’ wires tear apart our softer cheeks.

‘I want a cigarette,’ but I’ve run out of tootsie pops, and the taste of iron coats our tongue and throat.

These legs walk towards the building and the head leans on its door. Fists bang on it twice, then squeeze out a voice:

A name, a familiar one

—as I collapse, once more.

’AIRPORT STAFF ANNOUNCEMENT:

Please direct all defunct personnel to area 3’

The dim, faulty lights of the airport office flickered. The administrators had left the ceiling unfinished, and empty pipes still protruded from above. Inside, there was an even dimmer room: a cubicle for two people to make small talk. A room within a room. Walls behind walls. Only a red LED text light-up stood out of the dull background, a spike of color in a plain of grey concrete. Although it shrieked, the lighted text still stood no chance against the rigid concrete walls. With a low-tuned buzz, it showed only one message.

STAND BY

“Doesn’t it seem a bit off?”

“What do you mean by ‘off’?”

“I mean, these fellas just got through their first, I guess unfortunate, screening. Isn’t it a tad bit hesitate to call them ‘defuncts’ at this moment?”

The protestor spoke, puzzled. Fixing the still stiff collar of his uniform coat, he turned towards his associate. His face was clear and plump, a bit too young but a tad bit old. He seemed even younger with his orderly combed short, blond hair. Although he felt fine with his trusty morning coffee at his side, his eyes were equivalent to that of a miserable middle-aged man — tired of life. ‘The air around here is just too dry’, he thought.

“Well, most of them fail all them following screenings too. Barely saw any of these initial screenings picking a commoner, so maybe it’s fine for the ‘early categorization’.”

“I’m just not feeling it Smith. It doesn’t feel right.”

“What can we do? It’s those higher-ups who make these calls anyway.”

“So, you don’t care?”

“Not my business.”

As Smith pulled out a plastic lighter from the left pocket of his worn-out trousers, he lifted his hand, palm up, towards his protesting colleague. His hands were dry, and small pieces of skin were attempting to escape the arid surface. His coat held wrinkles, too damaged by perpetual laundry cycles; his residential neighborhood had no dry-cleaning, or at least, no affordable services. Like a war veteran, the coat had scars and stains encompassing the wool.

The wearer of such amusing fashion bore multiple similarities with it. Smith Hicks, the senior evaluator of the post, also carried a myriad of scars and stains on the surface of his desert skin and stale heart: battle scars, by his own words. His hair was gray, not white, old streaks of hair but worn out clumps of that were once colored black. His eyes were covered by the shadow of his brow that crumpled into a permanent expression of dismay a few years ago, never to recover its former relaxed position again.

“You should get to know that phrase, by the way. Hand me a smoke? I’m all out.”

Letting out a brief but deep sigh, the protestor reached into his own coat and scavenged the warm interior of his uniform coat for a cigarette, two, in fact. With his well-moisturized right hand, he put one on the pending hand while saving one for himself. Two brief sparks of light added a puny flash to the dim room, only to be shrouded by a cloud of smoke. Soon, only the red glow of ‘STAND BY’ pierced through the smoke.

“You know, I used to think just like you when I was new here, ’bout five years before you rolled in.”

“Oh really? Same topic?”

“Worse topic. We used to call the ‘defuncts’ ‘defects’ before we moved onto the term ‘rejected’ you’re used to.”

“Isn’t ‘defect’ practically…”

“The same thing with ‘defunct’, yes. But, ‘defunct’ implies that they used to be fine but just no longer so. ‘defect’ had a connotation that they were some kind of traitors.”

“Wow, that’s a bit… confusing.”

“Well, it was a confusing time. The public knew of the pandemic just a few months prior. We didn’t know much of the disease. Not much on what to do with it.”

“…”

A faint fiasco of footsteps echoed through the corridor.

“…”

“Desperate terminology for desperate times, I see.”

“Desperate times with a damned disease, indeed. No way of detection, like a stealth bomber. You’d just fall dead in the middle of a crosswalk without even knowing that you were infected before. No symptoms other than death, or so we thought until…”

“Until we found out about the crazy thing. I just vaguely heard about what happened.”

“Yeah, the crazy thing. Some smarties at WHO noticed it. You’d catch the damn virus, get a bit psychotic with that thing stirring up your head, and just… die.

“Only knew about the high-ups hiring psychology majors; my sister actually tried to apply, but they didn’t allow her. Apparently, her literature major proved her ‘too vulnerable for objectivity’.”

“They said that?”

“Yeah, I actually—”

The red ‘STAND BY’ suddenly disappeared with a whoosh; with the blinding monotone conquering the room once again, a blare of a dozen panicked alarms, delicately designed to scrape up as much tension as they can, soon replaced the newborn vacuum and repelled the ambitious greyness. The two men stiffened their bodies; they dunked their cigarette buns in the ashtray in mechanical unison as if the alarms had activated two robots. Bizarre and awkward uniformity.

“Stations?” Smith noted with a deep, aged, professional voice.

“Yes sir.”

The procedure was simple: two evaluators would get their standard issued tablets and enter a small confined booth with an interrogation table, one would sit on one of the two chairs and the other would stand in front of the wall opposite two where the partner sat; Smith took the chair this time.

A steel door to Smith’s right fidgeted and opened with a disturbingly high-pitched creak. In came a child. As their target of evaluation treaded towards the remaining chair, Smith and his colleague took quick alternating scans of the visitor and the profile that their tablets introduced.

‘Girl, age 13.’

‘Half Hispanic (father) and half Irish (mother); peculiar…’

‘Family records seem normal; little margins of error expected for that.’

The two scanners even analyzed and deduced in unison, reaching the same conclusion observing the same material (although from different positions). Meanwhile, the young girl sat on the metal chair. She sweated heavily while her eyes struggled to find where to look. The dry atmosphere expressed disapproval to the girl’s sweat droplets and hissed at her for producing them. Her eyes awaited her brain’s permission to let loose a flood of tears, but the brain was too busy chewing through the words of her mother.

‘Don’t let them stab you in there. If they do, just think of mama and go through.’

Terrible advice to give to a nervous thirteen-year-old.

The next procedure for the two men, a carefully conducted interview (or interrogation, as some activists put it), was the most stressful one — for the questioned, of course. The men in uniformed were very much worn out by perpetual hours work to be concerned of a few lines of questions; they quickly and disturbingly comfortably continued with doing what they were paid to do: question, evaluate, categorize, and quarantine. Their engines were well lubricated with morning coffee.

Click… Click… Click…

Like a recorder, accounting every answer, every irregular heartbeat, every rough breath.

They were on a hunt, a quest to find the slightest speck of insanity within their suspect. Any innocence too naïve. Any courage too bold. Any belief too absurd. The girl’s mind was a perilous place, much like any other human being: a vast expanse of bright, innocent colors all smeared together, making any line obsolete. But peril is the trait of the minds of all men and women. Although the question at hand demanded a dichotomy, the resources at hand did not cooperate.

So, it was the job of the evaluator to draw new lines; it was their job to implement that right upon themselves no matter how arbitrary it might seem. In the end, it wasn’t the people nor God who made the verdict:

Is she insane?

Is she infected?

And is she a defect?

…

“Did you reach a conclusion?”

“Definitely. Mentally unstable, paranoid, and a whole spectrum of cognitive pitfalls.”

“So, she’s infected?”

“I would say so.”

…

“Something on your mind?”

“No, it’s just… She’s just a kid.”

“Young, old, feeble, strong, they’re all hazards if they have the virus.”

“Didn’t it ever bother you?”

“No use in being sentimental. You’ll get used to it soon, too.”

…

“MAMA!”

…

The doors clanked once again. For another time for the two men, and for the last for the little girl. The tablets blinked into darkness, showing nothing but black. Within the black, reflected a red light.

STAND BY

The airport office, just now clear of cigarette smoke, filled itself with pending bureaucrats. At once, they lifted their cigarettes, following the same procedure as they did about an hour prior.

“Smith?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think that… just maybe… some of the people we quarantined weren’t, in fact, infected?”

“…”

“Is there… a possibility that they got infected in quarantine?”

…

“Definitely.”

#fiction #dystopia

Writing is existential. Putting pen to paper, finger to keyboard are all expressions of existence—ways of leaving your mark on the world, saying “I thought this,” and “I created this.” That expression of existence leads to the communication and connection with the world at large, both contemporary, past, and future.

To write is to paint. Like painting a picture, writing is painting a story. A good story could be a mere short slice of life, an illustration of a moment and a nuance, as long as it richly captures meaning as the writer blows into it; the story itself is the sketch—technique adds color, bright, dull, or grey. Of the many forms of writing, fiction—especially short stories—has been my dearest paint brush. Fiction is a craft: it paints meaning with a combination of literary technique and creative story-building. To master it would mean mastering not only writing technique, but also power of imagination. As a result, fiction enriches the writer’s own experience of living, as well as those of the readers. Therefore, mastering the act of writing is in itself worthy of becoming one’s raison d’etre, a pathway to a rich life; I find value beyond greatness from the opportunities.

I first began writing as a hobby to pass time in middle school. The regular old ways of scribbling and dozing off weren’t attracting options anymore. Instead of scribbling stick figures, I began scribbling words on scratch paper. Initially, they were more schemes to keep my hands busy than creative work. They were closer to practicing penmanship rather than writing ability—disorganized, grammatically imprecise, fully stream of consciousness rants. But repetition did its work, and writing became a more fluent activity for me. Consequently, my introduction to writing—fiction, poetry, essays, basically any kind of writing I did out of class—was upon a sturdy platform of fluency and familiarity. I’d learned that writing ability works as the basis for creativity and, most importantly, creative fervor.

I hope to accomplish not many things. My aim is straight and steady: improve. I hope to meet new people, read their work, show them my own, and establish wonderful connections. I hope that, in the end, I would make my own existence more marked and colorful.