FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Absinthe

The scraping of metal against floor runs through her spine like a shiver. Woo Hee curls herself into the small gap inside the kitchen cabinet and watches the shoes of the man walk past. Squeak - squawk, protest his rain drenched shoes and the rod he drags through the floor continue to sing its rusty anthem.

Next to her ear water drips from the pipeline that supplies water to the kitchen faucet, the air she breathe is moldy. She closes her eyes and bites her lip, willing herself into a forced calmness - breathing slow so that the noise of leaking water masks each shudder of exhale. This man is deranged - this man could kill her. And the irony is that it isn’t she he is looking for.

The sound of scraping metal dies away and Woo Hee waits another minute before fumbling over her mobile. She had put it on silent mode earlier when she was driving and it was still thankfully silent she notes as her eyes take in the several missed calls from Beak Ah on her screen, he might be calling to tell her that he is not home yet, as they had previously agreed to meet. But that is something she is already aware of - for she was the one who found the maniac outside snooping around in the empty house.

One ring could have given her away had fate not intervened.

It is difficult with trembling hands, but she manages to type the text “Don’t come home -” and the sudden flood of light in her dingy space takes her by surprise. Missing the beat in which she could have pressed ‘send’ Woo Hee drops the mobile and it clutters on the dump tiles. The light is cut off when the man crouches down to her level, his smile a flash - sharp as a blade.

“Hello, little mouse!” He says, his tone singsong.

**

There is a perpetual fog hanging over his mind between thoughts and memories, real and fake - shapeless emotions keep swirling in thick masses. The fog has voices. They talk to him in the gaps between his thoughts - friends that keeps him from feeling lonely. Most of the times the voices - the misty voices talk about her. About when he first saw her - was that so many years ago? He is not certain - but she used to be a bony little girl then - a tiny fairy. He closes his eyes and reminisces her rising from the water, dark rivulets of hair plastered over her face - holding out a hand for him to take.

He was fourteen then and he was old enough to know she came from her water world just to save his life - when he was drowning. He knew how that story goes, the little mermaid who saves the prince. He forgets all about the broken branch that had landed him on the stream - or the bird’s nest he went to explore. Until that moment when he sat his eyes on her, he believed he had been banished because Omma did not love him anymore.

But after he is saved by his mermaid he thinks of that very little. He does love Omma. Even when it is hard to love her. Especially when he sees her only a handful times and even then she talks too much about that other boy - the one she assures him she does not love - then again why would she need him to behave like him if she does not think he is better?

He hates that boy. Foggy voices hate him too. In the dark hours of night when he misses Omma so much, they talk of scary things they would do to that other boy if they get their hands on him - if they could get away with it. But he likes to think of his mermaid more - his voices like that too.

She befriends him easily at first, but isn’t amused at his efforts to please her. Especially not when she finds exactly how he had been bringing colourful feathers for her collection. He had been too careless to leave blood on them - forgotten how girls don’t like blood.

“Brute -” tears brim in her eyes as she stumbles back, the feathers cascading around her. “How could you?”

It is the last he sees of her for a while, for the woman who calls herself her mother, takes her away. He knows it is not true - for she is a mermaid who came to land just for him, but she doesn’t even wave him goodbye as the woman pushes her inside the car.