Cheat.

No one can cheat death several times and not pay for it!
At 18 months, the car she was travelling in with three other adults went down a ravine,
she was the baby who did not get hurt.
At 6, she was hit by a motorcyclist when alighting a public bus, she ended up
with a five-day coma in the hospital.
She was down with malaria and dengue when she was nine, they wrote about her in the newspaper.
"First dengue carrier in Pahang". No names mentioned of course. To protect the identity of a juvenile.
At 14, the car in which her father was driving met with an oncoming lorry – the family was thrown off to the side of the road, the car badly damaged;
At 21, the sampan she was riding on capsized in a crocodile infested sea. She was on a trip to Tasik Bera, to live with a couple of indigenous folks.
When she was 30, the four tyres of the car she was driving suddenly exploded, lucky there was a tyre repair shop nearby; the workman who saw her car remarked:
"The driver of this car must have died quite badly!".
When studying at the university, she fell into a drain, her left knee hurt by the sharp, rugged edge; the injury left a "V" sign on her leg.
Is that "V" for victory, the doctor who gave her 20 stiches asked with a laugh.
She was an accident prone child who lived as if there was no tomorrow.
With every fall, crash, and collision, she woke up and walked again, she ran and dived
she sommersaulted, while parachuting, and one day jumped off the Penang bridge.
She did not drown. She proved to herself at last, she was a cat who had nine lives.
But yesterday, while trying to cross the road in front of her home, a car came speeding and crashed into her. She died on the spot. She didn't know, that death, her jilted lover, had finally come to visit her.

Story of my love.

There is someone who loves me, but he lives in a far away land.
I, too, have pledged to love him, until death do us part.
Due to the circumtances surrounding his life at the moment, he says he is unable to prove just how much he loves me.
But I tell him that I don't need proof. Love's either there or not at all.
He has proven, time after time, of his commitment, during these six wonderful and passionate years of our relationship.
Don't get me wrong. He is a single man, not in any other liason or married to another woman.
He's such a simple and kind soul that no one has been able to take his place.
Not in reality, not even in dreams or fantasy.
He is beautiful and kind.
The most gentle soul I have ever met !
And unique.
I remember asking him one day, why does he not keep a photograph of me in his wallet.
"Why should I keep a photograph in my wallet of someone I have already kept in my heart"
That response swept me off my feet, like a whirlwind!
We are great companions when we are in each other's presence.
The intensity of our togetherness, though far and few in between, has kept the flame alive and burning.
That is why I let myself suffer the pain of our long distance love affair.
In this suffering, love does not fade but grows.
A long time ago, a fortune teller told me that I would be 'painfully separated' by distance from the one I love.
It did not seem plausible then but now I know our relationship is written in the stars.
That it is quite impossible for us to have chosen any other route.
Although I miss him terribly and most of the time, painfully, I sometimes appreciate his physical absence.
I have been able to get so many things done without being 'distracted' by a needy lover. Thank God, he is not one of those.
And I have been able to enjoy my independence, the way no other woman with a lover, could.
Friends ask me how do I endure such a distressing situation.
How do I trust him? Is he not fucking someone else?
I could only say that trust is the most important element in any relationship.
Trust is greater than love.
Without trust, love means nothing!
I tend to think that people perceive other relationships based on their own personal experiences.
They have blinkered views and jaded thoughts on the concept of love based on how it has hurt them or made them happy.
So I will forgive those who have no faith in long distant love affairs.
Most, if not all people need bodily warmth and sex daily to reaffirm their love or their participation in love.
They say that by only being daily together one can be assured of love.
Others are sillier in that they say that one needs to be married or have children to see love grow.
Then why do married couple break up or are unfaithful to one another?
To us, marriage is but a certificate, and kids, we do not plan to have.
My love has transcended what is physical and mundane.
My love is spiritual, magical, ethereal, and all that is godly.

Activist.

When I first met her in an international ngo conference in dhaka she told me 'you are a karmic replica of jesus christ'.

She lured me into her hotel room by saying she wanted to 'network' with the organisation I was working with.

'Take off your clothes' she said as the door closed behind me.

She was already lying half naked on the bed, one leg rubbing the other, enticing me further.

I run to join her between the sheets.

In that moment of sweat moans and groans i felt I have crisscrossed the entire world.

I have a meeting to go to, she said when it was over, though I was still buried between her legs.

'We have to discuss funding and the next consultation meeting ' she said disappearing behind the door.

The next day I saw her in a rally shouting slogans of "No to child abuse".

She asked me as I approached her "how old are you?".

Twenty, I said, and she told me to get in line. I couldn't believe she was 45.

I wanted another date with her as I gathered the courage to knock on her door.

I found her packing, preparing to leave.

"I have a plane to catch in three hours," she said.

"You took away my virginity but I love you," I said, almost sobbing.

She gave me her business card and told me to check the organisation's website.

"You might want to apply for an internship".

One night in Nana

Creamy, foamy, and steamy, with a flirtatious sprinkle of cinnamon and vanilla, the mug of latte, with a signature that says ‘coffee break’, in front of me is begging to be sipped.

The latte looks back with an appealing round face, spilling over the rims of the white mug, asking to be swallowed down the dark and lonely tunnel of my thirsty throat.

As much as I felt sultry and sensual that night, with the strings of my slinky blouse threatening to slip, showing off a sexy dragonfly tattooed shoulder, my latte is just about the only warm and liquid thing I will kiss and lick and suck tonight. The only object of desire I would swallow, under this starless, moonless, cloudless and winter sky.

Tonight, I am looking for angels in this City of Angels they call Bangkok or Krungthep, land of a thousand smiles. And yet, it doesn’t feel like winter, nor are there any angels on this street.

Read more at the Writers Connect, story of the week!

Photo.

Perhaps it was time to try her first cigarette. Gulp down a large pitcher of hard alcohol.Would it be better to swallow an abusive substance?

Stevie Gane was the 6th editor who turned down her expose.He may after all be the last one. Being chief editor of an independent alternative paper, Gane's rejection of her explosive expose spelled the end of her faith in the fourth estate.

What the hell are they afraid of when this expose is backed by solid evidence?

What she imagined long ago had came to pass now: that both sides of the media - mainstream or otherwise - have been co-opted. The former, by unscrupless and power greedy politicians, the other, by their own self interests and fear of being sanctioned by the state.

True, the Internal Security Act is the kind of sword media practitioners do not want to mess around with. But what is more unsettling for them is the Printing Presses and Publication Act which can guarantee a newspaper out of business for good.

At the end of the day, newspapers are nothing more than a business entity.

Those who harbored thoughts about its nobel cause,of it playing the role of a watchdog of the government, or an independent voice of the masses, can kiss their hopes goodbye.

They are all merely cowards, cowards, she chided herself as she left the building. She walked in haste, her footstep matching her racing heartbeats.

She left Ganes office feeling suicidal. In her handbag was the most controversial photo of the century.

She needed a so-called 'credible' media to have it published. As a freelance journalist, she needed a medium for her work. Yes, she has a personal blog, with a steady following.But this expose needs the widest, possible coverage.

So she turned to Malaysia Daily, an online outfit who had always adopted an unbias, unfliching, critical and agressive stance. But today her faith in the free media came crashing down. She felt it crashed on the windowpanes of the light transit rail she was riding in, with a loud bang.

Bloody hell! This controversial piece of evidence may well change the landscape of the judiciary, even governance of this country, she thought aloud. But it seems no one, not even an award winning and supposedly fearless editor in chief like Ganes was interested.

She was on her way to the bus terminal in Pudu Raya. She needed to go home to see her mother in Penang. The usual fillial daughter visits to her mother.
In her handbag were her travel tickets alongside the daming photo of the Chief Justice with the murdered victim.

Yes, the beautiful and glamourous African student was smiling langrously beside the CJ Shane. The time stamp on the photo showed the photo was taken a week before she was mysteriously blown up into bits by a bomb blast strong enough to destroy a four storey building.

When a group of Indigenous people found bits and pieces of human flesh strewn all over a jungle clearing near their ancestor's land, they called the police immediately. Horrified. Forensic experts later confirmed it was the remains were flesh and bones of Arista Dominique, a foreign exchange student at the Suntech College in Kuala Lumpur.

She went missing a few days before her death. The only thing she left behind was a note:"I am finally going to be in his arms. S told me he loved me today".

It exasperated her that the whole nation was willing to let this case die a natural death. The CJ, mired in countless scandals and allegations of corruption continues to deny his involvement in the death which rocked the country two years ago.
He was a prime suspect as witnesses saw him with the young woman just hours before her horrible death.

The legal circle was well aware of the torrid affair between the two.
Even Mrs Shane, the CJ's wife had made an appearance in the Palace of Justice.
The ugly scene left an indelible mark on many.

Despite endless calls for him to step down and allow himself to be interrogated by the police and the court of law, the CJ persists in deluding the people that he was, indeed, above the law.

That he rules the law, and therefore can enjoy special status laden with impunity.
The concept of rule of law it seems was alien to this country.

As she entered the terminal, she realised that she needed to get a drink. It was the migrane, it would attack her when her spirits were low, as it was now.
She decided against it. She had exactly 5 minutes to rush to platform 8 where her bus leaves. She did not want to miss her trip.

As she approached the platform, she thought she heard some call out her name. In that instance, she heard a loud explosion. The last thing she remembered, was her handbag sliding from her arms.

Who needs freedom of choice?

(image)

With some people the boundaries are clear and yet you lose a sense of individuality, like you are not so conscious whether you're man or woman, you forget about your race, your skin color, you know the language you speak is a language the other person understands.

With these people you feel you are on equal plain.

After all he or she is merely human.

In spite of all this, you can hide the truth about yourself.

The boundaries are so clear that you impose no threat or demands on the other.

With some people you can experience total freedom of choice.

With this person, the boundaries are blurred and yet I am totally conscious of myself.

I am so aware that I am woman and he is man.

I know my body and all its parts are capable of responding to him in the most outrageous manner.

That if he were to look into my eyes, they become glaziers, melting into pools of clear, blue waters, so clear he could see a reflection of his nakedness in them.

That if he were to touch me, my skin turns into silk, soft as cotton that you could strand all the pieces and I would cover him like a garment or a frock fit for a prince.

That if we made love, the color of my skin would glare so obviously against his color and yet we would blend into different shades, shades as wondrous as the rainbow, as our bodies merge like the hands of time when it is twelve o'clock.

That if he were to speak to me, I would lose myself in his voice, that his language would sound mysterious to me and I would experience fear.

Fear. Can you imagine?

I do not even fear God. And yet I fear him. Fear what he might think of me, fear that I would lose him, fear that every moment only brings him further from me.

Fear that one day when I wake up I no longer remember his face or his name.

Fear that some day he would need me and I may no longer be there. Fear of the known and the unknown.

Fear as if he were God himself. As if he were a spirit or an angel of death that would deny me my life and take me away from earth.

With this person, there is no chance to hide the truth or the untruth. For both would plead for release from the bottomless pit like doves trapped in a cage.

Like if you held back the waves for a hundred years and finally explode the dam, how the waves would avalanche.

It would be like the sun exploding.

Yes, my truth and untruth will leave me naked, to the microscopic detail of my skin, bones and blood.

That I could hide nothing from him is the ultimate truth, save the actual moment of my death. For only the Gods know when or where.

Friends, if I were mad, please tell me so. For my sanity has taken leave. Perhaps my sanity, my consciousness, my education and my awareness have all staged a revolution and rebelled against their leader.

Like I would stand by my religion even if you violate me, even if you dragged me by the hair or threaten to burn me at the stakes.

I would still venture into uncharted seas with hope, faith and love in my heart. With him there is no freedom of choice.

But who needs this phantom called freedom when you have made your ultimate choice?

The river of fire

She watched the leaves fall around the garden. She felt she was a candle burning in the wind. She thought of a river flowing like a tongue of fire. Then she thought of what it was like to be God.