Night Picture of Rain Sound by Sue Ja Joo

Author:Sue Ja Joo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: women writers; flash-fiction; prose, fantasy; translation; Korean culture; Korean writers'; experimental fiction; smart fiction; Korean literature
Publisher: Page Addie
Published: 2022-01-07T03:11:31+00:00

What Lies Under The Blood Moon

Shush! They’ll hear us.

Why, why should we be the ones shutting up?

They can’t know the secret. They can never know of the secret! You mean they don’t know it yet?

They don’t. And it will stay that way! How tragic.

That night, the clouds in the sky nibbled the moon as if it were a loaf of bread. A monkey and dog, chained at the door, greeted us as we entered the restaurant. A taxidermist’s eagle, shark, and leopard hung from the walls, proudly staring us down as we took a seat at our table.

I wondered why a fine dining restaurant in the middle of Seoul had chosen taxidermy as their main theme. Perhaps it was a ploy to lure wild-hearted guests. Or perhaps the owner was a hunting enthusiast. Regardless, it was a popular spot, and the chosen venue of the night to celebrate my boss’s recent promotion. We had a rather large group for dinner, and my boss had invited a cluster of important and semi-important employees from departments across the company. Each invitee had some lengthy achievement to brag on and on about. If you were stuck on the listening end, you had to smile and nod along, struggling to feign interest.

Cigarette smoke and chatter filled the air. The smell of grilled meat soon followed. I stuffed my mouth with beef and sipped wine until the night filled with an array of moons and my limbs struggled, entangled in a web. Words were spoken, though at this point I was unclear whether they came from my lips or someone else’s.

Just look at those guys. What? Who?

The omnivores over there! The ones chomping on bloody flesh, drinking bloody red wine, laughing like fools and flashing their teeth.

Ah, the humans.

Oh well, we can never know whether they’re human or not from the outside, can we? But let’s call them that for now. By the way, did you hear? Our captor is moving on soon.

Where to?

Tsk tsk, use your head. Where could he possibly go? Anyway, what do you think will happen once he disappears? Things won’t change around here. You think either one of us will end up on the wall?

What an odd conversation, I thought. Looking left and right, I tried to find the source. People laughed, drank, and joked with one another across the table. It was impossible to distinguish one voice from another.

The guy next to me belched out loud. Before I could say the words ‘how rude’, he farted. The combined smell was too real for this to be a hallucination. I lifted my head, away from the clouds of bodily gas, high enough to locate the truth behind the voices. The creatures sitting by the door. It couldn’t be. Or could it? Was I hearing their words? Or was I simply hearing things?

Fools, utter fools! You little chained-up things?

I sprang out of my seat like a chased gazelle. My head snapped towards the new voice.

Dust fell slowly from the tip of the eagle’s wing, like pixie dust.

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