The Sea Is Ours by Jaymee Goh

Author:Jaymee Goh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rosarium Publishing
Published: 2015-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Working Woman

Olivia Ho

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when the hearse ran away.

This was one of Singapore’s very hot days, when the heat sat in thick layers upon the dust of the streets and people moved as slowly as they could so as not to attract its attention. The hearse, one of the newer auto models, had been moving slowly. One moment it was trundling demurely along in the funeral procession, puffing gently; the next, it was shrieking down Victoria Street trailing clouds of steam and bruised mourners in its wake. A yawning fissure in the road skewed it a sharp left, and it ploughed through streets of terrified carpet merchants and songkok makers. Nobody tried to stop it, of course; any engine on wheels was liable to explode these days, and hearses were particularly contentious since the health of their passengers was no longer a standing issue. Instead, the runaway hearse went on gaining speed and losing pursuit, shedding flowers and tassels, until it crashed to a stop in the Malay cemetery.

By the time the funeral party caught up, the hearse was lying on its side, gaping, empty. The mourners looked to their leader, who swore violently in Cantonese, paused for breath and added, “It can’t have gone far.”

“No,” said another, “it’s a body.”

Still panting, their leader surveyed the wreckage of the hearse, the gathering crowd, the growing unease that traditionally followed the incursion of large groups of Chinese men into a Malay neighbourhood. How long did they have before the police showed up and started asking difficult questions? He weighed his options.

The hearse solved this dilemma for him by emitting an ominous whistling noise, and then blowing up.

The ensuing chaos meant that nobody noticed when, a few streets away, a door flew open, a dish smashed and a woman screamed.

~*~

“Weapons,” said the man at the door.

Ning Lam raised an eyebrow. She pushed her loose braid back over her shoulder, reached inside her paper cone of kacang puteh and popped a boiled chickpea into her mouth. This she chewed deliberately.

“Weapons,” growled the guard again. “You’re not going in to see the old man armed to the teeth. And throw away that stupid snack.”

Ning rolled her one good eye. The other merely clicked in her head, a gleaming clockwork eyeball, and remained pointing straight at the guard, a trick that most found disconcerting. Indeed, the man almost flinched, only just catching himself. Ning winked at him with the good eye, unclipped her butterfly knives from her belt and laid them on the table, followed by two boxes of bolts. From her back, she unstrapped her crossbow. ‘This I’m keeping,’ she added, waving the kacang puteh.

The man made an ill-advised grab for it. Ning tossed the paper cone to her left hand; with her right, she grabbed the oncoming fingers and twisted them halfway around. The man let out a yelp. Ning released him and strode past, fishing in the cone for roasted nuts.

She heard him spit in the doorway after her retreating back.

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