A Momentary Lapse of Reason - 16
A Novella
16. 功亏一篑[i]
(gōng kuī yī kuì)
“I could not believe that I ran.”[ii]
It was an avuncular face that Kit used on the downtown streets of Hong Kong, and he was enjoying himself since their escape from Kowloon Walled City with its claustrophobic interior.
“I must get back to Tal, tell him where I was, and tell him what I’m doing now.”
“You’re sure that this is the wisest thing to do?”
“Tal is the closest thing I have to family. My parents are mere slaverer and regard me as nearly a coolie.” She let the foulness of the word hang in the air. There was silence and get merely nodded.
“I don’t want to think about what they did to you.”
“It is clear that they had a spell, and that pushed me over the edge. But I still was pulled in that direction and not just by the magic.”
“There is a comfort in the maladaption.”
“What about you?”
“I know it from your experience because I suffer as well.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“There are many roads out of addiction but the only one that I feel works is, as the expression goes, cold turkey. So, I just have to stride and strut.”
“Isn’t this a more deeply rooted problem?”
“I must give up everything associated with it.”
She grasped her arms around his torso. “Sweet dreams are made of this.”[iii]
He smiled: “Travelled the world and seven seas?”[iv]
“Four – three – two – one. Earth below us.[v] Now I must call on Tal.”
“If he is still up.” A tiff from the nose.
“I don’t know what to say.”[vi]
“So, say it anyway.”[vii]
She mock pushed him away but looked back. Then his feet started to shuffle, and he caught up with her in the night, hungry like the wolf.[viii] His arm caught her, and he could feel her skin was tight.[ix]
It was thinning on their bodies and the neon lights were behind them lighting up their shoulders and their hair with a black illumination that dripped on to their clothes. They reached the doorway to the apartments that Tal inhabited. She of course had an extra key from her pants and opened the outside door and went into the long corridor and up one flight of steps and then back around until she reached Tal’s door. But immediately she saw that the door had been forced open and she had trepidation because there seemed to be blood on the outside that dripped in from the room.
Whatever fear that Maggie had Kit seemed unafraid even if his shoulders twitched. He pushed the door wide open and saw the blackness that came from the only light coming from the outside it was red neon and it cast a gloomy silhouette on their faces. People went inside and carefully looked under the table and inside the kitchen. Maggie noted that the picture was also missing and that someone who had intimate knowledge of Tal had been here. Her chest shivered but she kept looking around.
It was at this point that she looked at the hall closet. It was still closed which was unusual because all of the rest of the doors had been opened. She put her stretched hand out and touched the door but did not yet open it. Then finally she moved her hand down to the knob and slowly twisted it, but yet did not open it. Kit looked at her and stayed in place wondering what was going to happen.
And she wrenched open the door and there was confusion as a hat flew out and then the body of Tal came like a reverse slide. Kit could see that a wire had been attached to Tal’s neck and untold over Maggie. And then they looked at the corpse. While neither of them knew much about forensics it was clear that he was recently dead because they could feel a tiny bit of warmth from his skin. The eyes were completely missing but that could only be found out because the darkness corrupted the sight.
Taking his shirt between her fingers she took a long slow smell. “The bird of paradise managed to remove him from this world.”
“Do you think that it was … her?”
“I am positive of it because there is no one but her and her minions who want to see him dead. And I smelled the cheap cologne that she always wore.” Then her face frowned as if in thought.
Then she smelled everything in the room and once again Tal’s clothes.
“I smell my mother but not my father. And usually when they go hunting someone they go together.”
“They didn’t in Kowloon Walled City.”
“But that is the only time they have been separated. He is her dog and stays close to her under most circumstances.”
“So, she left them behind.”
“ I feel that there is more to it than that.”
“If you say so.””
“In their religion, it would be the cardinal sin. And she would not sin.”
“If you say it would be a sin, I believe you. But it must be a vile book that commands their actions.”
“Everything they want to do is within its covers.”
“ I don’t want to know where they found it.”
“Running up that hill.”[x]
“To find what?”
“A height that is below so that all look up to them.”
They took down Tal and went outside to the only payphone in this part of Hong Kong, where the dilapidated apartment dwellers used it when they did not have any money.
The police came by eventually and asked questions but did not require they go to the police station. A dead person in the slum is not much to report and the police did not want to know who was responsible.
The two went away and they realized that they had to confront their enemy inside the haven that it made its lair.
Watching the world wake up from history.[xi]
[i] Fall short of success.
[ii] Reference to A Flock of Seagulls, “I Ran”
[iii] Eurhythmics, “Sweet Dreams”
[iv] Eurhythmics, “Sweet Dreams”
[v] Peter Schilling, “Major Tom”
[vi] A-ha, “Take on Me”
[vii] A-ha, “Take on Me”
[viii] Reference to Duran Duran, “Hungry Like the Wolf”
[ix] Reference to Duran Duran, “Hungry Like the Wolf”
[x] Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill”
[xi] Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now”