Guilt

I felt sweat drip out of every pore as I walked past the front reception of my fiftieth floor office. Numbers rang inside my head the same way they had been the past eight weeks and they didn’t show any signs of abating today. Annual staff turnover, trailing revenue, adjusted earnings per share, diluted earnings per share, staff options granted this quarter, overhead cuts, squeeze budget bottom lines, whatever the hell it was it didn’t add up. It just didn’t. I had to do it. I saw Walter’s face as I broke the news to him and I can tell you that it just wasn’t pleasant. “But Ravi please you don’t understand. I have kids too. Kate’s just entering primary school this year. You can’t do this to me, Ravi. You can’t.” I couldn’t. But I had to. I felt sorry for Walter. And Melissa, and Aresh, and Kevin, and the rest of you MDs . I couldn’t bring myself to look at the receptionist. “Bye Mr Ramesh” was what Samantha usually said in her bright little twenty year old voice as I walked out of the office. It sounded a little less bright today, and all I could manage was a weak “Good bye” as I walked towards the lift lobby. No small talk about her boyfriend in national service, no advice about her part-time diploma course in the polytechnic, no nothing. Two of her older colleagues had been removed, treated as an overhead that was found surplus to requirements, nothing but a number in the balance sheet that had to be culled. Culled by the plague that emanated from the rest of the financial world as we all drank from the same water infected by the disease that has left everybody writhing in pain and suffering as we all sought brighter futures for ourselves, for our wives and husbands, for our children, for our goddamn Beemers and our own fucking pride. Greed was the name of the plague, and it was time for us to be culled.

I saw the numbers drop rapidly on the LCD as the lift plunged rapidly down the shaft the same way the axe fell on the heads of two hundred other honest colleagues who had to go home to crying babies, screaming teenagers, worried parents and spouses and sleeping pills.

My name was the one that was carved on the culling blade, and everything that’s left on the bodies of these corpses was the indelible mark of my name on the gaping hole that used to be their necks. My hands felt dirty, stained by blood that I could not wash off, even when I commanded them to. I heard a chuckle next to my ear. It had a diabolical and haunting quality, the kind that crept under your skin and squeezed the cold sweat out of the pores of your forehead. Whoever it was, it was gone by the time I turned around, probably laughing its way back down to hell as it prepared to welcome more friends into the land of gnashing and grinding of teeth.
I felt nauseous as I emerged from the lift. The ground floor receptionist nodded his head in my direction as I walked past and I smiled weakly back at him. I walked out of the building and saw a woman waiting at the bus stop with her child in her arms, a baby not more than four years of age and I said to myself, “Ravi, you’ve killed them. You’re a killer”.

I might as well have grabbed the child from the woman’s arms and killed him along with his mother.

The boy looked over his mother’s shoulders and gave me a smile. He was holding a sword and waving it at me. Not the bible, although I wasn’t sure if I was going to hell. Not the kind that cut people either, he was too small to understand what I had done. It was the plastic kind that came with batteries and lighted up when you pressed the little black button on the handle. He waved the sword at me and made little “bish bish” sounds with every little wave of his tiny hands. Maybe he knew. I had to leave before he could remember my face. I turned around and started walking towards the traffic light when I felt a sharp pain in the side of my head. The type that hits you when somebody drove a nail through your temple and into your brain and somehow managed to get the nail to expand and contract so you had those throbbing pains that refuse to go away even when you begged and pleaded. I bent over and rested my hands on my knees. I looked around and everybody seemed to be a little closer to me. I felt surrounded by people I didn’t know, people I might have killed, as if the Great Birnam Wood had come against me.

I looked down again and saw that I had been covered in a thin layer of film, a coating of some sort like a glaze, all over my hair, my face, my fingers, my cufflinks, my suit and I thought “Oh God, what is this?” I turned around and I suddenly understood what had happened to me. I had just emerged from the anus of a large and powerful organisation, whose function in society was to eat up the fruits of labour of honest men and women who put their trust and life savings and all their money in us hoping for a better future, and what we have done is excrete the remnants of our digested waste back into society. I was covered in a patina of excrement, and I could smell the ammonia, the smell that emanated from the layer of shit that covered my entire existence. I had emerged as a member of this big and powerful system and the stains on my body and the blood on my hands were something that would take the rest of my life to wash off. “Out, Damn’d spot! Out, I say!”

The scent became overwhelming. I bent over and gagged, and a small sliver of vomit emerged from my mouth. Oh God, the greed, the excrement, the guilt, the vomit.
I stood up, and looked at myself again, and looked back at the building and I thought, “No no, this is not it”. I had another vision, another moment of clarity, like some sort of an epiphany. The layer of film that covered my body wasn’t what I thought it was. It was something else, something deeper and stranger and yet seemed like it was part of the natural progression of things. And suddenly, it dawned upon me that I had been reborn. Not of woman born, but ripped from the womb of the organisation, the same way these good men and women were so untimely ripped from their workplaces. I was covered in a placenta of some sorts and I had been reborn into a new world of pain and despair and I had been given a new name.

I am Shiva, god of death.

Sarah’s Goodnight

The accent-less voice announced the next station’s name shortly after the door alarm chimed its usual nine times. It was a reminder to warn you about the door that threatened to cut you into half if you stood in the middle. Maybe not, but it was how Sarah used to imagine it when she was little, until Mommy told her that it wasn’t the case. The train doors were controlled by a man who watched everything that happened at the train station in a room called the control station. And so, it was impossible, even if she wanted to be cut into half. The control station man would never allow it because he wanted her to have a safe journey back home to Mommy.

She saw her mute reflection appear as the train entered the tunnel. Through the image that emerged like a negative exposure against the dark window, she saw her girly looking self dressed in a school uniform that she never wanted. The navy pinafore served as much purpose as a status symbol as it was a backdrop for a badge that many other girls and their over-zealous parents would have deemed an honour to wear. Her mother was one of them, and this girl didn’t object. She never did.
Sarah found herself holding on to the silver chain around her neck. Six carats of Mommy’s love for 4A*s on her PSLE transcript. She felt a sudden urge to remove it. She fiddled clumsily with the clasp before realising that she didn’t know how to take it off.

“You look so pretty. I’m sure your friends think so too, girl,” said Mommy as she put the chain on Sarah.

Sarah nodded automatically. She smiled as if her picture were being taken.
The same mechanical voice announced the next station as the alarm chimed the last warning for passengers to get away from the door. Today, Sarah wondered how it would sound if the train doors really closed on her. Would it make a crunching sound? Could she still do a pirouette? Mommy wouldn’t be very happy if she couldn’t anymore. She always had lots of things to say about Sarah’s ballet classes, or violin lessons, or math tuition, which Sarah never understood because she was always good at math. “You can never be too sure, girl. Last time, Mommy thought math was easy, until Secondary school”. Secondary One came and went, and algebra was a breeze. Mommy insisted on tuition still and Mommy always had the last word.

Sarah counted the number of train stops before she reached home. Three was the number, and three would have been the number of stations that passed before Sarah alighted. Not today. Today, Sarah-Lynn Chua had other plans. No more ballet lessons which made her toes bleed. No more violin lessons, she never liked classical music anyway. No more stupid math tuition. Today was the day she decided that she would take control, even if it was going to be momentary and fleeting.

The train emerged from the tunnel and Sarah discovered that clouds had gathered on this side of the island. The sky was a lot darker now, and Sarah wondered if God was reading her mind. Droplets of rain formed slanted streaks on the train windows. Sarah was well prepared for rainy days though. Mommy prepared a small umbrella that sat snugly at the bottom of her branded bag, in case the rain threatened to tear a hole in her daughter dearest. Today, the umbrella was staying in the bag.

Sarah alighted two stops after the last time she counted. She walked out of the station, and boarded the first bus that came her way. A group of friends sat across each other in the front of the bus. They were laughing and sharing jokes the way Sarah couldn’t with other girls. “Friends will come to you Sarah,” Mommy would tell her, and besides, “Mommy will always be there for you”. Sarah usually smiled and thanked her mother and Mommy would smile back and hug her so tight, sometimes Sarah had difficulty breathing.

Sarah looked out and saw that the same streaks of rain had followed her to the bus window. She alighted at a peaceful looking HDB estate. Sarah looked at her phone; incoming call. Mommy must have read the letter already. She switched her phone off, dumped it back into her bag and found the nearest lift in the block. She looked at the mirror that ran along the side of the lift wall, and saw her chain again. This time her urge to be free from it was even stronger. She yanked hard on the chain, continuing even as she felt it cut into her neck. The chain snapped and fell to the ground, and Sarah felt unstoppable.

She pressed the button with the largest number, and pressed the close button. The lift doors obeyed, and Sarah smiled to herself. She stepped out and peered out of the corridor, staring at the vast expanse of the estate that she was never going to explore. Sarah sat at the edge of the corridor wall, her legs dangling loosely underneath her body. It was getting late. The building was tall and she had such a long way to go. Besides, Daddy was waiting.

Sarah pushed herself off, spread her arms out the way bungee jumpers did, and wondered what sound jumpers made when they landed.