THE CITIZEN
I take the MRT back to Geylang in air-conditioned comfort, a gift from the government to keep us compliant. I think about the long trek across the country over the previous day, the romantic notions of life along the edge of oppression, illegal immigrants, workers both local and foreign, the proletariat in its raw, primal form, erupting in a mass celebration lasting through the night. I think about all of them being let down as the new reality sets in; everything has changed, nothing has changed. From the windows, I watch the HDB flats cruise by from right to left, and then a momentary flash of a metal fence, and then half-lit concrete, and then darkness.
The office from yesterday -- a completely abandoned building. Brutalist in its emptiness. Every window a hole in a wall. No locks on the doors, no jaga out the front. I explore a void-deck like ground floor littered with newspapers, plastic, fast food packaging and shopping trolleys, finding a lone stairway leading up to what was the computer levels, now a creaking landscape populated by empty office desks. Outside, a pickup truck sputters to life and cruises away, the crunch of asphalt echoing clearly between concrete pillars, ceiling and floor.
There’s nothing here.
I head up the second flight of stairs, greeted by the same vista as the lower floor -- a time warp to a post apocalyptic future where history has ended, capitalism has collapsed and humanity has either regressed or transcended. A godless world. And I’m out of ideas. I retrace some of my dance steps from yesterday in the dust, reminiscing the joy of disjuncture. My last resort: go back to Tan Vee Bun and attempt to outsmart the lizard conniving of Robert Sebastian Cheong. Perhaps using his boyfriend as leverage. I feel myself becoming my own villain, my own soul being removed by the 八字, if not the government’s clawed hands.
The smell registers only about halfway down the stairs. A damp, pungent, burning stench with the slight sting of ammonia. I turn back and explore the third storey further, but the smell seems to fade away the further I get from the stairwell. Heading back, I decide to go up to the fourth storey, and then the fifth -- still the same empty concrete expanse, but the smell getting stronger. Heading back to the stairwell, I look up to the ladder heading to the roof, and then I notice a hole opposite to the ladder, leading to an empty compartment created between the roof and the false ceiling.
I pull myself up to the hole and use my phone to illuminate the space, hunching as I step into this interim zone between floors. After my eyes adjust, I notice a faint glow in the far corner of the building, which resolves into a dying campfire, above which the faint outline of a piece of meat hangs, spitroasted between two metal rods jutting out from the floor. I bring myself closer to examine the meat, and soon realise, with a mixture of horror and glee, that it’s the carcass of a monitor lizard, its guts emptied out, its mouth open, its eyes white and cooked, its skin glistening with oil, crisping under the simmering heat of charcoal. A loud thud sounds out from behind me, and I spin around to behold a black, hulking outline framing two red, glowing eyes.
The outline grows before me, as the monster stands up and hunches beneath the ceiling, as I fall backwards next to the fire, my mouth too dry to scream. The outline extends a hairy arm towards me, its palm half big enough to crush my face, and lays it upon my shoulder, its warmth and lack of assault comforting me. I stammer out, “who are you?”
A slight pause, as the monster’s eyes flash in intensity, causing my heart to jump once again. And then the monster picks up the corpse of the lizard and beckons me towards the entrance of his lair, whereupon we climb down into the stairwell, the sunlight hurting my eyes as we enter the sixth floor.
On the light, the ape man produces a white chalk from its armpit, tracing a single word onto the floor -- “Abang”.
Abang. Brother. The ape man wants to help me. What does he want to help me with?
It brandishes the lizard in front of me, grabs the nape of its neck, and pulls upon it roughly to separate a clean film of lizard skin from the carcass. It starts to eat the lizard meat, offering some to me, which I reject.
I don’t want to eat. I want to know who is the new reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew.
The ape man cocks its head at me. And then it brings up an oily index finger to my face, and taps my nose. With the other hand, it picks up the discarded lizard skin and holds the lizard skin it up to the light, and I see it; beyond the shimmering rainbow-toned hues of the translucent skin, I notice little symbols printed onto each scale, a message, a warning, a herald towards the future.
But it doesn’t mean anything. The symbols correspond to no known language. The hieroglyphics of the future coded in arcane, unreadable script.
The ape man, its hair black as night, taps his index finger on my nose again, and then presses the skin onto the wall, rubbing his forearm against it until the symbols appear on the wall itself. He produces a chalk from his armpit, writing onto the wall -- “Takdir Hidayat”
Takdir. Destiny. Takdir Hidayat. Destiny Hidayat. It comes to me suddenly in a flash. Of course it’s him. The policeman who chased me at Toa Payoh Hub, who followed me as Tan Vee Bun got to me first. As I yelled at Robert Sebastian Cheong. As I escaped the police station into the machine limbs of the lizards of Bukit Brown. It all lands on him, with only himself to gain. Hidayat the policeman is the new reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew.
The ape man notes my look of horror and realisation. It bends down to encase me in a bear hug. And then it retreats backwards, floating upwards to its lair, the blanket of darkness encasing its body till only its red eyes shine out, fading away to become an afterimage, a ghost of itself imprinted onto the darkness, to disappear with the fading of memory and the long, slow, erosion of time.