Singapore Noir

The collector was weeping as he lay on his side, his face drenched in sweat and tears. “Please,” he begged. “Please.” It was a face the old man recognized. It was the face of everyone he had ever known — and everyone who had ever hurt him. It was a white man’s face, an Indian national’s face, a Chinese national’s face, a sarong party girl’s face, a new urban male’s face, a teenage punk’s face, his ex-wife’s face, her lover’s face, his former boss’s face, his representative of Parliament’s face, the pig’s face on the gate, all leering at him in unison like that goddamned Smile, Singapore poster. He had to get rid of all those faces.

He put the gun to his own temple, smiled at a terrified neighbor, and calmly pulled the trigger. There was a click. And then he understood what it wanted him to do. Everything was clear now. He lowered the gun again, put the little red dot on the collector’s face, and squeezed the trigger three more times.

Part II Love (or Something Like It)

Reel by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

Changi

Ah Meng knew how it would end even before they appeared.

The nibong poles would have long been in place, a wooden labyrinth designed to attract and confuse. He imagined their hearts racing, surges of blood pumping through, adrenaline pulling them further into the buttery blackness, panic steering them along the rows of columns. They would sense then that it was too late. Even so, there was nothing left to do but swim, just keep swimming. It carried reassurance, even if false. By the time the nets closed in, snuggling them together in a tight slippery ball, there was no more point in trying.

This was stupid daydreaming, Ah Meng’s mum would say. Fish so stupid — where got brains to think? The woman had a point. And the truth of that was what kept the family in business. Not good business, mind you — fish farming was becoming far more practical and lucrative than kelong fishing these days. But to start a new fish farm — expensive, lah. Maybe when Ah Long came back from Queensland with his atas business degree then they could discuss. For now, with the kelong that Kong Kong set up years ago, the family managed to catch enough each month to pass the time. Not good, not bad. Just can, lah.

Just can. That was what Ah Meng’s days were, one flowing into the next. His only relief came one Sunday. Ah Meng was squatting on the jetty after a late breakfast smoking a cigarette, trying to see how long he could pull on it, how long he could get the ash to last before it fell off in one long tube. He was getting better at it — almost reaching one and a half centimeters now! — which made him feel a bit proud, lah, even if no one noticed or cared. Life on the kelong is just like that, he had learned in a year. If you don’t notice the small things, there’s nothing to notice at all.

Monsoon season had just started, which was both okay and not so okay for fishing. Sometimes the stormy waters pushed flotillas of tiger groupers and cobia into the kelong traps. But some days all he and Siva hauled in were nets of shrimp and tiny crabs. No matter how many of those you caught — no point, lah. The Chinese restaurants only paid big bucks for large fish — nice nice one they can display in fish tanks.

Ma had just scolded him for squatting and smoking like a samseng the week before, when she suddenly showed up again in her new secondhand Corolla to spy on him. It was true that Ah Meng never used to do it until he started copying his army mates. But once she scolded him, aiyoh, he found himself doing it all the time. He couldn’t understand his mother sometimes — she always said she came by without calling first because she happened to be in the neighborhood. But hello, Ah Meng was her son — wouldn’t he know that she lived in Faber Crescent, all the way on the other side of the island? Sometimes Ah Meng couldn’t believe how toot she thought he was. He wasn’t smart like Ah Long, lah — can go university in Australia all. But she should at least know that he wasn’t stupid. After last week, Ah Meng started really enjoying squatting on the jetty smoking. He liked imagining the look on his mum’s face if she pulled up in her Corolla at that exact moment. The thought of that made each puff all the more shiok.