Break the world down and what do you get?
Animals.
Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.
—The Dhammapada
“You forgot to take out the trash.” - The feeble old man said. He was fat, from all the frozen meals. Neek, he introduced himself when we first moved in. We later found out it was spelled with two Es.
“I didn’t.” - Mr. Chun glared at Neek, his neck stretched a little as if to appear taller, in an attempt to look down on the old man. It was in vain, for Neek was 1m85 at least even if Time has hunched his back, while Mr. Chun was 1m65 on his best day. To me, Neek was harmless enough: he was appropriately forgetful for his age, as was appropriately racist for his age. Since he never let it out too much, I couldn’t care less. But to Mr. Chun, Neek was dementia-ridden, lonely, worthless.
“No, not worthless. He’s worth less than shit,” Chun said once, “at least shit can be used as manure, that thing meanwhile will remain a poison of Earth for years to come. A fucking parasite on society and people around him.”
“But you did.” - Neek raised an eyebrow, probably surprised that we would talk back. After all, we’re just Asians. We hardly speak the language, we are notoriously polite, and we have been doing the cleaning quietly. Unfortunately, the old man caught Mr. Chun on a bad day.
“I didn’t forget. I didn’t take out the trash because there are three more tenants in this apartment, and it wasn’t our turn last week. Nor the week before when Lee took out the trash. Nor the week before that” - Mr. Chun stopped glaring. It hurts his eyes if he sees too many “of them,” he once said. I hoped Neek would back down.
“So, that’s the excuse you’re gonna use?” - Oh no.
“Excuse?” - Mr. Chun cracked his neck, the first sign. Then his knuckles. “No, it’s not an excuse. Why the fuck would I make an excuse? Am I to get trouble with the likes of you? Do you think you have any power at all just because you are older? Or do you perhaps think a couple of Asians are merely going to slave away for you?”
“What… What are you tryna say?” - His eyes widened.
“What I am enunciating, is that you’re a racist fuck and that is the last line you will ever get to speak.” - There was no screaming, no anger. “Why would I ever be angry over killing a cockroach?”
The knife went into Neek’s throat, cutting off the words, the fear. The movement was too quick, the knife to sharp to even alert Neek’s blood to spill. Used to the situation, I plugged his mouth and the gaping wound, saving the cleaners some time. Then, with a practiced motion, I snapped his neck. Neek didn’t live long enough to regret his words or suffer from the pain, or appreciate what I was going to do for him.
“I swear, I hate idiots so much. I hate them so much. I hate them to my very core.” - Mr. Chun stood there, looking at the corpse.
“I know, Mr. Chun. I know. We can talk about that later, okay? Come help me with this first.” - I sat the lifeless body down to the communal area’s sole armchair, in his favorite position: facing the sofa, his belly protrudes outward, one hand scratching his head perpetually trying to remember what he had forgotten, one hand holding the remote control.
“There you are. I shall call it Representative, because it represents them.” - I took a picture, happy with the work. I have saved yet another being. Now Neek will never truly be forgotten. We went back to our room so I could develop the picture and had lunch.
“You’re on the news again.” - Mr. Chun said, flapping the cover of the magazine as he devoured his eggs.
Lee, the artist, smiled, his hands holding a trophy. The headline reads: “Youngest Asian Artist To Win International Photography Awards.” There was an interview that asked of his inspirations.
“Mr. Lee, before setting foot on the path of arts, you were a brilliant surgeon. Why did you decide to quit?” - The interviewer asked.
“Be a good person, my mother taught me that, but I was hardly the only one to have heard such a lesson. We, collectively as a species, were taught that as an absolute: to be a “good person,” to not lie, to not discriminate, to follow the rules, to help the weak.” - The artist said.
“And that lead you to being a surgeon?”
“Yes.” - No, I said my mom forced me to.
“I can see the connections. You work, “Mourning” must have stemmed from an experience with a patient, was it not?”
“Yes.” - The Artist and I agreed. The story told in the magazine, however, was his version, not mine. Never mine. Couldn’t be and can’t be and will not be mine.
“The patient had a father who was on his deathbed. I asked whether she would like to pull the plug, because keeping him on life support then was only prolonging his suffering. With tears in her eyes, she let her father go. I felt selfish for experiencing such a powerful moment by myself. It goes against my mother’s teachings. After asking for her permission, I recreated the scene at a studio, took the picture, and just submitted it, wishing others, even one person, to feel what I felt.”
“You did it. Every time I looked at that picture, I couldn’t help the tears and the urge to call my parents. And of course, since you won, that feeling must have resonated to not only the judges, but millions and millions of others.” - The interviewers dabbed a rehearsed droplet, the artist remembered. The magazine wrote (sob).
“What a pretentious bastard you are, Mr. Lee.” - Mr. Chun laughed. Of course, he knew my version of the story. He followed me for that story. We connected from that story.
“He doesn’t have long left. We are only prolonging his suffering. What is your decision?” - I asked the young girl sitting beside her father’s bed. She has been ignoring all calls from the hospital, until now.
“I… don’t know, Doctor. As a matter of fact, Doctor Lee, me and my sisters hated that man. He would hit us, Doctor, and yelled and screamed and threw dishes at us. “I raised you, and I can do whatever the fuck I want with you.” He would say to us. The happiest day of our lives were the day we ran away.”
“And yet, you hesitate now. Why?” - I was curious, for I also hated my mother and would have given everything to be in her position: to do her in with my own hands.
“Because… Are children allowed to hate their parents?”
Those words broke down the world. The bricks were coming loose. Why are children NOT allowed to hate their parents? Why do we have to strive for “good?” Why do the young have to respect the old, when they have done nothing deserving of respect? Isn’t respect earned, not implied? Brick by brick. Layer by layer. The once covered sky now shone brilliantly through the cracks.
“Of course they are, my dear.” - I kneeled and held her hands. “Thank you for helping me realize that. I too had a mother I hated, yet unlike you, I was a coward. I followed her words, absorbed her teachings as gospels, her orders as divine’s will. You are very brave, my dear, and now you have been rewarded.”
She signed the forms, and I took the picture right there at the hospital, standing behind her stooped shoulders, her hands holding on to her father’s. I quit my job the next day, in search of a specific individual I had in mind: someone who broke the chains of society like I did. I looked into the rich at first, but contrary to popular belief, except for their depravity, they are heavily burden by their own money. Even though they don’t know what to do with them, they wanted more. Their only drive to live was and is and always will be money.
I found Mr. Chun at the cinema one day.
Next time…
“Why can’t you kill others?”
“Because then, others can kill you too.”