Bull Spec #7 “FASTER, ANG MOH,” MOZ HISSED IN MY EAR, BARELY audible over the buzz of the e-bike’s overclocked engine. Moz’s knifepoint in my right side, kidney-high, was insistent, and I loored the ebike past dangerous levels, its engine a high whine. We sped through the housing blocks of Abdullah Crescent deep in Negeri Ciravseu, on the left bank of Tinhau’s Tehtarik River, weaving between the concrete pylons of void decks, slaloming around the carefully manicured public spaces, careful to avoid spindly palm trees and errant elderly residents. We’d probably already lost the polis who’d tried to raid our e-bike meet-up, but better to be safe. My visa was six months out-of-date and Moz had a shoulder bag full of designer drugs he didn’t really want to ditch—as well as a decade-long trail of drug-running and loan-sharking. Impressive considering Tinhau’s extreme punishments for both crimes. he e-bike I drove wasn’t mine; I don’t know where Moz had found it, stole it most likely, but it was certainly street-illegal, engine the capacity and power of a motobike’s, with enough seat room for two, Moz occupying the bitch seat, but only because he’d never bothered to learn how to drive one himself. A few minutes later, Moz tapped my left shoulder and shouted, “here lah,” pointing up ahead to a multi-storey carpark. I swerved past a family of speckled grey cats with pale blue eyes, zipped past the carpark’s pay-gate, and squeezed us through the opening between the tip of the gate and the concrete wall. We spiraled up past three levels sparsely occupied by Merces and Beamers and Minis onto the empty, moonlit roof deck. Moz’s girlfriend Savita stood at the far end, dressed in a white blouse and tight dark slacks more appropriate to someone working in a doctor’s oice than to a gangster’s girlfriend. As we pulled up, I could immediately sense tension from Savita’s pose, one arm around her back and gripping the other at the elbow. She wore her big Bollywood sunglasses, which she only used on those rare occasions when Moz smacked her around. I cut the engine, the absence of noise sudden and sharp. Moz got of as I put the kickstand down, the knife gone from my side; he pulled the shoulder bag over his head and handed it to Savita, who took it without a word. hen he turned, eyes aglare, and said, “You got something to say me, ang moh?” “About what, Moz?” I tried to keep the quaver out of my voice. He was short, but made up for it with fury and intensity. Moz stepped around me, slowly, predatory. I knew better than to face him, but also if there was nothing I could do against his anger, I wanted to be staring at Savita—even if she wouldn’t meet my gaze. He stood at my back, and I couldn’t see him at all anymore. I tensed, waiting. “I think you know about what,” Moz whispered. “Ang moh so smart, think he fuck my Savi and I not ind out? Ah? You shit-smoking cuntweasel?” When the blow came, it was almost a relief. he back of my head exploded in pain, and I blacked out before I hit the concrete carpark roof. We sit here, you and I, together in this cell, unknowing, unaware. I watch your jerky movements, the twitches of thousands of misiring neurons. I do not remember you, and from your blank look I can see that the feeling is mutual. I do know that I loved you, even if your identity is gone, like mine. he dry cake they feed us, delivered once a day through a wall tube, crumbles like ash, tasteless, void of nutritional value. Water drips somewhere, but I cannot locate its source I am thirsty, my lips cracked, my skin parchment. I know nothing other than this cell, and you.
Why do they, whoever “they” are, keep us here? Flashes of secrets important to the opposition, the rebels, linger in my hippocampus, though there is nothing I can grab on to, vaporous and ephemeral in the eye of my mind. Whatever procedure they used to delete my memories seems to have overloaded your poor brain, and you can only communicate in grunts, reversed down the evolutionary chain to your simian ancestors. You were beautiful once, that much is obvious, your dark skin now dulled by continuous lack of sunlight, and your movements become more erratic every day. No one has visited us for three days, after the incident with that one who tried to touch you; the other guards had to drag you of of him after you bit away his right ear and most of his cheek lesh. Perhaps they have forgotten about us, now that they know everything we know. Or have just decided to let us starve to death. Maybe our side attacked, and is unaware we are here. Or you were actually the interrogator, and I fought back. Or maybe the reverse is true. It’s impossible to know. he air grows thin. I have lost all hope of being released from this place. Either I will starve, or you will kill me in ignorant rage. I hope it happens quickly. he one thing I hang on to is the knowledge—perhaps false, perhaps true— Shivering, I opened my eyes from the strange dream. I was bound to a chair in a drab bedroom, my wrists constrained with what felt like plastic zipcufs. Was I still dreaming? he aircon unit high up on the wall was cranked full blast, the hiss masking any background sounds. he square white loor tiles were cold under my bare feet. Not much light in the room, but with the window behind me, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. he room was sparse: a simple single slat bed, a fold-out table, and a small bookshelf with titles I couldn’t quite make out. Concrete walls, so a gahmen lat then, probably still in the Abdullah Crescent housing estate. Moz wouldn’t have been able to move me very far. he door was, naturally, closed. Whose lat was this? he room was small enough to be a child’s, and I had the sudden vision of a future with a baby crib in one corner and a playpen in the other. For a little Eurasian girl, half-white, half-Indian, beautiful, dimpled. Where the hell was this coming from? Had I really been deluding myself so badly with Savita? I’d known it wasn’t love, nowhere close to love, just physical infatuation. She was just so classy and so sexy all at once, an intoxicating combination and she knew it. Curvy like most Indian women I knew, and she kept herself in great shape. I smiled at the remembered conversation in bed, where she’d boasted she could crush peanuts with her ass cheeks; I’d never thought to take her up on her braggadocio. As if my thoughts had summoned her, Savita opened the door and stepped inside. A quick glance past her revealed compact luorescents burning cool in the next room: still nighttime then. Or else I’d been unconscious for an entire day. Savita closed the door. At least she’d taken of the ridiculous shades. “How’d he ind out?” I asked and coughed, my throat dry. “I don’t know,” Savita said, her voice soft, hushed. “Not from me. But he does have a way of sniing things out.” “So what do we do?” “I don’t know.” She glanced quickly at the door, as if expecting Moz to burst in at any moment. “I’ve never seen him this angry.” “hen get me loose.” I wiggled my arms, feeling the zipcufs tighten and dig into my wrists. “We can run. We’ll go to Malaya or hailand.” She shook her head, her loose dark hair swishing in front of her face; in the dim light of the room, I couldn’t tell whether her eye was 9