In Continuum.

Red Apples

I went down to the river
To meet the widow
She gave me an apple
And it was red

Eleven in the morning, an hour before noon. The black tarmac road was turned white under the sun, a single point of light from the windshields of the passing cars, marking the beginning of the humid afternoon to come. Thinking about the long ride home in the bus, I thought about the road that led home from where I was then. All the way down Clementi Road, then turning right to Bukit Timah Road. Following it all the way down to the expressway and later Toa Payoh Town. No matter how long it takes to go home, anything under such a baking hot sun becomes too long for comfort, too long for anything really.

Despite it all, traveling long distances on an empty bus is probably the best thing I can hope for on a Thursday like that. Sitting on the right side of the bus and towards the back, I took up both the seats and plugged Cat Power's songs into my ears. Her minimalist-style was getting to me, performing every song with just a single instrument and her vocals. It added on to that empty feeling the bus was already showing, making the scene in the empty bus even more morbid and bleak. Such a contrast of images between the outside of the bus and the inside, for the scenery outside flashed by with such speed that I almost lost myself in between the blurs.

I slept in her black arms
For a century
She wanted nothing in return
I gave her nothing in return

The empty house on Sixth Avenue stood to my left, the grass in the lawn growing above the knees and left untouched by whoever that owned it in the past. Green vines crawled all over the walls like a million claws, and the broken windows that revealed the rooms left untouched by the light, looked like gaping mouths of a monster with their broken fangs, swallowing the life of the outside world. Trash cans laid on their sides all around the abandoned house, and the road that previously led to the front entrance is now covered in grass and moss. If not for the fact that I was on the second level of a double-decker bus, I wouldn't have spotted this hidden house behind the grassy fences, forgotten by the world and ignored. I could almost feel the stories bouncing around inside the walls, as the sounds from the outside penetrates no further than the walls and the locked doors allowed. It was a creepy house, but I've been thinking about breaking in. I'm sure by doing so, I'd get myself into a lot of trouble. But to be in a place everybody has forgotten about, isn't that where my heart is right now?

The bus rumbled on, bypassing a lot of stops and traveled towards home ahead of schedule. Everybody must have been taking refuge in air-conditioned canteens, or hawker centers with giant fans blasting away on top of their heads somewhere. Nobody wanted to risk the heat outside, nobody save for those little idiots in the bus this morning - the idiots like myself. But I still love long bus rides with little people, at least the smell of the day's work cannot be smelled from wherever I decide to sit. And in the corner of the bus, one's mind can wander to places further than the confines of the bus itself, to the imaginary future or the distant past. Especially with Cat Power's voice ringing in my ears and the echoes of her piano sustained in the air, it was difficult to pull myself out from the strange mood I was in this morning. To distract myself, I started with what I should have ended with a long time ago.

The ghost of her husband
Beautiful as a horse
Pulled up an apple cart
Full of millions of red apples for us
Full of millions of red apples for us

Running my fingers through my wallet, I started the task of emptying the contents. Receipts from restaurant visits in January, or the discount cards for two at a Golden Village cinema, they were all there in my wallet, slotted in between new crispy notes and the older one from India and Malaysia. I bought something from Takashimaya it seems, on the second of February and serviced by a cashier called Khin Muint Anng. Something that costs $4.90, something I cannot remember. Concert ticket to Lynette's Dance Synergy last year in September, curled up at one end and stained somehow. I remember that night well, how Lynette how to bow out from the performance due to a fractured toe. And also the old off-pass back in the army days, signed by the Officer in Command himself and never collected by the guards at the gate. I used this form to practice forging his signature a million times, but I guess Jonathan was the only person to beat me to it back then. He even managed to forge the signature with a piece of rock, and that's a gift of the rarest kind, I presume.

Just as I was about to close the wallet, a memorabilia of the past. I pinched it out with my fingers, the surface of it felt warm against my skin. The ticket, the ticket that was spat out of the game machines in the past, something I must have left out of my clearing list. The clown face smiled back at me, with his red lips and his plain white skin, all I wanted to do was to tear his face into two, then burn it with a borrowed lighter from a random smoker on board. But I was alone, alone on the bus home. And the music in my ears wasn't helping in calming me down, from the urge to get off the bus at that moment and then run back to the empty house down the road. But I was too far away from the house then, and home was ten minutes away. So I was stuck there with the tickets that we played for, the tickets that were left after we exchanged at the counters for those little toy cars. I still have the purple one, the one with the spoiled spring. What happened to your pink car, I wonder. Or has it been left in the emotional dumping ground, like the house with the green vines?

I went down to the river
To meet the widow
She gave me an apple
And it was red

There was a lot of time left before the birthday party, and the weekday afternoon attracted little shoppers at the mall where we were. Passing by the arcade meant for children, we decided to take a shot at the prizes. Everything from a pack of sweets, to plastic racing cars, to Batman's Bat-mobile. Everything was there in the glass counter, and the children left oily marks on the surfaces as they pressed their faces so close. With a few exchanged coins, we slotted the coins in one by one, and saw the crocodiles come to life on the machine. They emerged from the holes one by one, mouths gaping and threatening. But the hammer was nowhere in sight, and we cooperated in the game by smacking the crocodiles with our palms. We were quick to hit the plastic animals, and the tickets came spurting out from the hole like waterfall. The same thing happened for the basketball machine, with the reach of my arm being further than most kids queuing at the machine. They stared at us in envy, as the tickets came running out one after another until our hands were full and we lost count three times over. The children were envious, and you were happy. We, we were happy. Weren't we?

With the tickets collected, we exchanged for little gifts at the counter, The plastic cars were suitable, and we exchanged all our tickets for them, leaving four tickets behind for us to keep - as memorabilia.

'I'm going to keep this in my wallet,' I said. 'For luck.'

For luck, what a joke.

I slept in her black arms
For a century
She wanted nothing in return
I gave her nothing in return

It fell in between my fingers, like any other common litter you would find on the bus, it floated down and landed on the floor, next to an empty bottle of water that rolled this way and that to the swaying of the bus. Suddenly, the smile of the clown grew smaller, and the ticket looked like any other trash you would find. No longer a memory of the past, no longer my wallet's lucky charm. And the bus pulled closer to my stop towards the end of the journey, and the workers were taking their break again on the side of the road, with their yellow helmets taken off and sharing a bottle of water between one another. Everything was back to normal again, with life back on the track once more, though it was lost for a moment back there, halfway along the journey.

The red lights at the front of the bus lighted up after I pressed for the bell, and the folding doors opened at the back. The driver peered at me through the rear-view mirror, a look as if to tell me that he saw me leaving the ticket behind, leaving the memories at bay. I took a last glance at the floor where I left the ticket, and there it was still, and there it shall stay until the bus driver comes with a broom and a dustpan to sweep it away. Into the dustbin along with all the other trash, then to the furnace on a far-off island. I was rid of the tickets, the memories, and I was happy. In my ears, the next track started, and it was the last song on Cat Power's album. And the lyrics went - as I stepped off the bus and followed the pavement that led home - 'Oh, I do believe in all the things you see. What comes is better than what came before......"

I went down to the river
To meet the widow...