Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4567 | Page 360

She was a con artist. She was the nice lady selling you insurance that was as ensuring as nothing,
charming the elderly running from the decaying force of time with her plastic smiles. They wanted
some kind of security against death. She provided.
Every stage of first building a foundation, the build up, the pay off, the disappearing all executed so
meticulously with her team of amateurs. Who wouldn’t have trusted her?
Maybe she was one of the best Shanghai has had for a while, but in this very instant, she was nothing
but a hopeless woman who’s maleficence has backfired, isolating her away from daughter and that lazy
husband of hers with exactly 1243 quai in the soap tin.
Four walls and a roof.
It was a room.
a prison.
She stood under the concentrated beams of light that illuminated this small jail cell and tried to look
past the firm iron bars which dispersed it and shut her eyes to feel the warm radiating glow, somehow
lifting her away from these 4 walls to another world.
That one was surreal, and in that one, women roamed the streets along with men freely, the went to
work and helped to support their families instead of being confined to only the apartment blocks, and
devoting their absolute attention only to the business within it. She dreamed of doing something
more . . . .stimulating then sweeping the floors that didn’t need to be cleaned because all she did was
sweep them. She dreamed of a life where she could get paid properly and help support Mei and get her
enrolled in school, the one near the bund, because it was the best.
But they were all just dreams. Scenarios that one can only fantasize about, to dull the pain of the forces
these 4 walls puts on her. She continued to stand there every morning and afternoon for the next 12
years.
‘she’s out soon.’ He said tensely to himself, shoulders hunched in while focusing his gaze on the gray
rubber floor trying to avoid making eye contact with the disgusting women on the other side of the
thick glass, examining every detail with her squinty red droopy lids. The room smelled like death. The
strong stench of bleach stung his nose with something else, a faint smell of something rotting. Perhaps it
was the souls of these bad women locked up, he thought. The guard signalled for her to sit down. She
did it so gracefully and swiftly, just like how she used to be when he first felt a warm airy feeling in his
heart for her that summer. Those days were long gone. The both picked up the orange telephones on
both sides at the same time, and for the finally, he looked at that woman.
‘Did you show our daughter my letters?’ She croaked
‘My daughter, you mean.’ He attacked viciously. He can see that it stung her, which gave him a slight
feeling of justice. But what came after was something unfamiliar, something surprising and at the same
time, chilling. She talked back to him. ‘Our daughter.’
‘You’re disgusting. You know that? You go on a happy trip to this place for a couple of decades,
leaving me to raise her on my own and now she’s your daughter? She’ll barely recognize you. ‘ he spat.