Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4567 | Page 86

My panic was too great for screaming. All I could do was dive towards the back door, bursting into the night air. Sweat
froze to my skin. Time slowed. Every detail of the scene unfurled before me:
A towering man with pallid skin stood before me. His fist, red and dripping. Blood stained his sand coloured suit. His
face was leering; eyes wild; pupils dead. To my left, my brother lay on the wet ground, shivering. His shirt and jaw torn
open. His eyes half-closed, drilled deeper than ever into withered dark sock- ets. His hair all tufts, thrown about by the
beating. The contents of his pockets were littered around his bro- ken body; scraps of paper, dust, not a single coin.
Blood everywhere.
Time resumed, and I cannoned into the white man. He stank of soap and opium. He stumbled into a pile of firewood
with a deep, harsh yell. I grabbed my semblance of a brother, barely hearing my own voice over the blood thrumming in
my ears.
“We’re going to have to make a run for it.”
—
“We’re going to have to make a run for it.”
Boots takes off, blasting up the stairs that thunder almost as loud as our breathing. Cries flare up all over the tower; I
curse the weight that sits like a stone in my pack as I look up at Boots. Pelting it harder than we ever have before, the top
looms towards us, sky and guards bearing on top of it. One finds his way onto the scaf- folding, but retreats with a growl
when my shoe crunches on top of his grasping hand. Tears fly from my face.
I’d just wanted to make a statement, to have an adventure. Now I was to pay for that audacity with my life.
—
He groaned, a soft, broken groan. A veteran’s groan of imminent pain. I clutched my brother tight, hiding my sobs with
his ghostly wails. Every alley reared up against us, closing in as I desperately twisted and turned amidst the flood of
rain.
But it was no use. Deep yells and the smell of opium drifted in from every angle.
—
The sun is spinning angrily into the sky. We’ve hit the top. Boots is searching desperately for an escape route while I
pull something from my pack. Feet thunder on steps just a few seconds away.
—
They glided from gaps in the walls like ghosts. With each fist, the things I held dear to me flitted past. Thump. Mother.
Thump. House. Thump. Brother. Thump. Nothing.
My head rolled sideways to take in my brother. Blood streamed down, kissing the pelting rain. The white man stepped
between us.
“You work for me now.”
—
The access door bursts open. A mass of guards surges towards us like a spear. Done fiddling with the object in my
backpack, I let it loose, my back turned away.
Even from the other side of the Old City, people must be able to see it. A gust of wind descends like a torrent from the
sky, picking up the end of the banner for all to see. The sun, so often perched atop Xin Tower, now illuminates my
banner. A blazing message in the sky. A statement that no one could forget.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING,
it says.
THE OLD CITY IS NOT GONE YET