Midsummer Post-mania

We are drifting towards a less interior world, with further changes to our movements and activities announced this afternoon.
Before that Independence Day is upon us, a cautionary tale from one of our writers.

The Fairytale That Never Was

There was once upon a time, when humankind was so enlightened it no longer believed the world was flat but very much round, when the sun continues to rise from a resurgent East in order to set in the still sinewy and opulent Occident, when the ice-capped North continues to thaw threatening cataclysmic flooding to vulnerable coastlines and other places, when to all appearances the wretched South continues to wallow in abject poverty, social inequality, curable and incurable disease, misrule, human and wealth trafficking, brain draining and Lord knows what else… A time when a woebegone sufferer of writer’s block, seated cross legged on his bedsitter camp bed, found his tortured mind thus ruminating: “Yes, inspiration has deserted me when I needed it most. The deadline for delivery of the 500 word Fairy Tale is a tight couple hours away. In my anger and deep frustration, I broke my pencil in two, gathered the sheaf of discarded drafts and flushed the whole lot down the communal toilet – blocking it…and the cantankerous Landlord and other tenants are unlikely to be pleased with this recklessness on my part. Goodness gracious, Muse, what is to be done, pray?”

The writer’s laptop, then lying dormant on his naked lap, read these desperate writer’s thoughts and immediately whirred into life: “It is nobody’s fault but yours”, the laptop cried. “You have had a whole week to think and prepare. Self-isolation is here to be taken advantage of, and you haven’t. You have this awful habit of leaving everything to the last gasp, now look at the mess you find yourself in!”

On hearing this, a quaint imitation feather quill pen with an alloy nib then flew from the writer’s cluttered desk to land on the laptop keyboard. “I agree with your candid sentiment, Comrade Laptop,” said the quill, at the same time typing these words with the metallic nib so that they appeared as spoken on the screen in Harlow Solid Italic, to the surprise and amusement of both the writer and the laptop! “Now what do you say that, eh, Mr Suffering Writer?” the quill pen continued, before flying back to the writer’s desk.

Now from the cluttered desk a rustling sound was heard, whereupon a quarto size sheet of fine parchment emerged, leisurely straightened itself before flying to the top shelf of the ramshackle bookcase where it leaned nonchalantly against one mighty tome before crying:  “You can say that again, Comrades. Look at me, still blank despite having been acquired a whole decade ago! And yet the blocked sufferer possesses numerous bottles of quality red, black and blue ink to make use of, and has he ever? Has he indeed!”

As a much loved Russian writer once concluded one of his fine Belkin tale: ‘…the reader will spare me the unnecessary task of describing the denouement’.

Lockdown Dreams

I had too much to dream last night. In those first weeks of Lockdown, especially, people around the country reported their strange excess of dreams.

A dream story from Dalston Writer's Group regular Yvonne Lloyd

Lockdown Dream 1

I dream of a temple of the imagination, of echoing chambers garlanded with words, of tomes to elevate me from the confines of my London Fields flat and transport me across oceans and continents to distant lands. I dream of tales of long forgotten heroes and villains and life in a far-off future on a remote planet. I dream of being the curtain twitcher, of being led behind the scenes to a cast of characters, the complicated folds of their lives unravelled in enchanting prose.
I dream of palms skimming the carved banisters as I ascend the temple’s spiral staircase, excitement barely concealed, each winding step taking me nearer to this hallowed hall of imagination. I dream of bookcases stretching all the way to the horizon, reaching from earth to sky, row upon row of novels bound in a kaleidoscope of clashing colours cascading from them. I dream of burnt orange, deep turquoise, buttercup yellow, fuchsia pink, ebony, leathered brown books all covered in exquisite designs. I dream of picking from the groaning shelves well-thumbed volumes as thick as loaves with epic tales of the intimate drama of strangers’ lives. I dream of slender books with crisp compelling tales spun from a few carefully crafted words. I dream of accompanying detectives into the crooks and crannies of of Hackney as they unravel dastardly crimes. I dream of being a fly on the wall in the court of Henry VIII, witnessing the deadly games of politics and power.
I dream of an assembly of writers, of evenings spent wedged in around a crammed, neon lit table in the temple’s gabled roof, awed by the miracle of wreaths of stories woven out of invisible golden threads from the far reaches of the imagination.
I dream of the reopening of CLR James library!

#HackneySpirit

Two stories with Hackney Spirit

Yesterday I picked up a speck of blue I’d been eyeing on the ground outside my house for weeks. Because of the unwelcome publicity showered upon me throughout my life, it’s hardly surprising that I value privacy highly so when I picked up the aerogram, that flimsy blue rectangle lying on the ground by my house, I was in a quandary.

Having had the misfortune to be consigned to class A lockdown, I’m housebound, locked up in the prison of my own home, the key thrown away. I detest being dependent on others but unless I’m prepared to starve which I’m not, I am to rely for the foreseeable future on the kindness of friends and strangers for groceries. 

You don’t realise when you compile a shopping list how much room for misunderstanding there is. I’m not blaming the neighbour who bought PG Tips instead of Yorkshire Tea or Danish Blue instead of Stilton – I’m just saying shopping lists are as open to interpretation as a Sylvia Plath.  poem. Anyway I don’t mean to sound ungrateful – maybe I just have too much time on my hands. 

Time – yes, reams of it which has rolled out in front of me like a heavy bolt of cloth. Having read the books I borrowed before lockdown from CLR James Library, I now spend hours looking out of my second-floor window at the great outdoors.

In the first weeks, I felt I’d landed a part in a dystopian film - London Fields which in sunny weather becomes a hipster carnival was eerily deserted. Same for Lansdowne Drive, the occasional scurrying person looking shocked and fearful as if they were the only survivor in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. So, apart from the blossoming of trees and the growth spurt of plants on my balcony, there wasn’t much to see. Whole afternoons drifted by as I revisited the bygone lands of youth, middle age and beyond. It was a reckoning up, a cool totting up of the successes and scandals of my very public life. I reflected on the last (of three) marriage to Emmanuel who unexpectedly died ten months ago after a particularly unpleasant quarrel. I turned each word of the final crossfire over carefully scrutinising them one by one, regretting some, relishing others, uncertain how much they contributed to his death. 

I have grown tired of my inner reflections and am glad of some live entertainment – several weeks into lockdown, people are emerging from hibernation at first gingerly, now with carefree abandon. I watch the young rule-breakers on the street and in the Fields hug and casually cluster, clinking glasses, thrilled to be reunited with their tribe. I was young myself and remember the giddy sense of immortality so I don’t judge them.

And then yesterday a speck of blue on the street caught my attention, so under cover of dark, I slipped out for a closer look. It was an aerogram, something rarely seen these days. I picked it up and standing under a streetlamp was startled to see it was addressed to my dead husband. I made out the postmark – the letter must have got held up because it had been sent over eight months ago from Vancouver, a place Emmanuel visited regularly and in the two years before his death for extended periods. Indeed this was at the heart of our final argument – he cunningly evaded my questions about why he spent so much time there when his research could perfectly well be done in London. I flipped the aerogram over – the sender was Violet Cartwright. I had never heard of her.

So, the letter remains unopened - its presence in my hallway like that of an uninvited intruder. I can’t bring myself to throw it away, nor can I open it. I ask myself whether the dead are still entitled to privacy but perhaps my reluctance to read it is based not on principle but on the fear that I might find in it the reasons for the frequent trips to Canada, confirmation of my unvoiced suspicions.

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THE BIG BIRTHDAY

By Julie Balloo

Well, today is my 60th birthday, whey hey. I had other plans, not very big ones, but suffice it to say they certainly involved me leaving the house.

Just a few drinks in the pub, with a few mates. I mean nothing was really organized, not a marquee or a river cruise. I just had said to a few people that I had a big one coming up and perhaps they might like to join me for a bevvy. As it happens, I didn’t actually get around to organizing anything, so it’s all probably for the best.

Cheers.

Anyway, my friend Lynette, known her for years, we’re not that close but I see her now and then and I ran into recently, well not literally we were the standard 2 metres apart and we both had our masks on, well I had a head scarf wrapped around my mouth she had a proper one, we were walking through London Fields so I waved and she waved back and I didn’t want to stand there miming, so I called her which felt a bit silly, what with her standing there and me here. So, I called her and told her it was a big one for me and she and said why don’t you log on to a video conference call and we’ll all say cheers and sing you Happy Birthday?

Thing is she didn’t tell me how to do it, so I’ve tried my best.

Well, I’ve been trying to do exactly that for the last 2 hours but I’m useless with all this tech. My boy, Raymond he was good with it, he used to do bits for me but well, he’s been away, and I haven’t seen him for a while now and well, it’s probably all updated now anyway.

I’m coping, I still work, I’m a receptionist in a dentists, been there for years and years, wonder they still want me on the front desk. I know, I know, bit long in the tooth for all that, well I haven’t got a choice. I’m on my own and needs must. I’m not working now though, obviously. I went out to the shops earlier, for essentials, Prosecco and some pringles. Well, you’re only 60 once eh?

It’s terrible in the shops lately, before we had to do all this standing a ways from each other and respecting each other’s space so as not to get sick, I saw a terrible run in down the local Tesco. Woman shouting her head off at the staff, you’re all liars, liars!

I’m used to things kicking off in Hackney but this was not the time or the place, I mean we’re all stressed these days aren’t we?

Ooh she was cross, gone all the way to the shop for a big bottle of cooking oil and rang in especially to see if they had it in stock, they did so she drove down, well by the time she got there they’d sold out. People are buying up everything, I mean it would take me years to get through a big bottle of cooking oil, but she obviously had a thing for it or a she was feeding a massive family. Anyway, she ranted and raved like an angry lunatic.

I tried to intervene, but she said, no, don’t you interfere, don’t you dare. Well I’m not a very confrontational person so I did not, a nice young chap in front said ‘calm down love, we’re in a global emergency, have some patience’ but she wasn’t haven’t it. Don’t interfere! She screamed, I was quite shaken but as she left the shop, I couldn’t help myself, I shouted out. Good luck in a Blitz! Not very good taste I know, but it’s something my old mum used to always say. Your generation are soft, couldn’t cope in a war, never last in the blitz. She used to like me taking her to the Imperial war museum so she could relive the blitz experience. Folk are funny, aren’t they? Can’t see me wanting to relive this, mind you obviously it’s not the same.

I’m used to being on my own, it was always just me and mum then when she went, I had my Raymond. Well his dad wasn’t around long enough to count. Her lot were prepared they had parents who’d seen the worst, grandparents who had lost their offspring, heard of their callous deaths while they still rotted in filthy muddy trenches. No longer the man they were expected to be, just a corpse, a name on a memorial, perhaps a medal.

I haven’t got many friends anymore; they say you know who your friends are when you go through something like we did. I stay sort of in touch, I’m on Facebook, but I don’t really get it. 

Right let’s try again, oh hang on, somethings happening… Oh where is she? Lynette is supposed to be joining me for a birthday drink, I said that didn’t I? Well she’s even more useless than me. Oh, there she is, over here, this way, face this way. Lynette. Oh no, she can’t hear me, bleeding sound isn’t working. Lynette! Oh no, it’s all gone, oh I hate this, people say oh well thank goodness we’ve got social media, be awful going through this without it. Well yes, it is awful, nothing is working. I should get a new one of these thingy’s, my Raymond set this one up for me but that was oooh, a long time ago and they always update them, don’t they? You buy yourself a computer and think it’s all wonderful then six months later it’s out of date and nothing works…bit like me. My Raymond used to say, oh mum, what are you like? Seriously mum, come into the 21st century. I’m here, I’d say, but I’m not sure I like it.

I do miss him, I write regular, but he doesn’t write back. Think he blames me for all his trouble. He didn’t send a card, well of course he couldn’t, he could’ve made one though, he used to be very artistic when he was littlun. He hasn’t sent me visiting orders since the argument. That was six months ago now. He go upset when I said something about Lynette’s kid. I wasn’t comparing them, not really. Well I suppose I was, a bit. I thought I’d be a nan by now, looking after me grankids, and I said as much and he said, ‘well good job you ain’t eh? How would they have turned out if you got to them. Ooh that hurt, like it were all my fault. But I’m a mum ain’t I? Ray’s mum so I got to take some responsibility for it.

I went for a walk today, just around my neighborhood. Familiar streets, winding roads, everything was the same, yet everything was different. People giving you a wide birth, me with my scarf wrapped round my mouth. Posters on the buses announcing films opening in February, bit odd now that the weather is so warm. Like time has stood still but the actress is still smiling and hoping we all like the film. I feel sorry for the bus drivers, so when we go outside on a Thursday night at 8 0’clock, I clap for  them too. I look over the balcony and they toot the horn, all of them the 38, the 56 toot toot and we clap and the actress on the poster smiles like she’s finally getting the applause for her silly movie but she ain’t really. Hardly anyone saw it or wanted to see it or probably ever will see it now.

I didn’t know that the air could change like this, not in a scientific way, though I suppose it is, but in an alien way, the world that you have known no longer exists. We’re spoilt my lot, I am spoiled, I’m one of the 46 to 64 ers, a baby boomer, a boomer, once the golden egg of modern civilization, now the scourge. So, when this hit our shores a few weeks back, we were suddenly hashtag boomer remover, that’s how you say it isn’t it? That’s not very nice, is that how we are to be consigned to history, will there be a history? 

The last twenty years, this new and wonderful century, the 21st is failing and flailing. I always knew deep down that I lived in the golden age, but I didn’t understand, I didn’t appreciate, I saw the signs coming and ignored them. 

I have premonitions you know, always had them but not always understood them. Not ones when I see the lottery numbers or anything like that, unfortunately. Sometimes they come in the form of an image, a widow getting smaller, a door slamming shut, a wave washing over me, but they are real and always right. They were right about Raymond, I used to worry so for him when he was a kid. Would he get in with the wrong crowd, would it all go tits up? 

Anyway, I ended up walking through the park and it was the same park I went to for the Olympics in 2012, feels like a lifetime ago. I could see all the people, all excited. having picnics and drinking beers and watching the big screen they’d erected for the event. All sorts of people, different cultures, different colours, different accents but all stood there jumping up and down and cheering their heads off when Mo won, it made me sad, everyone together as one. Of course, Raymond couldn’t be there, as usual. But it was a wonderful day, we were invincible and the sun shining, so it made me a bit sad, I thought, oh now, where did that all go. 

I tell you something, I am having very, very peculiar dreams at the moment, and when I wake up for a nanosecond of a nanosecond, I think everything is normal, but then I’ve had years and years of doing that, bit of an expert. I had this dream the other night, oh it was ever so strange. I was in this lovely street and it had this big river running by it. I noticed the river first, calm deep blue, water, flowing parallel to the street. Keeping the same rhythm as the land it neighbored. I hadn’t expected to see a river so close to the houses almost like one of those luxury hotels on an island somewhere in the Indian Ocean, where guests simply rolled out of their beds and into a private infinity pool.

My friend Lynnette, remember her? and I walked toward the door of our new apartment. It was a compact unit on two floors and shared an entrance wit a similar flat. As we approached the door, a man came out of the other flat and stared at us. We could tell he was angry and though neither of us knew him, we sensed he was important. I nudged Lynette and whispered, Is that Lionel Ritchie? Shh she said, and continued to the fort door, Wait, he said and pointed to a seeping dark stain on the white concrete path heading to the flats.

Someone has thrown an octopus there, he shouted, see it made a terrible mess. Do not let it happen again.

His eyes fixed on us and sheepishly we agreed that we would do anything to prevent such an occurrence. He walked away, sneaking suspicious glances at us as we entered the building. It was modern but snug, with a sunny yellow kitchenette on the second floor which looked over the river from a window behind the sink. Lynette smiled, we were happy, and I felt at home at last. The doorbell rand, we weren’t expecting anyone and raced down the stairs together eager to see who was there.

A young man stood on the step smiling broadly. He had long tangled blonde hair and was wearing a backpack exhausted from his travels.

I wanted to invite him inside, I thought he must be a friend of Lynette’s, but she said Who are, suddenly hostile.

He shrugged,

What have you got in your backpack she asked him?

Oh my God, I said, suddenly convinced that I knew. He took the backpack off and opened it slightly so we could peer inside, but before we had a chance he replied, just an octopus.

Lynnette and I looked at each other aghast we could lose our beautiful new flat if this went wrong. She snatched the pack off him and slammed the door in his face. She raced upstairs to the kitchen opened the pack and tossed the octopus out of the window and into the river below.

No, I screamed, you won’t reach the water from here.

Our eyes locked in terror as we heard the splat on the concrete below. No matter how hard we tried we had allowed another octopus to stain the front steps.

Now I wonder what that means? Probably that Lynnette would suggest something like this that she knew I’d never be able to do and let me down again. I’m not bitter, it’s just well…I get lonely. I remember when all the kids were little and used to play together and we’d joke about what they’d be when they grew up. Lynnette said her Alfie would be a famous footballer or a politician. I thought at the time, oh really? Well you wait and see what my Raymond’s going to do, he’ll make a name for himself.

Well her Alfie is an estate agent now, doing very well apparently and Lynnette loves to talk about him to me whenever she can. Not my fault Raymond was better looking as a kid, her Alfie was a pudgy little sausage.

I used to dream about Raymond all the time, not how he his now, whatever that is but when he was a little kid.

We were so close when he was a littlun, in fact one night I was dreaming, oh it was awful, I was standing on the train platform and holding his hand and we went to get on and we got separated. I felt his warm little hand break away from mine and there were loads of people there, hundreds and I couldn’t get back to him and I could hear him crying out Mummy, Mummy, don’t leave me Mummy. Then the train doors closed, and I could see him all on his own on the platform and he was crying, and I was crying then I woke up…but I could still hear him crying. Then I realized, he was crying. I was still with his dad then and he didn’t like me brining Ray into the bed but I got up and ran to his room and he was red faced and snotty and wet with tears so I picked him up and held him close and he said, Mummy, mummy, you left me off the train.

Just like that, we’d had the same dream, we were that close.

Oh well, happy birthday to me eh? Never imagined it would be like this. This thing is not going to work is it? Like everything I try and do. 

Ooh me phones ringing. No one ever calls me, who’s this then?

Hello, Gail speaking…I said. It was my Raymond, silly bugger started singing Happy Birthday. He hadn’t forgotten after all and he said he was sending me a visiting order. So as soon as we can go out properly then I will go and visit him. Will be weird, especially now that I know a little bit of it is for him. Oh well, happy birthday chick, here’s to being sixty!

The end.

Fairytale Ending

As we are live! in a moment in history, writing is one way we can respond and record events. It's essential to document if we are able, how it feels to be in the centre of this experience.  We all have  unique positions, and while our experiences share many common elements, the emotional barometer is personal. Here is a pandemic story, a human story from one of our writers.

COVID-19 Will Not Separate Them

 by Kooi Glendinning 

Siew, sitting at home, all alone, obediently abides to the current government-imposed isolation. She is listening to the tv which is spewing out instructions of how to deal with the current pandemic.
Stay at home. Save lives. Save the NHS. 10, 000 deaths in Italy, Spain is fast catching up and UK is almost reaching 2000. President Trump is still blaming China and insists on calling the COVID-19 the Chinese Virus.
Why would a world famous or is it an infamous President outwardly discriminates against another race? Did he blame his own people and other relevant race when his country and the other countries had the Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD)/ Mad Cow Disease?
What about the Ebola and the AIDS? Did he blame the African? Did he call the Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome (MERS) the Arab Disease? Did the Arab and the African people got beaten on the street for those diseases like they are assaulting the Chinese people now for Covid-19?
Some of Siew’s Chinese friends with similar old age range were told to go back to their own countries. But this is their home and they have been paying taxes for more than forty years and counting. They are still risking their lives as nurses, scientists, doctors, cleaners and other key workers for working on the front line and saving lives in the NHS and other public sectors.
Siew shakes her head in disappointment at the thought of President Trump, “How on earth does America come to have such an unrestrained politically incorrect president? Now he is on TV telling people that maybe injecting disinfectants and zapping people with radiation is the way forward to kill these Covid-19 viruses. There were reports saying some poor naive Americans actually hurt themselves doing that!”
Siew snaps on the remote control. The screen blackens. She screams at her own misfortune. Her husband, James, is in hospital fighting for his life.

They say he has not much time left and that she cannot visit him as she may get infected by him.
She is not sure how long they will keep him on the ventilator. Without that he will just stop breathing and die.
Over in Italy, being 65, is not the priority age group to be saved, as there are not enough ventilators and James’s prognosis is bad. Over here, in Britain, if situation catches up with our recently divorced European countries, that ventilator will be given to a younger and more able surviving patient.
Siew’s eyes are already sore with Covid-19 Pink Eye syndrome, with the virus eating its way into her body. Her lungs are slowly compacted and trying to breath is a painful process.
Her throat is drying up. The trickling of water somehow is not soothing it. She must force it down, chasing those nasty viruses down into her stomach, where the 37-degree Celsius heat and the high concentration of hydrochloric acid in there will decimate them forever.

She misses her James and their children are far away and are not allowed to visit directed by Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister. Two meters apart! Self-isolate! Save the NHS! Save lives! Kill the Covid-19!
She goes to her living room where a huge porcelain statute of the Goddess of Mercy (Guanyin)’s altar is. Siew reaches out into a box and pulls out a bunch of joss sticks, lighted them and blows off the flames. Smokes rise to reach the face of the beautiful statute of Quanyin. No matter where you stand in-front of her she is always smiling down at you.
Siew kneels in-front of Quanyin and prays, her hands swinging the lighted joss sticks up and down, the smokes rising. She bows her head down to the floor, “Quanyin, I feel it’s time for James and I to join you. But we need you to help us help the Americans first. Please forgive me but I must help them.”
With that she gets up and plunges the joss sticks into the urn and smiles at Quanyin. One of the joss sticks falls out of the urn and lands on Siew’s feet, the lighted end suddenly snapped and the rest glows with bright golden light. She takes it without hurting
herself. She smiles back at Quanyin and, of course, she smiles back.
Carefully and with a deliberate need, she puts the glowing joss stick into the beautifully embroidered hang bag, sat dormant and forgotten on the dresser, she daintily dusts off the London filthy air.
As if prompted by an invisible force, she reaches out into her wardrobe, and changes into her best cocktail dress. Not bad for an old sick lady. The chiffon lime green flowy dress snugly accentuates her petite body. She had compliments before about how good she looked when scrubbed up.
Pouting red lips and a pair of sparkling diamond earrings and matching necklace, given by her ailing James, will compliment her tanned complexion. Besides, he will be pleased that she appreciates his rather exotic gifts.
The fluffy fake beige mink coat, the matching brown embroidered hand bag and her long forgotten brown stilettos make her feel like a million dollar, even though her face is partially covered with a glaringly red face mask, sewn by her at the lock down and an elbow length pair of purple rubber gloves.
She flicks her long black silky hair back as she waltzes into the intensive care unit, and sneaks into James’s cubicle, when no one is looking and carefully keep her two meters social distancing to ensure not to contaminate anyone.
She waves the glowing magic joss stick at James, connected to all sort of humming and pumping machines by his bed. James looks up and smiles as the waves of the magic joss stick expel, one by one, the attached tubes from his body. The tubes are ejected like wrangling tentacles of an octopus.
He musters up all his remaining energy and sits up, as if just woken up from a bad dream, relief at seeing his beautiful wife coming towards him.
With delightful appreciation of Siew’s effort in her glorious, flowy attire, with all his might, he pulls off the remaining attachments and tubes, coughs up some mucousy expectorant and splatters some inaudible words of welcome to her approaching gorgeous wife.

He welcomes her with open arms and holds her tightly, never to leave her alone again.
She eventually pulls apart and kisses him lightly on his lips and helps him gets out of bed. Tenderly, she straps a matching red face mask, one of the two she sewn earlier on lockdown, on his happy but pale and breathless face. Gracefully, she holds his hand and leads him out of the hospital, avoiding and disregarding the stunned nurses and doctors.
“COVID-19 will not separate us,” she shouts out to everyone and anyone who cares to look and listens but ensuring to keep the safe two-meter social distancing.
She waves the glowing joss stick again and together they are lifted by some magic force and starts flying up into the sky.
Quanyin, in her glorious flowy white gown and her amazing ribbons, shawl, and sparkling jewellery over her carefully piled up flowing hair, with curls that would send any men into shivering jellies, magically flies down from above, to pull them up with her.
The panoramic view of the ghostly London slowly diminishing in size as they fly upwards.
They smile at each other and then lift their faces up to enjoy the chilly wind and then zoom higher and higher up, still tightly holding hands, until they are totally on top of the fluffy white cloud.
Like a couple of lovesick puppies, they snuggle together, her face on his shoulder and his hand in hers. Quanyin looks on proudly and circles around them, just floating gracefully, displaying her own splendour of a breath-taking iconic beauty.
After a few moments, slowly and gently, the beautiful Quanyin, leads them by their hands and flies past the statue of Liberty. They circle it for a while and then with deliberate purpose zoom down to what look like the White House.
They see an elderly Caucasian bulky man with yellow shaggy hair sleeping with two beautiful women, one on each side of him, in the president suite.
Siew looks at James and then at Quanyin. They all nod gently. Siew points the joss stick at the blonde man. He wakes up, sees Siew and her joss stick’s rays of golden light, chokes violently and splutters and coughs and dies on the spot. His two companions blissfully snoring away under splashes of his sputum and smelly expectorants.
The couple grabs each other’s hand and smile at Quanyin, who nods approvingly. She gracefully pulls them upwards and together fly up and up and disappears into the sky.

The End