December 13, 2023

They All Drown
by You Lin

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.


On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, eight years after my death, I was summoned. It was a ritual I was painfully familiar with: candles flickering in the dark, wax dripping pitifully down their thick lengths, and blood. Thick, viscous blood that gleamed in the dark, illustrating the symbol of death—a pentagram scrawled with runes too ancient for anyone really, even ghosts, to decipher. I was drawn by the scent of blood: metallic and alluring and oddly powerful; did you know that blood, no matter how dark it was, glowed? I never knew that either, not before I died. I never knew anything could look so golden, millions of fireflies dancing in the swaying candlelight.
 
And so, I followed. I followed the call of pure music from the other side, warmth suffusing every atom of my existence. I was everything; I was nothing. It had been too long since I was this close to the living world. Where are you, I asked the wind? Where are you calling from? The initial plunge was always dizzying—but as the vertigo dissipated, I blinked, hovering above a darkened room with three figures huddled in a circle, whispering.
 
Him. If I had fingers, they would be tightened to the point of pain. And if I had a mouth, I imagined it as a cold, black abyss, poison leaking through my lips and the sound of hatred filling the cavernous space.
 
But I had neither. I had no hands to wrap around his greasy throat. I had no legs to kick the shit out of his balls and render him childless—not that it would matter much. He had a kid, I realized belatedly. A cooing thing of three trembling in its mother’s lap. It would be easy—too easy—to take it away from him.
 
Regardless, I had no form to strangle him, no ability to do what he did to me eight years ago. The child’s eyes flitted upwards, pupils widening imperceptibly. I stilled; they could see me sometimes—the kids. Sometimes, they could even speak to me. I never knew why; it was always the kids who saw me before I announced my presence. I stored this kernel of information at the back of my mind—if I even had a mind.
 
He tapped his fingers on the blood-stained paper impatiently. I glided closer, disgust rolling in every inch of me.
 
(He was pushing me down, down, down, parting my hair, sweat sliding off his face.)
 
Tap, tap, tap. More blood slid off his fingers: oily and glistening like obsidians and stalagmites.
 
(His breath smelled like peperoni. Spicy. It was spicy and foul and smelled of meat. I wondered if his teeth had sank into the last girl as hard, if he’d pulled a piece of her apart with his fang-like teeth and savored every bite of it.)
 
“It’s coming, honey,” he whispered to his wife. “I can feel it.”
 
(I wondered if I was tasting her as he shoved his slimy tongue down my throat, in and out. In and out.)
 
His wife rested her head on his shoulders, blissfully oblivious to the crimes he had committed. Maybe she knows. Maybe she was one of us. Maybe she loves him anyway.
 
It—he called me an it. I wanted more than anything to claw his face apart, watch him bleed, let him watch himself bleed.
 
The candle flickered. Once. Twice.
 
(My ripped skirt flapped in the wind. Once. Twice.)
 
They were not moving.
 
(I was not moving.)
 
They can—they chose not to.
 
(I can’t—I didn’t want to.)
 
I’m here, I announced, hatred spilling off me in waves. What is your question?
 
                                                                        *
 
Before
 
There were ghosts everywhere; I could feel them squeezing through the gaps in the concrete, infusing the century-old slabs of marble with a different kind of energy. I could always feel them if they ever came near me—I was different that way. No one believed me when I told them that though. No one ever wanted to. To them, I was just a girl: nerdy and weird and overly obsessed with the afterlife; to them, I was a nobody spouting nonsense with the hopes that I could become somebody if I were special enough. Not that I blamed them—I was, after all, a medical student grinding to graduate, just like everyone else was. Necromancy and spirits were but a myth to the logical students milling the university hallways. Everyone cared more about harvesting bloodless organs from cadavers than respecting the people they once were; they were too burned out and cranky to ever give a fuck about what happens after a patient flatlines. Death was death—it was the monotonous beep of a monitor and the flat plane of an asystole. You call it, dislodge the tubes from the patient, and move on to where a mount-load of paperwork stood waiting. There was no time to mourn nor to let your imagination wander to a place where silvers of consciousness gathered along with their years of love, anger, and frustration, too far away to avenge their past lives and too close to forget what happened.
 
Nobody cared. Nobody but me.
 
Sometimes, I think I resented them for it. Other times, I pity them. The spirit world was always closest to the world of the living in the seventh month of the Lunar calendar. It was when the spirits were strong enough to communicate stories of their past, stories no one cared enough to remember. It was the time they reached out, yearning, seeking for someone—anyone at all—to honor their memories. I was always the only one who accepted their outstretched hands, and in return, they offered me counsel. They were my guides: my spirits. They were the only friends I had as I struggled to be an eccentric, gay, Chinese female student in a male-dominated field.
 
The spirits of the medical school were angry; I knew they were. Almost all of them donated their bodies to science with the hopes that they could change the world, but all they got was hour after hour of prodding from rich white kids who were too privileged to get their hands dirty.

“Look at me deglove this penis,” one of them would cackle, waggling the floppy organ like a thief showing off their trophies. “Reckon I should chop it into pieces when I’m done?” People winced, shying away from the ringleader even as their eyes lit up with admiration.

“It says here this lady had syphilis when she died,” they would say when we studied the reproductive system in Human Anatomy. “Who knew ‘Lung Cancer Grandma’ had time to fuck? Must be all that morphine they gave her.” Another round of laughter roused the room.
 
Lung Cancer Grandma, as it turned out later, confided in me angrily that she had been molested by her husband while she was in bed, tossing and turning from pain. The spirits sometimes did that—they hovered around as we sank our knives into their bodies, hissing insults and hiding in the library afterwards, battered by humiliation.

Stupid fucking bastards, they liked to say while rattling the bookcases. “Stupid fucking bastards,” I echoed, head bent over my textbook when I was alone in the library. I wished I had said something in class; I was never quite brave enough to protest. I was already a target by trying like fuck to stay invisible—I didn’t need a billboard on my forehead inviting bullies to make me their next meal. 

Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe.
 
2
There was a boy at the library today—a boy who was not one of the spirits. He thumbed through yellowed volumes silently, occasionally scrunching his forehead in thought. I wondered what he was looking for; if anything, I probably knew this place better than the librarians themselves. I shuffled closer, my back pressed against the bookshelves.

Don’t go, the spirits whispered. Danger. They always said that about every white guy who passed: danger. Most of the time, I agreed, but this time, I ignored their warnings and plowed steadily forward.
 
“Hi,” he said without looking up as I sat down on the chair opposite his. 
 
“What are you looking for?” I responded. My question made him curious him enough to raise his head. Momentarily, I was staring into deep vortexes of swirling, ocean blue, so blue that it was unreal. He blinked.
 
“I was, uhh, just doing some research,” he said slowly. “Achondroplasia.”
 
“Ah,” I shrugged, puffing out a breath that lifted my bangs. “You’re in the wrong section.”
 
“I’m—what?” My blunt observation seemed to stun him. Typical. Guys like him never thought they could make a mistake until all evidence suggested otherwise. They were confident, in their elements, on their predestined paths to change the world. People like them don’t make mistakes.
 
“You. Are. In. The. Wrong. Library. Section,” I repeated loud enough that my words reverberated off the hollow wooden panels lining the walls. Where I got the courage to speak back was unbeknownst to me; somehow, it was easier standing up for myself when the person I was standing up to was a puppy-faced boy with eyes darker than a storm-tossed sea. He scrutinized my face once again, as if I could be joking with my hands on my hips and my lips a firm, straight line.
 
“Oh,” he finally exhaled. “Oh, that’s probably why.” As he walked away muttering to himself about God knows what, I let my hands drop in exasperation.
 
“Thank you for the help, Darcy?” I said to myself irritably. “You’re welcome,” I feigned a deeper voice, stalking back into the depths of the shelves where there were no assholes and where I could truly be alone in my own world without coming across as “abnormal”. For the first time of the day, my shoulders relaxed, and I let my spirits whisper in my ear as I memorized for the thirty seventh time the complete anatomy of the human brain.
 
3
The lecture halls were not haunted. Instead, they were painfully bare, gleaming white tiles paving the length of the new wing. I hugged my books to my chest, dodging what seemed like the thirteenth nasty glances--as if I did not fight tooth and nail to be here-- before colliding into a solid mass barreling towards me from the opposite direction.
 
“Oh, for fucks sake—” I snapped before slamming my mouth shut. There was that guy from the library again. Only, this time, he seemed harried and unusually flustered. I raised my eyebrows.
 
“Oh—um—I just—Darcy, right?” he stumbled over his words and I peered at him in surprise. Out of the thousands of male students whom I’ve spoken to, he was the first one—the only one, in fact—who stammered while he spoke, as if he were addressing a peer instead of an ant crushed under his shoe.
 
“That’s my name,” I replied drily. “Nice of you to know.” I have—in fact—never let my mouth run that freely before; in this place, I had to remain small. Insignificant. I had to follow the rules and let them walk all over me because I wanted a fucking medical degree, which I couldn’t get if I were murdered before I graduated.

But this unnamed stranger… he made me reckless. He made me say whatever shit came to mind without filtering. With him, I was almost… friendly. As friendly as one can get in my shoes. I turned my attention back to him. “You were saying?”
 
He ran a tired hand through the strands in his hair. “I just wanted to thank you for the day before, you know? In the library? And I was wondering if you would like to grab some coffee together; it’ll be my treat. As, you know, as thanks.”
 
I pursed my lips. More than half of the student body was well aware of my identity as a lesbian. Maybe he was the other half. Tentatively, I asked, “Are you asking me out?”
 
His face flushed scarlet. “No—um—yes. Maybe.”
 
I couldn’t help it then. A bubble of laughter burst out of me involuntarily. Him? Asking me out? Me of all people? I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed until I realized that he was still staring at me, expecting an answer. “Well,” I started. “I like you—perhaps more than the other guys here considering how they treat me, but anyway, I like you, whatever your name is. I really do.”
 
“But?”
 
“But you’re not a she,” I snorted. “I’m sorry but I don’t and will never like you romantically.”
 
If his brows could get higher, I was sure they would. For a full minute, he stood there, staring at me, slack-jawed, as if doing so would make me change my mind. I crossed my arms, internally wondering if he was homophobic or he was merely shocked by my rejection. And then, it was his turn to laugh.
 
“What the fuck?” I mumbled under my breath, turning to go. This was a waste of time. A hand shot out to pull me back, so roughly that I crashed into his chest. God, he smelled of pepperoni and cigarettes and I felt like puking. 
 
“It’s Edmund,” he said before I had a chance to speak.
 
“Okay, Edmund?” I said slowly. “Can you let me go now?”
 
“I’ll make you change your mind,” he whispered in my ear the way a lover would do. “You just wait and see.”
 
“No, you won’t,” I shoved him hard against the wall. “Fuck off.”
 
“You just wait and see,” he repeated, his wink sending nausea rolling in my gut even as I walked across the courtyard as fast as I could if only to put as much distance between us as possible.
 
4
At night, his words made their way into my dream. “You just wait and see,” a faceless spirit screamed in my ear. Wait and see. Wait.
 
I jolted from my bed, sweat dripping off my brows. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this awake before. Not even with caffeine.
 
5
While people might shy away from loneliness, I embraced it. It was part of me—a living thing beating in sync with my heart. I didn’t mind being alone; I wasn’t afraid of being alone.
 
So why do I feel like I cannot catch my breath when I curled on my bed in my dorm room alone? Why does my heart pound frightfully when I catch a glimpse of a shadow dancing across the ceiling?
 
Why am I suddenly afraid of his voice and that hardened glint in his eyes when he looked at me from across the cafeteria that day?
 
6
I had my death all planned out: nothing fancy—a simple mask connected to a tank of helium. I would graduate, become a surgeon, retire, and die in my own time, my own way. It was straightforward. It was grounding. I’d imagined it a thousand times—sweet gas flowing through my body as I greeted death in the blissful darkness…
 
Sometimes, it was so tempting I honestly considered scrapping the entire plan and just…
 
Do it.
 
You know?
 
7
He kissed me. In the hallway. He grabbed me and spun me and kissed me: not gently, not lovingly—it was messy, and it was the most disgusting thing I have ever experienced. I squirmed against the press of his cold lips, gagging as his tongue explored my mouth almost hungrily. I struggled, and kicked, and screamed, but all I got in return was a faceful of thick, grimy saliva.
 
8
“I’ll report you,” I told him, hiding the tremble in my voice and the shadows under my eyes.
 
“No, you won’t,” he said indulgently, the way a parent would address a petulant child. “Oh no, you wouldn’t, sweet Darcy.”
 
“I will,” I snarled, nails digging into my palms.

“Who would believe you if you did?” he taunted. “Who would believe poor, poor Darcy Liu?”

9 
He was right. No one believed me. They never did, not even after my death.
 
I was but another inconvenience they had to check off their list.
 
That night, I stood at the edge of the dorm’s roof and wondered if it would be better if I had just died.
 
10
He came back the day after, and the day after. Every time, he stripped me of my clothes, covered my mouth with his hairy hands and whispered poison into my ears. It hurt—it hurt like hell, but I remained silent. I was always silent, letting him do whatever he wanted to do with my body as I tried—and failed—to reach a place where nothing hurt anymore.
 
“Good night, my sweet Darcy,” he would whisper before sneaking off into the night.
 
I never responded. I couldn’t. He called me his sweet Darcy; I was not sweet. I was a monster, claws full of inky fire. I was a beast, vengeance rotting my organs from the inside out. I was a coward, a villain, a demon, a savage and I wanted to kill him. I wanted to stab, stab, stab, and stab him in the gut but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything other than let him stroke my hair and wish that the ever-watching spirits would do something—anything at all—to help me, just like I once helped them.
 
11
Entry eleven: this would probably be the last. Eleven: it was a beautiful number. An odd number. I loved the number eleven, perhaps more than I loved the number one. Tonight, he came back again smelling of blood. I wondered if he was doing this to someone else; I was sure he was. They had done a damn good job of bruising his eye.
 
They had fought back.
 
I wondered how long they would keep doing that until they realized how pointless it all was. I wondered how long it would take them to give up.
 
It took me eleven days. He raped me for eleven days, and I ended myself on the eleventh night after he had left my dorm room, sated and full of carnivorous delight.
 
*
 
After
They said my body was found in the sea; it was ridiculous—I pushed myself off the roof of my university, but no one knew that. No one would ever know that, because he found my body before everyone else and dumped it into the place whose colors bled in his eyes. I shivered, the thought of his hands all over me, stained slick with my blood. I wondered if he had the chance to rape me one last time. I wondered if he knew beforehand how easy it would be to break someone. I wondered if he kept doing what he did to me to other girls.
 
I wondered a lot of things, but I never got to know the answers to most of them. Because unlike you, I am dead. I was dead before I tumbled off the side of the roof. He killed me. He killed me and he drowned me because I wasn’t who he wanted me to be.
 
I never wanted to die; I had a plan. I was good at following my plan. I was good at what I did, and I was going to graduate. He took all of that away from me. He was why I never got to become a surgeon. He was why I stopped believing in humanity. He was what I thought about as I hurtled towards the ground, a solid weight devoid of anything else. Not who--what. It.
 
And guess what? Dying sucks. It was not at all peaceful or painless.
 
Dying. Fucking. Sucks.
 
The afterlife. Fucking. Sucks.
 
And being a spirit? That was what sucked most.
 
*
 
But back to the room where he summoned me, surrounded by the people he loved the most. Did he love his family? Perhaps he did; perhaps he was merely pretending. Either way, he did not deserve to even have a chance to pretend, and I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to drag him down with me so much that it punched a hole right through me. Yet, instead of doing all that, I did the same thing I did eight years ago—I answered his call and I let him do whatever the fuck he wanted to do with me because I was a fucking spirit who was fucking helpless and no amount of fucks was ever going to change that.
 
*
 
After I was dismissed, I ventured out into the darkened passages of his house. The stairs creaked noisily as a gale howled outside—the perfect weather for the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival—and I breathed in the stale air of his residence. Foul. This place was foul and unkempt and revolting: just like him. I let the distant beat of the kotai drum my anger into submission, all the while keeping a sharp eye out for my prey. People tend to forget that summoning the spirits had a price—there was always a price above the blood offered by the summoner. Sometimes, it came in the form of karma; other times, it was bloodshed: a sacrificed cow, burned golden papers, incense… But I wasn’t interested in any of those. No, I had something else in mind. A sacrifice. Bloodshed. I smiled as clumsy footsteps echoed closer and closer until she appeared in front of me, her front teeth missing from God knows what.
 
“Hello,” I bent down slowly. I wondered what she saw me as: a distinct shape? A hazy outline? Did I look like me while I was alive? Did she sense the sharp tang of rage radiating off me?
 
“My name is Elsie,” she said slowly, gums opening and closing in vain to form words I could barely understand.
 
“Elsie? That’s your name?” I tilted my head. “What do you see, Elsie?”
 
“I—” She scrunched her nose, waving and gesturing in a series of motions too complicated for me to understand and I sighed in frustration.
 
“Never mind,” I said, shaking my head. “Elsie, sweetie, do you wanna play?”
 
The poor, innocent child clapped her hands as her face lit up with joy. “Yes!”
 
“Well—” I leaned into her ear and spoke confidingly. “Follow me.” The traipse down the narrow corridors was slow; I suppressed the urge to snap at her to hurry, but a voice within me chanted persistently as we neared the front door. Revenge, it sang. Revenge, revenge, revenge, revenge…
 
“Mommy! Daddy!” the girl called out. “I wanna show you something!” My lips curled upwards in satisfaction. Good girl. Dimly, I heard her parents shift upstairs.
 
“Now go,” I coaxed the little girl forward. “Wait for them to come right out here and jump.”
 
“Down the bridge?” she asked hesitantly, peering at the rolling waves thundering below.
 
“Don’t worry,” I smiled. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll jump after you do, alright? And then we can both come up again and surprise your parents.”
 
“Okay,” she bobbed her head once. “Okay. What’s your name?” she asked.
 
“My name?” It had been so long. Eight years. Two thousand, nine hundred, and twenty days of not knowing who I am. “My name is Darcy,” I said slowly, the syllables foreign on my tongue. “Darcy Liu.”
 
“Nice to meet you, Darcy,” she chuckled, climbing closer to the railings. Her parents were sprinting now, mouths twisted in agony and horror. I urged her forward.
 
“Jump, Elsie!” I shouted. “Jump, before your parents catch you and bring you back to bed. You don’t want that, do you?”
 
“But Darcy—”
 
“Jump!” I surged forward, shoving my weight against her back. I weighed nothing—I knew that, but she didn’t. Propelled by fear and adrenaline, the girl hurtled down the bridge, her scream barely making its way into the cold night air before fading into the horizons.
 
From the edge of my vision, two figures skidded to a halt. There were tears. Maybe someone screamed. I didn’t know; I was being pulled down, down, and down into the familiar abyss of my home, just like poor Elsie was pulled down, down, and down by the currents.
 
She sank faster than I’d expected.
 
Part of me wondered if I too was swallowed as quickly by the raging, unforgiving sea when he pushed me down eight years ago.


                                                                        💀💀💀


You Lin is a writer whose pieces explore darker themes consistent with the fragments of her identity. Her work has been published by Archer Magazine, The Bitchin' Kitsch, A Coup of Owls, and The Minison Project's Pop-Up Pride Issue, among others. Locally, you can find her work at Malaysian Indie Fiction, Queer Southeast Asia: A Literary Journal of Transgressive Art, and NutMag Volume 7: Inheritance. When she's not writing self-deprecating poetry and fiction, you can find her questioning the purpose of her existence, overworking as usual, and losing faith in humanity.

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