My Book Bitter is currently selling at Pesta Buku Selangor that is taking place in Shah Alam Convention Centre. Bitter features 13 stories from me and I am highlighting few snippets from my short stories. Enjoy.
1) All About My Mother
By Bissme S
“You are too beautiful to belong to one man.
You should become a prostitute.”
The first time I heard those words, I was only thirteen.I was having a dinner with my parents in a restaurant. A tall man in a blue jacket sat at the table next to us.The tall man in the blue jacket had been staring at my mother from the moment we entered the restaurant. When we finished our dinner, the tall man in the blue jacket stood up and approached our table. Looking at my mother, he said: “You are too beautiful to belong to one man. You should become a prostitute.”
There was complete silence at our table. None of us knew what to say to him. We just stared at him.The man in the blue jacket had big smile on his face.
Slowly, he turned around and walked out of the restaurant, laughing loudly.
After the strange incident in the restaurant, our lives were never the same again. My mother stopped being a wife. My mother stopped being a mother. My mother abandoned us. My mother became a prostitute.
****
“Nobody loves her the way I love her. My love will bring her back,” my father said.
My father worshiped the ground that my mother walked on. My father said: “She was my first love and I was her first love. Nobody forgets their first love. Your mother will come home. She will become a better mother to you and a better wife to me.”
My father became a religious man. Every day, he begged the son of God to bring back the woman he loves into his life again. In the past,my father believed all religions was manmade.
“Jesus is Santa Claus for adults,” he used to say.
He loved making fun of God, Jesus and religious people in general.
Not anymore. He said: “God has been kind to me. God blessed my life with so much happiness and love. But I was ungrateful. I abandoned
God. I made jokes out of him. And God punished me. God made my wife abandon me. God wanted me to feel the pain that God felt when I abandoned Him.But now I am repenting my sins. One day, God will forgive me. God will make your mother stand in front of our doorstep with her two suitcases, begging for forgiveness.I will forgive her the same way God had forgiven me. We will be one happy family again.”
My father has no doubt that God will give him a happy ending. As for me, I am totally convinced that God is obsessed with sad endings... ( to know more a grab a copy of Bitter)
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2) The Woman I Love
By Bissme S
“Why did you kill her?” I asked.
“Because I want our love story to have a happy ending,” Malena
answered.
Slowly, Malena walked towards me and kissed me passionately.
Malena unbuttoned my shirt and kissed my chest. Malena unbuckled my belt and put her hands into my pants. I melted. Soon, we were on the floor fucking each other’s brains out, in front of a dead body.
Exhausted, I slept off on the floor where we had made love. When I woke up the next morning, the body was missing. Malena entered the room with two coffee mugs in her hands.
Placing one of the mugs in my hand, Malena said:”Drink up your coffee before it becomes cold.”
“What happened to....” but before I could finish my sentence,
Malena answered: “I have taken care of everything while you were sleeping. All you need to do is to make a police report.”
Like Malena had instructed, I went to the police station. I told
them that my wife was missing and I could not find her anywhere.
*****
A few days later, a letter arrived for me. It was from my wife. She no longer loves me...Our marriage was making her miserable…She felt like a bird in a cage that was crying for freedom…She had found a man who brought joy into her miserable life…She wants to spend the rest of her life in his arms.
My wife wrote: “Forget that I existed in your life. Forget that our marriage existed. When I married you, I really believed you will be the first and last man that I loved. Perhaps we are not meant to love one person for the rest of our lives.”
I showed the letter to the police. I showed it to my friends and to her friends. To my relatives and to hers as well.
“My wife is not missing,” I said.
“She had abandoned me.”
They believed the lie that was written in the letter. My wife did
not write a single word in the letter. It was Malena who composed the letter. ( To know more about the story Grab a copy of Bitter)
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3) Bitter
By Bissme S
The first time I saw him was at the cafe that my parents run. It
was raining cats and dogs. A photographer from a big city, he was cold, hungry and looking for some warm food to eat. He told us he wanted to shoot our small beautiful village. He wanted to featurethese photos in some travel magazine.
“Can I find a hotel here?” he asked.
There was no hotel in our village. Out of kindness, my parents
offered our guestroom to the stranger. But my parents soon learned a bitter lesson that kindness is not always rewarded with kindness.
****
Four days later, the stranger disappeared. But he did not leave
our house empty-handed. The stranger abducted me. My mother screamed when she learned that I was missing. The doctor had to give her a sedative to calm her down. My mother spent her days in bed, feeling dizzy and depressed. My father had a high hopes my tragedy would have a happy ending – that I would be found and he would soon be hugging me.
But my father had forgotten that sometimes God loves sad endings.
My kidnapper was nowhere to be found and I was no longer
breathing. The police found my body, brutally raped and badly
burned.
****
I was only 13 when my life ended tragically. I have become a
ghost, wandering in the house that I grew up in and hanging around my parents who love me with all their heart.
My parents cannot see me. My parents cannot hear me. But I
can see their agony. I can hear their cries of misery. I can feel their unspoken sadness.
“It is a norm for a child to bury his parents,” my mother said.
“But when the situation is reversed – when parents have to burytheir child – the pain can be unbearable.”
My mother had lost faith in God. She stopped going to church.
Our regular priest, Father Danny Fratine, visited our home. He
wanted to convince my mother to return to the church.
“I cannot pray to a God who had taken away my only child,” my mother shouted.
“There is no place for God in my heart any more. I wish God
burns in hell.”
My mother took the broom and literarily chased away Father
Danny Fratine from our house.
“God is my enemy,” my mother shouted.
“If you love God, then you are my enemy, too. And my enemies
are not welcome in my house. ”
My mother had become a bitter woman who constantly cursed
God and anyone who loved God.
*****
My father was in far worse condition than my mother.
“The police had made a mistake” my father said.
“The dead body they found is not my daughter’s. They just want to close the case as soon as possible. They don’t care about justice.
“I have done my research. Most paedophiles are not killers. He
raped my daughter and most probably, he would have sold her to some brothel. He is not heartless to kill my sweet Malena.”
One morning, my mother and I could not find my father anywhere in the house. There was a letter from him waiting for my mother on our dining table. My father had gone to the big city to find me, the daughter he loved and adored.
“I will only come back after I find our daughter,” my father wrote.... ( to know more grab a copy of Bitter)
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