Painting Murals: a novel

Clouds: they drift around like they have a purpose, like they cannot wait to go somewhere – to be something else. They change too much. One moment you had felt so lucky, sitting on a bench along Siloso Beach, thinking you were witnessing the birth of a star as you watched clouds morph into the gas and dust that would enter the spiral arm of the galaxy, eventually forming the cold dark clouds that cradle newborn stars; and the next you found yourself staring dumbfounded as you envisioned a ferry in the sky overturned by a storm, its hull bobbing with the waves, and metal frames of billboards collapsing, its parts being blown by the wind through an over-populated city. You couldn’t move. You felt like you were supposed to be one of those people on television wailing for the authorities to find a loved one or demanding a reason for the death of one. You were supposed to be keeled over, drenched in snot, instead of sporting Billabong surf-shorts, your boobs held up by a red bikini-top, idly lazing on a strip of man-made beach on the resort island of Sentosa sipping on a Carlsberg you bought illegally by flirting with the barman.

I kid; I could never, and still cannot, pull off a red bikini-top. I fear the prospect of exposing my tits to a bunch of upturned eyes, futilely baking under the rays bouncing off the ocean peppered with ship tankers and what-not, too much. The Carlsberg clutched in my right hand however – that was true. Even at sixteen I was already exhibiting signs of being an alcoholic, namely: drinking before the sun sets. Wonderful. But that’s not the point. The point is: when you have spent enough time online as I have, re-playing videos of the relatives of such disaster victims gasping as their heart plummeted to their stomach, their faces wincing in pain – the heart isn’t supposed to be drowning in intestinal fluid – and their unabashed display of grieve, you expect something to spark within you…right? But there was nothing. Not a minute burn on my aortal wall.

Go ahead, drown, die, get hit by a flying brick…see if I care.

[shall not post the rest. will probably re-work this because i'm an OC-bitch]