These walking people subsist, remote from lives like mine.  To them, I do not exist more than a spider on their staircase does.

As an adolescent, I lost my arm in a factory, condemned to join the horrors of Shanghai.  I was not a rarity, barely a commodity, and that much less human; they replaced me the next day.  I have only a vague sense of how my life compares to those of others and it is fruitless for me to consider something more; I am Heng Tse. 

I look like my father – same tanned, papery skin; same limp, black hair; same hidden, watery eyes.  Sometimes my parents metamorphose into strangers with pallid, mannequin masks.  They shake off their human shells to avert their suffering, but despite this allergic defiance, we live tortured in the moment. 

Our nightmare has faded with recurrence so that there are no longer any ghouls to guide me from my manacled body or shadows sharp enough to provide a sense of dimension.  These elements once terrified me, but melding and blanching together, their haunting merely clouds my vision.  I am thankful for this usurping calm, but this calm has also replaced something special.  Once, a long while ago, while I still dreaded nightmares, I also knew how to dream.

*                      *                      *

            I have seen posters and magazines plastered in the alleys showing people from another land.  I know only vaguely of this place called America.  I see women and men with different faces and different hair.  They smile.  I have seen myself before, in a mirror and in the crowds.  How hard it is, to accept one’s reflection; I know I could live with my own face if only I did not share the same features with the crowds.  I have a nose like them, eyes, a mouth, a face – all too terribly like them.  Recognising the traits of a race that I share with everyone around me makes my city share my weaknesses; what I am degrades those around me and I am ashamed.  But these strange people from so far away do not look so similar.  I have not tainted them.  I wish to protect this. 

            As I watch this woman, I see a perfect crystal figure dodging shattering blows and violent winds and I cannot help but become tense.  She does not belong here – even my stare will tarnish her beauty.  I am glad I am hidden across the street, but there are others like me – many others.  I silently urge her to leave.  She continues down the street and I see a vendor give her a threatening smile.

“Real tiger!” coos another vendor beside her, stroking a large orange rug.  She turns to escape into a mall that faintly strobes at the end of the block – she gazes up as if searching for a spire to her looming cathedral – she reaches for the door to her sanctuary.  The lusty vendors and monotonous crowd have overwhelmed her and she desperately seeks the enclosure of a building; inside, she can watch the foreign world pass around her – inside, she can rationalise that the suffocating newness comes from the effects of bad lighting or stuffy ventilation. 

She has taken a panicky breath and is about to exhale as she pushes on the door when the vendor with his tiger leaps out of the crowd.  Suddenly and aggressively, the man or the tiger pounces on her – at first I am not sure which; I see the ginger rug fall to the ground and I see that it is the man.  He twists her arm behind her and pulls her back from the building.  I see her tense and collapse at the same time.  All at once he has covered her face and is forcing her away from the crowd.

I have one arm.  I have two badly bruised legs.  I have no shoes.  I have no strength.  I have no chance.  I see her strain to scream and I reach out and cry.  The couple walking in front of me jumps back in disgust and hurries past.

“Stop!” I cry.  My heart swells into my ribs and they bend inwards, constricting my lungs.  My skin feels thin and covered with sweat.  The man glances back and runs into the alley, hauling the girl behind him.  I turn the corner behind them and he is standing there, rug still clasped in one hand, another claw pinning her to a wall.

“Let her go,” I plead.  “Let go.”  The man straightens his back languidly and the girl whimpers.  He laughs.  He laughs and he spits at me.  I can feel my legs weakening.  I feel faint and I hunch over, wheezing.  I am just a fly crawling in the alleyway.  He reaches into her pockets savagely and tears her bag out of her hands.  I cannot let him get away.

“Stop!” I shout, but I sound like I am crying.  He unpins her and she slides to the ground, shaking.  She sounds like a little bird.  He runs down the alley.  He is gone.  I feel sick and weak and anger is throbbing through my muscles.  The girl is crying.  She is lost.  She has no money.  For once I am truly ashamed of my weakness.  It is not a charade that my knees buckle from underneath me and I sprawl across the ground in front of her.

Horrified, the fragile girl clasps her knees tighter to her chest and starts to cry.  It is foreign to her to see such pervasive tragedy ignored.  It is horrifying to her to see me when no one else can.  She has just been attacked but all she can think is that, at home, the man running after her villain would have saved her.  I have only run across the street, but I have run out of my life.  I have run out of my life just as she has run out of hers – a harsh, forced, unwanted and unwarranted departure.  Both foreigners in this ally, I feel us cry together until I realise that this is my home.  I must feel responsibility – I must feel guilt.

The woman stands up.  She walks over to me unsteadily and she kneels beside me.  I struggle to sit until we are facing each other.  I do not know what she says but I see it in her eyes.  She thanks me.  She thanks me and tears pour down her face because she has reached out to me; she has touched something tender and broken caked in dusty, cracked, desert clay and its potent vulnerability astounds her.  I am ignored because I am a monster and no one can sleep with a monster’s face seared into his mind; all this world wants to do is sleep. 

I cannot let her cry for me and I do not dare stop her.  She is telling me to come inside with her.  I see her point at the mall; she pulls at my arm gently.  She wipes the tears off her face.  She knows she is safe.  She knows civilisation is just five steps behind us – that the loss of her money is trivial.  She knows where she is and she knows how to escape.  She thinks she can take me with her.  I gaze into my lap because I cannot look into her perfect, clear eyes.  I know these spheres were not meant to come together like this.  I know I can do nothing, but she thinks she can do something.  She tugs at my arm.  I turn my head away.  I will stay here.

She is pleading with me and she will not leave.  I tell her to go but she cannot understand.  At last she lets go of my arm.  I see her shadow stir beside me.  I still cannot look at her face.  She has stopped crying; she has stopped begging.  All is quiet but she is still there.  I turn my head to face her again and I see her arms behind her neck, unfastening her necklace.  She crumples it into one hand and unfastens the matching bracelet from around her wrist.  She takes the hand that I have let fall loosely to my side and opens my palm.  She looks into my eyes and she presses the jewellery into my hand.  She has earrings too and I cannot help but glance at them.  It is a greedy, primal, innocent instinct.  She notices and she smoothes back her hair and takes them out one at a time.  I hold my hand open again and she places them on top of the chains.  She lets her hand stay there for a moment and she says something beautiful but I cannot understand.  She stands up and her shadow passes over me.  I watch her leave and she does not look back.