CIII | Minority
❦
I finally decide
to submit
a blank vote
because
this is ridiculous.
But when I reach the cashier
and am about to insert
my voting slip
into the donation box,
the cashier lady
puts her hand over it.
‘Sorry, sir.
‘You can’t vote.’
‘Hah?’ is the only thing I end up saying.
‘You’re Chinese,
‘you’re straight,
‘you’re pro-life,
‘you’re christian.
‘You’re part of the majority
‘so you don’t get to vote.’
I stare at her.
‘Then, who get to vote?’
She smiles.
It’s clearly a smile
she’s practised
many times to get it perfect.
‘Only the minority, sir.’
A Malay man behind me
tells me to hurry up,
don’t hold up the queue leh.
So I have no choice
but to step aside
and let the rest vote first.
Does this mean
I’m stuck here
in this supermarket
forever?
Whaaaaaaat…
Despite being allowed to leave,
many who have
already voted
chose to stay back,
gathering around the man
they voted for,
talking to those
who voted for
the same man.
It’s surprisingly
the uniformed man
who’s popular at first.
The other customers
notice this
and begin to whisper
about the ‘right thing’
and ‘future generations’
before placing
their votes.
In the end,
unsurprisingly,
the red-haired man won.
The majority,
even though they were not
allowed to vote,
now voice their thoughts
openly,
which is of course,
the majority opinion
of the minority
—the red-haired man is the policeman.
The receipts,
having fulfilled their purpose,
are dumped in a trash bag
and the crowd begins to
disperse.
The ‘typical Sunday afternoon’
resumes
as though
none of that absurdity
just happened.
I’m about to leave too,
but I notice
the two men
arguing with each other.
Their voices are raised,
they’re still angry,
even though both of them
agreed
to this arrangement.
The red-haired man
reaches into his back pocket
once more,
points the gun
at the uniformed man
and shoots him
in the mouth.
For the second time
in my life,
I see brains
splatter
everywhere.
He falls
like a mannequin,
and from where I stand,
I watch light
fade from his eyes
like a birthday candle
blown out
by the wind.
This time,
there’s no police.
There’s no doctor.
The pool of blood
just gets
bigger and bigger.
Everyone walks past the corpse
like it’s a puddle someone made
that the staff haven’t cleaned up yet.
The red-haired man
vanishes into the crowd.
‘Stop him!’ I yell
but the cashiers
nearest to him
let him pass
with a nod of their heads.
I storm up to them
to complain
about this.
One of them hisses,
‘Shut up!’
and the other,
‘Don’t make a fuss
‘just because
‘we didn’t let you vote.’
When I finally reach home,
the cat demands its hotpot.
But my
hands
are empty.
‘Go buy it yourself,’ I tell Mr. Ahmad,
flopping down on my bed,
staring at the ceiling.
Something happened?
It sits beside me.
I sit up.
‘You had me go there
‘not for hotpot
‘but because of this,’ I accuse.
The cat curls its tail
over its paws.
What did you learn?
I sigh.
‘The minority is important.’
The cat yawns.
Wrong, try again.
I close my eyes.
But that just makes
the gunshot louder,
the blood splatter
more vivid.
‘Democracy is flawed.’
Mr. Ahmad steps on my knee.
Wrong, its voice is
irritated, snarling.
I push the cat away.
‘I don’t know!
‘How would I know
‘what’s inside
‘your cat-brain?’
With an offended sniff,
the cat curls up into a ball,
and closes its eyes.
I’m left
to think
for the entire day
about what
I should have
learnt.
❦
