(10) Lucy Zhang: Hope
Before riding the Ferris wheel, the child waits for Mother to return from the restroom. The sky darkens and people are leaving in groups of two or more–a sister holding a stick of apple-flavored cotton candy, a brother blowing on a pinwheel, and a parent holding the red balloon. Mother doesn’t return and the child winds up in foster care with a new brother and sister who steal ice cream from the fridge when New Mother isn’t watching. The child excels in school, gets accepted on a full scholarship to fancy boarding school, never sees the new family again aside from the occasional email confirmation that they’ve received their monthly deposit generated from the scholarship stipend. The exceptionally bright child realizes scholarship money can only get one so far and summer is the season of displacement–when dorms close and any square of pavement free of gum suffices as bed. The child grows into an unexceptional adult who washes dishes in the back of a pub and occasionally looks out the window to count the number of pedestrians.
Before riding the Ferris wheel, the child watches motorcycles zoom past mammoth delivery trucks on the highway and imagines the wind pushing against the motorcyclist’s body like they alone withstand the raw force of nature.
Before commencing mass destruction, the terrorist tugs a helmet over greasy, unwashed hair and rolls on the throttle, motorcycle and person a faint blur to the lone couple walking alongside the river, accelerating and accelerating and accelerating without a care in the world for the speed limit, maybe yesterday but not today–today, unyielding against the wind chill, back wheel propelling it all forward until forward ends at the Ferris wheel, empty but running, spokes flashing indigo, red and green, beckoning the terrorist into a passenger car held upright by electric motors and gravity and as the wheel makes its way around, pausing at the top with a view of all the illuminated skyscrapers and hotels and banks and apartment complexes–flickering, not all at once and not rapidly, but if you look long enough they’ll turn on and off in staggered intervals, like fireflies plugged into outlets powered by stars that once were but no more.
Before commencing mass destruction, the terrorist thinks about the children sleeping in their bedrooms with their night lights still on, about the children sleeping in an alley between a Seven-Eleven and brothel decorated by vibrant argon gas signs, fantasizing about next meals and a steady supply of shampoo. The children without parents to teach you that boring SUVs drive safer and faster than motorcycles before someone gets hit. So the terrorist tries to get as close to the sky as possible, not to release toxic gas or signal a suicide plane or jump from fatal heights, but to imagine a world in darkness.
Lucy Zhang is a writer, software engineer, and anime fan. Her work has appeared in Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. She can be found at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen