KJ
Online Special – Fiction
Yellow
Elephant
By O Thiam Chin
When
the wife stepped into the flat after a long day at the office
where she worked as a paralegal, she saw the yellow
elephant in the living room.The small two-room flat, located in a rapidly-aging housing estate, had been paid for in monthly
installments for the past five years, mostly out of her income
and savings; her husband refused to chip in after the second year
of
their marriage. He needed the money to pay for a new BMW 3-series,
swanky work-clothes and nights out with his colleagues. She didn’t
want to argue — they’d been having too many fights
recently –- so
she left him alone. They hadn’t talked for almost a month.
What caught her attention was the elephant’s intense color.
It was bright yellow. In fact, it was brighter and richer than
anything she had ever seen before. The yellow seemed like bright
rays of sunlight,
illuminating every corner of the small living room. Every part
of the elephant was yellow, from its big toes to long trunk to
its huge belly.
The beast didn’t notice the woman’s presence as it
went on chewing the leather upholstery of the black sofa, ripping
it into
small pieces with its powerful trunk before putting the pieces
into the pink gap of its mouth. Its movements were slow, controlled
and
purposeful. As it chewed, it carried on the work of tearing
up the sofa as though it was a defeated, fallen prey.
The wife was pained at the thought of the cost of the black leather
sofa, bought at a twenty-percent discount from an upmarket furniture
store
four months ago. Her husband had stubbornly refused to pay or even
share the cost. “What’s wrong with our old sofa? Why, we
can still sit on it without it breaking into pieces, right?” She
bit her lips and looked into his eyes. After a long-drawn silence,
her husband had no choice but to give in.
The wife dropped all the groceries; the sound of the bags hitting
the floor barely disturbing the big yellow elephant, which went on
eating.
She called out for her husband, but there was no reply. She wondered
where her husband could be, since it was already quite late and he
was usually back by dinnertime.
She manoeuvred her way carefully round the great beast whose sides almost touched
every wall in the living room, taking great care and caution to
avoid touching
or scaring it. As she edged past the beast’s tail and the pastel-blue
wall – she insisted on having this colour for the living room
and fought hard for it - she noticed that every hair on the elephant’s
skin was also yellow and glistered like tiny needles of gold, each
throwing off a powerful glow. She had to close her eyes to diffuse
the intensity in her sight.
The wife saw the note lying on the side-table beside the sofa and
picked it up.
“
You knew it was coming. I can’t help it. Bye.”
The wife studied the note and finally got the meaning. As she tore
it up in a mounting rage – ‘Can’t you get a grip
on your anger?’ her husband once said. ‘Why are you so
pissed off all the time?’ - she heard a loud plop behind
her. She turned around and saw a great pile of shit lying on the
floor.
The shit looked so big that from where she stood, she thought it
was a newborn animal, covered with a slick coat of glowing membranous
slime.
But the terrible smell reminded her otherwise. She took a step
back but kept her eyes on the beast.
She stood there staring at the yellow elephant for the longest time,
mesmerized. A loose thought floated up into her mind. She recalled
that it was damaging to the eyes to stare directly at any bright
object for a long period of time, but when she tried to pry her eyes
off the
animal, the light bounced off the walls and floor, catching her attention.
She returned her stare to the elephant.
Suddenly, as if remembering her manners towards a neglected guest,
she went into the kitchen and began to fill up the largest bowl
she could find with water from the tap. She carried it into the
living
room, placed it in front of the yellow elephant and stood back
a few feet. The elephant dropped the remnants of the sofa onto
the
floor
and sucked all the water up through its big yellow trunk. Raising
its trunk, the elephant then put the engorged trunk into its mouth.
Rivulets
of water cascaded down the edges of its mouth. Pulling the trunk
out and raising it above its head, the yellow elephant sprayed
the rest
of the water all over its back. The large drops of water falling
over the yellow expanse of the elephant’s skin resembled
droplets of liquid light, sparkling and resplendent.
The wife saw a glint of gratitude in the gentle eyes of the yellow
elephant and gathered the courage to walk up to the great beast.
Putting her hand on its side, she stroked it lightly and worked her
fingers
gently, slowly through the tough, hairy hide of the elephant, patting
it as if it were a newborn baby.
That night, the wife slept soundly on the large queen-sized bed,
right in the middle of the bed, not caring whose side of the bed
it was now
that her husband had disappeared. In her long, recurring dream, she
dreamt of the yellow elephant and its soulful eyes which contained
everything ever known to man, the height of the highest sky; the
depth of the deepest sea.
As the days went by, the yellow elephant grew even bigger, its
sides pressing tightly against the walls of the living room. Its
movements
became slow and languid, but its eyes continued to register a preternatural
self-awareness and alertness. The wife soon grew tired of the elephant’s
presence, even as she tried to comprehend the mystery of this mysterious
animal. She had to clean up the big piles of yellow shit every day,
scoping them up and putting them into double-layered trash bags. The
stench was like nothing she had ever smelled before, but she learned
to bear with it as she went on her task. Her immediate thought was:
If I don’t clean it up, the shit will fill the entire house.
She knew she could bear anything if she put her heart into it.
By the end of the first week, all the furniture and electrical
appliances in the living room had been trampled on, destroyed or
eaten by the
great beast. Its appetite continued to grow, and the wife had to
bring out the bed, table, chair, vanity, cupboard and what-nots
from the
spare bedroom to feed it. Yet the beast didn’t seem to be
satisfied with what was offered; it ate and ate until its gigantic
body continued
to expand and fill up the whole room. Soon the wife had to bring
out all the items from the master bedroom and from the storeroom,
kitchen
and toilet, to feed the yellow elephant. In no time, everything
in the house was gone.
The wife sat on the shattered ceramic-tiled floor of the living room
and stared angrily at the great big beast. Her rage simmered inside
her like the lava in a dormant volcano.
The yellow elephant returned an equally aggressive stare. Its skin
seemed to shine with a greater intensity, a sheer brilliant luminosity
that blinded any remaining shadows in the room. Then it let out a
loud shrill cry that reverberated throughout the flat. The wife covered
her ears. In her heart of hearts, she wanted to escape but the huge mass
of the yellow elephant had blocked out the front door, trapping her
like a prisoner in her own house. The beast stamped its huge legs
defiantly,
shaking the floor, causing the wife to fall to her knees.
‘I’ve had it with you. What else do you want from me, you selfish bastard? All you can think of is you, you, you. I have had enough. You can rot in hell for all I care!’ Her voice carried
through the whole flat, like a clap of thunder, and her eyes gleamed
with a
new cruelty.
She got up and went into the kitchen, her mind flooding with untypical,
violent thoughts.
The wife instinctively knew, with a primeval gut feeling as ancient
as the old blood that flowed from Eve into her, what she had to do.
Among the ruins of the kitchen, she found a few cans of pesticide,
stored at the back of the ripped-up kitchen cabinet. She emptied
the entire contents into a big metal bowl and filled it up with
water. She brought it out and placed it near the elephant’s hind legs.
She could feel its suspicious eyes on her. She stepped back and gestured
to the bowl. The beast then raised its thick trunk and tusks as it attempted to move closer to her, but
its great fleshy
flanks were jammed tight against the walls, restricting
its movements. It was stuck.
The wife stood back, shaking her head. She had had long cold wars
with her husband before, and knew the trick lie precisely in the
waiting;
the one who could bear the wait longer would come out the winner.
She was willing, more than willing, to stake everything on this;
she could
wait as long as she wanted. To give in now would be… she
refused to finish this thought.
When she grew tired, she went into the master bedroom. There, she
lay on the cold floor - the queen-size bed had been eaten up two
days ago
- and closed her eyes against her will, trying to induce sleep.
She didn’t dream that night.
In the morning, when she woke up, she had completely forgotten what
she had done the previous day. Stepping out of the bedroom, she saw
the beast, lifeless and immobile. Its eyes were closed. There were
hardened trails of yellow crust on its face, and puddles of golden
piss pooled around its body.
The wife went up and touched it. The skin continued to glisten
but the colour was dull, lackluster. Slowly, her thoughts caught
up with
her, and the gravity of her actions hit her. She began to stroke
the coarse yellow skin of the dead elephant, recalling something
someone
told her once: An elephant can always remember (if remember was
the right word to use), the burial grounds of its ancestors, no
matter
how many years had passed. In this respect, she felt herself to
be an elephant. She’d never forget the injustice she’d
suffered at the hands of her husband.
After some time had passed, she made up her mind. She went to the
kitchen, returning with a large carving knife.
The task was much tougher than she imagined, but she kept at it.
By evening, she had sawed off the trunk and four giant legs and sliced
up the great mass of the body into two. Large pools of blood, yellow
and slick like oil spills covered everything. The wife reached into
the gluey interior of the sawed-off body, groping around inside,
hoping
to find what she was looking for. Her hand finally found it. Gripping
the heart, she yanked it out with all her might, and looking at it
felt a tremendous jolt of energy, strong as the life-force itself,
surge through her.
She lifted the bloodied heart and took a big bite of it. The taste
was like nothing she had ever experienced before; her own heart leapt
in gratified joy.
Then as if invigorated by the rush of blood and flesh, she went on
to devour the whole heart, savouring each bite with increasing pleasure,
her desire transformed and renewed in strange mysterious ways. She
felt like a conqueror, a woman feared, like one of the mythical woman-warriors
in the Greek epics, striking terror in every man.
‘
To hell with you,’ she yelled aloud as the image of her missing
husband flashed through her mind. She belched with deep pleasure.
She put the numerous parts of the yellow elephant into large plastic
bags and threw them down the rubbish chute in the kitchen. When it
was finally done, the empty flat seemed to fall into a deep reverent
silence.
The very next morning, she noticed her skin began to glow yellow,
the early virgin-rays of an imminent dawn, and she smiled to herself,
saying
plaintively: “So this is what it has come to. Well, so be it.”
O
Thiam Chin's short stories have appeared in several literary anthologies
and journals, including Asia
Literary Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Best of Singapore
Erotica and Silverfish New Writing Six. His debut
collection of stories, Free-Falling
Man, was published in 2006. MPH Publishing recently
published his latest story collection, Never
Been Better.
A graduate with a degree in English Languiage and Literature from the
Singapore Institute of Management, Thiam Chin has won several awards
for his screenplay and short stories.
Copyright
held by the author
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