Caught in Possession

Miss Me

Warning: Threat to life of main characters, major injury, firearms, psychological trauma.

Please pay close attention to time switches!!

*The name Madee means 'Good beginning', spelt as Maddie here.

~~

"What was the joke, Dada?", the little girl sucked her thumb, nestling sleepily into the cradling warmth of her father's arms.

"Hmm? What joke is that, P'Maddie?", affectionate pinches to her round, rosy cheeks.

"Pai said you told a bad man a joke and it made him disappear"

"Did she now?" - Gulf's eyes narrowing to flicker disapprovingly at the elder girl, cross-legged on the opposite bed and seemingly enthralled by whatever high school social drama was unfolding on her phone that evening. "Well sometimes your sister needs to remember that she may be a big, grown up fourteen year old, but you're still only four, angel"

"But I'm brave and strong like Pai and Dada and-"

"-Of course you are little one. Nong isn't scared of anything at all...and that's very, very special. Dada wants you to always be happy and free like this. So let's stay away from Paithoon's ghost stories, na?"

And he placed a soft kiss against her forehead as he lifted her into the cabin bed, unicorn patterned fleece blanket tucked snugly beneath her chin, to cast his littlest daughter away on a happily meandering boat, twinkly-skied journey to the night garden of slumber.

"She'll find out one day you know?" - the young teenager's voice caught Gulf as he stooped beneath the low doorframe, mid-retreat from the room.

He paused, twisting back over a shoulder until the silhouette of his profile framed against the brighter backdrop of the corridor beyond, and in a hushed tone...

"Does she, Pai? All that happened long before Maddie. Maybe we never had the chance to think that the world was full of good people. Doesn't she deserve that though? Wasn't it the reason we chose her name as we did, before the adoption ceremony? 'Good beginning', that's what we promised"

"Perhaps, Da. But isn't it better that she knows shadows exist, and that her family's love burns so brightly they can't hurt us any more? Isn't that the real truth of the world?"

Gulf turning fully to meet Pai's eyes directly - fleeting sorrow between them, melting away to a deepest trust and understanding.

"I love you, big Kitty"

"Love you too"

//

"The truth of the world" - Paithoon's words rebounded about Gulf's mind with the whirring and spinning of the washing machine drum. Hands scouring absent mindedly at a dinner pan as he caught sight of his own reflection in the window above the kitchen sink. He couldn't see his eyes - only the glistening of tears within darkening depths. And then, as pale ash drifted across on a breeze from a Ton Pao neighbour's bonfire, the flakes became snowflakes, and he was slipping and tumbling headfirst back to that place that ached again.

A place some eight years earlier, where, with the clock's tick-tocks, November rain had frozen into sleet and then snow as afternoon light faded dolefully to evening. Where Gulf was held by ropes and gaffer tape as faceless minion mercenaries swarmed around him, and where his faen, his Mew, lay wounded on the floor.

And it was that moment - that moment again. The seconds in which he had silently promised the elder man, winks shared, that he would swim against the ferocious current for them both.