Chapter 1 : Dry coffee

The coffee in Seramban tasted like charcoal with sugar, i drank and smiled the widest smile and was in that smile — both dark and wide, teeth stained with coffee, heart entertained with self-deprecating humor — that i complained about the beef noodle that tasted like the meat of an old dragon. Not that i’ve ever had eaten dragon meat before, but as i satisfied the needs of ridiculous self-humour, alone i thought, if dragon meat were to be cooked in a soup, it would have tasted nicer if it were young.

And if they were selling dragon meat instead of the beef noodle, i would have stayed in Seremban and saved an evil stepmother from her dumb princess.

And i would have grown so old, older than my dreams, and told innocent children the story of how i had become whom i was.

But whom i was, in the journey to Melaka, was a cursed boy, in the leather suit of a guy, who were in love with too many wrong girls.

I grabbed your hand, in the night when there were music and lights, and we danced for a short while before you had become whom you were supposed to; a mortal dream.

We arrived in Melaka, but the hotels were haunted said the pamphlets, and i didn’t bring my magic wand told myself, and a good friend of everyone picked a hotel that had had flowers in the staircase. Dried flowers in the staircase, and a dry heart that was longing for an evil stepmother to sleep with for a confusing night in Melaka.