Corpus of a Siam Mosquito

by Steven David Justin Sills

—What?

—Those don’t seem like reliable sources. The two mosquitoes stared at each other nihilistically. There was silence.

Chapter 7

Childlike, Jatupon had assumed that togetherness, firecrackers, celebration, and the proud moment of that manly initiation of cold beer (not that it was his first) to be the ending of negative events. The day had resurrected him the way Kazem had once pulled him out of the lake on the outskirts of the city, Kanjanaburi. He was wading then in gradually deepening waters when the sludge beneath his feet suddenly dipped and he was thrust off the precipice into a watery abyss. He was just a boy then but one who owed his life to his brother. When he was older and they had returned to Kanjanaburi on a two-hour train ride, Kazem refused to allow him in stagnant waters. This was fortunate since a few days later two people died from a protozoan infection. Kazem had saved his life in both occasions and delivered his spirit on this one. He had never deserted him. Unlike Kumpee who despised work, Kazem could have gotten a slave labor position by signing an employment contract for construction work where he would have found himself assigned to one of such places as Taipei or Abu Dhabi. A few years there would have added a solid savings that he could have used for vocational training that would have broadened his opportunities. Broadened opportunities and a bit of a savings beneath him would have provided a chance of luring a woman who wasn’t a noodle worker. Instead, while knowing escape was an option, he fulfilled his high shepherdly calling.

As he entered the basement cell that they lived in, Jatupon couldn’t remember a time more linked in fraternity than this one except for the memories of early boyhood. Boyhood was summarized in that one photograph Kazem had salvaged out of a box of pictures that were thrown out with so much from the move. It was a photograph that prompted a solid memory (imagined or real). It was of the four boys. Jatupon, three years old and fully nude, trailed behind. Kumpee led the way. Kumpee had on a cap with the visor inverted to the back of his head. The four of them were walking down a sidewalk that went along the canal. Immediately to their left and across the canal were row houses of tiny wooden cabin shacks with metal roofs that housed residents and their scavenging businesses. The four of them were going to purchase some candy.

—They are copulating?

—Yes, and he has just awakened from the brother’s penetration of him on the basement floor. The belief that the world has been resurrected in pure and gentle intentions has been thwarted. His brain waves are still discombobulated from the liquor and none of what he is presently experiencing seems real. It is though. Innocence has been disgorged like a squeezed tube of love oil in a ride more painfully and physically intimate than any intimacy he has yet experienced.

His head was spinning and he couldn’t grab himself in all of the spinning images: sounds, smells, and visions all spun randomly. Finally there was a bit of a shape and texture to his thinking and he dressed himself. He wanted to use the wave of consciousness to exit.

—My dear, pain and pleasure have become inseparable in his young mind. In this act a few minutes ago-maybe a few hours ago—there was a yearning for this violation. The abuse was aggravated by too much alcohol consumption but it wasn’t entirely unwanted. Being a creature of habit and addiction, Jatupon yearned for his brother-only his brother-since he vaguely felt that sexual experiences with two people are totally unique and the physiological and emotional feelings his brother induced could not be duplicated by any other person. The madness of wishing to be overtaken, however, was confuted by painful sodomized lances and an ejaculation of the one who did his stress workout within him. In other experiences like this one Jatuporn, as they call him, always masturbated to allow the desire to peel back like a tide but this time his highest hopes were limp like a noodle. He is opening the door. He is glancing at himself to make sure that he isn’t wearing his underwear outside of his pants. Now he is outside as insentient as a fleeing animal after it has been attacked. Here he is feeling better in the open air. He is returning.

Jatupon reentered the room. For the first time, since awakening, he noticed that Suthep had not returned. He had not come “home”-whatever that word meant. Jatupon scavenged the pockets of his brother’s pants that were wadded in the corner near Kazem’s sleeping head. In it was money and a sheet of paper. He put it all in his pockets. He got on the first bus he could and paid the ticket salesman. The idea crossed his mind that being a coin collector on a city bus was not anyone’s best choice. It would be much better to be one of the few men who jumped onto the piers or docks to tie the city boats. Such a Bangkok Metropolitan Authority would give three brief whistles so the boat driver would give a backward thrust as he tied it down for the customers to enter or depart. He could picture himself whistling once, untying the boat he was assigned to, and jumping onboard at the last possible second. The second mosquito spread out its wings and copiously fluttered them about femininely. Jatupon began to be a little conscious of himself as a man coming out of anesthesia.