Deborah Wong’s poems and stories have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Banana Writers, Inwood Indiana Press, Mad Swirl, Crack The Spine, Streetcake Magazine, The Stray Branch, East Jasmine Review, Eksentrika and elsewhere. She’s the contributor at Thiscene, and reviews poetry submissions at Eastlit. Tweet her at @PetiteDeborah.
Journey to Hell’s Gate
Darren hoped to be awarded as the month’s most imperturbable employee. Hours before the sun arises, he was on his fourth double-shot Americano. His vision began to see each alphabet giving birth to splotches of exuberant vapour, consuming the computer screen like bite-sized carrots and zucchinis. At the adjacent office block, Amy Nightingale was typing resiliently on the computer keyboard. Born with an extra left thumb, she inherited her estranged mother’s stenography skill and fast-learning talent, typing in the probabilities of the country’s fertility and mortality rates in a chart sheet and then transferring them into PowerPoint for tomorrow’s regional presentation at the headquarters. Darren was alerted by the sound of an in-coming mail. Amy was enquiring the cocoa butter serum and a bottle of wild ginseng capsules. Before he finished reading her first order, he received her second one, explaining her skin type. “This woman should be imprisoned for narcissism,” he smirked and started to imagine her beauty, if she might possess any. “Ever heard of Hell’s Gate? It’s baptized and rejuvenated souls from all walks of life. Why are you always on night shift? How long you could stop breathing?” Darren’s computer screen was avalanched by online travel offers. Little did he was bothered by her long and winding questions. He left the desk fixing a cup of Long Black at the commercial espresso machine rented by his lady-boss this morning. Rumours had it that the earlier steamer-locomotive machine got kaput because somebody had operated it without reading the instruction properly, while some said the lady-boss used the machine as the bedding tool to release her stress with another Hollywood-like male co-worker. Clearly, Darren had used the new machine without her permission. It was expensive to own one and he’s always on midnight shift for the passed few months. After he’d re-arranged the lady-boss’s Darjeeling and English breakfast tea bags into airtight cookie jars, he shoved a middle finger at the surveillance camera. He knew for sure that she’d be watching closely his every move from home. Along the corridor, only the centralized soft melodies were trailing, as the backdrop of the office to de-stress the midnight shift employees. The air-ventilator was in a good condition, the new contracted cleaner had cleaned it last night. His outdated cell phone rang several times as if the next world could hear, but he ignored and rubbed the back of his neck ‘til it turned sore. When he was preparing to call it a night, Amy's question and her luscious body metrics made presence on his computer screen. “The Hell’s Gate is at Turkmenistan. Do you know where that is?”
To View more from this author pick up a copy of The Spring Summer 2018 issue of The Stray Branch.