F R A C T U R E D

C H E R Y L H U

Chapter 1

While I was still living in the so-called "human world," I was a clerk at a high-end waterproof watch store, responsible for running errands, customer service, and being reprimanded. I don't quite remember much about my life after that, it was something like working on a watch assembly line: eight hours a day, a base salary, and two hours of overtime. Until your fingertips were stained with the rusty smell of every object you touched, you sighed reassuredly : you wouldn't be sleeping on the streets tonight.

I didn't really mind, nor did I complain bitterly or sadly about the unfairness of fate or the hardship of life. No angry outbursts, no self-pitying complaints about fate's cruel hand or life's harsh realities. After all, it was just life. Ten hours of a twenty-four-hour day—I would align the watch hands, then according to instructions, put on the crystal covers of those high-end waterproof watches, finally placing them on the conveyor belt heading towards the next worker, just like me.

I listened to the relentless hum of the machinery, waiting for the next watch hand to be aligned, the next high-end waterproof watch needing its cover, and the next identical roar of the machine. I listened to the relentless hum of the machinery, waiting for the next watch hand to be aligned, the next high-end waterproof watch needing its cover, and the next identical roar of the machine.

Once, by chance, a cat was found dead near the factory compressor, lying in white foam. A 50-meter radius reeked of something hellish; the death didn't look like it had been crushed. Someone heard its agonizing scream, its convulsions, its twitching, spasmodic hind legs-- its tongue hanging out, and its broken front leg. Our shift was delayed for about an hour while they cleaned up that ominous place. The workers were gathered in the cafeteria next to the underground plaza: it was crowded outside, and equally crowded inside. There are lots of them, at least that's how it felt to me, because lunch was distributed in batches, and this was the first time that all the factory workers were presented before me so directly. Was it the sheer density of the crowd, everyone gasping for oxygen, or simply the terrifying visual—I felt a tightness in my chest, the air seemed to pass through my nose and mouth, but dispersed just before reaching my lungs, which were sticky and wet with rust and oil. This dispersed oxygen might have nourished other organs, but it only made the inside of my head feel like it had been pricked and torn open by sharp needles.Around 10 o'clock, after I finished my meal and sat down, I saw the woman to whom the roaring conveyor belt led. I don't think I'd ever seen her before… She looked young, but her face was like stagnant water, drooping downwards. This might be an exaggeration because her face wasn't sagging, but there was an indescribable strangeness about her. I had never seen anyone like her; it was as if the outer layer of flesh on her cheeks was separating from the inside, the surface of her skin light and airy, as if about to melt into a pool of spring water. She was very pale, with the most luscious lips I had ever seen. Her quietness was a kind of peaceful strength. She didn't seem to require company, and I let my eyes drift away

. ... ...

But I was curious, sincerely. It was the most primal impulse; the most unrestrained impulse. That made me look up again.There was no expected eye contact; she was still, eating quietly. Suddenly, A man had sat down next to her at some point…A man, whose gentle nature was at odds with his unexpected intrusion into my silent observation, sat down beside her. Her quietude didn't waver, but the ease with which he seemed to fit into her space—Their shadows intertwined, a grotesque embrace painted on the wall. The unspoken exchange between them—a silent choreography of power—sent a shiver of pure, visceral alienation down my spine. It wasn't what they said, but what they didn't say that chilled me to the bone; a stark sense of being utterly outside their private world, a world I could only observe from a distance.

Involuntarily, irresistibly, such a completely unfamiliar, inwardly extending individual is the most intoxicating, the most exquisitely fragrant, obsidian tunnel— a dark, elicious chasm beckoning every single person who still wants to discover the pleasures of humanity.

I was utterly captivated by this remarkable individual, my head throbbing with the intensity of my fascination. My gaze was fixed her them, unwilling to look away. The next day at work, I looked for her, but she wasn't there. Days turned into weeks, and still, I didn't see her.

Morning,' chirped Janice, her voice unusually bright, almost too cheerful. 'Michaela's not in today, is she? It's been a while.' Her words felt like a subtle accusation.

Michaela... Michaela... The name echoed in my mind, will be the most thrilling, intoxicating secret of mine.

Were you even listening to me?" Janice, my coworker, was trying to rouse me.

"I am, very well…," I mumbled, the words slurring slightly.

The assembly line hummed its monotonous tune, and the smell of grease and metal filled the air. Janice’s concerned frown was a sharp contrast to the dull ache in my head. Her words, though, cut through the fog of fatigue.

"Emma, you haven't been yourself since… well I can’t read your mind. But, you're barely eating, you're skipping breaks, and you look like you haven't slept in days. You look, exhausted. Tell me, what's going on?"

The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. I wanted to tell her everything – about the stolen glances across the factory floor, the electric touch of Michaela's hand brushing mine during a shift change, the chilling satisfaction of finally silencing that competition. But the words wouldn't come. Not yet.

Instead, I forced a weak smile, "I'm fine, Janice. Just stressed. Work's been… intense."

She knew better. We’d shared too many hurried lunches in the break room, and too many whispered complaints about the foreman, for her to buy this performance.

"Emma," she said softly, her voice losing its forced cheerfulness, "you need help." The word hung in the air, a stark contrast to the carefully constructed lies—or was it even a lie? Perhaps not—lies.

My ten-year-old self, fractured by him, built my judgment on unreliable memories.I knew I must have done something, but the details, the certainty... it all eluded me. The façade I’d been weaving for weeks felt less like a deliberate deception.

Help. The irony was almost unbearable. I needed help, yes, but not the kind she meant. I needed help burying my secret, burying the evidence, burying the guilt that gnawed at me, a constant, relentless ache. I needed help keeping my secret safe, the secret that made the thrill of Michaela's disappearance almost bearable. The secret that made me feel, for the first time, truly, terrifyingly, powerful. And that secret, I knew, I would never share. Not yet. Not ever.

The assembly line continued its relentless churn, the watches ticking away, oblivious to the unspoken anxieties that gnawed at me. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, deeply, terribly wrong.

The story inevitably headed towards collapse.

I see it coming.

Chapter 2

From the tender age of seven, I've felt different. My dreams are far more “lucid”, or perspicuous than the reality I received.

Tonight, I hope to dream of birds. Mother said it's a sign of good fortune. However, unfortunately, fortune had not done me good :

I feel the wind, a rasping whisper across the endless dunes, carrying the scent of salt and something else… something acrid, metallic, clinging to the back of my throat. The Sahara stretched before me, an ocean of sand and shadows, its heart—or perhaps its soul—a nameless way station clinging precariously to the edge of oblivion. A young girl sits motionless, her eyes vacant. The desert itself seems to hold its breath around her; Her mother, I learn later, died of measles on their journey, leaving her as silent as the desert itself. Here, in what purports to be the heart of the Sahara— though whether it truly is the heart of a desert, or even a desert at all, remains undefined, unexamined—the girl remains silent.

Beside her, a man, his face etched with the harsh lines of sun and sorrow, remained equally taciturn, initially leading me to believe they are devout father and daughter, pilgrims seeking truth in this vast emptiness. But the illusion crumbles upon closer inspection. No blood tie could possibly exist between these two faces, so utterly still, so devoid of warmth; their coldness is sufficient to wither and corrupt an entire family tree, leaving behind only the stench of decay

Further inside, twin sisters—or were they one soul fractured in two?—existed in a state of uneasy proximity.

One, lean and angular, lay gazing at the cosmic sky. The other, her features sharper, busied herself with a broken waterskin, her movements taut, almost feral. Her fingers were crisscrossed with knife scars; clearly a doer

"You lost? " Her voice made the flaky, greyish-green paint on the transit station's sand and stone walls crumble and shake.

"No," I managed, my voice sounding thin and reedy in the vast silence. "Just passing through."

"Come in," she said, her eyes flicking to the man, then back to me. The corners of her mouth tightened almost imperceptibly; a flicker of something—Irritation?—crossed her face before it smoothed into a practiced mask of politeness.

Oh, good grief.

Her words held an irresistible magnetism; I entered, willingly drawn in.

I remained virtually motionless, observing these intriguing people. The prolonged sitting induced a long-absent numbness—a drunken, magnifying numbness… I should get up and move around.

Chapter 3

I wandered around the transit station, gazing out at the endless sea of sand and salt. The smell, something like hydrogen sulfide, had been pungent in my nostrils for this entire encounter. That wasn't even the most irritating part.

Far more irritating was my own will's inexplicable craving for this very smell of the devil. I knew better than anyone: this was the place I longed for, the place the Gypsy woman had described that midnight, her unbound hair framing her face as she recounted her adventures on this sea to my countrymen: here, all the sunlight that had fled other lands—all the sunlight seeking escape—had found its final refuge. This sunlight nourished the Egyptian date palms, the oleanders, the date palms, and the thyme; it also nourished that unexpected heart, so much so that on that afternoon when her story reached my ears, a chamber in my heart was left empty, a heart left behind in the Sahara, forgotten and unclaimed. I must retrieve it to soothe the growing itch within my soul.

Of the five of us here, including myself, not one would consider this time-buried place an obstacle; it is an ocean. The Sahel, the word for the transitional zone between the Sahara Desert and the savanna grasslands, comes from the Arabic word sāhil, meaning--- shores. Filled with waves of salt, stretching for miles in every direction, a navigable sea. To explore even a sliver of this lost liminal space is a delicacy I intensely crave, transforming me into a glutton for the unknown.

This so-called transit station is, broadly speaking, dilapidated, but my gaze ignores this, fixated on a low bookshelf against the wall in the bedroom beyond the entryway, past the bathroom on the left and the small living room on the right.

Beside the bookshelf stands a withered sapling, equally short, its branches entwined with the shelves as if striving for symbiosis, threatening to topple a stack of papers that appear to be letters—no, a travel journal and a dozen kitchen accounts. The temporary owner of this bookcase—one of the two sisters—left early this morning. I can tell from the lingering warmth of the bed: the bed frame pieced together from desolate ancient wood from the heart of the desert, is seasoned with oil stains and salty sweat, then baked by the scorching heat. The bedding shares the same essence as the bed frame, only softer, like a woman's hair brushed by the sea breeze. The bedding now holds only the residual warmth of the sun. She must have left some time ago.

Remarkably, beside the bed, sits a goldfish in a glass tank. Crimson doesn't do it justice; it's too ordinary, its scales as unremarkable and irregular as any goldfish I've ever seen. Its eyes, swollen and whitish, like tumors, only know sleep, insomnia, and the impact of the glass. I peered into the tank. After teasing it with a dry twig, it spun once, like a piece of decaying wood in a rushing current, and I realized it was, quite dead. No one harmed it; it simply, faded away, but because countless similar lives exist, it achieves, on another level, a strange and enduring immortality. Its eyes, swollen and whitish, like tumors, only know sleep, insomnia, and crashing into the glass.he goldfish's milky eyes brought on a perpetual, unhealable headache, a harbinger of all things ill to come.The sun dipped below the horizon, Tcasting long shadows that stretched and distorted the waystation, painting it in hues of fading orange and bruised purple. The thinner sister, her gaze fixed on the endless dunes, let out a long, weary sigh. "Six months of winter," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the wind's mournful song. "Imagine. Not the postcard Mediterranean, sun-drenched and azure, but… grey. A relentless, soul-crushing grey. Rain. Unending, relentless rain. You wouldn't believe it." She gestured vaguely westward. "Those old paintings… romantic lies. They stole the light, the color, leaving only a pale, washed-out ghost of the truth."

Her sister, the stronger one, didn't turn from the view, but her voice cut through the silence. "Fromentin," she said, her tone firm and direct, her eyes meeting mine. "That fellow sailing from Messina in '69… he got it right. 'Overcast skies, biting wind… rain… like the Baltic,' he wrote. Brutal, wasn't it? And in '48, he fled to the Sahara. Three and a half months of solid rain. Even the Algerians, accustomed to the Mediterranean's capricious moods, saw the tourists' faces… shocked. They didn't know what hit them." She paused, then added, "We came here for… clarity. The Mediterranean in winter… it suffocates. A heavy, oppressive blanket. Here… the sun, even if it scorches, is a relief. This desert… it's harsh, yes, but it's honest. "

The second sister shrugged, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. "Yeah, well," she said, in a softer tone. "Who wouldn't ong for a supposedly pleasant climate?" A long silence followed, punctuated only by the wind whistling through the cracks of the dilapidated waystation and the rhythmic creak of its aged timbers. The vastness of the desert holds its breath.

Chapter 4

The girl's mother's body was laid before the shaman. It displayed signs only seen in the dead, but also illnesses contracted in life—necrosis of the gums.

The shaman concluded it was due to scurvy. The body was bloated, more like a water-filled balloon, the skin stretched taut but unbroken, abnormally swollen, a stark contrast to her once vibrant appearance. Her eyes, once deep and soulful like the roots of the deepest forest trees, were diluted to a pale, washed-out color, like pondweed bleached by a slow stream. The shaman's fingers probed the gums, revealing the necrotic tissue, the bleeding, and the spongy texture of scurvy. But scurvy alone couldn't account for the extreme edema. The shaman pressed gently on the distended abdomen; the fluid within shifted with a sickening slosh. This was more than just fluid retention; it was an overwhelming, unnatural accumulation of sick water

“Bystanders! You sinners! You disregard all human morality! ”The raw, desperate cry ripped from the shaman's throat.

The disembodied voice rasped, “Child, silent child, can you hear your mother's bones rattling? Each piece of skin was gnawed by maggots, finally turning into a mass of indistinct flesh, making people think she was an abandoned premature baby. Don't you feel resentment! Come, let me experience the feeling of a blade kissing my heart once more, perhaps I should end it here! Child, are you afraid? Your hands are trembling! And it's impossible that it's from the cold! You are afraid! What are you afraid of? I know you are a brave and stubborn child, take the knife, and resolve this ancient sorrow. Let everything end with the end of my life. Oh, I'm sorry, child… I ruined this unusually beautiful afternoon, I had to tell you these things on this beautiful day… I'm sorry, child…”

The girl felt thick blood rolling before her eyes, this accumulation of information made her feel a sticky, muddy, dull pain in her head. But her eyes didn't want to cry, she only felt an unprecedented sense of relief: because everything was clear now. Everything was clear: her mother's death, walking alongside the taciturn man, and finally, finally, everything pushing down everything mediocre and barren, a storm swirling, gathering, and solidifying from a grain of sand, pouring out from all the holes: tears leaking out because of the exposed shame, I tried every method but couldn't stop them. My chest hurts so much, all the sweat glands in my hands are working together, a cold fear. The purest, coldest fear.

Chapter 5

I've never thought of myself this way. I still don't consider myself a sinner. I just want to salvage something from a past life cycle. Now, it's the taste of a lump of humiliation. In the flickering dream, I examine myself, expose myself, and reread, discovering it's a long, agonizing aftertaste —like a fishhook tearing into flesh, ripping it apart, then stitching it back together. You always see different versions of me. Please tear me open. Don't be gentle to me like you are to the moonlight; that's humiliation. Arouse your conscience; use your conscience to treat my starving face—it's being roasted. This is probably the concrete feeling of shame, and this feeling will accompany a person throughout their life: When your physical body dissociated from your mother's body, you receive your first baptism of shame. The blinding light, of an unknown wattage, rips you from that warm, sweet cavity before anyone else cries out. At that moment, you may not feel shame because you are an ignorant, meaningless mass of flesh, but you may later recall a feeling called shame, like the unrestrained crying of your naked body. This later-occurring, melancholic emotion is called shame—a feeling of helplessness and a poignant sadness at the inability to control the thoughts of others, or even one's own. That comforting coolness no longer soothes you gently but ignites you like flickering fire.

I want to cry out; emotions begin to collide recklessly, uncontrollably erupting. Today's misfortune has shattered my spirit, or more accurately, dismembered it. And there's the accumulated weight of time. Euphoria is only superficial, a rudimentary response to the absurd; ultimately, it's just an underlying discontent. I dare not—and cannot—express my feelings or recount what happened with the most accurate words and phrasing. Please forgive me, forgive my trembling hands, and forgive my sins.

Leave me adrift in a sea of unanswered questions and haunting memories.

I am neither a sinner nor a saint. I am neither special nor ordinary. I love life, yet I trample it.