It feels like I should be writing more important things, but I’m sharing an old short story in an effort to resist the idea that diasporic ESEAs need to only make affirming, empowering, likeable, morally uplifting, and relatable art because “we” have supposedly only just become a viable consumer identity, marketable audience, and sociological category. It is part of my broader project to encourage us to want more.

My story about crocodile-fucking sisters was published in 2016 on The Dark and was on the Locus Recommended Reading List. It’s a queer re-telling of Krai Thong, a monster-slaying folktale with a giant crocodile, told from the point of view of one of the sisters who was married off to the hero. I was interested in giving her a personality (bad) and desires (also bad) of her own. I’ve also always found it interesting that polyamory–or more accurately, culturally specific forms of historical polygamy–is a feature of various folktales, and contemporary re-tellings can be rather boringly monogamous about that.

Here is an excerpt:

I’ve always moved with the expectation of hurt. Barbs waited inside my sister, primed and ready to pierce at any moment. She is gone, she is taken, but I resist learning gentleness in her absence, for I don’t know if I’m capable of such a life.

As I labour, our—my—room is filled with dozens of sculpted fruits. Sapodilla and rose apples split into many-petaled flowers under my bird beak knife. Mother’s pleased, saying that industry despite grief is becoming of a girl. I appreciate her pragmatism but there’s no sorrow in me; rather, the shock of death ebbs away to a curious new awareness which pulls and nudges at a world previously unknown to my senses. Scaled bodies push against the backs of my knees and laughter bubbles from nowhere. Occasionally the light, floral, aqueous scent of lotuses drifts by. My response is to carve a series of crocodiles from papayas, guavas, and gourds, each one more resplendently scaled than the last. Similarly, I’m moved to embroider tales of two lovers on a length of cloth intended to be a curtain without knowing why.

I see life through a mosquito net, filmy and soft. The rhythms of the day cease to have meaning; what matters is silk embellishing fabric, how quickly I must work before fruit softens, rots, is ornamented in turn, beaded with flies and velveted with mould. My body is sweat-soured, my hands sticky with juice and blood. The air in our—my—room is tight and sultry, filling the nostrils with cloying sweetness, sharp metal, dirty scalp. Work brings the relief of cool water and lily pads brushing against limbs. Save for ordering more fruit, cloth, and silk thread, I refuse the ministrations of the servants and brook no distractions.

“Taphaokaew.” Mother stands in the doorway. I don’t know what hour or day it is. “Taphaokaew, that’s enough.”

Braced against one of our servants, I kick and strain. What they don’t tell you in stories is how strong women get from a lifetime of work.

I wrote this story with the fullest sense of the erotic I could muster within my imperfect, limited self. I was trying so hard! (When am I not?) And I think you can very much tell the influence of 2016 liberal feminist politics. But there were also the seeds of potential – it’s probably obvious Lavinia (2008) by Ursula K. Le Guin, Alcestis (2010) by Katharine Beutner, The Handmaiden ( dir. Park Chan-wook, 2016) and its inspiration, Fingersmith (2002) by Sarah Waters, all lived rent-free in my head. This is where I fumbled the challenge of the short story: the decision to write only in first-person meant I was largely confined to the viewpoint character’s self-absorption and snobbery. It would take a much more skilled writer than I was (and am, frankly!) to manage multiple viewpoints within such a wordcount. I would have liked to write something that drew out different aspects of confining domesticity and feminised labour, the tension inherent in life that is built on the time of others.

Notice that I make no apology for the fucked up family dynamics. In case you’re curious: I am obviously an only child, but my mum was the middle girl and all of my friends had highly interesting sibling relationships.

Sorry if you have ever known me! I recommend this story if you like eggs.

Read ‘With Her Diamond Teeth’ on The Dark