Page 85 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
Military exorcists, Mei Chi echoes silently. She would have assumed they’d take one look at her and realize she was possessing this shell, but they clearly haven’t.
That itself is interesting. Perhaps she does not look like a possession case because possession happens to the living; two spirits crammed uncomfortably into a single body. What she has done is… corpse animating, possibly, or something akin to reincarnation. Indistinguishable from simply being alive, unless they examine much more closely.
As a ghost, her mind was clouded with anger and grief and loneliness. In a human skin, her thoughts are clear and cold—for the moment. She wracks her tattered memory. Everyone knows what a water ghost does to its victims, but she can’t recall any tales about what happens to them once they’ve found a living person to switch with.
Do they just… disappear into society? Live normally, like a human? Strange that the stories always stop with the murder, and never discuss the aftermath. Maybe they just carry on living, having found a second life to exist in.
The idea makes her chest constrict in horror and shame, even as her cheeks flush with excitement. Being in Siu Yin’s body means no more drowning. Freedom to live, breathe, be real. But it comes at someone else’s expense, someone she has killed and betrayed. She does not know if Siu Yin has become a water ghost, or moved on to the next life, and can’t tell which outcome is worse.
“—and they said we were insurgents, all of us. I am only a farmer!” The bandaged woman is still talking. “Now I am here, going to heaven knows where.” She grimaces, reliving some private memory.
Mei Chi tries to refocus and pay attention. “Where is here, exactly?”
“Some military ship. We’re being transported.”
“Oh. Where are we going?”
The bandaged woman gives her a look, like she is a child who insists on poking an anthill with bare fingers. “To where all the prisoners go, idiot,” she said. “If we are very lucky, we will live in Stanley prison camp. If we are unlucky, a soldiers’ brothel.”
Mei Chi crosses her legs reflexively. “How long have I been unconscious?”
“Two days, I think. A long time.”
“And we’re still not in Stanley?” It should only have been a few hours’ travel.
“None of us were well enough to travel till today,” the bandaged woman says, irritably. “Don’t you remember the military hospital?”
“If I did, would I be asking questions?” Mei Chi retorts, sitting up carefully. This body is weak, worn to death and dragged back again by an unfamiliar spirit; it is barely holding together. Slowly, through sheer willpower, she stands once more.
The bandaged woman eyes her uneasily. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out of here. I can smell the sea. I must swim to shore.” And find her way back to the island.
“Idiot,” the bandaged woman says again. “How will you get past the man outside our door? Let alone all the others.”
“I’m not staying here, and I’m not getting shipped away to become—” She can’t even say it. “I have to get back to someone. She… the one who needs me… she is on the island, still.”
“Aiyah, we all have people depending on us. Dying won’t get you there any faster, unless you hope to meet them in hell.”
Her patience is used up. “Do you have a better idea, or are you just pissing on mine?”
“I was only trying to help you,” the bandaged woman says, reprovingly. “Who is she, anyway?”
“Huh?”
“This woman, whose life depends on you returning.”
“Oh, she is… Erm.” Mei Chi pauses, flummoxed when she draws a blank on the name. Her best friend, her only friend in years. The woman whose body she has stolen. They’ve done so much together, like…
Like what?
Bottles with pictures, one bottle with a poem. Yes, those are good. Also diving and swimming, hand-in-hand, around the waters of…
… of…
A swell of frustration rises within her.
The island. Her home. The place where she has lived for so long. What is it called.
