The Hell Screens

by Alvin Lu

In humidity, in thick crowds, in old blood drawn in a colonial past, Taipei unlocked vengeful spirits from its train station, a former Japanese execution ground. The spirits of those anonymous bodies rose and, in the bustling commercial district of Hsimenting, coerced their ample prey into uneven exchanges, life for non-life. In this transmigration of souls, victims were sent to limbo, assassins were set free.
      Such karmic rites drove up the rate of auto fatalities. No one thought to blame the chaotic, unplanned intersections or the reckless, if not colorblind, drivers, for many had felt a cold hand on their necks as they tuned the radio or had glimpsed an unfamiliar visage as they adjusted their rearview mirrors.
      Children were warned, not of ghosts, because they wouldn't take them seriously, but of youth gangs, aggressive pimps, fast-food restaurants, and other agents of darkness.
      The university's men's dormitory, which had been raised on a site where prostitutes and disreputable women had been judged and buried, now found that ghosts frightened the students out of their wits, for the good reason that they, the students, tended to drive away the ghosts' proper spectral clientele. Once, when a literature student woke in the middle of the night to discover a woman sitting at his desk reading one of his books, he approached her, only to have her try to strangle him, leaving a hand-shaped bruise to persuade the authorities. Few dared to move there after that, even after the dormitory's temporary closing, an agreement reached by the owner of the school and a spokeswoman for the ....

Alvin Lu is calendar editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
He recently received an MFA from Brown University. This is his
first time in print. E-mail: alvin_lu@sfbayguardian.com