Excerpts from Scarlett Flight

"Come on, Steven. Don't be like this. It pains us to see you like this," said Jade painfully. Tears were already uncontrollably flowing out of her eyes.

"I said don't call me Steven!" boomed Ming. He burst out, but after that he became deflated. He repeated himself again, but this time it sounded more like he was whining. "Don't call me Steven anymore... It's Ming. I'm Ming."

William stood behind Jade and gripped his wife's shoulders tightly. His eyes were red and teary. It appeared as though his grip on Jade was for his support. If he had not, he might have had collapsed.

"Ming..." William muttered.

"Ming..." Ming whimpered. "Ming..."

***

A petal from a red rose fell onto the ground. It fluttered in the wind, taking two turns before reaching its final resting place.

A red teardrop dripped across a face, a nameless face and fell across the air onto the ground with a big splat.

A red handkerchief fell off a pocket and floated onto the ground. The wind blew it half a metre off its course.

***

Adele lay in Ming's arms and whispered in his ears, "Steven, do you love me?" It was just like every other couple seeking a verbal reassurance after making love. Adele was no different from other females.

"Of course I do, Adele," Ming replied with the standard answer of all men.

"You are a nice guy, Steven," Adele said, a bit off the point of discussion regarding love. "You have a nice family, you have a nice future, you should have a nice girl too."

"I already have one, Adele."

"No, you need a nice girl from a nice family, with a nice future."

"Adele, nice is not determined by family background. Besides, nice is subjective. I think you are a nice girl, and so you will be a nice girl in my eyes. Always."

"I'm nice?" Adele asked. "I'm nice."

***

"What a sweet girl Candy is," Jade cooed. "She really suits her name right, William? She has the nose of Steven and yours, so upright and firm. She'll grow up to a beauty."

"Don't worry about things, Steven. We'd work something out somehow," William said grimly.

"How many times must I say before you remember, call me Ming!" Ming shouted hysterically at his parents. But after that outburst, Ming softened. "And don't call her Candy, call her Tian too. Her name's Jingtian."

Jade turned to stare at William. A look of pain, a look of doubt, a look of uncertainty, a look of questioning, a look of sympathy, all were written on her face. William looked away from her, not looking at Ming either. He could not bear to look at any of the pain upon both the people he loved the most in his life. Instead, he turned to Tian and touched her tiny face, an index finger was all that was needed to cover half of his granddaughter's tiny face.

"Why do you want to do this?" Jade asked, leaving out naming her son from the name he wanted her to use nor the name she wanted to use.

***

Standing in the bathroom facing the mirror after his shower, Ming stared at himself. He had a head of black floppy hair which his teacher always had to remind him to cut and which he never did. His face was well-defined and handsome despite his relatively young age. It had a tinge of jadedness which came along with maturity unique for a teenager his age. He had after all been through a lot over the past few months.

His eyes were blood red after nights after nights of crying and breaking down. Lines had started to form at the sides of his handsome face. His nose was red too, and slightly swollen, and that redness spread to the whole T-zone, and his cheeks under his tired eyes.

"So what if I look good?" he snorted to the image of himself. "So what?"

His eyes were still glued at the image he saw in the mirror. He was tall, and still growing. Like other growing teenagers, he was skinny, but on closer inspection, there were signs on his body indicating his active participation in sports. His abs were one of those tell tale signs.

Touching his chest lightly with his fingers and feeling his heart beat, Ming slowly brought his fingers down hus body, feeling his stomach and tracing the lines of his abs.

"So what if I've a good bod?" he smirked to the image of himself. "So what?"

His eyes finally came down to his groin. Instinctively, his head jerked away from that sight. He could not bear for his fingers to continue the path down his body. He hated his penis. He hated all that had happened after the damage caused by his penis. He hated his penis so much that he wanted to remove it from his life.

"After all the trouble you've caused, do you really expect to stay alive?" Ming questioned that image of his penis. "How can a murderer remain alive?"

Ming's gaze roamed away from the mirror and shifted onto the pair of scissors he had taken from the kitchen. He had prepared for this execution for quite some time already and it seemed like the time was up today.

Picking up the flaccid penis in his left hand, Ming picked up the pair of scissors with his right.

"You time is up. Prepare for the execution." Ming mimicked the words of the executioner in those period dramas on television.

He brought the blades of the scissors over his penis. He could feel his heart beat increasing even though he had shut off his mind mentally. It is now or never, he thought as he prepared to press the scissors shut and execute his penis.

"Goodbye." Ming muttered.

***

"William, tell me, have I failed as a mother?" Jade sobbed into the arms of her husband.

"If you have failed being a mother, then I don't know what I've been for the past 16 years," William said sadly as he took Jade into his arms. Both could only find solace in each other as the failed parents of their only child.

"I'm so afraid, William. Every day I fear that he would do something stupid," Jade buried her head deeper into her husband. "I'm so afraid that he would follow after her." Tears filled her eyes and smeared all over her face and her husband's clothes. "He's my son, my only son. No matter what he did, he's still my only son. I'd forgive him, absolutely."

Tears stung William's eyes. He was less honest in his emotions and could not bring himself to the state of emotional breakdown like his wife, but all sorts of feelings and thoughts, and love for his only son was brimming inside him. He thought of all those years back when he played the role of the stoic father. Regret suddenly hit him hard in his guts. As much as he wanted to hold his wife close to him, he wanted to embrace his child and tell him that he and Jade would always be there for him. Always.

But this was not the time William could let his emotions take over him. He had to be the man, that pillar of support for his wife and his granddaughter. He could not lose anymore people he love.

"Let's go pick Candy up," William said softly to his wife. But in his voice, Jade could feel the strength she needed to pick herself up. "Let's bring her up ourselves. As our daughter. Perhaps that could lessen a bit of the burden on Steven."

***

Excerpts are not in chronological nor plot chronological order.
All are fictional and stemmed from the figment of imagination of the author herself, any resemblence to any persons dead or alive is purely coincidental, or a figment of your imagination.