Half-Life

by Jordan Beckett

West Kalimantan, 1942

Sari died in a riverside village in West Kalimantan, on the edge of a jungle.

She was a pretty girl who laughed too loudly and too much, the sound cutting through the still village air.

“Lower your voice,” her father would say. “You are not a child.”

She moved as though the world were something to be tested rather than endured, quick to speak, restless in body. She asked questions without waiting to be invited.

“You must learn to hold yourself smaller, child,” her mother said, adjusting Sari’s hair with a hand that trembled. “If a fire grows too large, someone will try to put it out.”

Sari only smiled and kissed her cheek, turning away, already imagining herself leaving their village and its rules.

Her father said nothing when he noticed her thickening waist, and the way her hands would linger, eyes softening.

He did not rage or accuse.

He watched, biding his time, until one hot summer evening, when he followed her into the jungle.

Her lover waited eagerly beneath the banana trees, his pale, foreign skin glowing like moonlight. Sari smiled broadly, arms reaching for him, but her father got there first.

The knife flashed once before he turned to face her.

“I knew you would shame us,” he said, his eyes fixed on her belly. There was no tremor in his voice. No anger. Only resolve.

The blade entered her belly, again and again.

She screamed, the sound tearing free of her body, ragged and unrecognizable. It did not feel like her own voice. It felt too large, too raw, as if something inside her had split open.

Blood darkened the soil beneath her feet. The earth drank it eagerly. Above her, the leaves stirred, whispering to one another, indifferent.

Her breath stuttered. She pressed her hand harder against her torn belly, as if pressure alone might undo what had already been taken from her.

Her lover lay crumpled beneath the banana trees, his body already strangely distant, as though he were slipping out of the world without her permission.

She slid down the tree, her legs no longer willing to hold her. Pain flickered at the edges of her awareness and then vanished entirely, eclipsed by something heavier, deeper. Grief swallowed her so completely her body felt unreal, receding from what it could not endure.

Her father stood over her, breathing steadily now. She looked at him, waiting for regret, for hesitation, for something human to surface.

In that moment, something inside her broke quietly, cleanly.

When the final blow came, she barely felt it.

The jungle did not release her.

She was reborn into a body that felt hollowed out, but sharpened at the edges. The weight she should have carried was gone, replaced by a hunger she did not yet understand. The night pressed against her skin, intimate and alive.

She thought only of what had been taken and stepped forward, no longer human.

West Kalimantan, 2005

The first time Arif saw her was at early dawn.

She stood near the banana trees, motionless, as if waiting for something to approach her. Her skin caught the early light strangely — too pale, too smooth, untouched by the grime of the jungle. Her hair hung loose down her back, dark and heavy.

She did not look feral. She looked strangely beautiful.

Pontianak. He knew of her kind — of their suffering. Their rage could be contained, and he knew how. She could have purpose in serving him. And he would keep her near, her peace chained to his will.

When she turned toward him, he felt the weight of her attention settle over his body. He could not tell if she recognized him as human, or merely as something warm and breathing. Her eyes flicked to his throat. The movement was small, unconscious. Hunger, naked and unashamed.

“You don’t want this,” he said carefully. “Not like this.”

She laughed once, sharp and broken, the sound tearing out of her throat as if unused. It did not soften her face.

“I don’t want anything,” she said. “I take.”

He shivered.

“You don’t have to feel everything,” he said. “You don’t have to burn like this.”

He told her how her feelings could be made bearable. How the rage could be pinned down, contained, rendered useful.

“I can help you, if you let me,” he said. “I can give you peace.”

She watched him closely now. Her body stilled, the hunger retreating just enough to make space for something else. Confusion. Curiosity. The faintest flicker of longing.

“What happens?” she asked.

“You stay,” he said. “You live.”

When he stepped closer, she did not strike him. That, more than anything, told him she was already tired, and that what remained could be molded.

The nail was cold in his hand.

She flinched when it pierced the skin at the back of her neck — not in pain, but in shock. Her body convulsed, a violent shudder ripping through her as something vast and burning was suddenly forced inward.

She screamed then. Not in fury, but in grief.

When it was over, she sagged forward, trembling, her breath coming shallow and uneven. The hunger was gone. So was the sharpness.

Her eyes lifted to his, duller now, unfocused, more human.

“What did you do?” she asked softly.

“I helped you,” Arif said.

He told himself it was mercy.

She did not remember agreeing to leave with him later. She only knew that the world had gone quiet, that the pain had receded to a distant, manageable throb. When he took her hand, she let him.

Queens, New York. 2015

America arrived without ceremony.

There was no sense of crossing, only displacement. One day, Sari was elsewhere, and then she was not. The air changed. The sounds sharpened. The world grew louder, harder, and more insistent.

Queens did not resemble the jungle, but it pressed in all the same. Brick replaced foliage. Sirens replaced insects. The sky narrowed between buildings. Sari learned the routes she was expected to take and followed them without deviation.

The duplex belonged to a distant aunt, now gone. It smelled of old cooking oil and dust. They took one side. Arif’s brother, Rian, and his wife, Maya, had the other.

Maya greeted Sari warmly when they arrived, touching Sari’s arm when she spoke, as if grounding herself.

“You must be exhausted,” she said. “Moving so far.”

Sari nodded.

At night, Arif reached for her.

Sometimes he told her what to do — how to move, how to sound. She complied. Compliance cost her nothing. Pleasure did not arrive, but neither did pain. She lay beneath him, eyes unfocused, waiting for it to be over.

Afterward, he slept.

In the mornings, she cooked.

She learned the house by timing it—when Maya’s heels left the stairs, when Rian’s key scraped the lock, when Arif’s hunger sharpened into expectation. She made herself necessary.

Maya began to linger in the kitchen.

At first, it was idle chatter — recipes, prices, the weather. Then, slowly, questions crept in.

“Do you ever miss home?” Maya asked one afternoon.

Sari paused, knife hovering over a cutting board.

“I don’t remember it clearly,” she said. This was true enough.

Maya nodded, her hand drifting unconsciously to her abdomen.

Sari noticed.

She found herself watching Maya closely after that — the way she moved, the way she flinched at sudden sounds, the way she slept curled inward when they shared the couch. The ways she made herself smaller. A low, unfamiliar tension began to coil inside her chest.

Every day, Sari stopped at the portrait hung in the parlor. A woman with pale skin and long dark hair, like her own, rendered softly, almost indistinctly, as though she were already fading even as she was painted. There was something in the woman’s eyes she recognized.

Not anger. Not hunger.

Vacancy.

She touched the frame once, lightly, then withdrew her hand.

That night, she dreamed of banana leaves brushing her skin, of something heavy and missing.

In the morning, she woke calm, muted, intact.

Her hand skimmed the nail in the back of her neck.

Maya told them at breakfast.

Rian froze mid-bite.

Arif smiled, wide and immediate. “I’m to be an uncle!”

Sari watched Maya’s face.

There was joy there, yes — but beneath it, a thin seam of fear. An awareness that something irreversible had begun.

Sari felt a tightening low in her body, sharp and disorienting. Her hand moved without thought, hovering near Maya’s abdomen before she caught herself and lowered it.

That afternoon, while the men were out, Maya led Sari to a chair.

“Let me brush your hair, Sari.”

Without waiting for a response, Maya began to run the brush through Sari’s lank, dark hair. Draping it over a shoulder, her fingers brushed across the small scab where the edge of Sari’s nail was just visible.

“Why is this here?”

“I need it,” Sari said.

“Why?” Maya asked gently.

Sari opened her mouth, then closed it again. The answer hovered just out of reach, like a word on the tip of her tongue. “Arif put it there,” she said finally.

Maya’s face changed.

Not dramatically. Not at once. But something in her expression hardened, sharpened into focus.

“He did this to you?” she asked.

She nodded.

“Why?”

Sari looked at her, puzzled by the question. “It’s my nail,” she said, simply.

“Do you like having this thing in your neck?” she asked, her throat tightening as if to strangle the words before they were spoken. Maya had noticed Sari’s stillness, her obedience, the way Arif spoke for her. Arif seemed less volatile than Rian, it was true. But even Rian never drove a spike into her neck.

Sari just shrugged.

“What happens if we take it out?”

“Arif wouldn’t like that.”

Maya stopped the brushing, saying bitterly, “Do we only do as our husbands command, Sari?” She ran her thumb over the wound, her fingernail sliding along the edge of the nail. “Stay still,” she said, her voice trembling only slightly.

Sari turned, confused. “What are you —”

There was a sharp, sudden pressure at the back of her neck. Then release.

The world lurched.

Sari cried out, collapsing to her knees as sensation slammed back into her body with brutal force. It was not pain at first, but volume—every sound too loud, every color too bright, every memory too close.

She gasped, clawing at the floor as unbidden images tore through her: banana leaves, blood-soaked earth, the hollow inside her, then the annihilating absence. Her father’s face. The blade.

She screamed.

Maya dropped the nail, backing away in horror. “Sari — I didn’t — I was trying to help —”

But Sari could no longer hear her.

Her body convulsed as memory reawakened. Her spine arched, breath coming in ragged sobs that were not entirely human. She pressed her hands to her abdomen, grief ripping through her with a clarity she had not known in decades.

‍ ‍My baby.

The thought was not abstract. It was visceral, present, unbearable.

She staggered to her feet, eyes wild, unfocused.

She looked at Maya then — not as prey, not as threat, but as something unbearably precious. Something to protect.

“Hide,” Sari whispered.

Sari did not remember leaving.

One moment she was in the duplex, and the next she was outside, striding quickly, her breath tearing in and out of her chest as if she were being chased. The streets blurred past her.

The memories did not stop. They kept coming, wave after wave.

Rage followed grief, fast and merciless, flooding her limbs, sharpening her teeth, her nails, her intent.

She was awake now.

Fully.

And she did not know how to bear it.

She walked for hours before coming upon the park. The city noise dulled, and she stepped off the narrowing path.

The earth here was softer. Uneven. Her shoes sank slightly into damp soil. She stopped beneath a cluster of trees whose branches arched overhead, their leaves broad enough to stir something ancient in her chest.

Not the sweet smell of bananas, she thought distantly. But something green and loamy. Close enough.

Then, another smell.

Alcohol, sweat, anger.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

Her body reacted before thought returned. Her muscles tightened, coiling, a memory older than language snapping into place. She felt her teeth ache. Hunger flared.

He reached for her arm.

His mistake.

She had him against a tree before he finished reaching for her, hand at his throat. For a breath, only his pulse existed. Then revulsion — at herself — cut through it.

She released him abruptly. He collapsed to the ground, coughing, scrambling backward on his hands, eyes wide with terror.

Sari staggered away, pressing her hands to her mouth as if she might tear herself apart.

“No,” she whispered shakily.

She fled the park, trees closing behind her, swallowing the evidence of what she had almost done. But she remembered now. Not just what she was, but what she was willing to do.

When Sari returned, the duplex was quiet.

She moved through it slowly, every sound magnified — the creak of the stairs, the hum of the refrigerator, her own breathing. Her body felt charged with memory and wrath. The restraint she had exercised in the park trembled, brittle and thin.

She paused as she passed by the parlor, staring at the portrait of the pale woman with the dark eyes as if seeing her for the first time. The longer she looked, the more the resemblance sharpened — not in features, but in expression. She was calm, but not remotely at peace.

Something inside Sari split open.

She tore the painting from the wall.

The frame cracked as it hit the floor, wood splintering, digging into her palms. She welcomed the sting, the proof of sensation. She clawed at the canvas, ripping it down the center, the sound sharp and final.

“Stop!”

Arif’s voice cut through the room.

He stood in the doorway, frozen, his face registering shock. Behind him, Rian hovered uncertainly, eyes flicking between Sari and Maya, who stood, one hand braced against the wall.

“Sari. Calm down.”

“I remember,” she said. “I remember my baby.”

That was when he understood.

His expression hardened—not with fear, but with resolve.

“You’re not well,” he said. “You know what happens when you’re like this.”

She laughed then, a sound stripped of humor. “You mean when I can feel?”

She moved toward him.

Rian stepped forward instinctively, positioning himself between Sari and Maya. The protective gesture was unexpected, but it was enough.

Sari stopped.

Her gaze flicked to Maya, pale and shaking, her hand curved protectively over her belly. The sight hit Sari like a blow. Grief surged, molten and unbearable.

Arif took advantage of the pause.

He lunged.

She reacted instantly, slamming into him, driving him back against the wall with a force that knocked the breath from his lungs. Her hands closed around his throat before thought could intervene. She leaned in, teeth grazing skin.

For a moment, the house disappeared.

There was only fear, and the knowledge of how easily she could finish this. How right it felt. How complete.

Then Arif’s hands closed around her wrists.

He was stronger than she remembered. Panic sharpened his movements. He slammed her into the wall, the impact rattling her bones, her head snapping back, vision blurring.

She gasped, the moment breaking.

He pinned her there, breathing hard, eyes wild.

“You see?” he hissed. “This is why. You’re dangerous like this. Too much.”

The words lodged in her chest.

Dangerous. Too much. A fire grown too large.

She wrenched free, stumbling, shaking. Blood from cut palms dripped dark and real.

“You don’t want this, Sari,” said Arif.

She understood. She looked at all of them — at Maya’s terror, at Rian’s helplessness, at Arif’s certainty. She understood that rage was not endless. Even fury could exhaust itself. What remained beneath it was heavier, more dangerous.

Grief.

“I don’t want this,” she agreed hoarsely. “I want something I can’t have. That I can never have.”

Silence fell.

Maya spoke first, her voice barely audible. “Maybe we can get you some help.”

Arif shook his head. “No one can fix what she is, Maya.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do,” he said. “Think, Maya. Do you trust her as she is? Would you trust her around the baby?”

Maya’s eyes shone with unspent tears. She turned to Sari and opened her palm. There lay the nail, dull with age, harmless-looking.

Sari stared at it.

She thought of the jungle. Of the river. Of the ache that would never leave. Of the hunger that would never stop demanding.

She thought of what she had almost done.

What she would do again.

She fell to her knees.

Arif stepped forward immediately, already reaching for the nail. “I’ll help you,” he said. “It’s for your own good.”

She flinched — but did not stop him.

When the nail pierced her skin again, the grief screamed in protest. Memory recoiled. The sharpness dulled. The fire collapsed inward, contained once more.

She sobbed as it happened — not in pain, but in mourning for all that she had lost. For the girl who was too bright, too passionate, too loud. For the boy she had loved and the babe she never bore.

She had chosen, and the cost was everything she had remembered.

Sari resumed her routines. She cooked. She cleaned. She pleased her husband, just as before, her body once again obeying rules she did not question.

One afternoon, long after the baby was born, Maya sat with her in the kitchen. “I like you like this. You seem… calmer,” she said, not quite meeting her eyes. “Happier, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Sari replied.

The sound of a baby’s cry floated through an open window — muted, as if traveling through water. Sari walked over and quietly lowered the sash. The house returned to its normal order, where Sari was exactly enough.