Eden Onpeng

Month: July 2025

  • No Watch, No Phone, No Goddamn Map: an urban vignette

    DOWNTOWN IN THE MORNING. FUCK YEAH. FUCK YOU. AND YOU. AND YOU. I’m goin’ down the road with my trusty old backpack and a pocket full of ROSES. HEY YOU WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’RE LOOKING AT. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU TOO! Oh. It is me. Pete. They must’ve cleaned the windows. WELL FUCK YOU ANYWAY. IMMA TAKE A NAP HERE AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME.

    I dunno what time it is. And you know what? It doesn’t matter anymore. I can just tell by the temp and the gray that it’s early but not too early. The office and working folks already made it into the office, there were a lot of people passing through our street and walking around our tents earlier but now it’s quiet again and the sun is out.

    You ask how long it has been? Been what? Oh, since I’ve been out here? Man. It’s been a while. I stopped counting a long time ago. I guess you can say life threw me lemons and I jumped into a fucking ocean of lemonade or some shit like that. I was living with my wife for a while but then we lost our house…and my drinking got bad, and things got worse from there…My wife left me after we lost our house, she blamed it on my drinking. She was probably right, but I also blame it on the feds. They were looking for me everywhere. They bugged my phone, my car, and our house. I saw them on the street and at the store, and when I saw them at work, that was it, I bounced. I dunno why they were coming at me, they just were, and they wanted to screw me over. And now I don’t carry none—see? No phones. It’s safer that way, ya know? I move around so they can’t track me. But they might still catch up to me someday.

    But for now, here I am. Sleeping under the stars every night. Well, maybe not the stars and more like the smog. But close enough. Just making it day by day, you know?

    You’re nice. Not a lotta people stop to talk to me. Thanks for the sandwich. Appreciate it. I don’t got much teeth these days, see? But I can still eat sandwiches. It’s good.

    I feel it coming back. Imma finish this sandwich real quick. You should probably go now. People say I get belligerent and mean. I’m sorry. I probably won’t see you again but maybe it’s better that way. God bless.

    FUCK YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!! I JUST WANNA GO TO THE STORE TO GET SOME FUCKING JUICE BUT YOU ARE ALL LOOKING AT ME. STOP THE FUCK IT. YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!!! IMMA HEAD DOWN BROADWAY AND FUCK YOU ALL. IT’S JUST ME AND MY BACKPACK AND POCKET OF FUCKING ROSES. YES AND THE WORLD. THANKS JOSH. FUCK YOU, THOMAS. GO TO SLEEP, IT’S FUCKING TEN IN THE MORNING. YES, I MADE THAT UP. I DON’T GOT A WATCH.

  • You Beautiful Dumbass: A Frank Letter from a Grieving Sister

    Hey Victoria, you beautiful dumbass. You were two months away from graduation. You were almost free. But whenever I talked to you about moving into your own place, you would respond with, “Mom and dad won’t let me.”

    I get it. You were scared. Mom and dad are controlling as fuck. And Mom is scary as fuck. Things would have gotten better, but you will never know now. You must have been in so much pain to make that decision. The future must have seemed so bleak, that the only way out was in an urn.

    And now you’ve been pulverized into ash, and are likely sitting in our parents’ dark living room. I’m sure Mom cries over you a lot. I wonder if your ash form enjoys being at home, or if you would rather be elsewhere, free in the wind. I wonder if your fat cat Smokey recognizes that the box of ashes is really what’s left of her favorite human, or if she is still waiting for you to come home from college, so that she can snuggle with you on the couch again.

    There is so much beauty in the world. From the gold of a sunrise to birds chirping among the trees, I remember you and all the beauty you can’t experience anymore, not because your time was up, but because you chose to end your time on earth.

    I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I didn’t know at the time that Mom told you not to hang out with me, but I could have reached out to you more often. I should have been more frank with you about what she did. You must have felt so alone in your own experience. Our family was run by secrets and control and fear and guilt. And I abandoned you to deal with it on your own. I am so sorry.

    I hope that wherever you are, you will have found peace.

    I love you, and happy 22nd birthday, my sweet sister.

  • The Perfect Daughter: a short story

    I have successfully molded my daughter into the perfect daughter. She is meek, quiet, and obedient. She goes to school and then comes home to study. That is all a child really needs in life. She used to whine about not having friends, and I told her, what good are friends? Your family is your friends. Your friends don’t pay the bills for you. Your friends don’t buy your clothes or pay for the roof over your head. A little girl shouldn’t be out running around with friends.

    I don’t remember when she stopped whining about it, but the last few years have been peaceful. I think she finally understands what it means to honor your parents. After all, her father and I sacrificed years of our lives working so that she could go to a good college, become a doctor, marry a man from the homeland that we find for her, and have children that we will babysit for her. After everything we’ve done for her, all she has to do is step up to the plate.

    Because her father and I both work full time, I work in the evenings while her father works in the mornings. So she spends most of the afternoons and evenings with her father, until I come home late at night. Her father complains to me a lot about the clothes she wears—that they are too revealing and thin, and that the curve of her nipples are showing through the material. So I buy her baggy clothes from the men’s section of the department store—modest clothes. After all, we tell her, Chinese girls don’t dress like sluts, not like those white and Mexican girls at school.

    Her father is a jokester. He likes to spank her on her butt. She tells him to stop, but I remind her that she is lucky to have such a loving father. Most girls don’t have such a warm and loving father. Sometimes he will pull her into his lap on the couch and give her a nice massage on the back and thighs. I wish he would massage my back. It is sore after my long days at the factory.

    But we know the rest of the world would take this out of context. So I tell her that everything stays within the family. She grumbles but knows better than to defy me. After all, I disciplined her with a plastic clothes hanger throughout her childhood. I stopped when she was fourteen, but I’m sure she remembers, especially when I raise my voice at her. When I see her flinch, I know she remembers our lessons.   

    But today…she threatened to tell a school counselor. She is accusing her father of sexual abuse. Her father was incensed. “How could you accuse me of raping you?” he said. All he did was joke around, how could she accuse him of raping her?  

    That’s right, How dare she! All we have ever done as parents was take care of her. We did our best. We bought her food, we paid for her violin lessons, we paid for her Chinese lessons, we bought her clothes, we gave her shelter. She is the most ungrateful child ever. I am in shock.

    We told all this to her. We screamed this to her until it slowly, finally started to sink in, as her defiance faded into a sullen silence and tears. I explained to her that I had warned her to not wear such slutty clothes—she is in this situation and it is all her fault. I made sure she cried to make sure she really understood. I told her she is wrecking our family for her selfish reasons. Why, because her father didn’t like the way she dressed? All he was trying to do was protect her! Now she is accusing him of rape. Ridiculous, and so incredibly selfish—her betrayal of our family cuts deep.

    We no longer allow her to walk to school. We drive her to and from school, and monitor any and all calls and text messages that go into her phone. I watch her when she takes out the trash, to make sure no one kidnaps and rapes her.

    She cries and refuses to hug me when I hold my arms out to embrace her. I give her lunch money anyway because I love her. She is becoming so Americanized, it is really sad. But marrying a traditional husband from China will help keep the culture alive.

    –EPILOGUE–

    Our plan for her life was all set. That was all she had to do—just go to school, get good grades, go college, get a job as a doctor, marry a Chinese man, and give us grandchildren. She had everything ready to go. She didn’t need anything besides us.

    But she decided to take her life in the bathtub.

    All that money we spent on her. All that work in raising her. All that blood.

    They all went down the drain.

    THE END