I can see myself lying on the bed. I’ve been awake for days; I’ve lost track of time. I feel like I’m somebody else. I’m busy, busy pretending to forget who I used to be. The music inside my skull backgrounds everything I do, high frequencies standing up the hair on the back of my neck and turning my mouth dry as sandpaper.
The last time Ng Shui Meng saw her husband, Sombath Somphone, alive was early in the evening of Saturday, 15 December 2012. Sombath was driving his old jeep home. Shui Meng, who was travelling in her own vehicle in front of his, noticed him being stopped at a police post on Thadeua Road, a main thoroughfare in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.