Bangkok Night

Originally written for a Story Club challenge, in which my colleagues and I set ourselves the task of trying to write like one another. This was written in the persona of our enigmatic and marvellous sports editor - a poor imitation, but a fun attempt. This is a version I later revised to enter in a flash fiction contest.


*

One night and the world’s your oyster.
That’s what the guys used to say about this city, on those nights of beer-soaked camaraderie that seem so long ago.
They always said they’d come here one day.
Bangkok.
The name spoke of tantalizing mysteries – exotic women clad in silk, offering forbidden fruits to those who dared to reach for them.
He knows better now.
An oyster? Perhaps. Crushed by a heavy-footed traveller, shell shattered like jagged shards of glass.
There is no pearl here.
Only laughter in the darkness.
And rain.

*
Rain.
He feels it run down his face.
Its warm fingers caress his head and embrace the wiry bristles that are beginning to emerge from the once-smooth skull. Its silver touch slides down his unwashed neck, clings to the faded denim jacket, lends a new lustre to the scuffed shoes.
The shoes.
Florsheims. He bought them to celebrate his first paycheque. He loved to look down and see their dark solidity as he strode down Bay Street to the firm.
He was someone then.
He knew his mind. He owned his heart.
And then she came.
Silver laughter and a teasing smile. A body of curves and sensuous wonder. Hair of molten copper and skin of silk and flame.
She reached out for his heart.
And delicately pried it from his chest with slim fingers extended in a caress.
Even as the thought comes, he wants to laugh. To stave off the inevitable melodramatic metaphor. But the image comes in spite of him.
Her fingers became serpents, sharp fangs digging deep under his skin, pouring their lethal venom into his veins. Intoxicating, poisoning, lulling into the sleep of the damned.
All he knew was her.
And her laughter.

*

Laughter.
The silver sound that carried the poison to his heart.
Love?
He says the word and she repeats it, her light tone airy with disbelief.
Lust maybe, that light voice scoffs, but never love.
Her laughter ripples over him.
And he runs.

*
Runs.
He knows he acts deliberately. Calmly. Secures a leave of absence. Buys a ticket. Catches a flight.
But in his soul, he runs. Stumbling blindly in the night. Fleeing unseen pursuers, heedless of direction or course or destination.
He falls. Gets up. And runs again.
Solace. He yearns for it. Seeks it half a world away, in the oppressive jungle heat that smothers all thought, deadens all emotion.
In the wat where soothing voices chant the refrain of the seeker in pursuit of noble truths, where saffron-coloured robes hide scars from the world’s sight.
They reach for him and he reaches back, a drowning man clinging desperately to a piece of flotsam.
Their shelter is inviting. A fortress against cruelty. A blanket against the cold of night. A rock gently placed to balance a world tilting off-kilter.
But it finds him there.
The laughter. The gilded gates can’t keep it out. The saffron robes are no armour against it.
He leaves their shelter.
He hears their pleas but cannot remain. The fortress is impenetrable no longer, more prison than shelter now.
The gates close behind him, their clang scarcely audible to the world outside.
He is gone. Running.
He is seeking his oyster; a pearl diver in denim jacket and scuffed shoes.
He hears the city’s alluring call.
The promise of Patpong. Of pleasure. Of passion. Of release from pain.

*

Pain.
He feels little of it now. Is it numbness or healing, he wonders as he sits on the curb.
He watches the flickering neon signs made hazy by the rain. The shadowed shapes on the street. The jet-black cascades of hair, the slim hips swaying as, one by one, sellers and buyers seal their bargains and make their way into the night.
The night beckons, its arms reaching out to envelop him in a lover’s embrace, the dark a seductress whispering his name.
But, like a woman, it is all tempting surface and empty soul. Like a woman, Patpong makes promises it cannot keep.
It offers no comfort. No respite. No hope.
Only an interlude of forgetfulness, a blurring of memory, an anesthetic to dull the pain.
So he sits.
He watches the flickering lights.
He feels the rain as it journeys into the very marrow of his bones, into the arteries that travel to his heart.
The night calls to him.
But he will not answer her siren song.
And he will not run.
Not tonight.
He sits.