Stranger in the strange land you’ve known all your life. Electronica drum and bass rhythms like tantric callings or beckoning to something ethereal and different from what's expected, Lan Kwai Fong type-beat, thumping warm and cold primaries coruscating all across the red light district. He’s here in a place where his name isn't worth the paper his airplane ticket was printed on, masks upon masks upon masks hiding the flesh-and-bone and grotesque charnel of the people we used to be. From Kowloon, where egg waffle wafts up to make good on its reputation, where bells clang and cashiers ring and bootleg shirts that don't pass the smell test are sold easily as poultry or pennies on the proverbial dime. To the high-rise Southside rooftops where clinking glasses meet fizzy neoliberal champagne pops and the taste of nicotine and deathlessness on his tongue await him each like ladies of the night, ready to smother in an anaconda vise. Up above with burly arms resting on the balustrade, he‘s suited, well-kept, perennially clueless but wicked smart, blinded by the disastrous beauty of a whole wide world sprawled before him. He knows, listening in through the glass, seeing past the cyberpunk trappings and stalwart starlights, the buzz and blink of lights as people lock themselves in cubicle cages, the incessant smartphone whines that tell of parents too busy to parent their own children, too snatched in the rigour and suffocation of their lives to make room for anything. Except the job, of course.
“Mr. Mason?” She asks him the question with that tempered siren's voice, King’s English, like a lot of them do here, practiced in front of a mirror for the thousand peering eyes to judge and preen. He'd be remiss to mention that he already heard her starting to walk up to him five minutes ago from the shindig in the foyer, wound up tight into a frock that ruffles her skin in brocade intonations. “Sir, you're checked-in. On behalf of the Marriott, we hope you enjoy your stay.” She hands him a card. He feels the embossed nature of it under calloused fingertips, looks into her eyes and sees all the light she used to have.
“Thank you.” Then, next up on the slate is the real work, good boy, go get it, that’s right. Back in the comely room, he switches off one yellow lamplight whose low buzzing made it impossible to do anything, scarfs a plate full of egg tarts, then gets on it. He unlocks the locks, lines the briefcase up where the tools lie in neatly-ordered OCD sequence. Paisley scarf for mild flavour, synthetic notch lapel, worsted, white seersucker: gunmetal-grey, navy blue, wraith-white familiar skin waiting to be worn on top of decayed meat, starving for the first chance to run off into the night. Eddie Mason (not his god-given name, but better for the gweilos) does not smile for he has forgotten how, as the plan is put into action, and the action becomes the man, and the man becomes his work, one body amongst the foundations, desperate to carve an enclave into this hell he’s called home.
”So we’re looking at fifty-five percent for the fifth, potentially sixty? That’s right, right? We’re moving? Oh, hell yes, we’re moving,” he says, the smile on his face hanging on for dear life. “Well, yes, we can arrange the loan but it will require some security on your end. How about your house?”
The disembodied voice agrees. Eddie goes, “congratulations. One less earthly attachment and you will be well on your way to Nirvana. No - I - yes, the place. Not the band.”
As he puts the phone down, he turns his head and sees the moon held high, full-frontal like someone angling their derrière his way. He thinks about it being a reflection of the sun, a pale shadow of the light of before, and in that long, cold lane of blackness, the only thing encompassed is the job, the work, the life.
He’s about twenty heartbeats in before he realizes he’s been holding the muzzle of the shotgun close to his head, enough to feel the coldness and smell the aged cordite. There’s a strange serenity to this action, a kind of serenity he found the last time he hiked up to the Peak, where the mist spread like a veil to show the city for the oyster that it should be, freshly-minted, shining in the saltwater. He’s up there again, bare feet prancing above the clouds, and suddenly the mantra returns, a chant that thumps with clattering hooves and reduces the ridges of his brain to grey-matter pavement. Eat, shit, die, repeat, eat, shit, die, repeat. A most terrible corporative clockwork, hear it like the end knell, see it like the fifth horseman, taste it like hard candy, the ending of analog to make way for digital.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
Another call. Another day.
Eddie sighs, setting the gun back down on his desk. He blows the moon a kiss from his hotel window, hangs the same old smile on the same old hooks, and gets back to work.
This is really well done. It’s good to see someone careening into the walls of the literary bounce house.
Yeah. That’s what life might start feeling like—a robotic set of motions, pointless. That’s when you need a change. But I guess your MC dug out the beauty in the monotony. :)