God of the Game (Dreamstate) (34 page)

The deathly excursion always begins with the animal sensing so
mething at its periphery. That
thing
jumps across, and the creature gives chase. In the design of the conduit, the corporeal is always behind the celestial. This sends the dog into a trance as it follows its own spirit. Once the two states of being are aligned, the canine attacks. And at that point, physical Rex is sucked into a wormhole and joined to its future self.

The escapade repeats, victim after victim, and Rex has no memory of each. Past midnight in Mumbai, after
obliterating the cronies of a local gangster - setting them alight, whereof slum dwellers called a phenomenal spontaneous combustion, the breath of the fire god Agni incarnated as Kali, the name for one of his seven fiery tongues licking those evil men dry - Rex spots a weird monster, a black Great Dane’s face on an imposing figure. For a while they stared; then as the dog cocks its head to one side, as if remembering, as if confused, the phantom shape disappears.

Here’s a puzzling metaphor: Agni, inferno deity of Hindu literature, has two heads, three legs and seven hands. Sergeant Siva and Detective Lingam, non-practising Hindus of the pre-and-post-apocalypse, have two heads, three legs and two hands. What separates the two icons are five hands and seven fiery tongues, which are absent from the latter. Some representations of Agni only give him two hands; this makes the similarity even more acute. What more? At least one of the twins has a blazing temper.

The Detective thought of this, research for his book he wants no one to read, not even his brother. So he writes when the other sleeps. It’s a
novel, but it’s more than that; Lingam traces the symbolism, their origin. What highly interest him are the seven fiery tongues; there must be some esoteric connection. As for the discrepancy of limbs, that’s probably an artistic misrepresentation, a perversion by the imaginative process of man through millennia.

He
’s got to stop soon, Siva will be awake. Then he will prowl for men in clubs. Lingam, inevitably, has to follow. The writer frowns, he can barely tolerate his other. The Sergeant will bring guys home; most frequently, an obnoxious stud who goes by the moniker Jim Franko. There’s gonna be an orgy in the room, some of the gays will even try to hit on him. Lingam just ignores them. Stuffs in his headphones and tries to do some reading. But that sanctuary can only take him so far. When fuck-time arrives, he is yanked from the solace of his absorption. Sure, Detective Lingam and Sergeant Siva have their own genitals, but they share one asshole! And it’s all right as long as homo-bro is giving, but when he receives...that which is pleasure for the Sergeant is literally a fucking pain in the ass for the Detective.

This
usually starts the fights. Lingam punches his brother, and a scuffle ensues. Those Village People lookalikes, they grab their accessories and leave in a rush, stating some embarrassing apology for initiating domestic violence. Siva, a burly moustachioed type, will scream with tears in his eyes, condemning his brother as the reason he can’t hold down a permanent boyfriend. Lingam, leaner, will retaliate, stating he’d not had a fuck himself for years; no woman would want to sleep with him. Siva says that’s not his fault; it’s just unfortunate they are freaks, and Lingam is targeting the wrong type of women...the normal ones.

  
“
What’s normal in a time like this?
” came the loud and final reply. Neither one had an answer. Staring silent, breathing heavy, sweating and in pain from the punches, the brothers acquiesced in their karmic prison of a bed to rest. After that, they go to work to pursue the lead they have on the enigmatic and malignant child rapist.

Perspiration imprint on ‘Tongkat’ Ali’s t is in the shape of Disney’s Mickey; as if his nipples and tummy were the only surfaces of his unceremonious body mass sweltering and sweating. He’d just done with a kid. A boy. Wiping durian pulp off his sword, he kept it, (still hard); paying the child’s dad two notes. The little fella, he couldn’t be more than eleven, was in tears.

For a
while, the paedophile felt sorry; then he shrugged. “He’ll get over it,” Ali implored his conscience, “learn the harsh realities of life, the school of hard knocks; he’ll be fine, I didn’t beat him or anything, everyone goes through emotional scarring, but we all deal with it in the end. Some pain is unavoidable, everyone has to lose his or her virginity, and it’ll be easier for him the next time round.
Damn
, it’s a cruel world, and people just gotta survive. Find any way they can,” he justified.

As he exited the abandoned bungalow, another man entere
d.
Picking up where I left off
, Ali thought, and laughed. That second guy would have to cream semen off that young boy. He got him first, a virgin then, too. First come, first served.

Well, justice is served, William Borg thought. Sirens flared out of the blue. Tyres screeched in front of a large derelict house and a guilty looking
oldish
dude in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt is shaking.

They got him
, the kiddie-dream thief. The police have on psychic helmets to protect from mental manipulation just in case. If he possesses telekinesis and can like chuck cars and debris, then it’s a different but no less dangerous scenario.

But that guy doesn’t look at all sinister, just a regular perv’s exterior. Strange, William had the image of someone fiercer in countenance, but from countless historical records, perpetrators often deceive their appearances. Inside that rundown bu
ilding with an unkempt compound is an epileptic kid and his dead father. The child is never going to awake. They’ll have to send him to
Special Cases
and let the experts deliberate.

As for the forty-nine-year-
old predator, he’s swearing profusely to God his innocence. They all say that. William cuffs and hands him over to Detective Lingam and Sergeant Siva. They’re gonna have a party time interrogating him. In the same room with those two, you’re gonna confess, you’re gonna talk, you’re gonna agree with anything they say and sign your life away.

William Borg smiles a satisfying
relief. Another bad guy confined. The cyborg is so proud he is a police officer, and he will be so long as his model is not replaced.

Far away in a small but historical country in Europe, Kunty Kaur is on a permanent vacation. She’d not planned to initially, Kunty just hopped on a plane in an impulsive move. She needed change, she wanted to travel, and she loves Europe. All that culture and diversity, the rich human history, the world-renowned arts on display; just the notion of it makes her swoon in marvellous dismay.

No, she
must
live her dream, make it a reality, not allow anything or any thought hamper her. So, out of the hospital, she purchases a no-return airline ticket. Touchdown anywhere in that beautiful continent will do. Therefore she bought the cheapest; she is thrifty, intending to make her whoring bucks stretch the longest.

Her travels started near the western borders of Russia, and she made west, alone, hitchhiking most of the time to
save money. Yah there were jerks asking for ‘
one thing
’ in return, but she handled them well, like the way she’d taken care of troublemakers in her former profession.

Guys, boys
, are in general, harmless, and most of them are damn shy in front of girls, what more, shameful when soliciting prostitutes. Kunty Kaur had promised herself,
no more cash for sex
, but she still knew how to placate, and if need, humiliate men. Worst came to worst, she spread her legs and they fainted.

Initially, her solution when she ran out was to work
, save, travel; but work was a scarcity, no one was hiring, and even if she did find an odd-job, the pay was meagre. So she reverted to the evergreen, and found perverted demand, providing her the means to continue her tour. But deep down, she was morose. She had broken her pledge. It seems she cannot run from her past, she cannot escape. Freedom is not a different continent;
freedom is inside
, and she has nothing within. She is a slave. But if she is going to be a slave, she might as well be a happy one.

Thus, country after country, absorbing the sights, the places, the tranqu
il towns and pristine villages - mostly impoverished - as well as the dreggier cities; she saw in them the landscapes of the War, the hideous vertebra under aesthetics. Proud though the lands are of their heritage, but after three world wars, they no longer have the will to live. She saw, in her roaming, the tired lines of young radioactive mothers nursing deformed babies, bitter men with more scars than face, the skeletons of famous buildings - for governments have not the resources to restore; children of the War, the next generation in which hope lie, but now they laugh and play with missing limbs and damaged spines.

Kids will be kids;
no matter how harsh the environment, no matter how terrible their condition, they will play on. The innocent, blessed with an uncanny gift to forget, though to forgive may be another matter altogether. Kunty gazes down, to where her reproductive organs lie beneath her shorts; offspring is out of the equation, perhaps, so too is love, and to the person who did this to her, if she ever finds out, with tears dripping onto that spot of her crotch, Kunty prays she’ll possess the power to absolve.    

61

The master-bedroom, red and ugly; and the mattress, soggy, with bloodied magazine pictures of sexy women lying on top. Above, hanging from right ankle is a naked Mr. Wong, slaughtered with his throat slit like a South-East-Asian market’s chicken. His free left leg is kicking, for whatever reason; and in a funny way, he looks relaxed, his deadened composure captured, as if it is a photograph of a man diving into a bloody bed of his own desire.

When they cut the pale corpse down, Mrs
. Wong is crying, confessing to the crime. Investigators only half believe her. If it is true, she must have at least one accomplice. How can a forty-five-kg woman lug a man almost twice her weight and hang him from the ceiling? And without a pulley in sight, too? No sign of struggle, Mr. Wong was killed by the incision at the jugular while aerial.

But the trouble is
that Mrs. Wong does not remember anything else; she’s only admitting, frightfully admitting, that she is the culprit. She is the murderer. Why? Because she dreamt the exact same scene last night, after their altercation, after he’d grabbed the pillow and bolster and crashed onto the living room settee. She’d discovered his porn collection, (his usually locked drawer – supposedly containing investment documents – was not), and she kicked a fuss. But no, she was not upset...not really upset, just a bit wounded and hurt.

She slept alone, weeping on their wedding bed
, and falling to slumber after a good cry, feeling a little melancholy. When she awoke in the nightmare, she was the one on the couch. He’d found pictures of naked men; the roles were reversed. She could not sleep, shrouded by reproach as in a heavy blanket, she wanted to apologize. She needed to. So she timidly climbed the stairs, quietly wound the doorknob, slowly entered the chamber.

She screamed and she retched and she woke up. Then she screamed and she retched and she fainted. Evilly, the two states had merged. Mrs
. Wong did not dream how it’d occurred; Mr. Wong had already journeyed on to the afterlife in this mortifying position. But she was convinced it was she, she who jerked the knife, she who strung him up there. How the hell she did it, she does not know. All she remembered was that she wanted it, she imagined it; perhaps it was just playful, girlish vengeance, but she recalled entertaining the morbid thought, he, butchered exactly the way he was found when she was incensed, hugging and soiling the bed-sheets with uncontrollable sobs.

Now it’s true. Now it’s become a reality. And all that fills her mind this moment, all that gives her respite and an abode, as CSI click and bag evidence, is the innocent portrait of her child...their one and only prodigious child, her precious son, Wong Boom Bong.

Master Wan is riled, his cloak fluttering everywhere, wizardry
vials and flacons flying violent in a tornado of putrefaction, a storm made up of unstopped corks, and the contents rifling and bubbling in demonic hues, smoke even appearing like sprites; spiritual realms and rooms are collapsing, portals  closing, hybrid creations within wiped clean;
reset to zero, start again
.

No doubt, all too dramatic, all in the name of too much flair; but the Master is one for palaver and exaggerated parades. And because? The newspapers, and all other media, are calling him a kiddie molester. Worse, a child rapist, a paedophile.

Apparently they caught him, “...
the police now have in custody
the most dangerous abuser of youngsters’ minds and posteriors; he is a fifty-year-old indigenous male suffering from priapism, a medical condition...
” he read aloud; “What a joke; don’t make me laugh,” Master Wan croaked, “mistaking me for that fat, pathetic fetishist. Don’t insult me!”

Underneath the pompous sarcastic demeanour, hysterical and satiric of police folly, the Master is honestly quite offended over the trifling comparisons to a pervert.