Faust

Collateral damage

       I once saw a Russian doll. Each strip, reveals a new page of Alice in Wonderland, and the pictures are linked together from head to toe like an ouroboros mural. Despite the differences in context, running around the market on the fourth floor underground and you'll find striking similarities.

         The space of Stynx stretches and concentrates. Plastic seats spread on the rounded route, benches link together till some selfish bastard takes the corner space for himself and decorated the end of the east and north walls with merchandise of ambiguous quality. And for some reason, each got at least two drapes of red and white tarpaulin covering the back of their stand.

        The lights in here are dimmer than the other end of the hallway. It consists purely of lightbulbs hanging in the air from railing they added or lamps set on tables for the window shoppers and counting coins.

        What are they selling?
        Well shit, take a wild guess. Hinges the answer at last second and you'd still get it right.
A pre-war Soviet riffle and gears, jackets with extra pockets, half a gallon's worth of AB plus blood bag, fingers and toes shipped straight from the local clinics this morning kept in small freezers (heard they struck a deal with the Norwegian doc downstairs for a package price) cheap-ass suits and cheap-ass trusses the Qins fancy, cricket's stories about his last three wives, re-boiled chicken breast from Piu Jie dinners, the law prohibited knives, self-made boosters in alarming visual clarity, two 30ish looking Chinese prostitutes at the entrance of the corridor behind corner where lights projecting from within are changing by the minute. Where Stynx would have its private booths, here they got mattresses and free-of-charge voyeurism and a nasty madam chewing Areca nut with one of the vendors.

           Vera's No.73s were bought here before handling tweaks somewhere else. My inhaler was the work of cricket and Uncle. As I said, you can find pretty much everything here. It's a junkyard full of tossed-aways in great conditions. Even if the place got a certain musk in the air, years of sweat, mold on fruit and cheap perfume, scented lotion from the whore house on top of the knotted circulation in the basement. They infuse a stench, some hate it, some get a hard-on by the whiff of it.

A kid at 12 or younger squeezes between me and the left wall as I step through the small corridor. I saw a quick grin on his cheek before disappearing faster than I could turn my head. Thankfully, my wallet's in the right pocket, but the skinny Malaysian tripping over someone else's bench just to limp towards the gate would think very differently...

Fuck me, is that cricket?

           Narrow nose even under the disadvantaged lighting could not stretch its shadow across his winded cheek, thin and petty lips, skin as slippery as if someone's pulling his hide backward. Sports jacket over a polo shirt, a notch shorter than me...... shit, he lost enough weight to make two more kids.

      With his face a shade of red and purple and a slender arm in willowy sleeve supporting the ground, he raises his head to me crouching right in front of him.

           "Bad day or bad week?"
                                        ***

"I'd say it's a Wednesday....." He grunts as his chin's finally above the ground and his arms push himself up. "Wednesday in the middle of the month."

Cricket is nothing special in the grand scheme of colorful assholes in this city, hell he might as well pass as a nicer guy than the rest. The most intriguing thing about him is that his little shop's always open, and he's always somewhere between the fourth and fifth floors underground. He told me a lot about himself, which I reduced in half and watered down ten times first since most of his 'history' is told when we're bickering about prices. Though I do believe he has kids and had a wife, once saw two wedding rings on him, a gold one on his finger and a silver one stringed as a necklace inside his shirt.