IA: Naraka
for kateriya; infernal affairs (mostly ming/yan)
Naraka
by omi
Nar•a•ka
Pronunciation: (nur'u-ku), -n. Hinduism.
a place of torment for the spirits of the wicked.
-Random House Unabridged Dictionary
Yan lounged in the driver's seat, cigarette dangling from his mouth, eyes half lidded to mere slits.
The heat of the Hong Kong summer night clung to the skin, impossible to dissipate. It was almost too hot to breathe. Patches of perspiration soaked into the thin cotton of his shirt. The air-conditioning was broken. The neons signs of Temple street casted a flickering surreal glow over his face, broken up by the throngs of people jostling each other. Light. Shadow. Light. He listened with half an ear to the hubbub outside his car window.
A shrill housewife, complaining about rising prices and falling quality to her friend, her voice rising and falling in the fluid cadence of the dialect. 'Three hundred dollars! He thought he could cheat me! Do I look as if I was born yesterday to you, I ask you!' They stepped into a shop, and their voices disappeared into the general noise, to be replaced by another.
A man, dressed in a florid shirt that seemed to bleed colours into the air, talking into a mobile phone, half whining, half placating. 'I told you, I was working late! ... Of course I still love you. I'm buying you your favourite roast goose right now...' And the man vanished into the crowds, just another body jostling for space.
'YO~ YO~ YO~ YO~!!' 'Yeah, work it!' 'And I LUURRVVEE you so, baby!' 'Yeah, yeah!' 'Love you one million years!' A quartet of teenagers, laughing raucously, jostling, nudging each other in the way of the very young. Their voices lingered a little longer, even after they danced-walked down the streets, pedestrians parting before them and swiftly closing back again in their wake.
Someone hurried by with a bagful of smelly toufu -- or a few bagfuls, by the smell of it. The pungent smell of the fried fermented toufu and chilli sauce called to Yan momentarily, and his stomach growled. He thought longinly about leaving the car to grab a bite but finally discarded the notion. He'd be screwed if he missed this job. Yan slumped back into his original position and glumly contemplated the pitfalls of the life of a member of Hong Kong mafia.
Finally, just as Yan thought he would go insane with boredom or perhaps just the heat, a tap on the car roof came.
"Hey," Dien Gau bent over and stuck his face through the car window. Two gold teeth gleamed in his mouth wetly. It was how he got his name -- he lost two teeth biting an attacking dog that was probably rabid. He said at the time, the dog bit him first. The boss was so amused, he paid for the gold replacements. "Time. The goods are here." He jerked his head in the direction of an alleyway.
"Finally," said Yan. He flicked his twentieth cigarette out of the window, past Dien Gau. "I'm about to die of hunger here." He wound up the car window, got out of the car, locked it.
"Not our fault," said Dien Gau, falling into step beside him. "Bloody Burmese," he spat to the side of the road. "They insisted on taking another damn route, doubled-back and drove here. Took us bloody two hours for a twenty minute ride. Fucking cowards. Boss told them not to bother to find him again if they haven't got the balls for the business."
"Really?" Yan scratched at his head.
"Up there," Dien Gau darted into the side entrance of a dilapidated building, taking the steps two at a time. The signboard along the steps advertised 'Massages! Reflexology! Acupuncture!'. Yan followed him in without comment.
The transaction took place in the top floor, in a dingy room with fluorescent lighting that blinked on and off unsteadily. One of the guys from their side tested a package, ripping it open with long expertise, and cutting the lines. Yan and Dien Gau had nothing to do, except to stand in the background, and loom menacingly. Or, in Yan's case, slouch menacingly.
Their guy confirmed the quality of the goods, eyes dilated, his breathing a little faster at the rush of drugs hitting his system. He'd be useless for a while, thought Yan, eyes half-lidded. Chong, Mr Right Hand Man, handed over a sports bag filled with thousand dollar bills to his Burmese counterpart even as Dien Gau took possession of the drugs.
And then all hell broke loose.
The door burst open, and a sea of black-clad uniforms poured in, shouting, screaming. "GET DOWN! DON'T MOVE! POLICE!" There was a brief tussle, but there were too many cops, too little space. Yan put up a perfunctory resistance, before being pushed to the floor. He squatted, a baton pressed firmly against his neck, a gun pointed at his head. All around him, the same was happening across the room.
One of the Burmese, more desperate than most, made a break for the window. He was more than halfway out the window when he was hauled screaming back into the room. Yan wondered where he thought he was going. It was about five stories straight down from where they were. He sneaked a peek through his arms, at the man.
The man, small, was twisting, almost bucking off his feet. It took four police officers to hold him down. Maybe he had some desperate need for money. Maybe he had family to feed, back in Burma.
Not my fault, brother. Yan thought in the silence of his mind, his eyes carefully blank.
They were cuffed and patted down, everything remotely dangerous removed, weapons, wallets, everything. Then they were pushed and herded in single file, out the door, down the stairs. They lined the side of the building, squatting, waiting until finally an officer came round to take their names and ID.
Young, fresh-faced, uniform pressed to an inch of its life, the officer had Shiny-New written all over him. Probably just made lieutenant, figured Yan.
And then it was his turn.
"Name and ID?" the officer asked, not bothering to look up from his clipboard file. He looked, from Yan's vantage point from the ground, as monumentally bored as Yan himself. Yan remained silent, posturing for the benefit of the gang members glowering on both sides.
The officer held the clipboard against his hip, and looked at Yan for the first time. "Don't bother to play games with us. You've all been caught redhanded, and we have our ways to make life hell for you in jail," said the officer crisply.
Their eyes met for an instant. And then slid away almost immediately in something like embarassment. Yan studied the ground in front of him intently, and muttered to the pair of feet standing before him, "Chan Wing Yan, 6912558."
The pair of shoes, leather and polished to a high gleam, remained in front of him for a heartbeat longer than it had to, and then moved away. "Next. Name and ID?"
Yan breathed. Wondered at the strange look in the young officer's eyes. Hoped that the longing in his own eyes had not been recognised.
They were pushed to a waiting police van. Chong, Dien Gau, the rest of the men, the Burmese, everyone got on. Yan was already half a step on the van, when an officer pushed him back down. Not rudely, but with no thought for him either. "There's no more space. Take him back in the squad car."
There was a brief moment of confusion, of discussions that resolved itself as an officer peeled away from the knot.
The young officer again. "There aren't space enough in the squad cars either. We weren't expecting so many of you. They're sending a car over for you right now. We'll have to wait."
Yan smiled wryly. "Take your time. I'm in no hurry."
The remark startled a smile out of the officer. The corners of his mouth quirked up, and Yan felt another strange pang in his heart. Of envy? Probably. Obviously.
Yan squatted at the side of the road, as the police van pulled away, carrying his ex-gang mates and the desperate Burmese away. The young officer stood beside him, staring up at the sky. Police activity continued, like ants on an kicked over heap, all around them. Temporarily ignored, it was as if they were in a private bubble of isolation. He sneaked a look at the tag pinned prominently on the black-clad chest. Lau Kin Ming.
Yan was lost in a reverie of his own. He thought about the choices he made, of the what-ifs of his life, of his empty stomach. And then suddenly, a cigarette box was there, in his face. He looked up, along the hand, the arm, and at the face of the officer, offering his captive a smoke.
"It'll be a while," said Lau Kin Ming.
"Thank you!" Yan nodded and bobbed his head in awkward thanks. They smoked together like that, in companiable silence, for as long as the cigarette lasted.
Yan walked out of jail two weeks later, stubbled, smelly, and as pissed as hell. Two long weeks, in a cell that was about the size of the toilet at home, and smelt about the same. No, Yan was not a happy camper.
Wong-sir had promised him a holiday. A break from the whole shit. No more gangs. No more dirty drugs deals. No more jail. Chong had sung like the proverbial birdie, and the Boss was in custody, charged, and waiting for trial. They had enough shit to put him away for life, said Wong-sir. Thanks to him.
Yeah. And the Queen will give him a medal, and he'd get an automatic increase in wages and instant promotion to Lieutenant too. A young face -- another lieutenant, a real one -- flashed across his mind, and Yan wondered at himself.
Fuck this. He needed a bath, food, and a woman, and in roughly that order.
Yan looked up at the sky, and made his way in search of what he needed. Within two hours, he was back at Temple Street. He had the worst craving for smelly toufu while he was in jail. Dipped the deep-fried square of smelly goodness into the chilli sauce and crunched happily.
Suddenly, life didn't seem as bad. He trolled the streets, eating his toufu as he went, ignoring the occasionally dirty looks thrown his way by people who just did not appreciate a good thing. He was at a CD shop, down to his last two cubes, when someone reached for the same Choy Kum CD he'd been eyeing.
"Sorry," he apologised automatically, before his brain kicked in and supplied a name to the face.
"You!" The young officer, Ming, was obviously surprised to find him out and about. "Out so soon?"
Yan cursed the gods mentally for a second, before grinning weakly. His eyes crinkled. "I just got out. Good behaviour. First offence. The judge took pity on me."
Ming nodded. "That's good." He looked down at the CD. "You like her too?"
"Sure. What's not to like?"
"Too old, too flat, too ugly?"
Yan laughed. "Then what are you buying this for?"
"Well, she has this voice..." the officer looked down at the CD cover, and smiled a fox's smile.
In the end, they got a copy each, paid for it, and then exited the shop together. There was an awkward pause, as they stood at the shop's entrance and tried to figure out what to say next.
"Eh," Yan scratched his head, and held out his bag of smelly toufu to Ming. "Smelly toufu?"
Ming's nostrils flared and his eyes brightened. "The one right at the end of Temple Street?"
"That's the one."
"Don't mind if I do." He deftly stabbed the second last piece of smelly toufu and ate it with gusto. "It's the best stall," He said, through mouthfuls of toufu and chilli.
"Yeah," said Yan, watching Ming's mouth move as he chewed, the bob of his adam's apple in his thought as he swallowed.
They finished the toufu, and Ming said. "I got to head back," he patted Yan on the arm. "Don't get caught again." The fox's smile slipped out again, and Yan suddenly felt strangely happy.
"I won't," he said.
Ming turned and started down the street. And Yan called out to his back just before it vanished into the crowds, "Don't work too hard at catching criminals!"
A wave of the hand, and Ming did not look back.
Yan laughed to himself, and tossed his CD in the air, and went home.
Days passed, and then weeks. The initial depression Yan had upon leaving the jail descended back on him with full force. Nothing seemed to go right. He felt strangely restless and irritable. As if someone was rubbing him all the wrong way with a sandpaper glove. He wanted to peel himself out of his body, throw himself off a building. Something. Anything.
Yan pulled himself out of May's body, ignoring the squech of fluids as he came out. Shit. He'd forgotten the condom. He fell back onto the bed, besides his woman's pale soft body and stared up at the ceiling.
Maybe he was missing work.
Besides him, the woman stirred. She pulled the sheets up around her, sat up in bed. The bed squeaked. "What's wrong?" she asked, her brows drawing together. "You haven't been the same since you got out of jail."
Huge eyes stared at him. Yan looked at her. She was so pretty, so young. Long hair, clear skin, big eyes. A sexy mouth, and a sexier body. Yan suddenly wondered what she was doing with a no-good guy like him.
"Stop looking at me like that," she breathed.
"What?" Yan looked at her in growing confusion.
A sob worked its way out of her throat. "I said, don't look at me as if you are seeing someone else!" The sheets fell around her. Her nakedness was suddenly seemed painfully vulnerable to Yan's eyes. "I SAID DON'T FUCK ME AND THINK OF SOMEONE ELSE!" she screamed. The tiny crystal vase by the side of the bed shattered into a million shards against the wall behind him.
Silence fell in the room, thick, impossible to break.
Yan exhaled. Tried to think of the right words to tell her. It was just the heat that's driving him crazy. That's all. Temporary summer madness. Stress.
No words came.
May looked at him, tears falling down her face. "Is it someone from the club?" she asked, as steadily as she could manage. "Or are you just tired of me?"
Yan got out his cigarettes, smoked one. And when he finished, he got up from the tangled sheets, dressed, and left the room and the silently crying woman in the bed.
Perhaps it was just summer madness. Which was why when summer ended, and autumn came, bringing with it cool winds, the rains, and Superintendent Wong's offer for another stint of undercover work in yet another gang, Yan accepted.
And when the new gang offered him heroin, part test and part brotherly offer, Yan looked out of the window at the impossibly blue sky, turned back and accepted with a wry smile.
Why not? They were all going to hell anyway.
- fini -
Naraka
by omi
Nar•a•ka
Pronunciation: (nur'u-ku), -n. Hinduism.
a place of torment for the spirits of the wicked.
-Random House Unabridged Dictionary
Yan lounged in the driver's seat, cigarette dangling from his mouth, eyes half lidded to mere slits.
The heat of the Hong Kong summer night clung to the skin, impossible to dissipate. It was almost too hot to breathe. Patches of perspiration soaked into the thin cotton of his shirt. The air-conditioning was broken. The neons signs of Temple street casted a flickering surreal glow over his face, broken up by the throngs of people jostling each other. Light. Shadow. Light. He listened with half an ear to the hubbub outside his car window.
A shrill housewife, complaining about rising prices and falling quality to her friend, her voice rising and falling in the fluid cadence of the dialect. 'Three hundred dollars! He thought he could cheat me! Do I look as if I was born yesterday to you, I ask you!' They stepped into a shop, and their voices disappeared into the general noise, to be replaced by another.
A man, dressed in a florid shirt that seemed to bleed colours into the air, talking into a mobile phone, half whining, half placating. 'I told you, I was working late! ... Of course I still love you. I'm buying you your favourite roast goose right now...' And the man vanished into the crowds, just another body jostling for space.
'YO~ YO~ YO~ YO~!!' 'Yeah, work it!' 'And I LUURRVVEE you so, baby!' 'Yeah, yeah!' 'Love you one million years!' A quartet of teenagers, laughing raucously, jostling, nudging each other in the way of the very young. Their voices lingered a little longer, even after they danced-walked down the streets, pedestrians parting before them and swiftly closing back again in their wake.
Someone hurried by with a bagful of smelly toufu -- or a few bagfuls, by the smell of it. The pungent smell of the fried fermented toufu and chilli sauce called to Yan momentarily, and his stomach growled. He thought longinly about leaving the car to grab a bite but finally discarded the notion. He'd be screwed if he missed this job. Yan slumped back into his original position and glumly contemplated the pitfalls of the life of a member of Hong Kong mafia.
Finally, just as Yan thought he would go insane with boredom or perhaps just the heat, a tap on the car roof came.
"Hey," Dien Gau bent over and stuck his face through the car window. Two gold teeth gleamed in his mouth wetly. It was how he got his name -- he lost two teeth biting an attacking dog that was probably rabid. He said at the time, the dog bit him first. The boss was so amused, he paid for the gold replacements. "Time. The goods are here." He jerked his head in the direction of an alleyway.
"Finally," said Yan. He flicked his twentieth cigarette out of the window, past Dien Gau. "I'm about to die of hunger here." He wound up the car window, got out of the car, locked it.
"Not our fault," said Dien Gau, falling into step beside him. "Bloody Burmese," he spat to the side of the road. "They insisted on taking another damn route, doubled-back and drove here. Took us bloody two hours for a twenty minute ride. Fucking cowards. Boss told them not to bother to find him again if they haven't got the balls for the business."
"Really?" Yan scratched at his head.
"Up there," Dien Gau darted into the side entrance of a dilapidated building, taking the steps two at a time. The signboard along the steps advertised 'Massages! Reflexology! Acupuncture!'. Yan followed him in without comment.
The transaction took place in the top floor, in a dingy room with fluorescent lighting that blinked on and off unsteadily. One of the guys from their side tested a package, ripping it open with long expertise, and cutting the lines. Yan and Dien Gau had nothing to do, except to stand in the background, and loom menacingly. Or, in Yan's case, slouch menacingly.
Their guy confirmed the quality of the goods, eyes dilated, his breathing a little faster at the rush of drugs hitting his system. He'd be useless for a while, thought Yan, eyes half-lidded. Chong, Mr Right Hand Man, handed over a sports bag filled with thousand dollar bills to his Burmese counterpart even as Dien Gau took possession of the drugs.
And then all hell broke loose.
The door burst open, and a sea of black-clad uniforms poured in, shouting, screaming. "GET DOWN! DON'T MOVE! POLICE!" There was a brief tussle, but there were too many cops, too little space. Yan put up a perfunctory resistance, before being pushed to the floor. He squatted, a baton pressed firmly against his neck, a gun pointed at his head. All around him, the same was happening across the room.
One of the Burmese, more desperate than most, made a break for the window. He was more than halfway out the window when he was hauled screaming back into the room. Yan wondered where he thought he was going. It was about five stories straight down from where they were. He sneaked a peek through his arms, at the man.
The man, small, was twisting, almost bucking off his feet. It took four police officers to hold him down. Maybe he had some desperate need for money. Maybe he had family to feed, back in Burma.
Not my fault, brother. Yan thought in the silence of his mind, his eyes carefully blank.
They were cuffed and patted down, everything remotely dangerous removed, weapons, wallets, everything. Then they were pushed and herded in single file, out the door, down the stairs. They lined the side of the building, squatting, waiting until finally an officer came round to take their names and ID.
Young, fresh-faced, uniform pressed to an inch of its life, the officer had Shiny-New written all over him. Probably just made lieutenant, figured Yan.
And then it was his turn.
"Name and ID?" the officer asked, not bothering to look up from his clipboard file. He looked, from Yan's vantage point from the ground, as monumentally bored as Yan himself. Yan remained silent, posturing for the benefit of the gang members glowering on both sides.
The officer held the clipboard against his hip, and looked at Yan for the first time. "Don't bother to play games with us. You've all been caught redhanded, and we have our ways to make life hell for you in jail," said the officer crisply.
Their eyes met for an instant. And then slid away almost immediately in something like embarassment. Yan studied the ground in front of him intently, and muttered to the pair of feet standing before him, "Chan Wing Yan, 6912558."
The pair of shoes, leather and polished to a high gleam, remained in front of him for a heartbeat longer than it had to, and then moved away. "Next. Name and ID?"
Yan breathed. Wondered at the strange look in the young officer's eyes. Hoped that the longing in his own eyes had not been recognised.
They were pushed to a waiting police van. Chong, Dien Gau, the rest of the men, the Burmese, everyone got on. Yan was already half a step on the van, when an officer pushed him back down. Not rudely, but with no thought for him either. "There's no more space. Take him back in the squad car."
There was a brief moment of confusion, of discussions that resolved itself as an officer peeled away from the knot.
The young officer again. "There aren't space enough in the squad cars either. We weren't expecting so many of you. They're sending a car over for you right now. We'll have to wait."
Yan smiled wryly. "Take your time. I'm in no hurry."
The remark startled a smile out of the officer. The corners of his mouth quirked up, and Yan felt another strange pang in his heart. Of envy? Probably. Obviously.
Yan squatted at the side of the road, as the police van pulled away, carrying his ex-gang mates and the desperate Burmese away. The young officer stood beside him, staring up at the sky. Police activity continued, like ants on an kicked over heap, all around them. Temporarily ignored, it was as if they were in a private bubble of isolation. He sneaked a look at the tag pinned prominently on the black-clad chest. Lau Kin Ming.
Yan was lost in a reverie of his own. He thought about the choices he made, of the what-ifs of his life, of his empty stomach. And then suddenly, a cigarette box was there, in his face. He looked up, along the hand, the arm, and at the face of the officer, offering his captive a smoke.
"It'll be a while," said Lau Kin Ming.
"Thank you!" Yan nodded and bobbed his head in awkward thanks. They smoked together like that, in companiable silence, for as long as the cigarette lasted.
Yan walked out of jail two weeks later, stubbled, smelly, and as pissed as hell. Two long weeks, in a cell that was about the size of the toilet at home, and smelt about the same. No, Yan was not a happy camper.
Wong-sir had promised him a holiday. A break from the whole shit. No more gangs. No more dirty drugs deals. No more jail. Chong had sung like the proverbial birdie, and the Boss was in custody, charged, and waiting for trial. They had enough shit to put him away for life, said Wong-sir. Thanks to him.
Yeah. And the Queen will give him a medal, and he'd get an automatic increase in wages and instant promotion to Lieutenant too. A young face -- another lieutenant, a real one -- flashed across his mind, and Yan wondered at himself.
Fuck this. He needed a bath, food, and a woman, and in roughly that order.
Yan looked up at the sky, and made his way in search of what he needed. Within two hours, he was back at Temple Street. He had the worst craving for smelly toufu while he was in jail. Dipped the deep-fried square of smelly goodness into the chilli sauce and crunched happily.
Suddenly, life didn't seem as bad. He trolled the streets, eating his toufu as he went, ignoring the occasionally dirty looks thrown his way by people who just did not appreciate a good thing. He was at a CD shop, down to his last two cubes, when someone reached for the same Choy Kum CD he'd been eyeing.
"Sorry," he apologised automatically, before his brain kicked in and supplied a name to the face.
"You!" The young officer, Ming, was obviously surprised to find him out and about. "Out so soon?"
Yan cursed the gods mentally for a second, before grinning weakly. His eyes crinkled. "I just got out. Good behaviour. First offence. The judge took pity on me."
Ming nodded. "That's good." He looked down at the CD. "You like her too?"
"Sure. What's not to like?"
"Too old, too flat, too ugly?"
Yan laughed. "Then what are you buying this for?"
"Well, she has this voice..." the officer looked down at the CD cover, and smiled a fox's smile.
In the end, they got a copy each, paid for it, and then exited the shop together. There was an awkward pause, as they stood at the shop's entrance and tried to figure out what to say next.
"Eh," Yan scratched his head, and held out his bag of smelly toufu to Ming. "Smelly toufu?"
Ming's nostrils flared and his eyes brightened. "The one right at the end of Temple Street?"
"That's the one."
"Don't mind if I do." He deftly stabbed the second last piece of smelly toufu and ate it with gusto. "It's the best stall," He said, through mouthfuls of toufu and chilli.
"Yeah," said Yan, watching Ming's mouth move as he chewed, the bob of his adam's apple in his thought as he swallowed.
They finished the toufu, and Ming said. "I got to head back," he patted Yan on the arm. "Don't get caught again." The fox's smile slipped out again, and Yan suddenly felt strangely happy.
"I won't," he said.
Ming turned and started down the street. And Yan called out to his back just before it vanished into the crowds, "Don't work too hard at catching criminals!"
A wave of the hand, and Ming did not look back.
Yan laughed to himself, and tossed his CD in the air, and went home.
Days passed, and then weeks. The initial depression Yan had upon leaving the jail descended back on him with full force. Nothing seemed to go right. He felt strangely restless and irritable. As if someone was rubbing him all the wrong way with a sandpaper glove. He wanted to peel himself out of his body, throw himself off a building. Something. Anything.
Yan pulled himself out of May's body, ignoring the squech of fluids as he came out. Shit. He'd forgotten the condom. He fell back onto the bed, besides his woman's pale soft body and stared up at the ceiling.
Maybe he was missing work.
Besides him, the woman stirred. She pulled the sheets up around her, sat up in bed. The bed squeaked. "What's wrong?" she asked, her brows drawing together. "You haven't been the same since you got out of jail."
Huge eyes stared at him. Yan looked at her. She was so pretty, so young. Long hair, clear skin, big eyes. A sexy mouth, and a sexier body. Yan suddenly wondered what she was doing with a no-good guy like him.
"Stop looking at me like that," she breathed.
"What?" Yan looked at her in growing confusion.
A sob worked its way out of her throat. "I said, don't look at me as if you are seeing someone else!" The sheets fell around her. Her nakedness was suddenly seemed painfully vulnerable to Yan's eyes. "I SAID DON'T FUCK ME AND THINK OF SOMEONE ELSE!" she screamed. The tiny crystal vase by the side of the bed shattered into a million shards against the wall behind him.
Silence fell in the room, thick, impossible to break.
Yan exhaled. Tried to think of the right words to tell her. It was just the heat that's driving him crazy. That's all. Temporary summer madness. Stress.
No words came.
May looked at him, tears falling down her face. "Is it someone from the club?" she asked, as steadily as she could manage. "Or are you just tired of me?"
Yan got out his cigarettes, smoked one. And when he finished, he got up from the tangled sheets, dressed, and left the room and the silently crying woman in the bed.
Perhaps it was just summer madness. Which was why when summer ended, and autumn came, bringing with it cool winds, the rains, and Superintendent Wong's offer for another stint of undercover work in yet another gang, Yan accepted.
And when the new gang offered him heroin, part test and part brotherly offer, Yan looked out of the window at the impossibly blue sky, turned back and accepted with a wry smile.
Why not? They were all going to hell anyway.
- fini -