Thursday, August 8, 2024 - 9:00 PM
That same evening as Queen Devi took her seat, miles from the alley off Grandmall Avenue, in the Mannu coastal district south of Meijing, next to an overgrown brackish canal, the dimly lit loading dock of a defunked medical facility was strangely busy, for during the day it was never busy. A half-dozen men unloaded their cargo from a nondescript utility truck and coerced four adolescents—two girls with short skirts and blue hair, and two boys with ill-fitted clothes—to stumble into the facility. It was a quiet operation until one of the boys regained enough consciousness from his drug-induced stupor to make a run for it. But the kid only made it a few meters before a muscular enforcer sucker punched him in the stomach and threw him to the ground. In the shadows, a gruff voice hissed.
“Great. Just what the boss needs—tenderized meat. Phillipo! Use brain, not fists, or fists may pound brain.” The breathless boy convulsed as two others grabbed the kid’s arms and legs and dragged him through swinging doors, past an abandoned reception area, and down a hall into the shadows.
Out of the shadows, the flickering light of a television screen streamed from a large room, and with it the laughing utterance of a man disturbed, if one listened closely to the uttering beneath the laughter. “Just what I need, competition. Am I not already helping?”
There was a long pause as the scratchy sound of applause atrophied from the television’s tiny speaker. The man’s irritated voice echoed again down the dark hall, as if an evil specter had descended to confront him. “Kasden, I pray…why play such a sour plot? From what pit in Hades did she rise?”
In the middle of a dark, pillared hall that had probably been a lounge or waiting area for hospital guests, a displaced conference table sat squat and hideous, strewn with putrid food wrappers, discarded clothing, a lone boot, greasy rags, electrical wires to nowhere, and cinders from cigarettes and cigars that spilled over the tundra of empty tuna tins. The conference table had seen better days. Scattered around the table were a potpourri of mismatched chairs—a rolling desk chair, a couple of club chairs with ripped upholstery, two ladder backs of different colors, a few wingbacks, and a brown egg chair with soiled covers.
Sapptoso Wanti had been slouching in a vinyl recliner the color of green pond scum, but was now sitting on the edge, leaning across the littered table, glaring in surprise and anger, but with more anger than surprise, at the irreverent screen, holding a glass of amber liquid in one hand and a rolled reefer in the other.
Standing and sitting near Sapptoso were three associates, all of whom questioned their association with the man behind the dope he was smoking, the whiskey he was drinking, and whatever putrid program he was watching on TV. Because none of the associates had a say in the matter of their association, they glued their attention to the television and Sabriya’s speech.
“Honorable King Arun, and Queen Devi; parliamentarians and members of the Supreme Judiciary; my dear husband, Sir David Kensington; and my beloved fellow citizens of Pellagore. I adore all of you. I pray for all of you, for your health, safety, and well-being in every way, and for a life that is abundant.
Tonight, I stand before you as a testament to the worst and best of our country. I have seen and lived both. Do not be deceived by how I appear before you in this beautiful setting, the gown I wear, or my sitting with our country’s honorable King Arun and Queen Devi. I came from a small and poor village in the northern mountains. I am one of you. With perseverance and determination, I was smiled upon by God to work hard at my studies, find protection among trustworthy people, and marry a humble and capable man.
“I fully endorse Queen Devi’s program to rid our Kingdom of the horrible plight that besets us, although I am not exactly sure how I will be helping our beloved Queen in this worthy quest of bringing goodness, truth, beauty, and safety to our people from the plight of human trafficking. But I know that I must with all my heart and being, and that is the desire of Sir David, my husband, and the great country he represents. I do know that I am here tonight to plead with each of you to pledge your support to this noble cause, to rid our land of the forces that would destroy our beautiful land by enslaving our most valuable resource, our children.
“Each of you, wherever you are in this tropical paradise we call home, deserves to live in the fullness of the transcendentals that God has bestowed upon us. But the Queen needs your help. There are persons among us who would steal our children, enslave our young, betray what is true, call evil good and good evil, and defraud beauty with what is loathsome. You must not believe them. Seek out wise men and women you can trust. Be skeptical of promises that sound too good to be true. Be protective of our young ones. Teach them how to defend themselves. And pray that God will protect us, and lead our great Kingdom to safety and a good fortune for all. I stand with our King and Queen, and I ask you to do the same. Thank you.”
As the television cameras followed Sabriya to her seat, Sapptoso muted the sound, pointed at the screen, and yelled.
“Marco!”
A short, trim, and swift 33-year-old Filipino, with a triangular face, straight black hair parted down the middle, and an abiding frown that was more mean than sad, stepped forward.
“Yeah, boss?”
“You recognize that bitch?”
“No, boss. Who she?”
“Sabriya Ratee. Married our new ambassador from England. How in hell, I have no idea.”
“Sure look different. How’d she get to England?”
Naw. He ended up here.
“Oh, yeah. You told me about her.”
“She owes me big, but I’m thinking she just dug herself a hole, a deep hole.”
“Ya, always right, boss. Want something done?”
“Hell, yes. Follow her. Tell me everywhere she goes. She’ll be protected, so don’t get close, don’t engage. She’s got to leave that walled-off fortress sometime. Find out where she goes, who she sees, who she meets. They won’t be protected. Let me know. Revenge can be sweet if we do it right. Damn bitch. I’ll get her. She won’t know what hit her. And keep an eye out for our deluded Queenie. In time, perhaps we can put her in a cage too. Get going.”
Marco jumped and was out the door in no time.
Sapptoso turned off the TV, finished his drink, and snuffed out his weed. Leaving the other two men in the lounge, he strode down a hall to a room with ornate, gold-leafed double doors and a carved grating that let light and air flow in and out. This was Kasden’s throne room. Opening both doors, Sapp looked up in reverence at the 3-meter-high, 15-metric-ton cast-bronze idol of Kasden, the god of riches, power, and wrath…or was it revenge, he could never remember. The massive graven image sat half-lotus on a round base with gold coins cascading from its groin into piles on the round pedestal beneath the colossal image’s crossed legs. At the end of the idol’s bent left arm, cradled in its left hand, palm up, was a round pot overflowing with gold-bronze coils. Likewise, cradled in its right hand was a skull, perfectly preserved, if a skull can be described as preserved. Naked from the waist up, armlets encircled both biceps with turquoise gems. Around the idol’s neck was a broad protective plate, also with two turquoise gems in the center. The face was rectangular and deeply etched with furrows in the jowls and forehead, and the heavy-lidded eyes suggested an existential sense of sorrow and pain, but with more pain than sorrow. The idol wore a large bronze crown topped with an onion dome, rising from a circle of flames emanating from the crown’s base. Along the idol’s head to the left, a menacing serpent snaked its way up, ready to swallow whatever might drop from heaven.
Before Kasden, his spirtless behemoth of a god, Sapptoso lit three small candles to either side, and then bowed deeply to the base of the idol quickly and purposely striking his forehead on a spiked plate directly in front of him, causing blood to drip from his forehead, streak down his face, slide between his lips, and coat his tongue in a communion of blood lust. Eyes closed, his mouth mumbled an unintelligible oath of vengeance. But at what? He was distracted; something else was fueling his anger. His thoughts stopped, and for an instant, he remembered. Tears came to his eyes—a horrifying image. Days after the tsunami destroyed their Indonesian village, he gazed down on a fetid pool of floating debris and his parents’ bloated bodies, embracing each other. They were dead. He was orphaned, age four, with no siblings, no relatives, only an insatiable animus to survive—against all odds, against all powers, and against omnipotence itself.
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