Puddles of a Rainbow
Pairing: No, no pairing. Just Fon-centric
Rating: M, for dark disturbing things
A/N: this fic was inspired by my love of Hong Kong action movies, Stephen Chow and my weird interest in Kowloon Walled City. I will probably update this story like really really slowly so I hope you don't get too mad about it. I really research on things like this and with school just around the corner it's becoming harder and harder to write anything coherent.
Chapter 1: Sleeping Nightingale
The sky is dark, not that you could see it. You can barely see anything in the dark yourself.
People could go their whole lives and never see the sky here; a patch of sunlight here and there but never enough to bathe in the light.
And it always stinks.
The air is rank with the pollution and mass industrialization the city has amassed since the British occupation and after the war. Homeless refugees had fled into this city and barricaded their way in here. It's once noble purpose of protecting China spiraling into a no-man's land where the law is kept by the gangs, theft commonplace and a fucked up system making this neoliberal makeshift society work even in the damnedest of ways.
Water is taken from dirty wells and electricity is stolen from the main supply. Where little girls and boys peddle in the middle of the night in all too revealing dresses for eight yuans. And every imaginable occupation is scattered within these towering walls—all illegal of course, you wouldn't want to be an upstanding citizen now don't you?
Where the wires and pipes overlap and convolute around each other so intricately it is a labyrinth of corridors and narrow walkways and stairs of boxes and trash. Where houses are built upon each other and stretch up so high there is only darkness below.
Where the sky is only a fairy tale to help children sleep and rainbows are as fleeting as sunlight as wishes are to dreamers.
The water drips from the damp walls in a steady rhythm.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The corridors are narrow and cramped, trash cans over flowing with waste as the pungent smell of rotting food invades your nose and makes your eyes water as you meander through the dingy streets of the walled city.
The night is quiet save for the muted sounds of stolen television and domestic violence about ten stories up. A singular object falls from above and lands in front of you. You're not sure what it is and you've a right to be wary. The last time this happened it was a large rat that bit your hand when you tried to grab it. You had to go the quack that night since your hand wouldn't stop swelling. A fat lot of help that sonovabitch did you.
So you inch toward it warily your eyes squinting in a futile attempt to see better—not that you could see much in this pitch black darkness. It's a small round object you think is a turnip at first, its dirty white and orange color does little to enhance its beauty. It's been a while since you had anything other than rice, a turnip would be nice, except you remember that turnips don't have nails attached to them.
You feel the corners of your mouth quirk as you realize your stupidity. It was a top. And it's yours. Well maybe not yours before but it was now. So you bend down low and pick up the small toy, fingering the simple cylindrical design adorning it like a mother would a newborn child.
You place the toy in your pocket right next to the package you were supposed to deliver to the Dragons. Hurriedly you make your way through the winding passageways of this dilapidated labyrinth until you could hear the telltale signs of the brothels.
The eerily haunting lilt of cheap beer, honky tonk jazz and sex pervade your nose as you take the final left, groping the grimy walls for support as you descend down a few steps, careful of any other funny business scaling the sides.
Entering the street, you're greeted by the nearest sidewalk whore who gives you a lascivious wink with her pearly white tattoo by the side of her left breast. It's a signal from the boss you realize, so you saunter off towards her like a true professional, slightly disoriented and swaying from side to side like you've just had a hit of poppy down by the backstreets. She leans closer, you can feel her hot poppy-scented breath against your ear as she clutches your shoulders with her long nails in a vice like grip.
"Down by the Dollar Darling, up two staircases to your left. Knock twice"
You nod your head taking a brief analyzing look at the woman, gaunt, malnourished and high, her hair slightly falling off from the drugs. She gives you a small crooked smile before she saunters off to a probable customer, a middle-aged salaryman with thinning hair.
He gropes her breast and slips in a couple of papers in her breasts before she saunters off with him to the alley in the back.
You have a mind to sock that man in the jaw but you neither have the strength nor the time. Hell, you don't even have the money for it. And you walk away, further into the heap of debauchery and lawlessness.
You arrive at the door, bringing your hand up in a gesture to knock. Halting to take a steadying breath, more for your nerves than anything else, you knock twice your knuckles rapping against the wood in quick rapt succession.
"Enter" says a cool voice, so you do.
The door creaks open and you see four men around a round table playing what appears to be a card game. Foreigners your mind tells you. You close the door before the man tells you to do so, best to be as polite and efficient as possible.
He beckons you toward him and you do so your head not quite looking at him, but your eyes observing the foreigners in the room. Expensive suits and perfume, both of them having white skin and distinctive pronounced bone structure, you reckon they're probably Italian. Wait, you notice a faint presence at the other side of the small room, in the blind spot. You eye him warily as the man unbuttons your shirt ungracefully, checking to see if you have the mark of the Dragons. Of course you had one, you worked part time in the factories before you got promoted to the whoring in the streets.
Nevermind yourself, the man acknowledges you've noticed his presence with the mere tip of his hat and a cryptic smile. He probably has a gun in his jacket's pocket. Your attention is brought back to the present when the man finishes frisking you off and giving you a slight nod of approval. You give him a small, cryptic smile as you glance at his hand.
"you have the package?" he asks you brusquely. Two pair, he loses this round.
Silently you reach for the package in your pocket and place it in his open palm. It's small enough that it fits perfectly. You retreat to your corner of the room. There are no thank yous and gratitudes given, only the barest of nods but you don't really mind. The money you'll get after.
The Chinese man hands of the package as a large suitcase is passed over the table. It's an exchange you muse. The briefcase reveals to hold over a million yuans in cash. You start to wonder what kind of package you had been carrying and how lucky you had been that nothing had come to harm you during your delivery. You start to think about what might have happened to you if you had lost it. You stifle the thought, it wasn't a good one anyway.
"It was a pleasure doing business with you" the man says in heavily accented English. You feel a sense of despair as the Italian places the package in his pocket. You had wanted to learn what that small package was in actuality.
"The other man glances at you lasciviously and you know he's willing to cash out. You make a small movement with your fingers as you grin at him conspiratorially. He'll probably pay you a whole lot.
You and Kyoya can eat like kings tonight.
Two shadowy figures navigate their way through the tight spaces of street that made up this urban jungle. The harried, slightly erratic way they jostled through to the edge did little to hide the frantic pace they set. They groped their way around, the walls wet and loose, pipes cascading trickles of dirty water on them, they wobble some more—they've had a bit of a drink. Jovial music from the nearby brothels only adds to the irony of the sorry tune the city has immersed itself in.
The two figures stop at the end of a street quite aways from well the scene of a rather gruesome crime.
"We're quite near the Wall already" says one. His dark slacks and coifed up coat mark him different from the other who was a balding middle aged salary man clad in a cheap suit and reeked of vomit.
"Unload the bag" he commands, his feet tapping on the damp floor impatiently, a frantic sloshing sound emanating from the pavement. He looks back perennially to see if anybody has followed them, a certain sense of paranoia creeping into him.
The bald man unzips the duffel and pours its contents onto the dirty pavement. Wet thuds dampen the already murky puddle a darker shade of black, the substance seeping into the water like a sea of ink.
"This shit stinks" the coifed man exclaims in a hushed tone of voice, his nose crinkling as the putrid scent of decaying flesh pervade his senses.
Tugging at a large strip of flesh that had caught the zipper, he pulls with a great heave as the stray flecks of blood hit his face; he drops the bag. "Why the fuck do I even have to do this!"says the bald man vehemently, trying to wipe the blood off his sweaty face with his sleeve.
"You got the balls to talk, Lue, you cut up the bitch yourself!" the other exclaims as he nudges a dismembered bloody hand with the tip of his shoe, his face contorting in a lustful disgust.
A wide assortment of body parts coat the damp floor a pinkish hue, blood still dripping out of the veins. A torso, several limbs and fingers as well as her innards are thrown down the cobbled street. No light from above shining down on them.
"Let's just get this over with" the man named Lue says.
He takes a flask from his shirt pocket and pours the contents onto the mangled body on the floor. He spreads it haphazardly spraying the walls with the substance as well. When the flask is good and empty he throws it on the floor and takes a lighter from his pocket. It takes him two tries until it ignites and prepares to set the body on fire.
His friend shoves him against the wall.
"The fuck Li? Don't you want to get this over with?" he says scathingly.
"Are you retarded? Do you want the entire city going up in fucking flame?! The boss doesn't need a manhunt to find out who burned the city. Let's just put her in the dumpster and go."
Plop.
"You hear that?"
And the man named Lue turns to see a worn down top in the alleyway.
It wasn't there before.
"Shit, some kid saw us Li! Let's just get the hell out of here before the kid starts getting more people to come. The Red Dragons might hear of this and this is their wench we screwed over" his voice becoming shrilly as he struggles against his partner's vice-like grip.
"But what about the body?"
"Let's just tell'em we got rid of it. It's not like they'll find out."
"Alright, Alright"
So they run off the cramped corridors and walkways, leaving the bloody mess on the floor.
The top just sits there.
Waiting.
Ad when the footsteps of the men finally die down, a boy gives out a sigh of relief.
It was a close call.
His hands were gripping the window ledge of apartment building six-stories above the armed men; his feet lodged themselves precariously on a thick metal pipe. It was a miracle it didn't give in under his weight; although he wasn't all that heavy to begin with.
He drops down from his perch high above, breaking his landing by kicking against the lower apartment walls. His feet barely make a sound as it touches the floor.
Dark hair sat in copious amounts atop his head, high cheekbones, eyes slanted like a cat, a straight nose and dry lips marked his visage. His body waif-like, not that he was any different from the kids living in this shit-hole. His eyes had a wild look from being starved for a few days. He reeked of a little something else.
He was a handsome boy in ragged dirty clothes, two sizes too large for him, around eight or nine years, you couldn't really tell with Asians.
He searches for the nook where his top went, stepping over the mangled body parts littered on the floor.
He finds it next to the girl's decapitated head.
His nose scrunches up in disgust at the poor way her limbs were cut. The man was probably drunk when he hacked her head off. The jagged splits of putrefying flesh destroyed the once beautiful face of this woman.
Her dark hair and brown eyes betrayed the horror of her ordeal. Her mouth hung open like a common whore. Maybe she was.
She must have pissed the gangs enough to have them kill her like this.
Maybe she didn't moan enough or maybe she displeased them with a disservice. Not that he'd know much about these things anyway. He hasn't banged a wench in the brothels yet but he's been banged before.
He didn't have any money on him anyway.
He crouches down ad looks at her in the eye and he feels pity for this unfortunate creature.
He wished he could have done something to help her.
Naïve little boy, you're a weakling. You couldn't have helped her if you tried, a voice in his head says.
So he reaches out a skinny hand and closes her eyes shut.
"May you find peace wherever you are, It's probably better than here anyway" he says to her quietly before his picks up her dainty head in his hands and stuffs it in the dumpster on the back end of the wall.
He does this to her other parts, scooping them up and putting them in as gently as he could muster. He's not entirely sure he's disposed of all her innards before he kicks the dumpster hard. Several rats that had started eating away at her body scampers away into the night and he frowns in displeasure.
He takes one final look at the girl—she must have been very beautiful once—before he closes the lid.
He'd have burned her if he could but he didn't have anything to a light a fire with. Not that he owned anything in the first place. He didn't have anything in this city. It was just you and Kyoya and that one room apartment you had two floors down from a noodle factory.
So he wipes the blood on his hands off on his dirty tunic, smearing it an even dirtier red and scoops up his top and meander the dark and damp labyrinth of the walled city.
In Kowloon, the slightest shred of pity is a treasure.
And Fon, himself had very little to give.
A/N: Read and Review! Constructive Criticism is highly appreciated and make my day when you do.