Midheaven
Member
If we are defined by our actions and history, then what better way to introduce oneself then demonstrating what it is they do? Re-union is the first introduction of my characters, and anyone curious about who I am or what I intend to do here will find more details in there than in my name, residence, or in a list of my interests.
To the locals, the village of Pan Chi is an outlying city on the southern border of the Kingdom of Cambodia, and there you are either still loyal to the previous monarch, but never allowed to say, or you are a neutral smuggler trafficking opium across the border to one of two Vietnamese villages. The mainstreet is one of the few paved roads crossing through town. The shops lining its sides sell tea and fabrics among the several open air food stalls. Directly to the west of main is laundry and a small gamblers den, where children make money in the morning selling homemade talismans, and in the evening drunken sods stamp about, mourning their losses and women beckoning for the chance to heal their wounds.
To the east is the anomaly of Pan Chi. A café that sells not only coffee and lemonade, but also wheat pastries as well as the usual rice and soup. The owner is a Finn named Jon who traveled here to help a cousin at the Christian mission. By the time he had filled his six months, he has asked for the hand of Cambodian girl with a widowed mother and a two year old son who had frequented the mission in search of its charity. They had stayed to tend to her family, and the Finn used the money he had earned teaching English to open the unusual but homely eating space.
But on this particular morning, there was a sight even more alien to the people than the stocky Finn and his lemonade. Sitting at a table next to the window waiting for more tea, was a Frenchman. The Finn’s wife spoke French, and had briefly had a conversation with the guest and discovered that he was here to meet several acquaintances. She and her husband awaited these people with some excitement, because this Frenchman was so unusual to look at and listen to, that they wondered if his friends were to be just as strange.
Jon initially was surprised when his wife asked him to deliver the tea, because she insisted that he listen to the stranger’s voice. She said it was hard to believe such a voice could belong to a person. Jon shook his head in disbelief, but regardless he brought the tea and studied the bizarre thin man seated at the booth with his elbows on the table and his hands at his tan chin. The Frenchman nodded at the Finn, gave a small gratifying smile, but said nothing. The Finn considered asking if he needed anything else so maybe he could receive a vocal response, but he stared so long at all the oddities adorning the man’s clothes, that he left hastily in some embarrassment. But the Frenchman called after him as Jon paced away from the table. He asked, in English, for some of the café’s “famous short cakes” to be brought out on a plate. The Finn turned around, in a small amount of amazement as his wife watched from the counter with her arms crossed and her slanted eyes squinting a little bit more than usual, as if she was looking for clues about the newcomer’s origin or occupation.
The Finn, with a slight stutter, asked, “Come again?” It occurred to him, that the stranger had no obvious way of knowing how Jon spoke English in the first place. The language is not native to many in Pan Chi, with the locals opting mostly to French. The Frenchman repeated his request, and Jon heard clearly. Now he understood why his wife had hoped that he would hear the voice in question, for it was maybe two or three octaves higher than any person’s he had heard before, yet it was clear and understandable. If you had sharp ears, which the Finn could not boast of, you would have picked up on a very slight reverberation or echo in the voice as well. Jon, his brow raised in surprise he was not aware he was displaying, nodded and gave a simple “yes”. The Frenchman smiled again, and resumed his looking out the window. Jon headed back to the counter, and met his wife in the store room behind the shop. They discussed briefly the stranger’s voice, and any potential correlation it may have had to the rest of his appearance. Any ties that would make sense of the neat black suit, the necklace, the grey ornament dangling from his left ear, or the two neon blue streaks in his black hair. They reached no conclusion.
Mae, the Finn’s wife, brought out a plate with maybe half a dozen short bread slices stacked in a pyramid, and set them on the Frenchman’s table. She glanced down on the fellow, but he did not return her glance. Instead, he was watching the road, and Mae looked up in time to see an empty auto-rickshaw pick up speed and depart, apparently after unloading passengers at the café’s entrance. The vehicle on this side of the street meant most certainly that whoever has gotten off it, were both from out of town and intending to come in. So she swiftly made her way back to the kitchen, glancing over her shoulder to see two new peoples entering through the open front door. The one in front was a confident, but pale Russian looking man in a dark thin overcoat. His hands at his pockets, he looked around at everyone in the café, making eye contact with all of them, his eyes resting on the Frenchman last, who return his gaze blankly. The new man gave a broad but closed mouth grin upon making contact with his friend and began to walk toward to table.
The Finn, glancing up from the counter but making an effort to appear to not be staring, noticed the new man had red neon streaks in his black hair, very much like the Frenchman’s. Immediately after, his eyes collided with the returning stare of the second, younger, man, who blankly watched Jon through some of the most tired eyes Jon thought he had ever seen. He wore a baby blue button down and denims. He had an expensive watch on the outside of his open gray raincoat, and he wore hiking boots. His hair had no streaks, but instead was short, curly, and already greying at the roots despite the youthful but also pale features in his face. Soon, he too followed his slightly taller companion to the table of the Frenchman. The Russian looking one in the dark tracksuit had placed one leg on the entirety of his bench, forcing the following man to take a seat next to the Frenchman. In the ensuing conversation, neither Jon nor his wife heard the tired looking one say anything.
The Russian was looking at the Frenchman in some sort of contempt. The Frenchman, sitting straight, gave back a sorry looking expression, and whenever he looked down at the figure of the tired younger man beside him, he looked even more sorry.
After a pause in which the two men studied each other, the Russian began by asking in more English and in an English accent as well, “Well now. How was America?”
“Wet. Muddy. Lots of flies.” Responded the Frenchman in his voice that many find comic.
“The flies seem to be a recurring theme for you these days.” The Russian replied, looking up at the ceiling, and waving his finger though circles in the air, imitating a winged bug. “I wonder what that could mean.”
“I’m not entirely sure.” This phrase caught the Russian’s attention with an even more contemptuous air than before. The little one next the Frenchman continued to stare directly in front of him, burning a hole through the wood back of the Russian’s bench. “How are you Mock?” Continued the Frenchman.
“Shitty.” The Russian who’s now apparent name was Mock returned. “I mean who wouldn’t be. An eight hour flight, followed by a sweltering ride in a van with more goats than people. A sweltering night sharing a room with this guy,” Here he gestured at that short blank one he had come in with. “Who insists we preserve all forms of chastity. Coming here to shoot the shiet with you, and Dennis? Dennis is coming right?”
The Frenchman nodded slowly but once.
“Great. To shoot the shiet with you and Dennis, after which I can look forward to another flight on a mini-plane to some butt-sketch-no-wheres-ville outside Hong Kong, once again accompanied by maybe the single most boring kid who ever came out of Cornell.” Mock obviously was referring to the little figure next to the Frenchman who still remained solid and silent.
“Well you should have more fun once you get to Hong Kong?”, the Frenchman said with some sympathy.
“Ohhh describing my plans wouldn’t do you the service.” Mock said with an enormous grin. “You should come. Help pass the two days between here and the city.” He laughed to himself, quietly. “That’s gunna blowwwww.”
Here the Frenchman smiled modestly in agreement.
Mae was bringing breakfast to an elderly couple too old to be put off by the frank loudness and foreign appearance of Mock and his friends, when without warning, someone else walked though her front door. He was tall, and wore and rusty colored suit and slacks. He was significantly older than the other strangers, and as he approached Mae, he took off his hat. He told her he was looking for some friends, and Mae directed him to the table he directly had his back too. He turned, smiled at the company eyeing him from the table, and raised his arm in salutations. He thanked Mae and walked over to them.
The new sturdy stranger extended his hand to each of them in turn as he swiftly greeted them. “Bou! It’s been too long. Good to see you safe.” He said, greeting the Frenchman. “Machiavelli! How yea doin’?”
Mock replied, “Jolly! Yea prick.”
“Great.” The tall man said, patting Mock on the shoulder. “How’s the super genius?” He bent down and glanced at the short one still brimming with a genuine happiness. But the so called “super genius” only forced a smile.
“How’s Dennis?” Bou the Frenchman asked their new arrival.
“Oh you know Bou. I’ve been really good recently. An extra special kind of fantastic.” Mock had removed his leg from the bench surface, and now Dennis was sitting next to him. “I just got word back from my lady friend, that her dog is a little shaken up, but okay after it got locked in the neighbor’s storage unit over night. The dog’s mute apparently. I didn’t know dogs could be mute, but this one is mute so no one noticed it until this morning when they found a puddle of piss outside their storage locker, and, and, and they heard scratching too.” Dennis was very animated with his hands when telling a story, and he asked if the short cakes were there to be eaten. Bou said they were, and Dennis ate with a paper napkin he pulled from his pocket. “Speaking of mutes. Guess who I saw walking down by the casino?”
“Your reflection?” Mock said in humor.
“No haha! I saw Simon down there, scouting or something I bet. He’s wearing, like a, a hijab or something, but it’s definitely him. Why? Why doesn’t he just come over here? I’m sure it’s safe right?”
At the mention of Simon, Mock let out a scoff. “Pffft! Yea. Sure. That guy. Jeeeez. Almost as bad as the kid. I mean, I guess he’s got his moments.”
“Who else is coming?” Dennis began again, looking from Bou to Mock, his mouth full of cake. “Did we find Macabre? Or Smiler?”
Bou and Mock began at once, but Mock seceded to Bou. Dennis’ arrival had lightened the mood, and but them both at their ease again. “We know where they are, even Macabre, but they are both otherwise engaged.” Bou replied.
“Huh. You say that. But fuck me, that’s almost five of us here today.” Mock added. “It’s been a long time since this many of us got together.”
To the locals, the village of Pan Chi is an outlying city on the southern border of the Kingdom of Cambodia, and there you are either still loyal to the previous monarch, but never allowed to say, or you are a neutral smuggler trafficking opium across the border to one of two Vietnamese villages. The mainstreet is one of the few paved roads crossing through town. The shops lining its sides sell tea and fabrics among the several open air food stalls. Directly to the west of main is laundry and a small gamblers den, where children make money in the morning selling homemade talismans, and in the evening drunken sods stamp about, mourning their losses and women beckoning for the chance to heal their wounds.
To the east is the anomaly of Pan Chi. A café that sells not only coffee and lemonade, but also wheat pastries as well as the usual rice and soup. The owner is a Finn named Jon who traveled here to help a cousin at the Christian mission. By the time he had filled his six months, he has asked for the hand of Cambodian girl with a widowed mother and a two year old son who had frequented the mission in search of its charity. They had stayed to tend to her family, and the Finn used the money he had earned teaching English to open the unusual but homely eating space.
But on this particular morning, there was a sight even more alien to the people than the stocky Finn and his lemonade. Sitting at a table next to the window waiting for more tea, was a Frenchman. The Finn’s wife spoke French, and had briefly had a conversation with the guest and discovered that he was here to meet several acquaintances. She and her husband awaited these people with some excitement, because this Frenchman was so unusual to look at and listen to, that they wondered if his friends were to be just as strange.
Jon initially was surprised when his wife asked him to deliver the tea, because she insisted that he listen to the stranger’s voice. She said it was hard to believe such a voice could belong to a person. Jon shook his head in disbelief, but regardless he brought the tea and studied the bizarre thin man seated at the booth with his elbows on the table and his hands at his tan chin. The Frenchman nodded at the Finn, gave a small gratifying smile, but said nothing. The Finn considered asking if he needed anything else so maybe he could receive a vocal response, but he stared so long at all the oddities adorning the man’s clothes, that he left hastily in some embarrassment. But the Frenchman called after him as Jon paced away from the table. He asked, in English, for some of the café’s “famous short cakes” to be brought out on a plate. The Finn turned around, in a small amount of amazement as his wife watched from the counter with her arms crossed and her slanted eyes squinting a little bit more than usual, as if she was looking for clues about the newcomer’s origin or occupation.
The Finn, with a slight stutter, asked, “Come again?” It occurred to him, that the stranger had no obvious way of knowing how Jon spoke English in the first place. The language is not native to many in Pan Chi, with the locals opting mostly to French. The Frenchman repeated his request, and Jon heard clearly. Now he understood why his wife had hoped that he would hear the voice in question, for it was maybe two or three octaves higher than any person’s he had heard before, yet it was clear and understandable. If you had sharp ears, which the Finn could not boast of, you would have picked up on a very slight reverberation or echo in the voice as well. Jon, his brow raised in surprise he was not aware he was displaying, nodded and gave a simple “yes”. The Frenchman smiled again, and resumed his looking out the window. Jon headed back to the counter, and met his wife in the store room behind the shop. They discussed briefly the stranger’s voice, and any potential correlation it may have had to the rest of his appearance. Any ties that would make sense of the neat black suit, the necklace, the grey ornament dangling from his left ear, or the two neon blue streaks in his black hair. They reached no conclusion.
Mae, the Finn’s wife, brought out a plate with maybe half a dozen short bread slices stacked in a pyramid, and set them on the Frenchman’s table. She glanced down on the fellow, but he did not return her glance. Instead, he was watching the road, and Mae looked up in time to see an empty auto-rickshaw pick up speed and depart, apparently after unloading passengers at the café’s entrance. The vehicle on this side of the street meant most certainly that whoever has gotten off it, were both from out of town and intending to come in. So she swiftly made her way back to the kitchen, glancing over her shoulder to see two new peoples entering through the open front door. The one in front was a confident, but pale Russian looking man in a dark thin overcoat. His hands at his pockets, he looked around at everyone in the café, making eye contact with all of them, his eyes resting on the Frenchman last, who return his gaze blankly. The new man gave a broad but closed mouth grin upon making contact with his friend and began to walk toward to table.
The Finn, glancing up from the counter but making an effort to appear to not be staring, noticed the new man had red neon streaks in his black hair, very much like the Frenchman’s. Immediately after, his eyes collided with the returning stare of the second, younger, man, who blankly watched Jon through some of the most tired eyes Jon thought he had ever seen. He wore a baby blue button down and denims. He had an expensive watch on the outside of his open gray raincoat, and he wore hiking boots. His hair had no streaks, but instead was short, curly, and already greying at the roots despite the youthful but also pale features in his face. Soon, he too followed his slightly taller companion to the table of the Frenchman. The Russian looking one in the dark tracksuit had placed one leg on the entirety of his bench, forcing the following man to take a seat next to the Frenchman. In the ensuing conversation, neither Jon nor his wife heard the tired looking one say anything.
The Russian was looking at the Frenchman in some sort of contempt. The Frenchman, sitting straight, gave back a sorry looking expression, and whenever he looked down at the figure of the tired younger man beside him, he looked even more sorry.
After a pause in which the two men studied each other, the Russian began by asking in more English and in an English accent as well, “Well now. How was America?”
“Wet. Muddy. Lots of flies.” Responded the Frenchman in his voice that many find comic.
“The flies seem to be a recurring theme for you these days.” The Russian replied, looking up at the ceiling, and waving his finger though circles in the air, imitating a winged bug. “I wonder what that could mean.”
“I’m not entirely sure.” This phrase caught the Russian’s attention with an even more contemptuous air than before. The little one next the Frenchman continued to stare directly in front of him, burning a hole through the wood back of the Russian’s bench. “How are you Mock?” Continued the Frenchman.
“Shitty.” The Russian who’s now apparent name was Mock returned. “I mean who wouldn’t be. An eight hour flight, followed by a sweltering ride in a van with more goats than people. A sweltering night sharing a room with this guy,” Here he gestured at that short blank one he had come in with. “Who insists we preserve all forms of chastity. Coming here to shoot the shiet with you, and Dennis? Dennis is coming right?”
The Frenchman nodded slowly but once.
“Great. To shoot the shiet with you and Dennis, after which I can look forward to another flight on a mini-plane to some butt-sketch-no-wheres-ville outside Hong Kong, once again accompanied by maybe the single most boring kid who ever came out of Cornell.” Mock obviously was referring to the little figure next to the Frenchman who still remained solid and silent.
“Well you should have more fun once you get to Hong Kong?”, the Frenchman said with some sympathy.
“Ohhh describing my plans wouldn’t do you the service.” Mock said with an enormous grin. “You should come. Help pass the two days between here and the city.” He laughed to himself, quietly. “That’s gunna blowwwww.”
Here the Frenchman smiled modestly in agreement.
Mae was bringing breakfast to an elderly couple too old to be put off by the frank loudness and foreign appearance of Mock and his friends, when without warning, someone else walked though her front door. He was tall, and wore and rusty colored suit and slacks. He was significantly older than the other strangers, and as he approached Mae, he took off his hat. He told her he was looking for some friends, and Mae directed him to the table he directly had his back too. He turned, smiled at the company eyeing him from the table, and raised his arm in salutations. He thanked Mae and walked over to them.
The new sturdy stranger extended his hand to each of them in turn as he swiftly greeted them. “Bou! It’s been too long. Good to see you safe.” He said, greeting the Frenchman. “Machiavelli! How yea doin’?”
Mock replied, “Jolly! Yea prick.”
“Great.” The tall man said, patting Mock on the shoulder. “How’s the super genius?” He bent down and glanced at the short one still brimming with a genuine happiness. But the so called “super genius” only forced a smile.
“How’s Dennis?” Bou the Frenchman asked their new arrival.
“Oh you know Bou. I’ve been really good recently. An extra special kind of fantastic.” Mock had removed his leg from the bench surface, and now Dennis was sitting next to him. “I just got word back from my lady friend, that her dog is a little shaken up, but okay after it got locked in the neighbor’s storage unit over night. The dog’s mute apparently. I didn’t know dogs could be mute, but this one is mute so no one noticed it until this morning when they found a puddle of piss outside their storage locker, and, and, and they heard scratching too.” Dennis was very animated with his hands when telling a story, and he asked if the short cakes were there to be eaten. Bou said they were, and Dennis ate with a paper napkin he pulled from his pocket. “Speaking of mutes. Guess who I saw walking down by the casino?”
“Your reflection?” Mock said in humor.
“No haha! I saw Simon down there, scouting or something I bet. He’s wearing, like a, a hijab or something, but it’s definitely him. Why? Why doesn’t he just come over here? I’m sure it’s safe right?”
At the mention of Simon, Mock let out a scoff. “Pffft! Yea. Sure. That guy. Jeeeez. Almost as bad as the kid. I mean, I guess he’s got his moments.”
“Who else is coming?” Dennis began again, looking from Bou to Mock, his mouth full of cake. “Did we find Macabre? Or Smiler?”
Bou and Mock began at once, but Mock seceded to Bou. Dennis’ arrival had lightened the mood, and but them both at their ease again. “We know where they are, even Macabre, but they are both otherwise engaged.” Bou replied.
“Huh. You say that. But fuck me, that’s almost five of us here today.” Mock added. “It’s been a long time since this many of us got together.”
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