+++

Sitting in the small square outside his workplace wasn’t something Trig was particularly pleased about, in fact, he’d told Cav at least six other places that were less bleak, that had competent views…but as usual his capricious, ghost horse friend didn’t listen.

‘You get the lights better here.’

‘Huh?’

‘The Zinc Burger backdrop, behind you. Lights are hands down the brightest in the whole shitty complex.’ Cav took a swig of his Asahi King Size, continuing while swallowing and almost spitting some back up. ‘You can see everything, see what you’re doing in front of you, the bugs crawling around…’

‘What bugs?’

‘…Salvo trying to look at her phone like a little sneak.’

‘I’m not a sneak,’ she replied, auto-pi.

‘Nope, not anymore. What are you looking at anyway?’

‘Probably a Ryukahr vid,’ answered Trig, smirking.

‘Ree what?’

‘A guy with a two metre beard who plays Mario Maker levels on YouTube.’

‘Japanese guy?’

‘Nope, American.’

Salvo finished whatever she was doing on her phone and looked up. ‘Stop talking about my activities when I’m right here. And it’s Mario Maker 2 videos now, not the original one.’

‘Is he speaking English, in these vids?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Native English?’

‘Yeah.’

Cav pulled a Yuen Wai-Ho face, a pretty good one. ‘How do you understand him then?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘I’m not having a go, my English is pretty shit too. I’m just wondering how you can watch something you can’t understand. Unless you’re just watching for the Mario parts and-…’

‘My English isn’t shit, I’m B2 intermediate.’

‘B what?’

Salvo didn’t sigh but she definitely thought about it. ‘It means I’m fluent, to a practical level.’

‘You’re fluent?’

‘And listening isn’t that hard…I know generally what he’s talking about, and you can see it on screen, so…’ Salvo stopped, looking at the window of Zinc Burger behind them. ‘Why are we even talking about this?’

‘You were looking at your phone,’ Trig said, physically pointing at her phone in case she couldn’t understand the spoken word.

‘Like a sneak,’ added Cav.

‘You getting messages from someone?’

‘No.’

‘Hoping to get messages from someone?’ asked Cav, looking at Salvo’s forehead. ‘The guy who bought you that rainbow scrunchie maybe?’

‘Wah, you finally noticed…’

‘Hard to miss.’

‘…and, no, it wasn’t given to me, I got it myself from the twelve dollar shop. You know, the same place you go to buy presents for us.’

Cav opened his mouth to object, kept it open for a few seconds then gave up on performance and laughed into the Asahi can.

‘What is it, an anime reference or something?’ asked Trig, filling the gap in the not unfamiliar battle between his two friends.

‘It’s comfortable.’

‘Not anime-related?’

‘You mean, did I copy it from one of the characters? No. I never do that.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Cav, for some reason abruptly gesturing like an evangelical and almost spilling some of his beer onto Salvo in the process. ‘That thing with the jacket, the woman with purple hair who wore that red mini-jacket…’

‘Misato Katsuragi.’

‘Yeah, that one. You bought her red jacket, and wanted to dye your hair purple. But then…wah, the jacket mysteriously disappeared.’

‘I remember,’ said Trig, drinking some of his own beer. ‘What happened to that?’

‘Nothing that I’m gonna tell either of you.’

Cav sat forward, his knees an inch from Salvo’s. ‘Come on, Salv, don’t be coy, tell us.’

‘Coy?’

‘Okay, bad word choice. But we’re interested, genuinely. Right, Trig?’

‘I guess.’

‘Well…’ Salvo leaned in, placed a gentle hand on Cav’s knee. ‘Part of me wants to, but it’s quite a long story, and there’s an oil bucket involved so…’

Trig pulled an ‘oh shit’ face while Cav looked across the little square, his head going from bench to bench. Of course, they weren’t actual benches, more like wooden platforms jutting out from the raised walkway covering the inside ring of the complex, but Cav found them suddenly fascinating all the same.

‘Guess that’s still a taboo topic,’ said Salvo, after waiting twenty six seconds and receiving no verbal responses.

‘Nothing taboo about anything,’ said Cav, turning back with what looked like a forced smile on his face, as if some little fairy had just flown up to his cheeks and injected in a litre of prednisone. ‘The oil bucket was a joke I was telling Trig. My old boss at the petrol station had it, like a pet, and I went back there earlier and he was talking to it…and when he saw me looking at him, he got mad and said he was gonna drown me in it. That’s it, that’s the story.’

‘Surprisingly short,’ said Salvo, tapping the bottom of her can.

‘From beginning to end, full stop.’

Cav gave big eyeballs to Trig, which was interpreted by the latter as a signal not to dispute anything he’d just said. But he had to say something, so he just added, ‘yeah, Old Git is a weird one’ and drank more of his beer.

‘Of course, it was longer when I told it to Trig…that’s why I was annoyed when you wanted me to tell it again. Couldn’t be bothered explaining everything. Sorry if it made you feel weird. I guess.’

‘I’m adaptable…’

Trig nodded, almost saluting her with his can. ‘True.’

‘…that’s why I can go through so many jobs,’ she said, laughing.

‘Many, many jobs.’

‘Unlike Trig, who’s chained to this place,’ said Cav, reclining back into the wooden platform, then pulling himself back up when he realised how uncomfortable it was. ‘He even subconsciously engineered it so we’d be sitting outside here with our beers.’

‘Hey…’

‘Zinc burger…food parlour of the Gods!’

‘I didn’t engineer anything.’

‘Joking, relax.’ Cav picked up another can of Asahi and flicked it open. ‘I know what you really wanna do is go back there, you and the forensics team, analyse your little green stain.’

‘Yeah, what happened with that?’ asked Salvo, copying Cav and starting a new can. ‘Did you really see someone get kidnapped?’

Trig opened his mouth to respond, to unleash the whole tale of the night before, but was overwhelmed by a man walking behind them, speaking incredibly loud Mandarin.

They all turned at the same time, expecting to see him on the phone to someone, but there was no phone and no earpiece, only a an old-style box TV under his arm. Sitting down on the wooden platform below and to the side of them, he put the TV on his lap and turned the dial. Amazingly, a picture came on, a news report showing a robot breakdancing on the streets of some European city. The man seemed to enjoy it as he clapped his hands and said, ‘just like in Sichuan fifty years ago.’

‘Another night owl,’ muttered Trig.

‘How is that TV even working?’ asked Salvo, craning her neck a bit to try and peek round the side of it. ‘There’s no plug, no battery.’

‘It’s a replica, I guess. Made to look old-fashioned but really quite modern.’

‘I don’t know, it looks genuinely old.’

The man noticed they were looking and shifted his position on the platform in order to block their view. More sounds in Mandarin followed.

‘They’re not sending their best,’ said Cav, quite loud in Mandarin.

‘Shut up,’ bit Salvo, moving her hand to cover Cav’s mouth and failing by about a yard.

‘It’s true…guy’s a fucking mess.’

‘He’s not hurting anyone.’

‘Not physically, but…the sounds of him, the attitude. Serious, there’s loads like him now, they’re everywhere, in my estate too. Just walking round barking shit in Mandarin like it’s the only language on Earth. Watching replica TVs in front of everyone, on the train, bus, whatever. It’s annoying, they’re annoying.’

‘Am I annoying too?’

‘Huh?’

‘And Trig, is he annoying?’

‘What are you on about?’

‘Our home towns, idiot. I’m from Guangzhou, he’s from Chongqing. Both of us Mainland produced.’

‘Actually,’ said Trig, coughing artificially, ‘I was born here, then went back to Chongqing, then came back here when I was four.’

‘I’m not talking about you guys,’ said Cav. ‘You speak Cantonese, you’ve assimilated. What I mean is the imports, the ones who come in with the attitude. If they didn’t shout all the time, I wouldn’t care, but that’s all they do. They’re worse than the fat white cunts, at least they stay in Wan Chai and Central…these ones are everywhere.’

‘What, like locusts?’

‘Hey, I didn’t say that word, that’s the localists.’

‘Doesn’t sound much different.’

‘Which is nothing to do with-…nah, it is different, very different. I just want them to stop being so loud all the time. They can live here, I don’t care, just don’t be so loud and don’t bring the attitude.’

‘Attitude…’

‘Fuck off, you know what I mean…that attitude, that one.’ Cav nudged his head towards the guy and his replica TV, just at the same moment the channel changed and a news anchor started reporting on the recent probe to Pluto.

‘…five distinct structures have been found, which scientists are saying could be alien in origin. One of the structures is said to resemble a post office, which, if true, suggests that aliens lived there in the past and exchanged letters with each other. The search for more structures, specifically around rocky areas, are continuing.’

The news report faded out, which was the trigger for the man to turn the whole thing off and wander to another part of the square.

When he was out of sight, Cav turned to Salvo with two hands raised in the air. ‘Look, I’m sorry. It’s just when I hear loud Mandarin, I get a bit riled up.’

‘It’s okay, long as you don’t use they…’

‘Probably all the videos you’re seeing online,’ added Trig, swirling his can to check how much remained inside. ‘All those nationalist nuts waving the flag and praising fascists.’

‘I don’t watch those channels.’

‘No, I mean the videos, the automatic ones…they just pop up and…’

‘The adverts?’

‘No, the ones after the-…you know, they come on after the regular videos, automatically, and you have to click them off with the-…’

‘I don’t get it. Which videos?’

Trig fixed eyes on Cav, locking him in a figurative truth beam. ‘Are you messing with me?’

‘No, serious, I don’t know which ones you’re on about.’

‘Fuck, really?’

‘I swear.’

‘Salvo?’

‘Nope.’

‘After your Mario vids, nothing?’

She shook her head. ‘Just more Mario.’

‘Wah. That’s weird. I thought everyone got them.’

A basketball hit the ground nearby, three high school kids on their way back from the courts. They seemed to enjoy the attention it gave them so they did it again and again and again as they walked over to the other side of the square.

‘How about a change of topic?’ Salvo held up her beer for no real reason. ‘The thing on the news just now, those weird structures on Pluto…’

Cav’s eyes lit up. ‘Ah, aliens. Could be related to Trig’s green stain.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘I’m serious…once you confirm aliens exist, like, as a practical reality, then you open the door to loads of them.’

‘He’s got a point,’ said Salvo, nodding at her can.

‘Though why they’d be coming out of a maintenance door in the backwaters of Shek Mun is something else entirely.’

‘Why not? It’s quiet, isolated.’

‘Yeah, not really.’

‘Not that quiet either,’ said Salvo, raising her can to the square around them and the other late night drinkers within it.

Right on cue, the man with the TV returned, holding a cup noodle to go with his TV. Sitting back down in the same spot, he patted his TV and started coaching it in Mandarin.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Cav, biting his tongue when he saw Salvo glaring at him.

‘You wanna move over to a different bench?’ offered Trig, pointing at a vacant platform opposite.

‘Nah.’

‘A different square?’

‘How about we go back to the river, check out your green stain?’

‘Huh, you just dragged us away from there.’

‘Now I’m dragging us back. Come on. It’s better than staying in this shit heap.’

Trig nodded, using his years of experience at Zinc Burger to bury his true feelings in case things didn’t work out. Luckily, Salvo was on the same page, already standing up with her Asahi cans in both hands.

‘Definitely on the move then?’ asked Cav, picking up his own cans.

‘If you still have legs.’

‘Trig?’

‘Coming.’

The three of them jumped down from the platform into the main square then hurried back up the small set of steps and set course for the main street leading over to the river. Trig couldn’t help but take a quick look through the side window of Zinc Burger, shivering slightly when he saw a customer in his pyjamas jabbing his finger at the staff. He checked his phone: eight hours until he had to be back in there, being jabbed at. Fuck.

As he was losing himself in Kafkaesque thoughts, Cav was busy putting his hand around Salvo’s shoulder in a semi-drunk way, asking her why she was so keen to move all of a sudden.

‘I’m curious about the stain,’ she answered, looking to the right as she crossed the road.

‘And that Mainland guy was annoying, right?’

‘I never denied that.’

‘So he was annoying.’

‘Yes, he was annoying. That particular guy.’

‘Aha.’

‘And so are you when you get that head on you.’

‘Not as annoying as him though, right?’

‘It’s borderline.’

Cav stopped in the middle of the road and did a little jig, telling them to get out their phones and film it. Before they could react, a taxi beeped loudly and forced him quickly to the pavement opposite, almost knocking his leg as it sped past.

‘Fucking hell…cunt almost clipped me.’

‘It’s taxi land.’

‘Should be fucking sued for that.’

‘Let’s just get to the river, take a look at Trig’s alien door to Pluto.’

‘Yeah, if we don’t get mowed down by another taxi.’

They kept walking, crossing the even larger road and taking the steps down to the riverside bike path. As it was now past midnight, the place was practically deserted, with only the occasional insomniac walker passing by. Strangely, none of them seemed interested or bold enough to go as far as the underpass where the stain was, probably because the lighting was poor and it was a good place for perverts to lurk. Hong Kong wasn’t famous for this kind of ambush attack, but it did happen from time to time, when the moons were aligned and the God of sleaze was in ascendance.

Just like the previous night.

The ambush part.

Not the astrology shit.

+++

When they reached the second underpass, Salvo went on ahead to the stain and then, when she found it underwhelming, over to the maintenance door. Trig tagged along with her, waiting for some kind of comment or request for more information about the night before, while Cav headed to the railings to marvel at the bike abandoned in the dried out part of the river.

‘Fuck. Even drunk, I wouldn’t do that shit.’

‘You’re drunk now,’ said Trig, still waiting for Salvo to start the dialogue.

‘And I’m not doing it. See? I may be erratic, sometimes…but I’m not a clown, not like the pokkai who did that.’

‘Right.’

‘In fact, I’m gonna go down there and rectify things, do an emergency bike rescue. Maybe ride it round the river a bit. Ride it into the river. You can go on the surface…I’ve seen it online, some guys…they can ride on the surface of the water for like a second before-…’

‘I doubt that. Highly.’

‘Nah, it’s true, I watched it… with my very own eyes.’

‘You sure it wasn’t edited?’

‘Like your alien kidnapping…nah, it was real…had a guy, a bike, all the real things you need…no jump cuts or hidden block under the water like that magician video thing.’

‘I didn’t say it was an alien kidnapping,’ replied Trig, filtering out all the background noise from Cav’s speech. ‘I just said there was a weird guy, dressed in a bin bag…and then a passer-by disappeared in the same spot.’

‘Sounds like the Mainland TV guy.’

‘And the only thing left behind was that green stain. Still wet, like someone had just spilt something.’

‘Okay, Detective Dee…’

Trig waited for more to come so he could ignore it and say more about his story, but he quickly realised that Cav was lost in the riverbed and switched to Salvo instead. She’d been studying the maintenance door for a while, even trying to open it, and completely neglecting the green stain. Trig walked up next to her and was about to speak when she turned suddenly and said, ‘this door is annoying.’

‘It won’t open?’

‘Not even a bit.’

‘What about the green stain?’

‘Yeah, that.’

‘You don’t think it’s weird?’

‘Not really.’

‘But…it’s green.’

‘So’s avocado. It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, nothing is really weird about any of this…only your story about last night. The stain’s a stain, the door’s a door.’

‘Then why were you studying it for so long?’

‘I wanted to open it. And I’m annoyed that I can’t. Which is weird cos it’s normal that it’s locked, right? I mean, it’s a maintenance door, why would it be open? And definitely not at night.’

‘Err…okay.’

‘Sorry, my head’s feeling a bit weird, trying to work out the door stuff. Still on board with your story though.’

‘You are?’

‘Of course, I’m unemployed. It’s the only interesting thing going on in my life right now. Even if it is probably nothing.’

‘Hey guys…over here.’

Trig and Salvo looked at Cav’s air traffic controller style body movements and reluctantly made their way to the railings. They peered down at the shadows on the riverbed, but the only help they got from Cav was, ‘look, look.’ Eventually, he modified it to ‘look down there, to the right’, which is when Trig saw it.

‘Alien jacket,’ said Cav, slapping the railings.

‘Looks like a bin bag,’ said Salvo, unimpressed.

‘Exactly.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Huh? Last night, he said the alien guy was wearing a bin bag…like a jacket. Right, Trig?’

‘More like wrapped around him than wearing it.’

‘And there it is, ditched in the river.’

Salvo folded her arms and stopped just short of shaking her head. ‘That could be from anyone.’

‘No chance, who would put a bin bag down there? It’s insane.’

‘Same person who put a bike down there.’

‘Bike? Nah, that’s not the same thing…bikes have wheels, need to put them somewhere when you’re finished with it…them…it. Probably rolled down itself. Or the alien guy did it.’

‘You okay?’

Cav jabbed his temple, moaned at his brain to stop vibrating.

‘Headache?’

‘Nah, it’s-…there’s a bin bag down there…Trig’s bin bag. It’s real, right? That means that door might be real too.’

‘That door,’ said Salvo, turning back to point to it as evidence, then freezing on the spot when she locked eyes on it.

Both Trig and Cav took a second to realise there was no second clause to her sentence, then turned just in time to witness the same ludicrous thing.

A hand on the edge of the door, a crazed-looking face, a pair of shorts and then a running top…the whole picture came together slowly in front of them, the figure staggering forward, opening his mouth to speak and then collapsing sideways onto the concrete, his left hand touching the green stain.

‘The runner,’ mumbled Trig, and, for a fraction of a second, he smiled.