The Feng Shui Guanyin Buddha silver card for protection. An amulet against evil, danger and disease? Does this thing really have magic powers? And make the holder invincible. There are many around here that certainly hope so.

But forgeries are rife. To recognize an authentic silver takes cunning. The question then is, will a fake or copycat charm work? Or will it merely cast a spell and bring harm upon its user. So instead of wealth, happiness, prosperity and longevity, it's deprivation, misery, failure and death.

Basic digs for basic wage earners. That's what the two storey Hotel Aun offers at the junction of Hutton and Dingdings Lane. Long term guests are the mainstay. It's all about cheap. They want cheap prices. For that they get cheap bedding, cheap decor.

Cindy know's about cheap. Her knock off Gucci clutch bag that goes everywhere with her, carries her cheap perfume and lipstick, broken two-penny vanity mirror, a small bundle of tatty ringgit notes and her two for the price of one reading glasses. She's lost the other pair. Her old Samsung phone with cracked screen gets tucked away in one of the zipper side pockets with broken zip.

Before stepping out into the balmy tropical night she reaches across the spongy cut price mattress and nasty nylon bed sheet for her bag. She has much to cry about, but instead just laughs out loud. What do they say? The meek shall inherit the earth!

“There's nothing international about the international hotel. For internationals don't know it exists".

Black isn't a color. It's all colors. Or rather, the absorption of all colors. When the black car, with its black windows, that from which light could not penetrate or escape, slowly rolled into the parking lot and stopped, the Tua Pek Kong shrine attendant on the hill felt an absorption of all her senses. They amalgamated into just one. Fear.

The Proton. A sub atomic particle. The national car of Malaysia. The one is an unseen mysterious force. Evenly distributed. Invisible and yet everywhere. The other is apportioned randomly. Parked all over the place.

A dull grey green Proton caught the cats eye.
Or did it? Was it not the strange smell emanating from the Proton's boot that tickled it's snout? An odour of rot that was still below the sensitivity level of the human nose, and yet strong enough to draw the street Tom out from the gutter and across the alley.

What's the saying? Curiosity killed the cat?

"Down downtown Georgetown at the no frills Noble, that which is not the domain of the hereditary class, or those with high social or political status, there are no aristocrats here".

The crouching canny ones plan to plot one against another, and exchange wicked thoughts between themselves. Subliminally. Unholy minds think alike. So the deceitful and treacherous, intoxicated by their interest in doling out shady deals, cover their eyes with the cover of selfishness, and thus keep their hearts suspended in darkness and shadows.

Yet there is nothing more Godly than light itself. All that is other than light, depends on light to see a way forward. Henceforth they may stand up and step forward out from the shadows of their hearts and towards the path of Enlightenment. Purity. Wisdom. Honesty.

“The lurid lime green facade of the Boon Wah Textiles is a Georgetown landmark. The business closes at 6. The doors and windows are gated and shuttered. It helps keep prying eyes off the expensive silks and Chinese brocade.

Last century it was the Teow Chew triads, in the pay of the merchants, who ran things around here. Campbell street and Rope Walk was their turf. Paid protection money, they kept the petty thieves and other gangsters away. Bad folks protecting the goods”.

"Night hawks bathed in artificial light. That's what they appear to be, but everyone knows reality is never what it appears to be. It's all guess work, conjecture. Summation".

"She's lost her mind. She sits Buddha like on the betel nut stained walkway outside the old Central hotel and mumbles to herself. And like the Chinese guardian lion beside her, she's motionless.  Together they watch the giddy performance before them. The swirl of passersby and traffic that throng the busy Jalan Penang. 

She's alive, a composite of warm flesh and blood.  The lion made of rock is lifeless and cold. She's gone mad and is of no use to anybody.  The stone Foo Dog as the Chinese like to call them, has a purpose.  It protects the hotel from harmful spiritual influences and bad people".

She wears the collar not with resignation but with irritation. Beyond her responsibilities of guarding the premises, she has an axe to grind. More than anything she wants to scratch that scab. Rip out the irritant. She's a bitch with an itch. The collar is her friend and yet she thinks of it as an enemy. Without the collar, she'd claw herself raw. Right now, life's an itch.

But suddenly, in the dead of night, something moves in the darkness. Her mind shifts focus. Now she has a different enemy to contend with. Her desire to scratch is replaced by her instinct to fight.

Her priorities change. From dubious friend to suspicious foe.

He watches the skies.

His, is a world alone.

Raising his eyes he beholds a planet unknown.

He thinks,

The creatures that shaped this planet's soil, now their reign has come to an end. Has life again destroyed life? Is this is the end of man's long union with Earth.

Judge not this race by empty remains. But do I judge God by his creatures when they are dead?

Is this the end of man's long union with Earth?

(Derived from the Watcher of the Skies. Lyrics. Genesis)

Meanwhile, the "League of the Scarlet Narcissus", a secret society of twenty Chinese gangsters, "one to command, and nineteen to obey", is engaged in protecting their counterparts from the daily interfering machinations of the police .

Their leader, the mysterious Scarlet Narcissus takes his 'nom de guerre' from the Chinese sacred lily, one of the most auspicious flowers, offering protection and good luck. Despite being the talk of Penangite society, only his followers and possibly the 'Govenor' of Penang know the Scarlet Narcissus's true identity.

He and his cohorts are the ultimate escape artists, and their daring heists and brazen comrade jail breaks and other lurid exploits have the public entranced.

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Clan members at the Clan Jetties, can. Kan can too. For he’s a “Straw Sandal” Liaison officer. He can choose his game play. Below him are the “Blue Lanterns” uninitiated members. The “49ers” ordinary members. He tells them what to do, and when it's time to go play bad. Not games, but deeds.

Those he’s answerable too, and those that will prompt him to ditch his Kung-Fu Grand masters mobile game and get off his ass, are the “Deputy Mountain Masters”, the “Incense Master” the “Vanguard” officers and then the King pin himself, the mighty “Mountain Master” the dragon head leader.

When Mountain Master speaks, everyone, doesn’t matter what game play or fornication position they are immersed in, stands to attention.

It's past midnight and all quiet at the house along the Persiaran Abdullah Arrif. The folks upstairs are asleep. Their dogs in the yard at the back are too. An old florescent car porch outside light flickers and hums.

The faulty tube flashes pale greenish blue light through the net curtained kitchen window, into the dark and hushed house interior. But the scullery door ajar, allows these intermittent beams of sallow cyan to bounce around in the adjoining hallway and illuminate the circular stained glass windows in the front door. The two decorative portals appear to be blinking like the eyes of a madman.

To the thief standing across the street in the shadows of Persiaran Abdullah Arrif, observing these demonic winks, decides the place reminds him of a house of horrors, and decides to move on.

Hit man Wan, between taking hits on his roll up, and planning his next hit, he keeps a low profile, down at the Oasis.

He hits for cheap. That's what keeps him busy. Just $1000. Bang bang they're dead. He stashes the silenced Glock 19 off premises. Hidden where he knows it's safe. Behind a loose brick in the south perimeter wall of Fort Cornwallis. He's got it all planned.

Wan the man, he's a long term boarder. The Oasis offers sanctuary from the tepid heat and nosy cops. He likes the gangly receptionist with big tits. So he spend most of his time there, chatting her up. The reception fridge is always stocked with ice cold Red Bull. Red Bull and MacBaren rolling tobacco. His in-between staple. Between hits and meals that is.

For meals, its across the road to the Mak Long. Raw fish congee for breakfast. Laksa for lunch, and Char kway teow for dinner. His favourite. A stir fried noodle dish with pork and prawns, a Hokkien legacy from Maritime SE Asia. A dish that reminds his of his sea faring days in the merchant navy. But those days are behind him now. He's happy with a more stationary existence. Just waiting. Hitting on his roll ups. Hitting on Priscilla. Waiting for a call.

Hit man Wan, waits for a hit.

The rat catcher around the New Assakim hostel is a three colour calico called Khan. His mainstay fare is leftover fried rise courtesy of the hostel's doorman. He supplements the heavy carb diet with some protein. That of raw meat Rattus Norvegicus.

Rodents emerge in plentiful supply from the labrynth of underground tunnels that crisscross this town they call Georgetown. A maze of dark canals of gurgling fetid black water. Passageways built by the British when Penang was regional HQ of the mighty Great East India company. The rats need to come up for air from these dank, humid holes to ferret for food. Cheap stay hostels and dormitories are a repository of crumbs that rats are drawn towards, like vampires to blood. And therein sits Khan.

Waiting patiently for the sound of scurrying feet.

The muezzin calls the Friday faithful to prayer. It's a ritual that far surpasses the evening rush hour outside. The mosque is a place of peace and prostation, the street is one of chaos and indignation. While the red robed muezzin cries, and the black crows in the trees along the Jalan crow, the heavens above, scream out in putrescent purple. Allahu Akbar, God is great.

Flash forward, flash back. He spent his life craving the future, and before he knew it, he was missing his past. From youth to old age in the blink of an eye. This evening he thought he saw a black hearse before him! Wasn't it just yesterday he mused, that he was in his pram.

Suddenly the vehicle flashed its tail lights. He was blinded by a crimson glare. Through the dazzle of dancing red phosphenes behind his closed eyelids, he wondered if he had died! His suspicion was aroused. "ain't the gates of heaven bathed in white light?" he asked himself. "Then dammit. I must be in hell".

Wasting time, he stands at the side of gurney reclamation and marina bay, and with the distant tide dissolving away, into a grey dusk, it reminds him of a dock of decay. He looks across to the concrete structures and twinkling lights of the Straits Quay and as it appears to float on the sand and mud flats he thinks of Stephen King's Dark Tower and Waste Lands . Oh and Arthur Koestler's ghost in the machine. Works which explain humanity's tendency toward self-destruction.

He pulls on his cigarette and in the post-day gloom considers doom. How the concrete apron nearby to his right, reminds him of an empty stage. A vacant stage set against an uninhabited world. The glowing lights are merely an illusion he concludes, for like distant stars their rays have taken thousands of years to finally reach his retina. They died long ago.

Gone are all the people, he philosophizes, ruminating on human folly and how cyclical political–historical dynamics, reach the height of their potential in the nuclear arms arena.

The machine still stands, but the ghosts (human souls) have departed!

Hercules, the Greco-Roman God held up the sky. Haeder (a boy's name meaning Lion in Malay) holds up a silver Astra. The young man, under the glare of solar street lamps, prepares himself mentally and physically for duties asked of him by the Malaysian Gods above. The canonical "Twelve Labours" he's been asked to perform;

1. Slay the Sumatran Tiger
2. Slay the nine-headed Taman Negara Hydra
3. Capture the Golden Cow of Nanga
4. Capture the Boar of Bidor
5. Clean the Titiwangsa stables in a single day
6. Slay the a Rhinoceros Hornbill
7. Capture the Muar Bull
8. Steal the Water Buffaloes of Bandar Tenggara.
9. Obtain the girdle of Cempaka, Queen of the Batang.
10. Obtain the cattle of the monster Santu Sakai
11. Steal the papaya of the Orang Mawas
12. Capture and bring back Tambuakar

Haeder as he pushes against the gravity of the deeds before him, with head bowed, prays; "O Allah protect me from my front, behind me, from my right and my left, and from above me, and I seek refuge in Your Magnificence from being taken unaware from beneath me."

Light negates darkness. But does it? One light source striking a solid opaque object casts a shadow. What lurks within shadows is the stuff of legends. Oh the lore of the luminescent plasma blade, the Lightsabre, that which cuts through darkness with little resistance and whatever its arc or trajectory, it simply melts darkness away.

Ramesh, recumbent in the shadows, before Block A of the Taman Abidin housing estate, his plasma screen, that of iphone lore, another light emitting marvel in this world of darkness and evil, casts photons upon his dark Indian face. He's feeding his troubled mind with bad ideas.

Youtube, another light emitting diode is where he can research how to make a zip gun. He imagines the muzzle flash. Or a strap on explosive device. Something that would light up the entire room or street momentarily. He imagines the halo of light he'd see for a nano second before been catapulted into darkness and oblivion. Oh trip the light fantastic.

Master painters lay down dead colours on canvas, a monochromatic underpainting that's rendered in cold, dull, matte hues. Chinese butchers, lay down a live hog with one masterful knife slash to the throat, a technique passed down from father to son. Unlike the colour of underpainting, freshly killed pig is all pink, vivid, fleshy tones. Dead colours have no gloss upon them. Pork fat glistens.

In Medieval Europe, pigs that killed humans, some committing infanticide, stealing human babies from their cots, would be caught, held in prison, tried in court, and then publicly hanged before huge crowds.

In Georgetown Penang, swine die quick surreptitious deaths with hardly a squeal. Concealed behind shuttered doors and windows in dimly lit shop houses, their innocuous demise transpires purposefully well out of sight of the Muslim majority. Only the Chinese God Caishen looks on from behind a porcelain vase of red and yellow carnations.

Her life is just a crazy game. She, the mad Queen, who calls herself the King of the castle. The madhouse. Her prison.

She walks around in circles ignoring the squares, with her head held high, opening all the sanitarium windows to let the imaginary peace doves out.

You see she wants war. To fight. To slay them alright. She hears them day and night. The vipers that hiss in her head.

So unbothered by the mice at her feet, she paces the dark corridors and rooms that are like the recesses of her mind, and with the help of the black knight, she’s lops off their heads and tails. They spit and try to escape the snake pit.

But no. She will bring down the house of cards. Checkmate.

Life comes around, goes around. Full circle. Those arriving into this world spend most of their early months asleep. And close to departing they do the same.

Most of us arriving are surrounded by love. For many that take their last breath, they flat line alone. There’s no one around to wave goodbye.

The doss house demise. A most undignified decamp.

The Rosetta Stone helped scholars crack the code of hieroglyphics. The ancient Egyptian hand hieroglyph is an alphabetic hieroglyph with the meaning of "d", as in death, decay, demise. It is also used in the word for 'hand', and actions that are performed, i.e. by the 'way of one's hands', or actions. Stab, strike, grasp, feel.

Down the dimly lit corridor of the old housing estate on Campbell street, the blind Malay woman Siti, uses her hands for touch and feel. The old bricks are her braille. She knows the irregularities of their shape and texture. They tell her where she is along the gloomy corridor. She stops at the top of the stairwell and draws a breath. But she's going nowhere. By no means down. Not yet anyway.

While stretching her numb legs and feet, she feels the light she can't see. Her hand senses the heat changes between the hollow bricks. After warming her fingertips and her heart with warm sun light, she turns around and heads back to her small, dark cramped government flat. Where she exists. Alone.

The King Crimson is often assumed to be a synonym for Beelzebub - prince of demons. A name derived from a Philistine God, formerly worshiped in Ekron (Israel) and later adopted by some Abrahamic religions as a major demon.

In Muslim Malaysia Israeli passport holders are forbidden to enter Malaysia without written permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs. Mossad agents slip in and out. Under cover of course. They know too, that landlines are a secure form of communication. Public phone boxes been the most secure of all.

Getting back to the Crimson King. It's widely known in the land of the Philistines, that he reigned where there were societal rumblings and dark forces at play and his other name 'Beelzebub' as an anglicized form of the Arabic phrase "B'il Sabab" means "the man with an aim". Or mission for a better word.

Ishraaq concluded his conversation in Malay and hung up the receiver. After stepping away from the phone box and taking note of its appearance before stepping off the pavement into the road, he thought to himself in Hebrew, that it reminded him of 'Epitaph', one of his favourite King Crimson song's.

As he crossed the Jalan Dato Keramat, he sang it to himself in English,

"The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
The silence drowns the screams".....

11pm. Baking of the bread. “I do with God's help.” she murmurs. Breaking of the bread. 'Oh that's the Holy Communion' she concedes.

It's dark and noisy and hot in this cramped bakery, smothered in tropical heat. The ovens only add to the misery. Rimba thinks of Jesus. She's a Christian Indonesian on the payroll of the Chinese owned Maliia bakery, working overtime. She's cheap labour on low wages. The clatter of tin baking trays on the metal racks ads to the cacophony on sound. It's not all hell, fire and brimstone though. The warm golden loaves, fresh from the ovens, like manna from heaven, do smell divine.

Small recompense for Rimba however, for even though one of Satan's challenges was, “If you are the Child of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘one cannot live by bread alone.’”

He, inside the Subaru, the off duty van driver, slumped in the passenger seat, scrutinizes the passersby. He squints at them from behind the slits. They can't really see him, for he sits still. Partially hidden behind the slivers of light, which slant across the windscreen, he knows that the angle of incidence equals angle of reflection and so he chooses his sitting position to maximize on the screened effect. The slits are not an aperture, but a veil.

He's sick of the 'affair'. His wife spends too much time alone while he's on delivery duty. Her infidelity is her problem. He waits patiently for that someone to stroll by. Steadfast. Stoic in his mission. His problem will become his problem. Because from behind the slits, he's gonna jump out and slit that someones God damn throat.
.

The compound eye of the dragon fly has some 30 thousand light sensitive facets. Each of these lenses points in a different direction, creating its own image. The dragonfly's brain compiles these thousands of images into one picture. Think surveillance CCTV on steroids. These ancient insects have evolved over the past 350 billion years to be the most successful hunters in the natural world.

They don't chase prey, but predict where it's heading. Then intercept it with lightning speed and a 95% success rate. The highest average kill or capture statistic of any living creature on earth. Their speed, distance, direction calculus is supercomputer accurate. This is a time, place and event prediction ability that the muggers lurking in the shadows around the banks and ATM terminals along Beach street wish they had indeed!

At the front door he noticed a sign. 'Conspicuous Antiques'. He knocked. He wanted to investigate further. There was no movement from within. He knocked a second time. All he heard was the rustle of something in the bushes to his right. A snake perhaps?

He noticed the front window ajar. He had to peer inside. His eyes took a few moments to adjust to the gloom, and then he saw the figure of a man. Not standing. But lying motionless on an grey-green couch. It was heard to tell if he was breathing. Was he dead?

Series: Island Streets Midnight Shadows (Penang Noir)
Title: Grey Zone. Jalan Mansoor

Il fait gris. It’s a dull day. Le travail à domicile en zone grise. Home work in the gray zone. French is not spoken widely in Penang, except by some. Mathuram Anbuselvan is one of the few. In Malay she's anak perempuan, literally the daughter of Anbuselvan.

Mathuram lived in France for a year. Not to study french, but to work as an intern at the Malaysian Embassy in Paris. She had a rather dull clerical job. Shuffling papers. None of them classified. She found the city rather grey and forlorn in winter. Les Miserables. But the summer she felt more at home in the marginally warmer weather.

Now back in Penang, in a little grey room off Gat Lebuh Acheh, this time shuffling papers for an Indian merchant called Divit, she often thinks of Paris and reminisces. Swopping Occidental and Oriental grey office memories. She contemplates her ying and yang existence. More light than dark. She goes to work in the dark. Returns home when it's dark. In between that she sits in her monotone office.

For Mathuram, its mostly monotone monotony in a grey zone.

The Wisma Yatim Laki-Laki Muslim Boys orphanage, officiated by the Chief Minister of the Federation of Malaya, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, in 1956, has two wings with a minaret in the centre.

Seen through the heavy wrought iron railings from the busy intersection of Jalan Air Itam and and Thean Teik, the building some might say has a rather austere presence.

Each evening at the orphanage, with bats flitting around the onion dome of the minaret, as the light of day fades into night, we hear a sort of collective murmuring. For at this time, the dean of the school reminds the boys that to avoid the fire of hell, they need to guard their speech and recite the following;

اتقوا النار ولو بشق تمرة ، فمن لم يجد فبكلمة طيبة

“Save yourself from the (Hell) Fire even with half a date. And if you do not have any, then with a good pleasant word.”

In point form they are told;

1. It is recommended to give to charity even if the only have half a date seed.
2. If there are no dates or they can't afford them, then good words are enough.
3. Good speech will slay ego and arrogance.
4. People don't like arrogant people.

The bats outside, snatching moths beddazzled by the flickering neon, ignorant to the teachings inside, don't think about Heaven or Hell either. They are just too busy hunting down their prey.

Just off Jalan Prangin down a narrow dank alleyway one comes to a window with no curtains.  At this portal odors mingle. Drain and sewer smells from the streets outside mix with the pong of unwashed clothes and stale food inside. It's a very organic aroma. Eye watering indeed. 

Through the window and watery eyes one notices a man asleep.  He's in a state of deep sleep. Sleep so deep he looks like he might never awaken from it.  And if you whispered in his ear while he snored and asked him if he wanted to be shaken from his dreams, he'd probably answer no! 

For his subconscious mind would whisper back, and tell you that right now he's having heavenly dreams of been recumbent with 10 buxom wenches on a king sized bed. Overlooking the golden beaches of Tahiti. Sipping pina coladas and coke.

Yet once awakened he'd be back to the nightmare. Of hunger, poverty, lice and fleas. Gamy air and moldy rice. His dreams are full of fun and hope. With his eyes open and wide awake, he'd be back to his reality. Of no fun. No hope.

Let him sleep!

"Drink! Drink! Drink "

They are naturally drawn to bars and taverns. Those that regard alcohol as their best buddies are lost souls, drinking the blues away, in what they perceive to be an unfair and unforgiving world. They love their frothy beer. They call them fizzbangs. And those that drink fizzbangs are called fizzbangers.

While these folks have keen survival instincts they lack much in the way of common courtesy. Their feelings of loss and abandonment early on in their lives, as well as repeated rejection by anything approaching a community, has led to their laundry list of sociopathic behaviors. Hanging out in shop-house taverns, drowning out their internal malaise with grog is on that list.

Fizzbangers are sophists prone to quibbling who douse their raw twitching nerves of emotion and unreasoning with more fizzbangs. Very little guides them. They aim to fall down. Fizzbanger fucked.

Inside the living room it's just another evening of television buzz and smart phone flicker. Flashing colour against blank walls and blank faces. They gogglebox suspense, murder and mystery and don't see the irony of passing their time away. Until they pass away. They sit in there and miss the real theatrics outside. The shadow-play on blank walls. Hitchcock couldn't do it better.

But the cat burglar outside, he notices the CCTV pointed the wrong way, and the open window, and the shadows to conceal him. He sees the irony, that art imitates life. He'll just wait for their suspense film to be over and for them to go to bed. Then he'll break in and steal their distraction gadgets.

"Hey kid, you're not old enough to enter this establishment, so I'm going to stand here and stare you down until you shuffle on.

Admittedly young man, this place is for teenage sexual fantasies. But you're out of luck. It's for grown men! Desires fulfilled for a price. There's a legal age limit. We don't like to do illegal things around here.

So kid, look, come back when you're older with a fistful of ringgit and my girls will give you the time of your life. They know how to make big boys cry. Like babies at their mothers nipple.
But for now, lad. Skedaddle".