The Incredible Indelible Origin Story of Yawk

Part II - In the beginning there's a plan, then someone orders a beer, and then there's a pool of blood on the floor and mysterious bloody fingerprints all over the ceiling.

Written by Johnny Speedcakes | Havana, Cuba | February 14, 2022

In the humid, musty darkness, her black macabre fingernails tore off his Beer Chang tank top like a werewolf ripping into a lamb. This girl is so frenetic, thought Travis McCorkel, a backpacker freshly washed up in Bangkok from his Koh Phangan party bucket tour of adolescent fuckery. It's not easy to keep pace with her! This girl is nuts!

Two days earlier, Travis had been lying unconscious on a dirt street in Koh Phangan near a fried chicken sandwich shop in a pool of his own piss. Now he was voraciously locked into a young Thai woman's mouth, the alcohol drenched garlic pallet of her tongue jolting him every few beats with sharp bites on his lips. I can't wait to tell my mates, he thought.

After days of striking out in Koh Samui and Koh Phangan, save for making out with a sunburned beached whale named Brenda from Sydney covered in glow sticks, he was now going to hit pay dirt. Finally, after thousands of miles traversed and thousands of quid spent on airfare, hotels, fuck buckets, pad thai, and beer Chang tank tops, finally it was all going to payoff for him. Travis, his brain rejoiced, you've got bush!

The two lusty strangers were in a rundown cockroach hotel near Soi 22 in Bangkok's Sukhumvit neighborhood. They had just met on the street, randomly, in a horned-up, alcoholic fervor. From the blurry shadows, the woman had appeared and stepped in front of Travis. She placed a hand immediately on his chest and gave him a woozy, dreamy look with her swooning midnight eyes lathered in mascara and arousal. They made out on the sidewalk amid the smell of moist tobacco and fried garlic. We go your room, she breathlessly commanded.

And now they were here, in Travis's shitbox sarcophagus. A host of brown, long-legged creatures tin-pan-roof tap-danced inanely about the nearby mildew bathroom and around the moldy mattress wrapped like a cadaver in damp, musty sheets. The mattress itself was simply a thin mat covered in vinyl; the type one found commonly at a sex motel or an insane asylum.

About the bed, the cockroaches prowled and scurried like directionless dandies on a boardwalk promenade. Seeing one nearby on the wall strutting in the fluorescent half-light seeping in from the Kandahar bathroom, the woman viscously struck out a fist and hammered the roach like a ripe plum against the chalky concrete. Her teeth grimaced as she reveled in the voluptuous strike, and her eyes blazed and twitched in hedonistic thrill.

"What the fuck!" Travis said in dismay.

He still wanted and had to close the deal, but now this crazy girl had cockroach guts all over her hand. She's gotta wash her hand before we continue, doesn't she, he thought to himself. Yeah, of course, she's gotta clean up.

The woman stared at him for a moment, and he at her, in a fleetingly timeless, frozen silence. Her black eyes burned fiercely begot of a strange, dazzling, inner fire. His eyes sat there in the faint light in dumb alcoholic glee like a buffoon. Do I have condoms?

It was then that the fleeting silence broke like a thousand mirrors dropped into a wood chipper. With the force of a thermobaric bomb, the woman dove onto Travis and wrapped herself around him like a demonic octopus. Travis let out a perplexed wail half-tinged in laughter, half-tinged in what-the-fuck alarm. That half-hearted laughter turned on a dime with the suddenness of a guillotine careening downward. Instantly, it morphed into a gut-wrenching wail that could twist one's stomach in a thousand paralyzing knots while simultaneously stopping one's heart cold.

Two doors down, a lone female traveler from Korea heard the chilling wail. She froze mid-bite into a small pinch of uncooked ramen noodles dusted with spicy seafood seasoning. Her eyes jumped up wide in fright. A K-pop song continued to beep and squeak from her phone, but the young woman sat there still as the grave, neglecting even to breath.

Loud thuds and muted horribleness reverberated through the concrete walls and echoed up and down the hallway. The woman's panicked eyes darted to the door, the lock (it was locked, thank God!), and then back to the wall. Someone is in trouble, she thought. Am I in trouble? She hit mute on her phone.

Just then another grotesque wail cut through the night and all her cement catacombs like cannon shot blasting through a glass atrium. It sent a deathly chill reverberating throughout the environs like a depth charge blasting and knifing through the deep lonely sea. The surrounds instantly appeared dimmed, out of focus, and filled with a dull static. Do I get out of here? Do I call for help? Thoughts blazed through the Korean woman's petrified mind like napalm. She remained on the bed frozen, unmoving, mind paradoxically working a mile a minute, yet desperately paralyzed without answer.

Next came what could be described as a reverberating aftershock. There was an array of terrible sounds, but this time the horrific wails were muffled, smothered somehow, in muted surrender.

The woman could feel her heart thumping in her chest. What's next, she fretted. A few blessedly quiet moments passed. The woman noticed the environs beginning to settle, to ease into normalcy, re-emerging from the shadowy, static-filled fog of some frightening dimension, and casting back smoothly into benign seas of terrestrial tranquility. The calmness slowly washed over the room and the woman's senses. Her heart relaxed. She took a deep breath and exhaled. It became, she thought, slightly warmer in the room - more comfortable. Tentatively, her jaws began working again on the saliva drenched noodles in her mouth.

What in the world was that, she wondered as she chewed slowly, antennae still acutely scanning for any lingering signs of trouble. As they did, her mind began constructing rationalizations to calm herself. It's just drunk vanilla faces fighting about nonsense. Someone got bad news on WhatsApp. A bad breakup, per chance. Maybe someone is mentally ill or freaking out on drugs. Vanilla faces were always messing about like barbarous goons. Whatever it was, it didn't have any effect on her. That was it. Don't get involved in anyway whatsoever. Stay out of the vanilla faces' drunken, violent nonsense. The door was locked. No one knew she was in this room. Everything would be okay. It was all over now. It was quiet.

A few moments slipped uneventfully into the ether before the woman took more uncooked ramen noodles, chomped them down, and followed up with a sip of warm Leo beer. We're good...probably, she said to herself. She picked up her phone, unmuted it, and began scrolling through K-pop YouTube videos for the next song to play. The remainder of the night was uneventful, and, after one more beer, the Korean women went calmly to sleep.

The next morning, she checked out of the hotel at 7:00 and flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia. She spent the next four days there touring Angkor Wat, relaxing by the swimming pool of her hotel with beer and K-pop tunes, hoping someone would hit on her, completely unaware that she was one of only two people to have heard the murder of Travis McCorkel, and the only one to have heard it that wasn't involved directly in his bloody, violent demise.

*****

A mere matter of blocks away, but in starkly different confines, Pee Tan had just settled onto his bed, the sheets fresh, crisp, and spotlessly white. No cockroaches here, not in a million years. Reclining back into a sea of bolster and throw pillows, Pee Tan twisted open a Khoyo Berry Zeltzer and navigated his 55" inch TV to the music video channel. No sooner had he landed on it when his phone began chirping. Sonuvabitch, he griped.

Pee Tan was in town managing an event for an Italian megalomaniac promoting boutique hotels. He was there with two assistants, Nong Serena and a new hire, Nong Kitty Boom Boom. Being the boss meant every 10 minutes the Mussolini of the boutique hotel industry would call with an insatiable overflowing of questions, comments, and concerns. We need more white balloons. We need more lights. We need less lights. The white balloons need glitter. What are we doing about a tapas bar? Where are the badges? Is it too late to change the badge design? The blue looks off. We need 500 white rose pedals. You know the ice cubes that are like balls? No short hostesses. I need 1.8 meters and up. Their teeth must be perfect. No snaggletooth. And no crazy Issan toes sticking out of their high-heels like a velociraptor. And so forth.

Now what the fuck was it going to be, Pee Tan wondered as his phone bleated. He picked it up and checked the screen expecting to see "Armando" emblazoned across the viewport. But wait, what was this? It wasn't Armando at all. Immediately, a wave of calm washed over Pee Tan followed quickly by a rush of excitement.

"Well, hello there," Pee Tan answered.
"Pee Tan!" a lush, velvety voice cooed. "You're in Bangkok!"
"Uh, yeah."
"That's great! What are you doing now?"
"I just got back to my hotel."
"No, no, no. The night isn't over! It's just starting. Come with me!"
"Where?"
"It's a secret."
"Ha!"
"I'm downstairs. Come on, we'll go for a nightcap."
"You're downstairs?"
"Yes."
"How did you know where I was?"
"Pee Tan! I have a million sources."
"You are crazy."
"I'm not crazy. I'm in the lobby. Bring a jacket, Pee Tan. It's going to get cold."
"Cold? Where are we going?"
"See you!"

Pee Tan sat in the bed for a moment. What in the hell was going on? Should he go? Soon Pee Tan envisioned the next few days: the stress, the incessant phone calls, the decorations, Armando's sweaty garlic face doused in Drakkar Noir bitching about this and that, the late deliveries, the ever encroaching deadline like a tightening noose, the hostesses dropping out last minute because of menstrual cramps, "no have high-heels", and "I sleepy", etc. Fuck this, Pee Tan quickly surmised. Let's go get blasted tonight.

Rifling through his suitcase, Pee Tan came upon his North Face fleece. Jacket, he thought to himself. Who needs a jacket in Bangkok, sweatiest stank dungeon in the universe. This fleece would surely be fine. Overkill, probably. Where were they going? An ice skating rink? He grabbed his smokes, a wad of cash, checked his hair, winked at himself, and said, you are a fucking lady killer, my friend. Go kill.

The elevator door opened and immediately Pee Tan saw the sparkling terracotta eyes and lush strawberry cream smile of Violette Wautier.

"There you are!" Violette squeaked as she rushed over to hug Pee Tan.
"How in the world did you find me?" Pee Tan chuckled.
"I know where you are because you know where you are," Violette answered opaquely.
"What?"
"Oh no, is that your jacket?"
"Yeah, it's my jacket," Pee Tan laughed. "Hello. We're in Bangkok. Why would I need something more than this?"
"Alright, don't worry about the jacket. I've got you covered."

In Violette's arms were a white, fur-lined snow jacket, a Columbia beanie, and a pair of white gloves lined lavishly in speckled rabbit fur. Violette patted them reassuringly as she smiled at Pee Tan.

Violette led a bemused Pee Tan outside to her snow white Porsche 918 Spyder outfitted sublimely with black trim and menacing spoiler.

She tossed the jacket into the Porsche and rummaged around for a moment. Pee Tan, jaw still on the ground, continued to simply stare at the exquisite car.

Stop trying to figure it all out, Pee Tan said to himself. Just go with it. Fuck this project. Fuck Armando. Get wasted!

They both fired off the tops of their Zeltzer bottles and made a toast.

"Here's to the best night ever," Violette said.

Together they slurped down a good long pull. As soon as they finished, Violette swooped in to give Pee Tan a kiss.

"No matter what happens," Violette assured him. "I'll make sure you stay warm all night."

Pee Tan gazed in wonder at Violette's glimmering kaleidoscope eyes, then at the sparkling glacial Porsche, and then back to Violette. I don't know what the fuck is happening, he said to himself, but I am fucking all in.

Violette hopped in the driver side of the ivory spacecraft and revved up the engine. The magnificent German machine sounded like a purring dragon. Pee Tan took one more heavy drain on the khoyo berry before coolly strutting around to the passenger side and climbing in to join her.

"Ready?" Violette asked.
"Fuck yes!" Pee Tan smiled. "Hit it!"

*****

Just north from where Pee Tan and Violette were climbing into their Porsche 918, Pee Brett had finished drunkenly sauntering past the myriad catcalls, street gropings, man pussies, and sagging, tattooed, wrinkled propositions to a motorbike taxi.

Unbeknownst to him, he had missed his opportunity for a chance encounter with the Black Widow of Soi 22 by the grand total of 2 minutes and 42 seconds. Had he just smoked a cig at the bar before leaving, perhaps it would have been he who would have had his neck chewed off. Had that occurred, to this very day Travis McCorkel would be alive and residing happily in Ipswich with a cat and a waitering job at a local pub named Slaggers. Alas, Brett had taken his cig with him "on the road", a whimsical act that circuitously bought him an extra 42 years on this planet and sent Travis to the Bangkok morgue.

"Thong Lo - Soi 55." Brett said to the motorbike taxi. "40 baht ($1.30)."

A smiling, dim-witted driver grinned, revved up his abused and busted Honda Wave shit machine, adjusted his mired orange vest besmirched with grease and street filth upon his 2-days-without-a-shower sticky body of bones, and waited for Brett to saddle up. That was easier than I thought, Brett mused, having anticipated some drawn out negotiation over a 50-cent increase in fare.

The 125cc, 4-stroke, single-cylinder Honda Wave engine wined like a tortured goat as they rattled off east down the cement canal of Sukhumvit awash in catacomb shadows, streetwalkers in whiteface, and sprinklings of crippled, disfigured bodies shuffling about the concrete jungle.

Whining into the night like forks screeching across chalkboards, the rattling, metallic hyena jostled past Benchasiri Park and the Emporium.

"So far," the driver feigned as if he were just now realizing what Soi 55 meant.

Next, the Phrom Phong skyway station swam past on the right.

"So far," the driver repeated, his rapist's intellect hard at work.

Brett ignored him, instead reveling in the cool, dirt and exhaust-laden air blasting in his red raw eyes, jet-lagged, boozed up, and lambasted. The blissful breeze dissipated, however, to Brett's chagrin, as the driver slowed and pulled over to a stop in front of a Top's Market.

"So far," the driver cried. "40 baht, no good."
"What are you doing?" Brett asked, the driver's body odor filling his nostrils like a wire brush as they slowed.
"So far. 40 baht, no good," the broken record regurgitated its contribution to the universe.

Brett's blistering eyes scanned around.

He pushed the driver in the back as he stood up off the bike. The driver squawked like a chicken with a foot caught in a trap. Brett made a fist and grabbed at the driver's filthy, rung-out collar. The driver's dim eyes quickly drew large and he cranked the gas on his rusty motorized bicycle. He sped off ineptly into the dour midnight streets. What a silly fuck, Brett thought to himself.

Brett began marching east down Sukhumvit, continuing his journey now on foot, feeling like a champion, but then paused for a second. Silly, yes, but would the driver come back with 2-3 other street rat reinforcements in order to get his dollar? Unlikely, but who knew the inner workings of the dim-wit, drink-riddled motorbike taxi mind.

Brett backtracked west now along Sukhumvit, past the Metropolis Building, with the intention of heading north up Soi 39 and taking the convoluted (and "safe") way back to his hotel, hopefully encountering a friendly motorcycle taxi somewhere along the route.

As he walked past the art deco Metropolis, its golden umbrella awning and quaint, sparkling fountain, he felt a cold collection of diamond fingernails running their claws up the base of his spine and grabbing hold of the undercarriage of his brain. At this moment, a pair of orange headlights traversing up Sukhumvit towards Brett titled peculiarly on an axis, as if they were on a teeter-top. Inexplicably, they lifted up off the road and took flight right before him, caroming and sailing over Brett before banking north around the Metropolis, smoothly careening through the heavy, stultifying air before disappearing behind a row of high-rises. Sukhumvit itself decided at that moment to pull back a mysterious veil. The street lugubriously transformed into a richly illuminated grid of geometrical perfections, long, dazzling, glowing lines of slowly pulsating orbs stretching out until infinity in a digital ocean. A thought manifested in some far-flung outpost of the galaxy traveled through space, time, and dimensions beyond the speed of light and arrived in Brett's head. You are and always have been inside a cosmic computer.

A dizzying, hypnotic array of brightly illuminated cars flew by serenely in the air like swordfish gliding through sparkling seas. One smoothly descended in well-choreographed pirouette down next to Brett and purred as it idled, hovering next to him. The dimmed driver's side window didn't go down, but instead smoothly dematerialized to reveal a gregarious, fat, long-haired, and bearded driver with sparkling eyes of excitement.

"Kalispera, moremu," he bellowed in Greek and good humor. Good evening, dear. "I'm Nikos. Tell me," he smiled, his dark beard streaked with gray along with his long Mediterranean locks. "Have you ever tried Sky Pussy?"
"No," Brett said.
"Malaka! [Asshole!] Come on! It's perfect for you!"

The door behind the effusive Greek driver did it's vanishing trick, revealing a backseat with a woman wearing a school girl uniform with an astronaut helmet. She moved over and motioned for Brett to join her inside.

"Fuck yes, Nikos!" Brett said as climbed into the hovering vehicle.

As soon as he stepped in, bright blinding lights began flashing in disorientating strobe. The woman near Brett undid some fasteners on her helmet and carefully pulled it off. Brett was dumbfounded. From her body and school girl uniform, he was expecting a Japanese woman. Instead, a gargantuan avalanche of lush, black hair cascaded down around a beguiling face of Persian beauty with proud nose, voluptuous lips of deep burgundy and purple, and wondrously large, mesmerizing almond eyes.

"Welcome to Sky Pussy," she purred.

Brett realized then he wasn't in one of those run-of-the-mill flying taxi cabs that one normally encountered on Sukhumvit Street. Actually, he wasn't even inside a taxi anymore. Instead he was smack-dab in the center of a large dance hall that was jammed packed with thousands of Japanese school girls all wearing sailor uniforms with miniskirts, phone-book-thick platform shoes soaked in glitter, pigtails, and 90's style bug-eye wraparound sunglasses. Hypnotically they danced in a myriad of tribal circles flashing in strobe lights, stopping their feet in unison like interconnected clogs in some interstellar, neon machine. Boom tap tap tap. Boom tap tap shake tap. The dance hall was an epic electronic warehouse with Escher-like twisting stairs and large observation decks all adorned with a busying beehive of the school girls in their uniforms.

"Come with me," the Persian splendor beckoned, leading Brett up up a grand staircase that stretched upwards into the stars.

All of these celestial bodies were connected by intricate, complex highways of geometrical, glowing tendrils dotted with precision-placed pulsating orbs. They winked and flashed before Brett's eyes like a sea of winking buoys in a crystal ocean. Women on either side of Brett and the Persian princess danced and gyrated in two long rows along the staircase stretching onward forever.

"To the moon?" Brett asked.
"Better," the Persian splendor smiled with sparkling diamond eyes.

Brett glanced upwards to realize that directly above him hovered the planet Jupiter, its mass of swirling, crème brûlée, salted caramel, and blood orange marmalade clouds of thick cream pluming magnificently in endless churning. Brett realized that the movement and dance of the armies of girls was somehow rotating the grand, great mill which was promulgating the whole celestial enterprise. The flashing orbs, the sea of animated, intelligent stars, the great planetary mechanics - it all stemmed from these worker bees in sailor costumes and miniskirts. A fresh, cool wind whipped past Brett's face and through his hair. It felt as if the wind had emanated from somewhere on the other side of the solar system and blew to him stellar and clean though a pristine universe.

"We're going to a club on Jupiter?" Brett asked in amazement.
"Yes," the Persian wonder said. "Select now from one of my beauties as your companion."

She motioned her arms to the array of girls dancing up and down the celestial staircase.

"So many hard yeses. How could I choose?"
"Try this one," the Persian princess smiled coyly as she beckoned forth one of her retinue.

In the hypnotic, ceremonial dance groove of the club, a Japanese girl in sailor uniform and miniskirt crept forward. She approached Brett like a spider descending onto her prey. Once close enough, she grabbed tightly at his yellow shirt glued to his body in sweat and drew at his neck and chest to hedonistically breathe him in.

"Ohh, spacemonkey!" she cooed in disorientating arousal. "You smell oishi fucking-licious!"