Thailand

Wet Nightmares

Jim Algie

The fat guy grabbed Watermelon’s hand, pulled her onto his lap and squeezed her breasts. When he kissed her, she felt like digging her long, sparkly silver fingernails into the soft spot at the bottom of his throat and ripping out his vocal cords – anything to stop him from treating her like she was public property and shoving his tongue down her throat so she almost gagged on the taste of garlic and gin-and-tonic.

Instead, she pulled her mouth away, giggled, and said, ‘You pay bar, I come your room, okay?’ He shook his head and his bearded jowls flapped.

Pay the fucking bar fine or stop squeezing my tits, she thought.

Watermelon leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and smiled. In her helium-high voice, she squeaked, ‘You handsome man.’

‘No, I am fat, ugly man – ja.’

She suppressed a laugh; at least he was right about that.

Then she looked over at the stage of the Hot Pussies Go-Go Bar, where nine or ten Thai women were dancing in matching red thongs and bras to a techno song. The flashing lights painted their faces and bodies with shades of pink, blue, orange and green. At the front, Bird was rubbing her crotch against a silver pole and smiling down at some cute young guy sitting at the bar which ringed the stage.

That greedy bitch had stolen Watermelon’s customer last night after she’d been sitting with the guy for two hours. It was only halfway through the month and Bird had been bragging to the other girls that she’d already racked up ten bar fines and eighty-five drinks. Although Watermelon, tiny and fair-skinned, considered herself the prettiest girl who worked there, she’d had a dismal month: only two bar fines and fifteen drinks.

As Bird turned around to rub her crack up and down the chrome pole, the German leered at her.

‘Don’t look she. She have AIDS.’ It was the kind of vicious lie Watermelon had been telling lately about any of the girls who made more money than she did, to the point where none of the other go-go dancers wanted anything to do with her.

After four years of working at various go-go bars around Patpong, she couldn’t hustle the way she used to. More and more often, when she wasn’t dancing, she found herself sitting alone in the corner, thinking of ways she could get enough money to start her own little beauty parlour in Bangkok, bring her daughter back from her parent’s village in Chiang Mai province, and find a new husband who had a decent job.

She didn’t think that was too much to ask for. So why was she stuck here?

To end up as a whore in this life, she must’ve committed some terrible sins in her previous one, probably even killed somebody. That’s why she was being punished like this. But as long as she kept doing good deeds when she could, and giving alms to Buddhist monks, she might be able to improve her bad karma.

With the money she’d already saved up, all she needed was a couple of thousand more dollars, and then she’d have enough to go into business for herself.

The fat guy beside her, now rubbing her pussy through her thong, was going to be her ticket out of here. Looking at his gold Rolex watch, diamond ring and Versace shirt, it was obvious that he was rich. Since he was staying in a fancy hotel, it was also obvious that his expensive clothes and jewellery weren’t the fakes that they sold in the Night Bazaar right outside the bar.

Earlier, when he’d taken out his wallet to give her a tip, she’d noticed that it was stuffed with American dollars. Seeing that, Watermelon lied and said she was going on a trip to Chiang Mai soon – and was it a good idea to take traveller’s checks with her?

‘I never use them in Thailand. I come here three times every year for ten years now, and I never have some problem. Thailand is very safe, ja.’

So maybe he had more money and jewellery back in his hotel room. Maybe there was an expensive camera she could steal, or even a video camera. But would he keep the rest of his cash and valuables in the safe-deposit box?

He’d already given her a one-hundred baht tip and bought her three ‘Lady Drinks’, so he must like her. Now she had to get him to pay the bar fine and take her back to his hotel. Hot Pussies was going to close in half an hour, and she was worried that he might wander off to an after-hours disco and pick up someone else. After another song, she’d have to go back onstage to dance again. Her feet were already sore from shuffling and grinding all night in her high heels, and if she did go back onstage, then Bird or one of the other girls might steal her customer. She couldn’t take that chance. She had to get him to pay the bar fine now.

With one hand, Watermelon stroked the lump in his trousers, while she rubbed his right nipple through the silk shirt. His blue eyes closed slightly. She then put her hand inside his shirt and circled the nipple with her fingernail as the lump in his trousers grew. The man’s eyes closed a little more and she could feel his heart pumping out of sync with the pounding drums.

Squeezing the lump reminded her of milking cows on the family farm. She opened another button, leaned over and rimmed the nipple with her tongue before taking it between her teeth and sucking on it.

His eyes were closed now, and the lump was wriggling as she put her tongue in his ear and tasted some bitter wax. Then Watermelon moaned, ‘I so horny. You pay bar for me, okay?’

His eyes opened and there was a dazed smile on his face, like he was awakening from a very pleasant dream. ‘Ja, I pay bar.’

Watermelon smiled, gave him a hug and kissed his prickly cheek. ‘Tank you.’

In the dressing room, she changed into a bright pink mini-dress with matching high heels and took all of the perfume, makeup, underwear, tampons, her miniature panda bear, and the capsules she was going to use to drug him out of her locker, and put them in her Snoopy backpack. In the cracked mirror, she wiped the lipstick smears off her cheeks and chin with a wad of damp toilet paper, put on some fresh lipstick, and then brushed her long, lustrous black hair.

Walking out of the bar behind the fat guy, she stopped near the front of the stage and called out Bird’s name. When the other woman turned around, Watermelon gave her the finger, yelled, ‘Fuck off!’ and giggled. As she did it, she imagined that it wasn’t only the greedy bitch she was telling to fuck off: it was also every customer in the bar, the owner, the mamasan, and the entire red-light district of Patpong.

*  *  *

In the back of the taxi with her customer, Watermelon’s guilt and nervousness about robbing him gave her an upset stomach. But how many men had ripped her off? Even after she’d told them in the bar, or in another after-hours club, that her prices were fixed for ‘short-time’ and ‘all-night’, they still kept cheating her. The younger, better-looking guys were usually the worst: they never wanted to pay or they lied and said they would.

As she looked out the window of the taxi at a little stand selling red-pork-and-egg-noodles soup, she remembered that one cute guy with the spiky blond hair. Among her customers – the manicured bankers and cologne-reeking diplomats, the alcoholic whoremongers and the tattooed backpackers like him – many shared the same fantasy: They were such virile lovers they could even make a prostitute come.

Watermelon spurred on his fantasy with a series of sighs, cresting on each breath as she moaned, ‘Oh yeah…oh yeah. You hit my G-spot,’ like an actress repeating lines in a play she’d performed dozens of times, all the while wondering what she would eat afterwards. The sweet green curry or the rice noodles with fish balls? And which pair of flats would go with the new top she’d bought that day?

In the throes of arousal, men became such mindless animals that they did not realize she was only engaging them with her body. Her thoughts ranged freely. So it was a little better than working as a seamstress in that garment factory, following patterns on an industrial-sized sewing machine amidst a racket that made the fillings in her teeth ache and nullified all thoughts. That job demanded both her body and her mind, and it didn’t pay nearly as well as working in a bar.

Humping away with short, sharp, repetitive strokes, not even varying the tempo at all, he reminded her of the two bunnies she’d bought for her daughter when they got into mating mode.

‘Rabbit’ was too young and vain to possibly be a good lover. He was more interested in admiring his tattoos, piercings and muscles in the mirror beside the heart-shaped bed than he was in pleasing her, the kind of customer she had often overheard boasting to his friends, ‘I shagged that tart rotten last night.’ Since few of the men spoke much Thai, they were unaware that the bargirls were constantly ridiculing them. Watermelon repeated his boast about her to Bird, who was sitting in a man’s lap beside the bar. Over top of the throbbing dance music, Bird yelled back, ‘So you had a really big romance last night?’

Watermelon shouted, ‘Are you kidding? It was the most well-paid two minutes of my life.’ She and Bird shrieked with laughter.

Another bargirl chimed in with a Thai expression for a premature ejaculator, ‘He’s a sparrow dipping his beak,’ and that set off another chorus of giggles.

All the jokes they made about their customers were less about revenge than a need to prove they were more than just an empty mortar to be pounded by a series of blood-engorged pestles. Any man could rent Watermelon’s body. None would ever possess her mind or heart.

But the longer she worked in a bar, the less true that resolution had become.

After she took a shower and put on her clothes, she politely asked him for her money.

‘I don’t pay for it, luv,’ said Rabbit with a sneer.

‘You say me already you will to pay, na.’

And then there was that smug little smirk of his, like he was so superior to her (she wished she could travel back in time now and return the smirk), followed by ‘Nobody likes a whore, dear.’ Without even letting her pick up her purse, he grabbed her arm, dragged her out of his hotel room, and slammed the door. For a few minutes she pounded on that door and yelled at him to give back her purse until a security guard came up and said the man had accused her of trying to steal his watch, so he had to throw her out of his room.

After a long argument with the guard, who also knocked on the door repeatedly, the ‘cheap Charlie’ opened it just wide enough to throw her red purse, emblazoned with gold hearts, on the floor, causing half of the contents to spill out.

Blushing with embarrassment, she quickly shoved the package of condoms and the thong back inside it, then checked her wallet to find that the guy had stolen a thousand baht from her. Not only that, the security guard demanded some money – leaving her with barely enough for cab fare – or, he said, he’d report her to the police for stealing from one of the hotel’s guests.

Even that was far from her worst experience though. She forced herself to remember the most terrible encounter because it alleviated her guilt about what she was going to do tonight.

Watermelon couldn’t remember if that businessman had been from Japan, or Hong Kong, or Singapore – what did it matter? – but he came into the bar after playing a round of golf and still had his bag and clubs with him.

His sick fantasy was for her to sit on the floor of the ‘short-time’ hotel with her back against the bed, then spread her legs and sex apart so he could use his putter to try and tap a golf ball inside her. But he was far too drunk to realize it was impossible. After about thirty attempts, he shoved the ball inside her with his fist, raised the club and his other arm above his head, cheered and yelled, ‘A hole in one!’

Later, he made her kneel on the bed like a dog while he shoved the thin end of two clubs into her anus and vagina, screwing her with them while masturbating. Naked except for his blue socks and white golf cap, the sadist kept ordering her to look in the big mirror on the wall.

‘Look! Look in mirror!’

It wasn’t enough for him to make her lose face like this, she thought. His real excitement depended on Watermelon seeing her shame and his superiority.

In between gasps and stabs of pain, she continued to look down at the pillow and think I’m being used as a scapegoat for every woman who’s ever rejected this fucking creep. And who wouldn’t?

Because he had a pug-nose like a Pekinese, she decided this client’s nickname would be ‘Dog’. So when he growled ‘You like? You like?’, she replied in Thai, ‘I’ll bet you were born in the Year of the Dog, weren’t you?’ and giggled.

A hyperactive chatterbox who never knew when to keep her mouth shut – which was the main reason she had so few regular customers – Watermelon kept making jokes he couldn’t understand, followed by giggling.

When his pants and moans became whimpers, he grabbed her by the hair, twisted her head around, and shot gobs of disgusting semen all over her face.

Still panting, Dog said, ‘You don’t laugh at me. Too many women do like this already.’

Then he punched her in the face and broke her nose.

She curled up in a fetal position, wiping the blood, semen and tears from her face with a sheet, while he got dressed, shoved a couple of bills into her pussy, and left without saying a word.

Since that shameful evening six months ago, she’d had trouble looking at her face in the mirror without sneering and telling her reflection: ‘You’re nothing but a stupid, rotten whore. No decent man is ever going to fall in love with you again and want to marry you because you’re so disgusting.’

Until tonight, Watermelon had never stolen much from her clients except for some loose bills, a couple of expensive watches, and a few hundred multihued lighters. Since she didn’t smoke, she super-glued them, in the shape of peacocks, flowers and elephants, to cover the cracks in the walls of the one-room apartment she shared with three other bargirls.

But she’d been fucked over too many times; now it was her turn to get even and get out of the business. Besides, this fat and hairy guy – Gorilla, as she had dubbed him – was rich, so he wouldn’t really miss the money and jewellery anyway, and maybe she’d give him a good blow-job first, so he wouldn’t feel too cheated when he woke up.

If he woke up.

She’d heard a couple of stories about prostitutes drugging their clients. The men overdosed and the women ended up going to jail for twenty-five or thirty years. Watermelon knew one of those women and had gone to visit her a few times at a horrible prison in Bangkok. She always brought her some food, cigarettes, tampons or medicine and fashion magazines. She knew these were, in part, selfish gestures: good deeds to help erase her bad karma.

But even working in a go-go bar had to be heaven compared to being imprisoned in a Thai jail, where the cells were so overcrowded that the prisoners had to take turns sleeping on the floor, and the daily food rations consisted of a small bowl of watery rice, and maybe – if you were lucky – a fish head.

Maybe she shouldn’t drug this guy. He’d been quite generous so far and would probably pay her well for sleeping with him tonight.

Then she remembered ‘Dog’ growling at her ‘Look! Look in mirror! You like? You like?’ … and that smirking guy with the blond hair throwing her favourite purse on the floor in the hallway.

What if Gorilla was a sadist, too? What if he stole her money and beat her up, or gave her AIDS, or even killed her?

To reassure herself, she felt around in her backpack for the switchblade she carried and stroked the plastic handle.

Then she looked down and saw Gorilla caressing her bare thigh. How long had he been touching her like that? Why couldn’t she feel it?

When she thought about it, over the last four years Watermelon had been groped, kneaded, kissed, licked, bitten, screwed and sodomized so many times that she knew her body was slowly dying and that her heart must look like a withered old rose, turning blacker and getting smaller by the night. If she didn’t get out soon, her body and heart were going to die completely. Or she’d end up knifing one of her customers.

But she also had to quit for the sake of her daughter. A couple of weeks ago, she’d telephoned her parent’s house in northern Thailand and her five-year-old had picked up the phone. Listening to Duck babble away in that bright voice of hers – a memory of the heart-shaped wind chimes hanging down from the eaves of a Buddhist temple passed through Watermelon’s mind – always made her smile and feel like such a proud mother.

It was funny how Duck couldn’t pronounce some of the Thai tones properly, so when she wanted to say ‘We’re a very big family’, it sounded like ‘We’re a very big strawberry’. She explained the mistake to Duck, and they both laughed. In the hope of inspiring her daughter to be more diligent about studying than she’d been, Watermelon taught her the correct tones for ‘family’ and then made her repeat them a few times until she got them right.

Only about three minutes into their conversation, however, her daughter suddenly asked, ‘Mom, are you really a prostitute? Is that why you never come home and visit me?’ At first, Watermelon was too stunned to say anything. Then she exploded. ‘I never taught you that dirty word, and I don’t want to ever hear you use it again! Do you understand? I’m a beautician and I have to work in Bangkok to help support you and my parents, younger sisters, and my two lazy brothers who never do anything but get drunk.’

Duck began crying. Watermelon rubbed her forehead while scolding herself for being such a bad mother and a liar.

Just then, the taxi pulled up in front of the Watergate Hotel.

*  *  *

Watermelon took a hot shower and thought about her plan. Another go-go dancer had told her that the best way to drug a client was to rub some sedatives into her breasts and nipples. But wouldn’t he be able to taste the drug when he licked her boobs? Seeing how drunk and horny he was, maybe not.

How many capsules should she use? One? Two? Since the guy was so fat, maybe she should use all three. But would that kill him? (The pharmacist had told her that five of them would knock out a tiger.)

Finally, she decided on two capsules, one for each breast.

Before she rubbed the tranquilizers into them, Watermelon moved her gold necklace around so that the tiny Buddha image was facing her back, like she always did before having sex with a customer. That way, the amulet would still protect her, but the Buddha wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing.

For lubrication, she put a few globs of Vaseline inside her sex. Then she wrapped a dry towel around herself like a sarong and walked into the cool, air-conditioned room. At the foot of the bed, she put her backpack on the floor with the switchblade under it.

Gorilla was lying on top of the covers, holding the remote in his hand and channel surfing with the volume turned down. Except for the little lamp with the white shade beside the bed and the flickering shadows cast by the TV, the huge room was dark.

She lay down beside him, smiled and giggled. ‘How are you, honey?’

He kept staring at the TV. ‘Drunk and lonely.’

‘Why lonely? I am here, na.’

‘Ja, you are here for money, but you don’t like me. It’s okay. I also don’t like me.’

‘I like you.’

‘Quatsch! Don’t speak bullshit! I don’t like people speaking bullshit.’

What was he so angry about? Was it just all the gin?

Then it occurred to her that the tranquilizers might be seeping into her bloodstream and she’d be the one who fell asleep or overdosed. If she had murdered someone in a previous life, maybe it was this guy and he was here to get revenge? Drugging herself to death while he watched – now that would be fitting karma.

While Gorilla went on and on about how much he missed, and still loved, his ex-wife Karla, she looked around the dark room. Over by the balcony were two suitcases, but she couldn’t see any cameras or jewellery lying around. So maybe they were in the wardrobe? Or was there a safe in the room?

Sitting on the edge of the bed, pretending to listen, she tried to stroke his hand, but he pushed it away.

Now he told her about his job, working as a medic at a clinic for Burmese refugees along the border and gave her a long lecture about Burmese politics and why she should never go there, because tourist dollars helped to support their military regime.

With only two days off a month, how was she supposed to go anywhere, except if a customer took her on vacation and paid the bar? And who would ever want to visit some poor, boring country like Burma? The only places she wanted to visit were Singapore, for shopping; Hong Kong, because they had a Disneyland; and America, because everyone looked so rich and beautiful in the TV shows she watched.

Watermelon switched off the lamp and squeaked in her helium-high voice, ‘You tink too much. Don’t worry, be happy.’

He stroked her hair. ‘Ja, and you think not enough.’ For the first time that night, he laughed.

With her on top, they began kissing. Gorilla pulled the towel up over her ass, cupped her buttocks in his palms and kneaded them. His beard scratched her face. Raising herself up on one hand, Watermelon pulled the towel down over her small breasts so that he could lick them.

As he sucked her nipples, greedy as an infant for milk and for love, she felt a surprising affection for him that was maternal, not sexual, because he seemed so helpless and needy. The feeling only lasted for a few seconds – until he bit her nipple and made her wince – but it was still good to know that she could feel something for a man besides anger and bitterness.

The pain evaporated while nervousness crept into her mind. He was really licking and kissing her breasts all over, ensuring that he’d get the full dosage. Would it be enough to kill him? How long would it take before he fell asleep?

He rolled her off of him and kissed her neck while he pushed one … and two … and then three fingers inside her. But since that night with the golfer, she’d felt nothing when they penetrated her down there but a series of chills that slithered up from between her legs and settled in her stomach, like when a gynaecologist put a cold, metal speculum inside her.

Worried that her body, and Gorilla, were both dying on her, she resorted to one of the tricks she used when sleeping with a really ugly customer: rerunning erotic fantasies from her adolescence. Closing her eyes, Watermelon pretended that it was Johnny Superstar fingering her. She saw the pop singer’s effeminate face appear in her mind and silently asked him: ‘Why do all the men that I’m most attracted to always turn out to be gay?’

Johnny, smiling, said, ‘I used to be gay, my lovely sweetheart, but you turned me into a normal man and now I want to marry you. I’d also love for us to have a child together and –’

Gorilla crushed that fantasy by climbing on top of her, burying Watermelon under his prickly bulk after she’d only felt a few pangs of heartburn for her lost and silly dreams of teenage love. Automatically, she moaned and sighed with false passion when she only felt sweaty and claustrophobic. But Gorilla was not like her more aggressive customers who wielded their cocks like killers armed with knives, stabbing her with violence and vengefulness. The German knew that he was too big for her and slowed down. He whispered in her ear, ‘You are like a fine piece of china, the most beautiful girl I ever have touched. I don’t want to hurt you in some way.’ She wished he hadn’t said that because, for the first time that night, he became a real person to her; not a customer, not an animal, but a human being. The drug, combined with all the gin, must have been really kicking in now, because Wilhelm’s voice took on a new undercurrent of softness.

‘Karla, do you love me still?’ Some of her customers had requested a ‘girlfriend experience’, but no one had ever asked her to play their ex-wife before.

Acutely aware of the sweat pooling in her stomach and needling at the corners of her closed eyes, Watermelon hesitated. She had not been hard-wired to provide any automatic responses to a request like this. Half-heartedly, she said, ‘Sure, baby, I always love you.’

His sweat, salty as tears, dripped on to her closed lips and eyelids, impregnating her with his sadness. ‘You will never leave me again, will you?’

Not daring to open her eyes, but with a little more sympathy, she cooed, ‘No, never. I always stay with you.’

Reassured, he began moving his hips again, but slower, more gently, like a man making love to his wife, seeking an intimacy and a connection above and beyond the merely physical. His consideration penetrated a deeper part of her that few of her customers had ever accessed before. Vignettes from her marriage, beginning at the age of sixteen, to a southern Thai Muslim and livestock trader, flickered across her mind like scenes from a grainy film shown at a Buddhist temple fair. Resplendent in his white fez and striped sarong, Hasan smoked tobacco wrapped in a nipa palm leaf. Each time he spilled an ash, he licked the tip of his index finger, picked it up and put it in the ashtray. It was a small gesture which had grown larger in time because she’d never seen anyone else do that and probably never would again.

It also said a lot about how neat, gentle, and meticulous he was. Unlike her previous boyfriends, he did not expect her to clean up after him, not even a single cigarette ash. After his daily reading of the Quran, her darkly handsome husband always kissed the cover of the book before putting it back on the shelf. Then he would teach her another expression in Arabic that made both of them laugh.

‘Trust in Allah, but keep your camel tied up.’ He also enjoyed teasing her about the more extreme elements of Islam that he did not believe in. ‘You know, sweetheart, by law I could have four wives, but since you’re like ten different women rolled into one, I’ve already got about eight more than I can handle.’

Watermelon sat down on his lap and tweaked his nose. ‘If you even have one other wife, I’ll cut your dick off with a machete and feed it to the pigs.’ It was the most offensive thing she could possibly say to a Muslim man, but instead of taking offence, he laughed; his long, feminine eyelashes, which she thought were his most attractive feature, fluttered as he laughed.

‘Oh, you’re such a country girl with all your passion, intensity, and terrible manners. You’ve got more spirit than all of those prissy, boring office ladies in Bangkok and Had Yai put together.’

Eighteen months after the wedding, Watermelon answered a phone call from his brother informing her that Hasan, barely twenty, had been killed in a motorcycle accident while visiting his family down south. According to Muslim tradition, they had to bury the body within 24 hours of death. She would not have the chance to see him one final time or attend his funeral.

That, more than anything else, had continued to haunt her. How could she have ever explained to him that she’d slept with hundreds of men, but only ever made love to him? And that grief can don many disguises indistinguishable from madness and not-giving-a-damn depravity.

Watermelon was making love to Hasan. Wilhelm was making love to Karla. How could two people performing the most intimate of acts be so completely lost to each other? This was not sex so much as a form of psychotherapy and mutual grieving. In that, it was preferable to grieving alone.

The ghost of her husband, now inhabiting this man’s body, pushed his way deeper into her, conjuring a recurring nightmare …

At opposite ends of a bridge made from the stretched umbilical cord of their daughter stood Watermelon and Hasan. They called out to each other, but the wind whipped their words away. Holding on to the ropes on each side, Watermelon walked towards her husband, foot over foot, on a swaying ribbon of flesh as slender as a tightrope. Hasan walked towards her. But the more they walked, the farther away from each other they got.

The wind hurled dead owls and palm leaves at her. Digging grit out of one eye, Watermelon watched as the wind grew arms that picked him up and threw him over the ropes. Limbs flailing, he plummeted into a black pit. She let out an ear-piercing scream.

Thinking, perhaps, that she was having an orgasm, Wilhelm quickened his pace and, with their thighs slapping together, they filled each other with the desolation of their lovelorn lives, boiled down into the most primitive elements of bodily secretions and saltwater tears.

Wilhelm lay down beside her, panting heavily and groaning. ‘You okay?’ she asked.

He put his hand on his heart. Ghostly, blue-white images from the TV flickered across his sweaty face. ‘I have terrible pain here,’ he said and patted his heart. ‘Maybe I am having a heart attack.’

Watermelon swallowed noisily, and it sounded to her like an admission of guilt. When she looked over at him, his eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. She tried to wake him up, but couldn’t. Oh no! Watermelon grabbed his wrist and felt his pulse beating. But for how much longer?

What should she do? She wasn’t a murderess. She didn’t want him to die. So maybe she should call security and make up some bullshit story; they wouldn’t know she’d drugged him.

Chewing on her long, sparkly silver fingernails, Watermelon thought about her daughter (‘Mom, are you really a prostitute?’), and then Dog and his golf clubs (‘Look in mirror!’).

No, she had to stop being a whore. She had to do it for Duck.

Quickly, she got dressed and turned on the lamp beside the bed. Gorilla was snoring. Good.

Watermelon crept over to the two suitcases by the balcony, opened the big one and riffled through the contents: shirts, jeans, socks and underwear. Then she opened the smaller suitcase and … hit the jackpot! It was full of plastic bags containing gold Rolex watches, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. But her smile went flat when she realized they were probably fakes. Either that or this guy was a robber, too.

Stealing from a thief?

‘ Wen gum [That’s karma],’ she muttered.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back until it felt like her neck was going to snap. Looking up, she saw a dark beer belly.

‘You stupid bitch,’ he said in a groggy voice. ‘You think you fool me with this drugging trick? No, I fool you.’

Gorilla tried to pull her to her feet, but only tore out a clump of Watermelon’s hair. Her scalp on fire, she scurried across the floor on all fours to grab her Snoopy backpack and groped for the switchblade, only to hear it click open behind her. ‘I have your knife,’ he said.

Watermelon ran for the door in the dark hallway. Feeling around on the carpet for her high heels, she grabbed one of them and stood up to see the silhouette of a monster lumbering towards her. With her fingers wrapped around the toe of the shoe, she pulled it back over her shoulder, took a step forward, and smacked him in the face with the sharp stiletto heel.

‘Scheiße!’

Watermelon dropped the shoe and tried to whip the door open, but it banged against the chain. Just as she slid the chain off and opened the door, Gorilla flicked on the light in the hallway. The sudden flash blinded her. She blinked rapidly and looked over her shoulder. Standing there naked, he stared at her with tears seeping from one blue eye and blood weeping from an empty socket. His other eye stared at her from the palm of his hand.

Feeling as stunned as he looked, she stood there, muttering, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’

Watermelon then ran down the hallway and slammed the button for the elevator.

One of them was on floor 18, the other on 12.

‘Hurry up! Hurry up!’

Down the hallway she saw Gorilla, a towel around his waist, lumber out of the room and bellow, ‘Wake up, everybody! Wake up! There is a thief in our hotel!’ Watermelon bolted for the stairway.

Holding the metal railing to propel herself around the corners, her bare feet slapped against the concrete stairs while the numbers of the floors flashed by: 6, 5, 4, 2 …

Out of breath, she stopped on the ground floor, her heart drumming against her breast. What if he had caught the elevator and was waiting for her in the lobby with one blue eye in his hand? What if he’d called Security? But she couldn’t stay here, and waiting would only increase the chance of her getting caught.

Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she walked across the cool marble floor of the gleaming lobby, feeling very suspicious in her bare feet. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be around except for the doorman and the front desk clerk.

She smiled and politely asked the desk clerk for her ID card; it was a fake, so it didn’t matter if he’d written down the name and number. For once, she was grateful for the condescending way he dropped her ID on the counter without so much as a word or even a glance.

Quickly, she strode towards the front door, shooting glances over her shoulder at the blinking numbers of an elevator descending (6 … 5). Up ahead was the doorman, who stared at her bare feet and frowned. (4 … 3). The doorman was dressed in this old-fashioned Siamese costume of bright silk. Earlier, when she’d walked in with her customer, he’d opened the door for them, but he made no effort to do so now. She heard the ring of the elevator behind her, indicating it had reached the lobby.

Just as she put her hand on the door, she looked around to see a young white guy walk out of the elevator. Watermelon exhaled audibly and smiled.

When the taxi was six streets away from the hotel and she hadn’t seen any police pick-up trucks or motorcycles, she figured she was in the clear.

It was sickening though to remember how she’d knocked Gorilla’s eye out with her high heel. If she didn’t make a decent donation to the temple in her village, the Buddha was going to be very, very angry with her.

After she’d visited her daughter and family for a couple of months – Gorilla and the police would’ve given up looking for her by then – Watermelon knew she’d have to come back to Bangkok to work in another bar. Since her parents could only afford to send her to school for six years, she didn’t have many other choices. Obviously, she couldn’t go back to Patpong; but some of her roommates worked at a new go-go bar called Wild Women in Nana Plaza, so maybe she’d work there and finally meet some rich guy who wanted to marry her.

Watermelon let out a yawn that made her lower jaw tremble and slumped down in the back seat. She could still feel Wilhelm’s bulk (or was it all the guilt and disappointment?) pushing down on her chest, along with the dead weight of every customer she’d slept with over the past four years. How many had it been? Two hundred? Three hundred? As many as four hundred? She wasn’t sure, but it felt as if she had that invisible Siamese ghoul who sits on the stomachs of dreamers while they sleep and slowly suffocates them to death sitting on her own chest right now.

If she kept saving her money, however, and stayed away from drugs and gambling like she’d done so far, then maybe in another year or two she’d be able to set up her own little beauty parlour and bring her daughter to live with her in Bangkok.

Whatever happened, Watermelon swore to herself and made a promise to Hasan’s spirit, that Duck would never end up as a prostitute.

When the taxi stopped at a red light, the driver looked back at her and sharked a grin that made Watermelon shiver and look away. Using a slang term for a one-night stand, he said, ‘Do you want to go up to heaven? I have a big rocket that’ll take us there in a very short time.’ Even though the driver was at least fifty, he laughed and laughed like a teenager.

Resigned to her bad karma for the next few years, but none too happy about it, Watermelon pushed herself up in the backseat with her elbows and smirked at him in the rearview mirror like Rabbit had once done to her.

‘How much are you willing to pay, Mr Rocket? So you can go up to heaven and I can go down to hell.’

Jim Algie has worked as a security guard in an insane asylum, a gravedigger, a journalist, and a nomadic punk rock musician – an appropriate apprenticeship for practicing the black arts of weirdsmithing. His most recent books include Bizarre Thailand: Tales of Crime, Sex and Black Magic, the guidebook Travel Pack Thailand and an upcoming short fiction collection, The Phantom Lover and Other Twisted Tales from Thailand. Under its original title, ‘Fucked Over’, this remade version of ‘Wet Nightmares’, is one of the prize-snagging stories collected in the latter book, along with ‘The Death Kiss of the King Cobra Show’ which appeared in Extremes 2: Fantasy and Horror from the Ends of the Earth, a volume which won the Bram Stoker award for the best anthology in 2001.

His journalism features have appeared in the International Herald Tribune, CNN Travel.com, and the Japan Times. More importantly, among his favourite musical artists are The Ramones, The Replacements, Leonard Cohen, Cat Power and Ella Fitzgerald.

More jolts, dollops and pixels of wonderful weirdness are available at http://bizarrethailand.com.