Bangkok's rainy season is unpredictable.
In the cheap hotel on Khao San Road, the ceiling fan stirred the stagnant dampness listlessly, like a dying old man. The air was thick with the musty smell of straw mats, the acrid scent of cheap cigarettes and the cloying, rotten stench rising from the sewers below. Ah Zhan suddenly opened his eyes. Bathed in the dim light, the mould on the ceiling conjured a distorted, mocking smile, silently ripping him off.
He had a splitting headache; it was not just a throbbing nerve, but rather as if a rusty nail was slowly drilling upwards along his spine.
He propped himself up; each of his muscles emitted a heavy, aching sound as he moved, like rusty gears meshing. Looking down at his chest, he saw that the ancient tattoo of Hanuman, the god of war, was now slightly raised. The lines, which were originally bluish-black, had turned a dark reddish-purple, and murky blood was seeping from the edges. Even more horrifyingly, a bud the size of a soybean had sprouted where the god's eyes had been. The bud throbbed beneath the skin as if something were trying to break through.
He stretched out his finger, its nails filled with black grime. When he touched the edge of the decay, there was no excruciating pain as expected, only a nauseating numbness — the feeling of dead flesh.
'Damn it...' A-Zhan cursed hoarsely. He could feel his sanity being eroded by a damp, cold chill — the price of the 'Death Curse'. With each spreading patch of decay, the memories of his wife's laughter and his life as an ordinary person under the sun became blurred, as if he had been doused in concentrated acid. He knew that if he didn't find an inhibitor soon, he might wake up tomorrow and not even remember his own name. He put on his greasy army-green jacket to conceal the eerie tattoo on his chest and set off with a clear purpose: to find 'Old Man'.
Old Man Zhan was the area's only black-market drug dealer, and the only person who could procure the antiseptic serum laced with holy water. Azhan pushed open the creaking wooden door of the hotel. The corridor lights flickered. In the neighbour's shrine, the offerings of brown sugar water were swarming with flies. The once benevolent statue of the Goddess of Wealth was now lying beneath a dead gecko.
Bangkok mornings had an eerie, morbid quality to them.
Usually crowded, the tuk-tuks were sparsely parked along the roadside. Instead of soliciting fares, the drivers crouched in the shadows, emitting low, sticky coughs. The purplish-black haze in the air was thicker than yesterday. This haze, known locally as 'desire smoke', was said to be caused by an ancient poison leaking from the Chao Phraya River.
Azhan pulled his hat down low and walked through the narrow alleyways. He stopped as he passed a Muay Thai gym called 'Golden Lotus'.
'Hey, Zhan, you look like a ghost just crawled out of a grave.'
The speaker was Awang, the gatekeeper of the boxing gym and Zhan's sparring partner. Leaning against a doorpost, his face was almost translucent with paleness and strange purplish-blue veins coiled around his bare arms like scriptures or parasites.
'Is Dad in?' Zhan's voice was low, his hand unconsciously resting on the folding knife at his waist.
'Dad? Ha! He went to pray. He said the current medicine isn't working anymore — we need something more effective.' Awang chuckled, revealing a mouthful of bloody teeth. 'Zhan, can you feel it? That itch that grows from your bones? I'm so hungry, Zhan. I want to eat."
Awang's eyes began to glaze over and black tendrils seemed to flicker deep within his pupils. Without a word, Zhan pushed Awang aside and ran into his father's pharmacy at the back of the alley.
The pharmacy was a mess. Jars of formalin lay shattered on the floor, their contents — amulets and unidentified biological tissues — emitting a suffocating stench. A-Zhan searched frantically through the chaotic drawers, finally finding two talisman-inscribed syringes for protection in a hidden compartment.
Just as he was about to inject them, a scream rang out from outside the door.
It wasn't a scream of fear, but the distorted roar of a creature tearing apart its prey with great excitement.
A-Zhan rushed to the window and flung open the blinds.
In the middle of the street, A-Wang had tackled a young monk in an orange robe to the ground. A-Wang's movements were completely uncoordinated. His spine was twisted grotesquely backwards, his skin split open to reveal fleshy buds like brown vines. Rather than using his fists, he was tearing at the monk's neck like a wild beast.
Blood gushed out like a fountain, splattering the four Buddha statues lining the street.
What chilled Ah Zhan to the bone was that, in his dying moments, the bitten monk revealed a smile of relief and ecstatic joy. Black scriptures representing the 'Desire Gu' rapidly spread from the wound, reassembling his flesh.
'The Desire has erupted...' Ah Zhan murmured, quickly injecting the liquid into his thigh. The cold liquid rushed into his veins, stopping the throbbing of the tattoo on his chest. At that moment, the Bangkok morning utterly collapsed.
Chaos swept through Khao San Road like wildfire. The previously listless drivers, vendors and tourists pounced on those around them like madmen. This was not just a massacre; it was more like a frenzied ritual. The infected — the 'Desire Bodies' — moved with a rhythmic, religious-like quality to their dance; each bite was accompanied by indistinct scriptures gushing from their throats.
Azhan witnessed a mother strangling her child and then stuffing the severed limb into her mouth while weeping. Deformed, blood-dripping wings sprouted from beneath her skin on her back.
The scene was more terrifying than any horror movie. Azhan clenched his fists as a surreal rage welled up within him. The world was utterly rotten; even death had become a luxury.
He turned to leave this 'slaughterhouse', but in the corner of the pharmacy he found a bloodstained photograph — his father's keepsake. Scrawled on the back in Thai were a set of coordinates and a sentence:
'Go to Wat Suphanburi in northern Thailand. Find the girl who can see the "flow". She is the only antidote.'
Just then, the back door of the pharmacy was suddenly kicked open.
Instead of zombies, however, a Royal Special Forces team entered, clad in full protective suits and armed with talisman-inscribed ammunition. The leading commander, Colonel Mann, coldly surveyed the area, his gaze finally settling on Azhan's lifeless grey eyes.
'There are some "sources of contamination" left here,' said Colonel Mann, raising his assault rifle, which gleamed with a holy light. His tone was icy. 'Clean them up.'
Azhan let out a low, trapped growl, feeling the tattoo on his chest throb again — not because the medication was wearing off, but because the damned, monstrous instincts within him were awakening and growing stronger, stimulated by the stench of blood.
He didn't want to die, but he also didn't want to become a smiling, lifeless corpse like those madmen.
He had to live, find that girl and discover where this curse of immortality was leading him.
In the distance, a gigantic column of purplish-black smoke rose from the direction of the Grand Palace, blotting out the sun. Bangkok, the 'City of Gods', was slowly sinking into the abyss of desire in the first rays of sunlight.
The air inside the pharmacy seemed to freeze. Colonel Mann's gun barrel was fixed on A-Zhan's forehead like a cold, venomous fang.
'I am not them,' said A-Zhan, his voice hoarse as sandpaper. He raised his hands, palms facing outwards, trying to appear different to the roaring monsters, but the burning, throbbing sensation in his chest gave him away. Beneath his jacket, black fleshy buds writhed uneasily.
'In the cleansing zone, there are no "people", only "potential threats".' Colonel Mann's fingers tightened on the trigger.
Just as the bullet was about to leave the barrel, the pharmacy's ceiling suddenly collapsed. The pharmacy clerk — a mutated 'Desire Entity', barely recognisable as human — now had a row of ivory-white bone spurs sprouting from his back. He roared as he plummeted from the second floor.
The task force's formation was instantly disrupted. Bullets engraved with scriptures exploded with dark golden sparks upon hitting the 'Desire Entity', accompanied by the acrid smell of burning and decay. Without hesitation, like a long-dormant black panther, A-Zhan flipped over the counter and grabbed a rusty, long-handled machete.
Rather than charging at the soldiers, he smashed through a wooden window in the back alley.
"Chase!" Colonel Man calmly ordered, turning his head slightly.
A-Zhan fell into the muddy back alley, where the puddles had turned dark purple and made a sticky sound underfoot. At the end of the alleyway, three infected individuals crouched beside a pile of rubbish, mechanically tearing at a stray dog. Hearing the noise, they turned around simultaneously. Their "damaged Buddha faces", formed by bone hyperplasia, looked particularly eerie in the shadows.
A-Zhan gripped the hilt of his machete. Due to the side effects of the 'Life-Eating Curse', his left hand trembled slightly. But the ferocity in his eyes grew even stronger.
'Get out of the way,' he growled.
The infected individual at the front sprang up, bracing his limbs against the wall like a gecko and spitting out bloody vines. A-Zhan dodged to the side and sliced upwards with his cleaver in a gruesome arc, precisely severing his opponent's throat. No blood flowed; only a thick black liquid spurted forth.
A morbid hunger rose from A-Zhan's abdomen — a curse yearning to devour him. He bit his tongue hard to stay conscious through the excruciating pain; he had to escape the labyrinthine slum terrain before the task force could encircle him. He traversed alleyways filled with clotheslines and tin roofs, taking refuge in an abandoned shrine.
The overturned incense burner and the askew statue of the local earth god, its broken stone hand clutching a half-chewed human finger, were all that remained of the once-worshipped deity.
A-Zhan leaned against the cold wall, panting heavily. His trembling hand unzipped his jacket. His eyes widened as he saw that the recent exertion had accelerated the decay of his wound; large patches of dead flesh were now a translucent bluish-purple colour. Beneath this, dense black buds resembling living creatures were devouring his healthy tissue.
'Is this what you wanted?' he asked the empty shrine, his voice filled with desperate rage.
He thought of his wife and the woman who had gently tied an amulet to his wrist that rainy morning in Chiang Mai. Now, the amulet was a piece of rotten iron within his flesh. His so-called 'immortality' was the gods' cruelest joke, forcing him to watch himself rot and transform from human into a mere 'mythical relic'.
He slammed his fist into the statue, sending stone chips flying. His hand bones fractured, but black buds surged forth and mended the broken bones within seconds.
This undignified process of repair filled him with nausea.
'I won't become one of those things...' He pulled the bloodstained photograph from his pocket and fixed his gaze on the coordinates of Wat Suphan Buri.
If a Spirit Maiden truly exists — a saintly woman who can see the 'flow of desire' — then she would be best placed to end all of this, either by healing or killing him. The rain began to fall again.
The raindrops stung his eyes once more. A-Zhan stepped out of the shrine, preparing to venture further into the darkness.
Suddenly, he stopped.
On the elevated light rail track across the street, a gaunt figure in tattered monk's robes and a bronze Naga mask stood on the edge, entangled by a giant strangler fig, looking down at him.
At the man's feet, dozens of desire entities knelt like docile lambs, emitting low, resonant sounds like chanting.
The eyes behind the mask gleamed with an eerie green light.
The man slowly raised his hand, pointed to A-Zhan's chest and made a 'harvest' gesture.
"Ah Zhan…" A hollow voice echoed directly in his mind, carrying a damp chill: 'Time's up. The container is full."
The next second, the figure vanished into the purple mist.
Ah Zhan felt a sharp pain in the tattoo on his chest as if something were trying to crawl out of his heart. He knelt in the mud, clutching his collar tightly. In the surrounding shadows, countless scarlet eyes slowly opened.
The first rain in Bangkok had just begun.