Macau

"Can you feel that?"

My friend lowered his head and spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth. He had just moved closer to his wife, taken her hand, and leaned into her as we walked.

Yes I bloody could feel that. It was 4am at the end of a balmy evening in Macau. We were on our way from the 5-star casino where my friend was playing in a show band, heading toward a Cantonese restaurant for a late, post-gig meal. Turning an unfamiliar alley we had plunged faces first into a soup of primordial aggitation, conjured by a brooding mass of hungry-eyed hookers. My friend's reflexive reaching for his wife was as much for protection from the estrogen tsunami that swamped us as it was to show that he was off the menu. I, on the other hand, had no-one to save me.

The entire length of the alley was lined with dark posturing figures, all now focussed on us with vampiric intent. We were no longer free men meandering the boutique backstreets of Macau. We were fresh meat being stripped from the bone by scores of predatory eyes; tremoring rodents caught in a sudden snake pit, regarded by a wall of appetite.

A pretty girl dressed in Victorian ruffles and stockings floated like a Draculian bride across our path and back into the shadows. Her theatre of innocence was a perverse contrast to the murderous sexuality assualting us. My perception lurched sideways. We had descended into Hyborian madness of animal eyes, sensual limbs, and boiling darkness.

We had almost reached the end of the alley, pursued by faceless threats that folded into the dark behind us, when a shadow fell. Framed in light coming from the street ahead stood a crazy-eyed Russian, her long shapely legs spread and planted into the road like a hardened sex soldier. Her hands held her hips in fierce defiance. Brutally bleached hair drifted around a sickly white visage, blown by an occult wind. The space around her dimmed as if veiled by diaphanous spreading of demonic wings. Several kinds of corruption swam in her stare and she mowed us down with burning blue and bloodshot eyes.

We had to change direction to walk around her. She never moved except to turn her head as we passed, eyes sucking at our souls.

The old Cantonese restaurant and its faded extravagance felt like a shining temple of spiritual light afterwards. We had won through a diabolic horde to reach our worn seats and bone chopsticks. Spicy Chinese steamboat never tasted so good.