Job in Nana Plaza

Na saw the restaurant owner, the lady from nearby her hometown, and told her all about the incident, how the crazy farang had ducked out, tricked her, not paid...

While Na was describing the farang, the snake, the restaurant owner's jaw dropped.

She asked what the farang's name was.

"Job, Joker of Buffalo... I'm not sure. He was nuts..."

The restaurant owner took a step back, held her heart and caught her breath.

She told Na that many years ago, in the late 60s, she'd worked at Nana, at a bar, and one of her most loyal customers was a red-haired farang, with a pet snake he'd bought at a market.

She said the farang had proposed marriage to her and that he'd wanted to move with her, to her village, start a farm, raise snakes, but he'd disappeared, never returned.

"What was his name?"

"Jake... But his nickname was Joker... He was from Buffalo. It's a real city in America, Buffalo..."

"Was... Your nickname... Bee?"

"Yes."

Na's phone, in her front pocket, turned cold and buzzed.

She thought it might be the bar, but instead it was a video, taking up the full screen of her phone.

She and the restaurant owner watched as Jake, in fuzzy footage, walked through a jungle, in fatigues, holding a machine gun... A palm tree in the background ablaze...

Jake stepped into a trap of some sort, and a sharpened bamboo stick sprung up from the jungle floor, driving straight up his ass, impaling him through the stomach.

Blood curdled in his mouth and he writhed in pain and a small group of camouflaged, tiny yellow men, homunculi, painted in mud and leaves encircled him, grabbed his gun, went through his pockets.

Then an explosion.

A sage colored hand grenade had landed nearby, and everyone, including Jake, were blown into bloody pieces.

The video instantly rewound to the beginning, where Jake was walking in the jungle and was impaled and continued playing on the same loop.

Na tried turning it off, but it wouldn't stop, the video, so she opened the phone, which got increasingly frigid, and she yanked out the battery.

Still, the video played, and the phone went cold as ice. Its rectangular edges lit up in neon green lining.

Mortified, Na threw the cheap, olive Oppo phone down into a nearby sewer, which was purling in a lime subterranean liquid, and the screen of the phone went dead...

Then there was a loud bang in the distance, and audible firecracker-like, popping sounds...

The racket emanating from down the road...