The White Flamingo Read Online Free PDF

belongings of broken lives.
    Ghosts rumored to live among the living in Fun City, the old stories brought down from the villages. A long-limbed flicker in the corner of the Headman’s eye. White blouse with fingernails painted black. Long dank, black hair. Blackened eyes. She haunted the village of her childhood with her stories of easy money and naive foreigners. The hunger for cash broadcasted from her bitter pinched-up streetwise mask. The worn cheetah-skinned leggings, cheap plastic handbags, chunky metal gold-colored bracelets. These were not the packaging for hearts of gold. These were street costumes for Fun City’s eldest entertainers. The whores moving around the block in a final lap of failure before their daughters took over their patches in the next cycle of ecstasy and agony. They would train their daughters how to bleed the buffalo dry. How to lie, cheat, and steal. How to fake love. How to become bitter, cynical shells of anger, and how to keep sending the money to the P.O. How to ‘look for man with good heart.’
    How to break it.
    The detective was not looking for a maniac. If he were it’d be easy. He knew that they were out there. Thousands of them flocked to the resort. Yes, shit happened. It happened every day. Steroid freaks shot up and went on the rampage. Attacked pedestrians. There were balcony jumps. Suicides a daily occurrence in Fun City. Chicks with dicks. Boys in Brown. Russians. Stabbings. Balloon chasers. Gold hunters. Until this. Nothing came close to this. A dead whore sliced apart on top of a pool table. It was not the work of a maniac. It was the work of dark art and revenge. It was the work of a man with an agenda.
    A dark fucking agenda.
    The Detective walked on.
    It was just how he had remembered it. Hunted men sat everywhere. Outnumbered by the predatory eyes of the bar girls, the lady boys, the zombies, and the cash carriers. Their hands shakily held bottles of beer and lit cigarettes. For some , it was the end of the dream and for others, it was just the beginning of the nightmare. A man with a long black beard and a body covered with tattoos couldn’t negotiate the distance from his bar stool to a motorcycle taxi. Bar girls helped him. It was both pathetic and beautiful. Living out his dying days in sin. In the next life, he would be reborn to Fun City as a street dog or a souvenir salesman.
    An adolescent boy of twelve or thirteen walked past a tattoo parlor with a small leopard on a leash.
    Beat that. 
    The Detective had studied the books of faith.
    Desire demanded conflict. However, desire demanded much more than just that, it required mystery, beauty, money, and the fulfillment of greed. Without desire, only peace remained. Peace, what was that? There was no need for peace here. It was a freak show. Episodes of abuse, unheard silent screams. The bargirl wincing in pain, as she pictured the money at the end of the alcoholic red-faced customer ravaging the only thing she had that was worth buying. Her hands gripped the bedposts as the fat, bald foreigner entered her from behind. What would she spend the money on? The bottle of whiskey for her boyfriend. The boy from the village who drank to medicate. The game of cards, rotgut whiskey, the release from the trap, the motorbike, the abandoned child, the endless wheel of fortune. Or would she spend the money on a brief snatch of cuteness.
    Yeah,
    Hello Kitty.
    Paul Frank.
    Burberry.
    A gift for the friendly Norwegian sending two hundred dollars a month.
    He had good heart.
    Why he no come back?
    Because she was a whore.
    And always will be
    Unless,
    It wasn’t worth thinking about.
    It was a waste. The human waste dripped down to a reservoir of ruin and relief down the city drains where monitor lizards and awful pythons dwelt amongst the shite, tampons, used condoms: the excesses of Fun City, its center, its soul: a dreamless sludge of spent desire.
    Joe glanced at them, wary not to catch their eyes. These men were not shocked.