1928. Shanghai.

 Twilight, l’heure bleue, descended upon the streets of Shanghai. It was late autumn and fog had begun to settle in this almost night. But that didn’t stop the city from engaging in delights well into the early moments of the dawn. It was the end of the work week and the privileged were beginning their next hour of uninterrupted indulgence, and the many were preparing to push away the fatigue and laborious hours of Friday, and the days prior, at the bottom of a cold glass.

 People were dining and dancing the night away, with martini glasses clinking and svelte bodies slipping through the tiny spaces of room on the dance floors of the most decadent of clubs. It was interesting to see how much Shanghai had changed within a decade’s time, once the monarchy was overthrown and the centuries of Manchu dominance were violently concluded. How easily the rest of China descended into chaos, while only pleasure and frivolity could enter Shanghai. It was a new era for a new China, in the Paris of the East, where foreigners flocked to see the newly erected buildings and quarters that came with the wealth brought in by the busiest port in Asia, and how with the demise of the Qing, came modernity and Western influence, as China planned to relive the glory days of the legendary, but distant, Ming. The future looked bright for Shanghai.

Amidst the bright lights, an old shadow swept through the streets, cloaked in dark, all you could see was his white smile and his flickering black eyes as he skipped along the steps that led to a tall, crimson-coloured house. He looked at the neon sign that hung over the house. It read: 80 Days.

“I guess this is the place,” The shadow said, with a white grin as he entered the house, to look into a foyer that was cream and Victorian-inspired. It had minimal décor and there was even a receptionist desk. The shadow smirked, my, even the brothels have advanced. A beautiful woman dressed in red at the desk, a phone attached to her arm as she lovingly wrapped her fingers around the cord. She looked up to see the shadow and she plastered a fake smile as she said in a breathy voice, “Welcome to 80 Days,” She hung up the phone and folded her arms around her, her auburn curls bouncing as she stared at the shadow seductively. “What’s the pleasure?”

“I’ve heard that your brothel is fond of…performances,” The shadow’s lips were curled into a smile, “What is tonight’s theme?”

The woman’s red lips shared his smile as she whispered, “Ancient Persia. Would you like to go visit?”

“Gladly.” The woman smirked as she stood up and lead the shadows through a hallway, and into darkness and the sounds of strumming of strings.

As the shadow was being led into another world, a different darkness became a path to another, through a simple alleyway. With a keen eye of a rat, you could easily see a trail of blood leading to a dead end. Rats danced along the trail, hoping to scrounge some food, only to find a mangled body at the end of it. The rats, starved, began to eat away at the tortured flesh, trying to ignore the murky smell of humanity that emitted from the body. Empty eye sockets looked up at them as they pierced their tiny teeth into the gray skin of the face, fingers and neck of the body, each place covered with burn marks that formed tiny symbols and characters. The body had been burned so badly it was difficult to place whether it had belonged to a man or a woman and its hands were tied up with rope that the rats gnawed at once. The head of the body was positioned as to look up at the next living being to enter the alleyway which functioned as the body’s final resting place for the time being, its mouth stuffed with paper, a paper to be read by the next living thing that could read in a human tongue. The rats oddly refused to touch the paper; a smell wafted from it that turned them off. So as the flesh and blood of a human body was eaten away, the paper still laid there, its message waiting to be read.