Thirty-Three Teeth Read Free

But it had turned out to be a trick. The stone was actually a spiritual lintel that opened a gateway from their world to his. He’d been lucky to survive their attack. Now they wanted revenge on him. Lah had been selected to deliver this omen, and she was in danger as a result. It was clear that she could never be a part of his life. No matter how strongly he felt attracted to her, it was impossible.
    Of course, Civilai said that was all a pile of buffalo dung. He said when the chance of a little over-seventy nooky presented itself, one shouldn’t read too much into coincidence. “At our age, my little brother, these opportunities don’t come along every day.”
    “It wasn’t a coincidence. I sent those spirits packing, and in so doing I saved the soldiers that were cutting down their trees. They weren’t happy about that. But I tell you, that stone had been destroyed.”
    “Did you see that happen with your own eyes?”
    “Yes. Well, not with my own eyes. But I saw the dust before the Hmong took it out to the forest.”
    “Then you can’t be sure it came from the stone. Mystery one solved.”
    “So how did it get here, to Vientiane? How did it get to the market? And of all the people who could have bought it, why Lah?”
    “I’m an elder statesman with a not-inconsequential intellect. I can solve many of the conundrums that arise from the day-to-day running of a little country in the southeast of Asia. But I have a one-mystery-a-day quota,” Civilai said. “Release me now. I have to get home to my dear wife. Remind me where my car is.”
    “You think you should drive?”
    “Certainly. What is there to hit?”
    Siri nodded and escorted him to the door. Civilai was right. On a Sunday afternoon in March, Vientiane had the atmosphere of a town in the talons of a deadly plague. A motorcyclist might brave the late-afternoon heat. A dog might lie on the concrete paving stones to burn off the fleas. But most folks were at home, waiting for the sun to go down.
    At dusk, the girls would two-up on bicycles and ride slowly along Fangoum Road, catching some small breeze from the river and advertising their availability to boys two-upping in the opposite direction. They would still be mopping their sweating brows with their mothers’ large pink handkerchiefs until long after nightfall.
    Farewell the Diarrhetic
    Old Auntie See lived in a shed behind a peeling white French colonial mansion that now housed five families. For a living, she bought fruit at the morning market, cut it into colorful slices, and sold it from a card table beside her back gate.
    Business was never too brisk, since money for luxuries had become scarcer. As a result, her main diet was overly ripe fruit, which saw her spending much of her nights in the tin latrine behind the shed.
    On that particular Sunday night, whilst engaged in her dribbly business, she thought she heard a growl. There were footsteps through the undergrowth of her uncared-for garden. They were too heavy to be those of a dog, but somehow too zigzag and rambling to be those of a person. She called out anyway: “Can’t a woman have a shit in peace any more?”
    There was no answer. The noises stopped. And after a few more minutes she forgot all about them. Diarrhea, in its most vindictive state, can erase even thoughts of terror.
    Some twenty minutes later, she groaned and rearranged her long cotton phasin around her waist. She stepped through the corrugated tin door, and before she could stoop to wash her hands in the paint can basin, that thing was on her. She had no time to scream—to run—or even to turn her head to see what was biting into the back of her neck. With one swipe of its powerful arm, she was dead.

Two Dead Men on a Bicycle
    Siri arrived at the hospital on Monday morning with a vodka hammer beating and a vodka sickle scything through his head. He guessed he couldn’t have a worse hangover if he’d drunk the formaline straight from the sample bottles. Every