Her eyes, as cool as almonds, glazed and luminous in the neon obscurity of the shanties. Face-up, a grisly smile impressed upon mud-weathered cheeks gradually putrefying in the gloaming humidity of half-past-six. She had been a Hmong woman--an honor killing or clan rivalry, probably. Or a suicide. Who knows. She was too far down river.
Cheap spandex whores in six-inch heels. Catamites in six-inch heels. Golden Quetzal™ brand jeans flash rasterized on SHD displays, “Only 2,000 baht!”. Perfume of shit, river-mud, and fish paste. When the breeze hits you you feel it, you know the river’s near. Junkies huddle in the rubbish heaps under the banyans. Vats of coconut oil simmer for Pla thot, but no one eats that shit--you’d have to be crazy to eat fish from the river. And the sufferers of the techphage, pale, husks languishing like lepers in an oblivion of mud.
Dusk falls hot and pink with the murmur of tuk-tuks, and the shanty crowds with the whorehouse patrons. Deluded expats with bottles of Sapporo Ichiban. Construction workers. Sex tourists. Crowding under the zinc roofs, drenched in sweat. The high-rises of the South Isan Business District coruscate in the distance.
Then, a catch in the wind: piphat music drifts downriver, and immediately everyone stops in their tracks. The whores even stop fucking. They know all too well who’s coming. The barge slowly wends its way downriver, a glistening island of neon and gold and Chinese lanterns, blaring the incessant hammering of ranat ek and thad like the ominous predestination of a fortune reader. In the prawn-must oblivion of the shanties it’s all stares. They know that this is the pleasure barge of Heng Dith: “The King of the Mekong”, “The River-Demon”. And that you don’t fuck with him. Because if there’s anything in this world that’s certain, it’s that he’ll fuck you back and he’ll fuck you hard.
The barge maintains its course, leaving a golden wake of iridescence like an oil slick. It is not until its lights are a wink on the horizon that the shanties, reluctantly, hum back to life.

Heng Dith-Manso was born into a world of light. His father is an affluent Spanish businessman (Aureliano Jiménez-Manso), hailing from Cádiz, and his mother (Phhoung Dith), hailing from Phnomh Penh, is a socialite with close relations to the Thai royal family. His father came to the Sprawl, like most Westerners, on business obligations. At the time, he was working for Luó-Huntington Pharmaceuticals, once one of the premier medical megacorps, and, due to his great experience, sent to act as a marketing manager in the company's Southeast division. However, Jiménez-Manso was becoming disillusioned with LHP, though the money was good. He had found no passion in his work, and, being ringed by opportunity on all sides, decided to try his luck elsewhere. Thus, in an act which he recalls as one of great foresight, Jiménez-Manso resigned his position, sold all of his LHP stock, and went job hunting--only a month later, LHP crashed and burned. He found a well-paying position in a corp which at that time was a only a rising star with great promise, Dith-Poolworth Inc.(DP), a biotech and arms manufacturer. Before three years had elapsed, he was Co-Vice President of DP and engaged to the CEO's granddaughter, Phhoung. She was beautiful, half-Thai and half-Khmer, with velvet black hair and almond eyes and skin that exuded the fragrance of jasmine. Their nuptials, were, at the time, record shattering: a staggering $450,000,000 USD (฿14,638,500,000.00 THB). Amongst others, the guest list included the King of Spain, Prince of Monaco, and the Emperor of Japan.

Their son, Heng, was born not long afterwards. By the age of 4, he had already travelled to nearly a quarter of the world’s countries, and had been guest to an innumerable amount of galas, balls, yacht cruises, banquets, toasts, masquerades, parades, etc., etc., etc. He was, allegedly, the perfect child of a perfect coupling, destined for success no matter his predilection. As he came into age, however, not all was revealed to be idyllic. The boy was a pathological liar, endlessly rude, and seemingly without any shred of empathy. He was prone to rages, to violence, to screaming, beating, cursing, mostly directed towards his sister Océane, yet to the outside, at any social function, was a charming, well-adjusted, bright, and engaging child. His diagnosis at the age of 11 for mild psychopathy was predictable--and its secrecy, hallowed.
However, an event which occurred when Heng was 14 served as the tipping point for his parents--he brutally raped Océane, and evidently had been molesting her since he was 12. Threats from her brother had forced her to conceal the evidence, but on this occasion her cries of agony disclosed the secret to the entire household. Océane was hospitalized, and, after being beaten nearly to death by Aureliano, Heng was put into conditioning therapy, under the pretense of attendance at an esteemed academy in Tokyo.
Not much is known of his time in therapy. Five years later, at the age of 19, however, Heng returned to his parent’s household on his hands and knees, pleading for endless forgiveness. Océane was attending school in Spain, a decision his parents thought appropriate for the occasion.
Heng’s metamorphosis was, in a word, extraordinary. By all appearances, he had completely changed his life, though he admitted that precautions still had to be taken in the case that he might be aroused to violence again. Over the course of three years, no incident occurred, even when Océane returned from Spain. Ostensibly, against all reason, his psychopathy seemed to be nearly vanished. He gained the trust of his father to such a degree that Aureliano succumbed to the temptation of giving his son a position within the company, though admittedly a lower one. No matter--he had to work himself up, had to make his own way up from the trenches, like his father had. Aureliano thought the boy had a good feel for the business world, and, if he rose high enough, could be successful in any endeavor he so chose. With a history at DP, and as the son of the CEO (the elder Dith had died a few years earlier), his horizons were broad and his future offered nothing but promise.
Though he had learned little in therapy, he had mastered most acutely the delicate art of subterfuge and deception. Heng could outperform even the most lauded of thespians with his prowess. Not only had his psychopathy not been cured, but its heights had reached a stratospheric intensity. Amongst other hobbies, he found delight in fucking whores before flaying their buttocks and tenderly dismembering them alive. On a typical Friday evening, after returning from an exquisite banquet with his co-workers, he would entertain himself with the indiscriminate rape of the homeless. He mostly concerned himself with the lower classes, whom he privately referred to as “the fucking shit of the fucking world”--and, in The Sprawl, who would miss them? In the streets a dead body was a familiar sight to anyone. Yet after a time he bored of slaughter, which he gradually came to see as a plebeian affair, and began to take pleasure in enterprises which were more tactical, more like long campaigns and operations, mostly after single targets. He would follow them, learn about them, known them lovingly, know their routines, their desires, their habits, their lusts, their dreams, their aspirations, before casually destroying them.
But even this he came to disparage. He found that what he desired was not necessarily murder, but devastation. He wanted to destroy and demoralize so effectively that the person whom he wrought his havoc upon would never, ever stand up again. He found the victim’s suicides particularly engrossing. Yet he wanted something more. He wanted to devastate someone in particular. And he realized in a lightning flash of insight that the person he wanted to destroy was his father. He laughed at that. Imagine the look on his face!
And thus, Heng’s foray into the criminal underworld began--as a notion of revenge. There was no question that he would be respected, and feared. Yet his business savvy earned him particular acclaim. He is a procurer of arms, biotech, drugs, chemicals, prostitutes. Though he is widely known his network still has much farther to expand. In particular, he has in his keeping a number of houseboats that operate along the Mekong, the main channel of his enterprise. Much is left to be seen, but it’s certain that he’ll go to any lengths to accomplish his end.