Midnight Chick Hunting (午夜猎女记)

One of those unwritten hobbies for young and old male bachelors working in Ipoh Light Industrial Estate in those days was ‘midnight chick hunting’. There were a few food processing, textile and machine part manufacturing factories around the area that hired many young ladies from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh just to name a few nationalities as factory workers other than the locals. Naturally, these pretty foreign ladies became the ‘prey’ for those hungry partner-seeking males as these foreign ladies were more friendly than those arrogant and demanding local ladies. Many of my fellow colleagues at that time married either Indonesian or Philippine ladies as their wives, one of them is Mr. Khor.

Before Khor got his Indonesian wife, he has some fair share of supernatural encounter during his midnight chick hunting exercises.

The best time for chick hunting as the name implies was during midnight because this was the time when those afternoon shift factory workers knocked off for the day. Although many factories provided bus services, many those foreigners had to walk back to their hostels in the midst of the night. So, this situation has indeed opened a door to those midnight chick hunters to get their preys.

At that time, Khor was an avid chick hunter and I occasionally joined him for a session or two.

One night, right after our afternoon shift work; we parked our bikes near the exit of the industrial estate waiting for potential targets. Khor and I were chatting on our bikes while eyeing for those female workers to come out from their factories. As we waited, I suddenly felt an urge to release myself. So, I excused myself and ran to the back of a banyan tree and peed there.

After the relief, I slowly walked back to my bike and saw Khor was already hooked onto a long-haired lady worker apparently to be alone. I heard Khor asked: “Where are you going missy?”

The lady replied: “Returning from my work.”

And then both started to chat and laughed quite amicably. I thought how lucky Khor was by gotten his pray only after a short wait. Perhaps if I didn’t leave my bike to answer the call of the nature, I could also get another chick too. So, after observing the newly met couple for a while with sense of sour grapes; I started my engine and turned my mike to head home.

All of a sudden, I felt a sense of chillness and goose bumps. Instinctively, I looked at my bike’s rear mirror and I didn’t believe what I saw: Khor was still Khor alright, but the lady who talked to Khor didn’t look like the lady I saw a few seconds ago, she became a long-haired creature with a pair of red eyes from the reflection of my mirror! I got a shock and accidentally stepped on my gas. Consequently, my bike made a S-curve and my bike nearly rammed into a drainage beside the road.

The commotion attracted Khor’s attention and he shouted: “Hey, Liew! Are you overexcited and jealous to see this pretty lady I just knew? Ha! Ha! Ha!”

After I subsequently stabilised my bike, I turned by head and to my surprised; the lady beside Khor remained as beautiful as before. But when I relook at my rear mirror, what I stall was still a hideous long-hair creature with a pair of red eyes!

Now, with extremely fright and uneasiness, I yelled to Khor: “Go home, Khor! Go home!”

Apparently, Khor didn’t heed my call and I just stepped on the gas and sped off the place leaving Khor behind with whatever the creature might be.

Khor didn’t report for duty the next morning. Then later in the afternoon, my boss asked me to do overtime taking over some of Khor’s jobs as Khor has met with a car accident last night and he was not fit for duty for at least two weeks.

No one really knows what happened to Khor that night with the new found ‘lady’… Khor didn’t want to say and I could probably have guessed.