Superimposed over Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Placenta is a social gathering hub where business and pleasure are conducted so symbiotically they are difficult to distinguish. The club exists on an in-between, an existential bookmark between so unquestionably there it borders upon obnoxious and so removed from existence the psychotropic wallabies can’t identify it.

Placenta is so named because it gives a universal feeling of hominess to all of the damned. This is due to the rather technical Allure Aura, Jezabella, its owner, tapped Astaroth to enchant it with. It has a top ten ranking in 'hospitality' on damnedtourists.com.

Placenta is aesthetically the love-child of the threesome between a French boudoir, a UV light bulb and a Porsche’s upholsterer. It hums effervescently in so many shades of scarlet, amethyst and cobalt prolonged exposure can force the brain to release large quantities of endorphins in an effort to shroud the pain caused to the retina.

The public lounge, eye of Placenta's storm, was cavernous with a clique-y set up of semi-conceptual art seating and rococo balconies skirting the walls giving vantage into air suspended cages and down on the thicket of social engineering below. The bar paid a twisted, dislocated homage to the Hotel Montelone of New Orleans, formed from a carousel plucked from a nineteen hundreds fairground. The yogurt-like varnish of its unicorns and stallions furled and peeled revealing the mare's coal innards, rotting wood and ruby gemstones had been embedded in their eyes.

Lynceus' suit was a rumpled hunchback of italian tailoring over his domed shoulders at the bar. He pinched the halo of air above his shot glass. Gritt had re-filled the cracks of chapped skin on his portly fingers. Once with a springy vigor, he'd sudded, rinsed and dabbed a forefinger of a tart smelling oil into his palms. Dirt magnetised like iron filings to the jelly loan beneath his short fingernails whenever his mood descended to the trenches.

Lynceus was the media mogul and a gnarled Grecian, on his mother’s side, demi-god, who resembled a hobgoblin which had bulbed off the trunk of an oak after centuries of bark stockpile, until like a caricature verruca, the oak had had him freeze-dry removed. His chin bulged like two mutantly conjoined onion bulbs. He wore egyption stylised lynx demarcated eyeliner which congealed a mountainous landscape for a civilisation of bacterium so long undisturbed they were entering a puritan era of a religion founded on the imaginings they inhabited a petri dish of malignant tannin.

Bobbing somewhat biologically within the mini martini well of his shooter beneath a band of brandy cream in a medicinal clear alcohol aborted a cherry liquored nipple charmed to shimmy the glass's base playfully away from it's patron's tongue.

His tie was balled in his fist. A soggy ring from the base of an emptied tropical orange Mai Tai smudged a paragraph of ink on a stack of nineteen seventies divorce papers. Lynceus dragged the back of his finger beneath the whiskers twitching at his nostrils his gold wedding band glinting in the bar's spotlights. Hypermnestra.

He glanced self-hating and humiliated up for the maitre de who would collect him once his upper west wing room was ready for him. Lynceus downed his slippery nipple, cartwheeled his smartphone between his fingers and opened his work email blind to the jenga tower of subject lines waiting there.

Lynceus had always dreamt it was a game. He'd prove himself to her. They both knew, deep down, one day. It was why she'd spared him. She loved him. He knew even if she didn't. Her revile was how she made him try harder.

This was what women did, they nagged, they bustled, strong thighs, rolling eyes and a soft hand to hold by evening light. One day, one day and they'd be sons and grandsons. Olive skinned, running about table legs on patios backdropped by fig groves with the scents of local wine, lemon wedges and grilled white meat fillets. Hypermnestra was all he knew. His home. His best friend. Lynceus' heart faltered, the maitre de was gesturing for him to cross the bar. His room was ready.