It is April 2022, and we are a bit late to run this issue. Other than this, the world is pretty much the same, except maybe for the war that has been unfolding since Russia unleashed an onslaught on her neighbour, Ukraine. If you are saddened by the hunger, displacement and refugee crisis that can result from such political tensions then you are not so different from me.
In this issue, we encounter some tension, anger and revenge, but we also find love and compassion in the speculative, science fiction, fantasy and horror stories from across Africa – Lesotho, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa and Nigeria.
Read how a man’s lust and greed hook up with a deity’s cunning and lead to cataclysmic events. The gods have made a request is a story that will make your heart race in rapid beats.
You will also encounter Aisirhiowen, a semi-bionic genius whose invention has to eventually be put on hold to enable her fulfil a calling that is greater than a fight for power, and greater than what’s left of humanity of that time.
Parasites are not friendly, and often they can be deadly, but have you ever thought that a parasite could have benefits? Beyond causing pain, loss of some vital senses, and even loss of speech, this particular parasite can give pleasure in equal measure. We’ve got just the story to acquaint you with the wonder of the tongue-eating louse.
Notes on The Shadow World tries to paint for us the gore experienced by the inhabitants of the shadow world, which is accessible via a portal that has interesting coordinates, with attendant grave consequences.
Ghost stories are fun, and if you believe revenge is best served cold, then, The Activist and Riding Hood are just the tales for you. Our Riding Hood is no innocent girl who is at risk of being eaten by wolves; she could be worse than flesh-eating wolves.
We also spin you a mermaid tale this time around. Sweet love is an unending whirlwind which comes full cycle in the story For You Only.
In addition to the fiction stories on offer in issue 21, we also present you an essay on THE BATMAN movie written by writer and notable comic head, Seun Odukoya.
We bring you these pieces after a thorough selection and editing process, so let me not keep you from them any longer. Go ahead and read to your fill. Don’t forget to share and comment!
La lune était recouverte d’un brouillard aveuglant, on pouvait s’y perdre autant qu’avec les sentiments.
Au loin, le vent caressait les feuilles du baobab qui semblaient enchaînées. En dix ans elle l’avait vue changer en même temps qu’elle. La seule vue qu’elle pouvait observer, la seule vue qui lui était atteignable.
Cela faisait quelques jours que personne n’était entré dans la pièce. Aujourd’hui c’était le grand jour, pour elle, enfin, pour tout l’empire. Comme si sacrifier sa jeunesse n’était pas suffisant. De toute façon, pour elle, rien n’existait plus, rien n’avait de sens. Sassouma Keita était vide. D’ici quelques heures, tout allait revenir à la normale. Enfin qu’est – ce que la normalité ? se disait-elle. A quoi le monde ressemblait il maintenant ? Cela faisait tant d’années qu’elle n’avait pas mis les pieds sur terre.
L’aube n’allait pas tarder à faire son apparition, pour la première fois depuis plusieurs années elle pouvait la contempler. Le Mansa avait accepté qu’elle passe la tête par la fenêtre, ce qui semblait être un exploit. Aussi aigri qu’un corbeau, rien ne comptait pour le Mansa à part sa propre personne. Sassouma essayait de se remémorer tous les moments passés dans cette pièce, mais ils étaient tous le même. La seule chose intéressante étaient les poteries.
Posées dans tous les recoins de la pièce, elles étaient recouvertes de fresques représentant le Mandé. Autant les paysages, que la société en elle-même. Celle qu’elle préférait était plus petite, un pot, paré des gravures représentant deux jeunes enfants et une cavalière mystérieuse.
Le ciel entrait maintenant dans sa lueur orangée, les quelques feuilles posées devant la fenêtre imbibées de rosée matinale. Au loin, un homme promenait son troupeau d’ovins, rejoignant petit à petit la clairière. Les mouvements dynamiques des bêtes amusaient Sassouma. Un peulh qui promenait son troupeau vers la brousse, un schéma structurel si simple qu’il attrista Sassouma. Toute sa vie n’avait été qu’une simple pièce, il lui faudrait reconstruire avec les pots cassés.
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Pas à pas des murmures résonnèrent dans le palais. Les servantes accouraient avec impatience pour s’occuper de la fille de l’empereur. Sassouma les fixait d’un regard neutre.
« Sassouma ! C’est le grand jour ! » s’écria une servante, « Il faut t’habiller, une noble ne peux pas se permettre de … »
Le regard de Sassouma devint glacial, elle détestait qu’on lui donne des ordres, surtout quand il s’agissait de son apparence. Même seule dans sa prison, elle y prenait soin tous les jours. Le maintien des apparences maintenait sa raison. Elle se levait, et suivi les femmes qui devaient l’accompagner dans sa nouvelle chambre.
« C’est bon, je suis là ! Est – ce qu’elle est sortie ? » hurla une voix haut perchée.
Une silhouette qu’elle ne reconnut pas accourait vers elles, portant maladroitement un bol, et trébucha. Sassouma reçu un jet d’eau froide dans les jambes. Elle frissonna, ce n’était pas comme cela qu’elle pensait être accueillie au palais.
« Mince, je suis désolé ! » dit la servante « La bonne nouvelle c’est que vous êtes ici n’est – ce pas ? »
Sassouma leva un sourcil et les yeux au ciel.
« Imbécile ! » Cracha Sassouma avec dédain.
L’humeur de Sassouma se détériorait alors qu’elle avançait dans le couloir. Cela ne faisait que quelques minutes qu’elle avait quitté son cauchemar, ce n’était pas pour recevoir un jet d’eau d’une abrutie, ruminait-elle.
Elles longeaient un tunnel légèrement éclairé, Sassouma avait beau en observer les recoins elle n’en avait aucun souvenir.
Un brouhaha incessant se faisait entendre, une servante couvrit la tête de Sassouma d’un foulard. Le Mansa n’avait pas encore annoncé l’heure de la cérémonie, il souhaitait rester le plus discret possible. C’était un homme réservé et méfiant. Il avait toujours fait des concessions pour se protéger, aux dépens de sa famille. Son honneur passait avant tout, même avant sa fille.
Sa chambre, elle, était restée la même. Elle était toujours aussi spacieuse, et décorée de tissu en bogolan comme l’aimait Sassouma. Elle entra sous le regard des servantes, et passa le doigt sur les poteries couvertes de poussière. Rien n’avait changé.
Une main attrapa soudainement son poignet. Qui oserait ? pensa t’elle, se figeant à la vue de celui qui lui tenait le bras. Elle n’en croyait pas ses yeux. Comment pouvait-il se permettre de l’attraper ainsi ? Après tout ce qu’il lui avait fait.
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Ina était désemparée, ce qu’elle voulait, elle, c’était travailler dans son atelier, pas faire les corvées dans tout le palais. Le fait que Balla allait la devancer la mettait hors d’elle. Déjà qu’elle était dans son ombre, ce n’était pas le moment de disparaitre. L’insulte que Sassouma lui avait craché à la figure, l’avait énormément perturbée. Elle rajusta son pagne, sortie du tunnel et se précipita vers la chambre de la princesse. Effectuer le travail des servantes ne lui plaisait pas, mais être en retard le premier jour n’était pas sérieux, même si la fille du Mansa ne voulait plus la voir.
« Inutile de revenir, tu vas encore casser quelque chose. » dit l’une des servantes.
« Mais c’est un ordre du Mansa, » protesta Ina « je ne peux pas lui désobéir, je vous promets de faire attention. »
Elle la regarda durement puis sourit.
« Ça nous arrive à toutes…Bon c’est d’accord, mais prends soin cette fois, tu t’occuperas de la tenue de Sassouma ni plus ni moins. »
Ina acquiesçait, elle voulait absolument trouver sa place. En quelques jours elle avait déjà la réputation d’être une petite maladroite inutile. Elle entra dans la pièce, et vit Balla qui tenait fermement le poignet de Sassouma. Son frère avait encore frappé.
« Balla ! Que fais – tu ? » demanda Ina en se plaçant face à son frère.
Il retira rapidement sa main, l’air nerveux.
« Je suis désolé, je vous ai pris pour un bandit. » marmonna Balla. « Excusez-moi. » dit-il, et quitta la pièce.
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Son visage couvert, personne ne savait ce que ressentait Sassouma. Seules ses mains tremblantes étaient visibles. Elle ne répondit rien et s’assit sur une chaise. Les servantes se précipitèrent vers elle.
« Tout compte fait, Ina, prends ta matinée. » lui dit la servante.
Ina se sentait à la fois soulagée et déçue. Elle avait l’impression d’avoir échoué à sa mission en mettant mal à l’aise Sassouma. Mais elle était ravie de pouvoir continuer ses poteries.
Ina se précipita derrière son frère.
« Balla qu’à tu fais ? Je t’ai vu lui attraper la main. »
« Pourquoi en faire toute une histoire ? Ce n’était qu’une bonne n’est – ce pas ? »
« Oui bien sûr, ce n’était qu’une simple bonne … » Chuchota Ina.
« Apparemment Sassouma va bientôt sortir, cette nouvelle me déplait fortement. » dit Balla.
« Et pourquoi cela ? C’est la fille du Mansa il était évident qu’il allait la laisser sortir un jour ou l’autre, et puis tu travailles pour lui, donc tu devras la supporter. »
« Oui c’est évident, mais après tout ce qu’elle m’a fait endurer… »
« Ce n’était qu’une enfant à cette période tu ne … »
Balla envoya une gifle sur la joue d’Ina. Il avait toujours été violent, mais depuis quelques temps il était toujours en colère contre elle.
« Mes ennemies sont aussi tes ennemies, grave bien ces paroles dans ta tête. Je refuse que tu t’approches d’elle. »
« Mais je travaille pendant quelques jours pour le Mansa, je ne peux pas me permettre de … »
« Trouve une excuse, mais je ne veux pas te voir proche d’elle. »
Ina acquiesça, Balla était son frère ainé, c’était la seule chose qu’elle pouvait se permettre de faire.
« Où vas-tu ? » demande Ina.
« Je vais travailler à l’atelier. » dit Balla.
Balla entretenait une relation privilégiée avec le Mansa. Le succès de ses poteries rapportait un énorme capital à l’empire. Les royaumes et empires voisins se jetaient sur les poteries de Niani. Les poteries signées Balla passaient même les frontières de la Méditerranée.
« Moi aussi il faut que je… »
« Non ! » s’écria-t-il, « Je…enfin… Ne va pas là-bas, tu devrais te promener un peu dans la cour. »
Pourquoi Balla se montrait aussi nerveux ? Avait-il quelque chose à cacher ?
Ina voulait absolument le découvrir, mais elle devait d’abord se soigner, la gifle qu’elle avait reçue lui avait légèrement ouvert la joue. Balla et la douceur, deux antithèses. Ina désinfecta sa plaie avec quelques herbes médicinales que la reine lui avait offertes lors de leurs voyages à Tombouctou, elle ne se doutait pas qu’elle en aurait utilisé à cause de Sassouma. Ina était sous la protection de la reine, depuis qu’elle travaillait avec Balla. Les poteries de celle-ci avaient touché la sensibilité de la reine. C’était la seule qui croyait au potentiel créatif d’Ina.
La reine était bloquée aux alentours de Gao, elle ne pourrait très certainement pas assister à la sortie de sa propre fille. Ina se demanda comment leurs retrouvailles allaient se passer. Sassouma avait tout de même passée dix ans de sa vie enfermée, comment retrouver des personnes sur qui elle comptait pour la protéger, mais qui lui avaient tourné le dos tant d’années ?
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Le vent, soufflant dans les feuilles, laissait entrevoir le soleil à son zénith, la fin de la matinée se faisait sentir. Sassouma avait finalement pu se retirer du palais. Les servantes lui accordaient trop d’égard à son goût. Elle ne pouvait plus s’habiller seule, manger seule ni faire sa toilette seule.
Dans le jardin elle se sentait mieux. Ici aussi rien n’avait changé. L’herbe, fraiche et verte d’un côté, et asséchée aux couleurs d’or de l’autre. Le baobab géant, et le baobab sans branches étaient toujours au fond du jardin.
Sassouma marcha à vive allure, elle voulait savoir si tout était toujours là, au pied du baobab. Les herbes fouettaient ses petites jambes délicates. Elle avait oublié de mettre ses sandales. L’impatience grandissait en elle, toutes ces années enfermées, accrochée au merveilleux souvenir d’enfance qu’elle avait concocté avec le prince et la princesse du royaume de Sosso avant que son père décide de l’enfermer.
Son pagne s’envolait à l’allure du vent, quelques grimaces se faisaient voir sur son visage, depuis quelques secondes elle renaissait. Elle s’élançait le long des arbustes, déplaçant les branches qui la gênaient, piétinant les mangues tombées des arbres, mais plus elle s’avançait et plus les herbes mouillées s’asséchaient, crépitantes sous ses pas. Plus elle s’avançait et plus les arbres perdait en couleurs, la verdure timide devenant ocre. Sassouma accéléra, et devant le géant baobab, plus rien. Les décorations avaient disparu, les couronnes de feuilles qu’elle avait concoctées avec ses amis avaient fanées.
Elle s’agenouilla, essayant de déterrer le peu de poteries qui restaient entre les racines noueuses de l’arbre mais en vain. Les poteries qui avaient bercé son enfance n’étaient plus que poussière. Elle éparpilla les feuilles d’un buisson, et y vu un trou béant. Si profond qu’aucune lumière n’y était perceptible. Elle y passa la main et un vent fort l’aspira. Sassouma recula brutalement, surprise et intriguée, mais pas effrayée. Elle remit doucement sa main dans le trou, et des petites gouttelettes se posèrent sur ses doigts. L’humidité lui faisait un bien fou, l’emportant doucement…
« Sassouma ! Il est l’heure de rentrer ! La fête à finalement lieu plus tôt ! » s’écria une servante.
« Votre mère est bientôt arrivée, elle est dans les alentours de Niani. »
Sassouma se retourna brutalement face à l’annonce de la servante.
« Ma mère…de retour… » chuchota Sassouma, ébahie.
« Oui c’est formidable, toute la famille sera réunie à nouveau, comme avant. » dit une autre servante venant d’arriver.
« Je ne veux pas que ma mère me voie jusqu’à la cérémonie, je ne veux pas qu’elle s’approche de moi. »
« Mais c’est… »
« C’est un ordre. » dit – elle gentiment.
Les servantes n’avaient d’autre choix qu’obéir, attiser la colère de Sassouma n’était pas une option. La reine était une femme douce, généreuse et compréhensible elle saurait respecter la décision de sa fille qui ne pouvait être définitive.
Une fois dans sa chambre, Sassouma avait l’impression d’être retourné à la case départ. De nouveau tout avait disparu, de nouveau rien n’existait plus. Un ou deux reflets dans l’obscurité, et la voilà apparente. La voici, une lumière qui prenait sa place dans cette obscure clarté, une trace incertaine, bâclée, bâclée, pouf une flaque, miroir cassé. Sa trace ne se voyait plus dans l’obscurité, retour à la citadelle, enchaînée. Dans l’obscurité, elle n’était plus lumière, la voilà qui devenait lugubre. La voilà qui devenait faux-semblant.
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Ina lavait ses mains imbibées de terre.
« Comment est – ce possible ? Elle ne veut pas voir sa mère, sa propre mère ! » Vociféra-t-elle.
Elle avait du mal à ingérer la nouvelle, la reine avait toujours été une femme sans défaut à ses yeux. Elle ne comprenait pas pourquoi sa fille ne le voyait pas. Peut-être, après tout ce temps, l’avait-elle oublié.
« Moins fort Ina, elle risque de t’entendre. » dit une domestique.
« La reine s’est toujours souciée d’elle, je ne comprends pas pourquoi elle ne veut pas lui parler… »
« C’est temporaire, elle passera bientôt à autre chose, fait lui confiance. »
Ina sorti de l’atelier, bien qu’elle ne connaissait pas la princesse, elle savait qu’elle pourrait lui faire changer d’avis sur la reine. Elle traversa le couloir, pour retourner dans la chambre de Sassouma. Il y avait tellement de pièces qu’elle était perdue. Deux couloirs s’offraient à elle, elle décida de prendre celui de droite. Elle regretta très vite son choix. Le chemin était dépourvu de lumière, elle peinait à avancer, mais une lueur s’échappait de l’embrasure d’une porte.
Peut – être que Sassouma est à l’intérieur se dit -elle.
Elle avança sur la pointe des pieds. Des voix rauques se faisaient entendre, impossible que cela soit Sassouma, Ina avait souvent payée le prix de sa curiosité mais ne pouvait s’empêcher d’écouter.
« Le temps presse, on n’a pas d’autres options, Balla. » dit un homme.
« Le Mandé sera à moi très prochainement, lieutenant, je sens que ce n’est pas le moment de prendre le pouvoir. » dit Balla.
« J’ai des mauvaises intuitions depuis que Sassouma est de retour, je pense qu’il faut agir vite, très vite. »
« Justement sa venue va occuper le Mansa, il n’y a absolument rien à craindre. »
Ina était désemparée. Son frère préparait un coup d’état. Il était vrai qu’il avait des attitudes de plus en plus étranges. Plus évasif, plus violent. Malgré tout ce qu’elle endurait, Ina essayait toujours de voir les bons côtés de son frère aussi infimes soient-ils. Mais il ne s’agissait plus que d’elle, mais de la sécurité de tout l’empire.
Balla et l’étranger ouvrirent la porte, et s’éloignèrent peu à peu. Elle avait peu de temps. Il lui fallait trouver la chambre de Sassouma pour tout lui expliquer. Elle ne faisait confiance à personne dans ce palais, excepté la reine, mais en son absence…
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Ina traversa la place du grand marché. Les longs voiles, et les pagnes colorés étaient de sortie. La place du marché était remplie de tentes, et de fruits écrasés. L’odeur de la viande de rue chatouillait ses narines. Les femmes se ruaient pour avoir une tenue convenable pour la cérémonie, les hommes achetaient leurs plus beaux boubous. Tout le monde était dans l’ambiance pour fêter le retour de Sassouma, sauf Ina. Elle avait le pressentiment que la fête ne se passerait pas comme prévu.
« Ina ! » hurla la servante, dont Ina ne connaissait toujours pas le nom, mais semblait la trouver ou qu’elle soit.
Elle se retourna agacée, ce n’était pas le moment.
« Je sais que je t’ai donné ta journée mais est – ce que tu pourrais juste me tenir les habits de Sassouma, car je suis débordé. Il faut juste que j’aille chercher ma tenue chez la couturière. »
Ina sourit. Elle ne savait pas comment elle aurait pu entrer dans la chambre de Sassouma sans se faire prendre. Elle en voulut moins à sa collègue, elle venait de lui offrir une opportunité en or.
« Oui bien sûr, je t’attends. » répondit elle.
La servante fila, et Ina s’empara du bac, s’élançant vers la chambre Sassouma. Le contenu était lourd, les nombreux bijoux à l’intérieur ne lui facilitaient pas la tâche. Ina remettait sans cesse en question sa décision, car cela pourrait changer le cours de l’Empire.
Elle ne comprenait pas les motivations de son frère. Le Mande était stable, prospère. Balla n’était qu’un potier. Il ne faisait pas partie du monde de la noblesse. Ses poteries étaient reconnues partout, qu’est – ce qu’il voulait de plus ?
Une fois devant la chambre, elle toquait à la porte attendant une réponse. Mais rien. Sassouma ne répondait pas. Ina enfonça alors brutalement la porte à l’aide du bac.
« Je suis venue avec votre tenue pour ce soir… »
Sassouma était assise face à un miroir brisé. Malgré l’entrée d’Ina, elle ne bougea pas d’un poil. Sa présence ne lui faisait ni chaud ni froid, ce qui ne lui plaisait pas du tout.
« Je sais qu’on n’est pas partie sur de bonnes bases, mais il serait plus judicieux de répondre car la fête à lieu ce soir. »
Sassouma se retourna vers Ina, son visage toujours couvert. Quelques courants d’air brisant le silence de la pièce.
« Je pose ça ici. » dit Ina.
Sassouma ne réagit toujours pas.
« Bon, il faut que je vous dise quelque chose. » ajouta Ina.
« Si c’est au sujet de ma mère, je ne veux pas la voir pour l’instant, ça ne sert à rien de vouloir me convaincre. »
« C’est ce que je voulais vous dire, enfin… Non, j’avais autre chose à dire mais… »
« Si tu ne sais pas quoi dire tais toi, tu éviteras une autre catastrophe. »
« Justement si je ne dis rien une catastrophe se produira. »
Sassouma se tourna vers Ina et baissa le voile qui recouvrait son visage. Elle avait un teint ébène, qui contrastait avec le tissu bleu qu’elle portait. Ses cheveux étaient en longues tresses perlées, ressemblant à une couronne. C’était le portrait craché de sa mère.
« Balla veut prendre le contrôle du Mandé… Il faut faire quelque chose. »
Sassouma ne s’y attendais pas, Balla prendre le pouvoir de l’Empire ? Cela semblait impossible.
« J’ai entendu une conversation entre Balla et un homme de l’armée, il faut agir vite ! »
Sassouma regardait Ina gesticuler en vain. Elle se calma, et fixa Sassouma du creux de l’œil.
« Pourquoi tu me fixes comme ça ? Que veux-tu que je fasse ? » Demanda Sassouma.
« Il faut absolument qu’on aille voir le Mansa ! »
« Il ne se passera rien… Je ne pense pas que Balla va assiéger le Mandé il n’est que potier après tout. Fait moi confiance je sais ce qu’il me reste à faire… Combien de temps avant le début de la cérémonie ? » demanda Sassouma.
« Le Mansa a décidé d’avancer la célébration, j’espère que tu es prête. » dit Ina.
« Ma mère n’est pas arrivée, mon père ne commence jamais les cérémonies tant qu’elle n’est pas là. »
« Je sais, mais il a ordonné que l’on commence malgré l’absence de votre mère. C’est étrange, votre père s’est également absenté, qu’elle est l’utilité de la maintenir… »
Sassouma laissa Ina la vêtir, reprit le voile, le mis sur sa tête pour cacher son visage, et suivit Ina qui l’emmenait malgré elle à la cérémonie.
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La chaleur qui s’était emparée du Mandé commençait à s’atténuer. Contrairement à ses gardes, la Reine Anta la supportait facilement. Elle revenait du désert, la chaleur lui manquait presque mais il lui tardait d’arriver à Niani. Revoir sa fille après tant d’années était son souhait le plus cher mais comment la regarder en face après ce qui lui était arrivé ?
Anta et ses gardes s’arrêtèrent à un point d’eau. Elle se mit debout sur un rocher, regardant son reflet dans l’eau. La vieillesse ne semblait pas l’atteindre, sa peau ébène contrastait également avec son voile bleu, et ses tresses ornées de perles rappelaient celles de Sassouma. Elles étaient comme un reflet dans un miroir. La seule distinction qu’elle avait avec sa fille était les innombrables grain de beauté présent sur son visage.
Me ressemble-t-elle encore aujourd’hui ? pensa-t-elle.
La reine rentrait le cœur lourd à Niani. Elle avait passé un merveilleux moment à Tombouctou, mais elle portait dix ans de culpabilité sur les épaules, en plus des nombreuses poteries achetées pour décorer le palais.
Elle leva la tête et vit un attroupement de bergers et paysans qui accourait vers elle.
« Pourquoi tout ce raffut ? » hurla un garde.
« Une attaque a été lancé il y a quelques minutes dans les alentours de Kangaba. » dit un berger. « Je ne sais pas s’il s’agit de bandits ou d’une armée. » La reine sursauta. Une attaque ? Cela n’avait aucun sens. Le Mande était fort. Mais le moment n’était pas à la spéculation. La reine descendit du rocher et remonta à cheval.
« Gardes ! Encerclez les habitants et protégez les ! Préparez-vous pour une attaque ! »
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Des claquements réguliers de sabots résonnaient au loin, et un attroupement de civils fit son apparition sur la place du marché de Niani. Bonne nouvelle, se dirent les quelques commerçants n’ayant pas écoulés leurs stocks avant la fête.
Mais l’attroupement ne ressemblait guère à celui de clients de dernière heure. Les civils se bousculaient les uns les autres, hurlant des phrases incompréhensibles.
« Ils arrivent ! » s’écria une vieille dame, se cachant derrière un stand d’igname.
Petit à petit l’incompréhension laissait place à la peur. Des cavaliers étranges se tenaient à l’entrée du palais. Ils arboraient des tenues différentes des soldats de Niani. Leur chef portant un turban vert émeraude qui semblait atteindre le ciel. Un petit châle cachait sa bouche et son nez. Il avait un boubou qui lui arrivait à la hauteur du genou et un sarouel étanche orné de motifs, son cheval aussi élégamment paré que lui.
La foule était fébrile. Les enfants se réfugiant derrière les genoux de leurs mères alors que quelques hommes s’étaient armés de machettes.
L’homme enroulé de tissus leva son sabre vers le soleil en faisant dresser sa monture, et hurla une phrase qui n’était ni du malinké, ni du soninké et encore moins du peulh, et l’armée s’avança au trop vers la place du marché, écrasant les personnes âgées devant eux.
Des servantes entrèrent en furie dans le palais, un mouvement de foule ce fit sentir à l’extérieur. L’armée étrangère passa aux galops, sabres levés.
Ina était pétrifiée. Sassouma attrapa la main de celle-ci, l’entrainant dans une course folle. Sassouma n’avait jamais couru aussi vite de sa vie. L’écho des sabots se faisait plus proches. Elles arrivèrent au jardin, courant le long des herbes sèches, dépassèrent le baobab et se mirent face aux buissons. Sassouma dégagea les feuilles encombrantes, et se retrouva face au trou.
« On va très certainement se faire trancher la tête et vous m’emmenez devant un trou ! » S’écria Ina.
« Il ne faut pas tirer de conclusion hâtive. » dit Sassouma.
Elle passa délicatement sa main au travers, des gouttelettes se déposant sous son bras. Soudain Sassouma virevolta, aspirée dans le vide, des ronces s’accrochant sur son pagne. Ina se jeta dans le trou, tentant tant bien que mal de rattraper Sassouma mais en vain. Elles s’enfonçaient toutes deux, la lumière du jour disparaissant derrière elles. La seule chose qu’elles ressentaient était de l’humidité.
Elles s’écrasèrent sur de la mousse, manquant de peu un rocher à quelques pas d’elles.
Sassouma se releva brusquement, elle mourrait d’envie de savoir où elles se trouvaient. Son acolyte quant à elle, était défraichie, son visage couvert de boue et d’herbe.
« Il faut qu’on commence à avancer. Voir où cela va nous mener. » dit Sassouma.
« Et si on retournait au palais ? Imaginez un instant que ce n’est qu’un rêve ou pire un piège ! »
Sassouma secoua la tête, désespérée à l’idée d’effectuer ce voyage avec une poule mouillée.
Il fallait absolument qu’elle découvre ce qu’il y avait derrière la grotte. Elle ne comprenait pas pourquoi Ina voulait faire demi-tour. Le fait même d’être aspirée par un trou ne semblait pas l’intéresser.
#
Les cavaliers avaient encerclé le palais, mais étrangement cette armée fulgurante n’avait pas l’air de vouloir attaquer.
Balla se sentait prêt, depuis plusieurs mois il s’entrainait secrètement corps et âmes. Le Mansa s’était absenté, c’était le moment de prouver sa force.
« Soldats, le temps presse il faut agir ! » s’écria t’il.
« Où est le général Konaté ?! » demanda un soldat.
« Il est parti à la recherche de la reine. » dit un fantassin « Il y a des rumeurs selon lesquelles la caravane de la reine est introuvable ! »
Aucun autre chef d’armées n’était présent, et le Mansa était absent.
« Soldats ! Je vous donne l’ordre de monter sur le toit du palais, des arcs y sont gardés. Nous allons tenter de vaincre l’ennemi par le ciel ! Il faut également un groupe au sol ! A vos sabres ! »
Les hurlements de la foule devinrent plus insistants. Les soldats hésitaient à suivre un potier, aussi influent soit-il, mais c’étaient leurs parents et leurs amis qui mourraient dehors.
Les soldats exécutèrent les ordres. Balla rejoignit les archers. C’était pour lui le moment de faire ses preuves. Les étoiles se perdaient dans le ciel bleu nuit. Balla les contemplait, ferma les yeux et s’imagina les conséquences de ses actes. Il se coucha sur le toit, s’emparant d’un arc et de flèches. Les archers autours de lui faisaient de même, les flèches fusant vers l’ennemi. Au sol, les fantassins prenaient facilement le dessus sur les étrangers, bien trop facilement.
« Balla… On s’est trompés. » dit l’un des archers. « Ce n’est pas une armée étrangère mais des simples bandits ! »
La plupart des cavaliers avaient disparus, il ne restait plus que quelques hommes à terre.
« Fausse alerte, descendons, les soldats attraperont les bandits. »
Balla et ses hommes descendirent du toit, les mystérieux attaquants ayant pris la fuite. Balla et les soldats aidant les blessés et déplaçant les corps, quand un groupe de cavaliers approcha, entourant le Mansa.
« Que ce passe – t – il ici ?! » Hurla l’empereur.
« Des bandits ont attaqué le palais. » dit Balla.
« Pourquoi y a t’il autant de flèches au sol ? » demanda le Mansa.
« C’était un ordre de Balla. » dit un soldat.
Le Mansa se retourna, le visage serré, vers Balla. C’était la première fois qu’il le regardait ainsi.
« Balla rejoint moi dans la salle du trône, et vite ! »
Le Mansa descendit de sa monture, et se dirigea furieusement vers son trône.
#
Balla ne comprenait pas l’attitude du Mansa, il avait pourtant tenté de sécuriser le palais comme il le pouvait. Pensif, il ramena le cheval de l’empereur à l’écurie, allait-il se faire renvoyer de la cour ? Ou pire bannir ? Il avait besoin d’en parler se rendant compte à ce moment de l’absence d’Ina. Où est-elle passé ? s’interrogea t’il.
Il rentra, nerveux, dans la salle du trône, sous le regard menaçant du Mansa.
« Préparer une action d’une telle ampleur pour des simples bandits, Balla, c’est irresponsable ! Sans me consulter en plus ! Imagine juste si des soldats avaient perdu la vie pour cela ?! »
« Mansa je pensais bien faire, des cavaliers étranges avait fait leur apparition et aucun général n’était présent. Il fallait absolument que quelqu’un protège les habitants ! »
« Il y a tellement de soldats plus expérimentés que toi qui auraient pu prendre le relais enfin… Balla, tu es potier ! Qu’est – ce qui t’a pris ? »
« Je serais prêt à tout pour protéger ma patrie et la chérir. » dit – il, « Je ne suis que de caste d’artisan, cela est vrai, mais je manie avec précision les armes, Mansa… »
Le Mansa écouta attentivement Balla, surpris par la manière dont il avait su gérer les troupes.
« Bon, ça va pour cette fois, en tout cas je te félicite pour la manière dont tu as géré cette petite crise avant la cérémonie. »
« Je vous remercie, Mansa. Je… »
« Balla, aujourd’hui je me suis absenté avant la cérémonie pour rencontrer des émissaires et tenter d’apaiser les tensions entre Zazzau et Niani. »
« Zazzau… mais qu’avons-nous à voir avec ce peuple ? » demanda Balla.
« Leurs soldats s’approchent beaucoup de la frontière ces derniers temps. J’ai d’ailleurs pu parler à des gardes qui m’ont affirmé te contraire de loin. »
La tension de Balla virevolta.
« J’avais de la famille qui commerçait à Zazzau, il y a de cela quelques années, c’est très certainement à cause de cela. » dit – il, cachant son tremblement.
« Je comprends. » dit le Mansa se satisfaisant de son explication hâtive. « J’avais comme l’impression que tu avais quelque chose à me demander. »
« Oui, Mansa. » dit – Balla, « Comme je vous disais. J’aime ma patrie, je suis prêt à tout pour la défendre, et si en plus Zazzau a des vues sur nous, alors…. Permettez-moi de rejoindre le corps de l’armée. »
Le Mansa était surpris de la demande de Balla, il arrivait que certaines castes rejoignent l’armée mais il n’avait jamais eu une telle demande de la part d’un forgeron.
« Je vais réunir le conseil, on décidera de ton sort. »
Balla sourit, comment le Mansa pourrait-il refuser ? Il pouvait enfin mettre en marche son plan.
#
Cela ne faisait que quelques minutes que les deux jeunes filles arpentaient un chemin sinueux, qui leur semblait pourtant éternel. La respiration d’Ina s’accélérait, ses pieds lui faisaient mal. Elle s’agrippait comme elle le pouvait au mur. Sassouma était subjuguée par la beauté de la grotte, et les dessins gravés sur les murs. Des soldats soninkés, armés de leurs sabres se précipitant vers une contrée lointaine. Un festival sous la peine lune dont le sens est depuis longtemps perdu. De simples paysages, et le passage de la vie. Aucun accomplissement de son père n’était présent, il devait donc s’agir d’un autre royaume. Mais lequel ? L’ambiance de la grotte lui rappelait indescriptiblement des souvenirs de son enfance.
« J’en peux plus. Je t’attends ici. » dit Ina se jetant à terre.
« Mais c’est extrêmement dangereux, je ne peux pas te laisser là. Si on se perd comment on va faire pour rentrer à Niani ? »
« C’est vous qui nous avez ramené ici, je n’ai rien demandé moi. »
« Il y a surement une bataille qui se prépare. C’est pour notre sécurité. »
« Non je ne pense pas qu’une bataille a lieu, je suis sûre que c’est un plan de Balla. La situation s’est obligatoirement stabilisée… Moi je fais demi-tour. »
Devant elle, un léger faisceau lumineux attirait son attention. Elle prit ses jambes à son cou, il ne fallait absolument pas qu’elle perde de vu la lumière. Celle-ci disparaissait petit à petit, plus elle s’avançait et plus elle s’éloignait. Le chemin s’arrêta soudainement. Une fente se faisait voir dans le mur de la grotte, mais où la mènerait – elle ?
Sassouma essayait tant bien que mal de passer à travers la fente, sa silhouette svelte était à son avantage. Une fois de l’autre côté c’est avec stupeur qu’elle se trouvait dans la place du marché, couverte de tentes et de fruits écrasés, d’une ville inconnue. La grotte derrière elle ayant disparue. Cela ne ressemblait pas à Niani. Elle marcha petit à petit, vers une vieille dame assise dans l’ombre d’une tente.
« Tu as l’air perdu, je peux t’aider ? » Dit la vieille dame.
Elle parlait un malinké emmêlé, avec un accent qui n’était pas propre à Niani. Vêtue d’un pagne violet qui recouvrait tout son corps, des cernes et d’énormes rides creusaient son visage.
« Euh, oui… Je ne sais pas du tout où je suis, est – ce que vous pouvez m’éclairez ? »
« Comment ça tu ne sais pas où tu es ? On est dans le royaume de Sosso. Tu te moques de moi ? Toi, une servante du palais ? Les jeunes franchement… » dit -elle en s’en allant.
Une servante du palais ? Sassouma regarda ses vêtements déchirés. Elle était sous le choc. Cela faisait tant d’années qu’elle n’avait pas mis les pieds ici. Depuis que son père était ennemi avec le royaume de Sosso, elle n’en n’avait plus jamais entendu parler. C’était une occasion qu’elle ne devait pas louper. Il fallait qu’elle aille parler au roi et à la reine de Sosso.
#
« Halte ! Qui va la ?! »
Sassouma se retourna brusquement, un soldat était derrière elle, prêt à l’attaquer.
« Je… Je suis une servante. » Dit Sassouma par réflexe « J’ai sorti le linge de la reine maintenant il faut que je retourne au palais. »
Le garde sembla hésiter mais à sa surprise, la laissa passer.
« Bon, passe mais dépêche-toi, ne traine pas. » dit-il.
« Oui bien sûr, merci beaucoup… à demain ! » dit – elle en s’en allant.
A demain ??? pensa-t-elle. Qu’est ce qui m’a pris…
Il lui manquait de peu pour ce faire attraper, comment pouvait-il la croire ?
Elle entra dans le palais. Elle se souvenait de l’endroit exact où se trouvait la salle du trône, marchant le long de couloirs familiers mais étrangement vides. Ou étaient donc tous les gardes ? Etant enfant elle était toujours impatiente d’arriver dans ce royaume. C’était un lieu de réunion pour l’empire et les royaumes voisins. Son père l’y emmenait souvent, pour elle c’était comme un grand jardin. Elle s’amusait avec les nombreux enfants de Sosso. Tout était sublimé par leurs imaginations. Les écuries se transformaient en salle de tournoi, la grande prairie non loin de la place du marché en hippodrome.
La salle du trône était immense. L’architecture en terre cuite formait des grands ovales autant à l’intérieur qu’à l’extérieur. Des masques immenses et des crânes étaient posés délicatement sur le mur. Un long tapis en or massif ce tenait face aux trônes. Le trône des Kanté était orné de koris et d’or. Un grand miroir, debout derrière les trônes, reflétait la pièce, doublant sa taille et sa profondeur.
La reine la fixait d’un regard glacial. Ses cheveux étaient tressés et orné de perles, recouvert d’un fichu bleu nuit posé délicatement sur sa tête. Elle portait un long pagne sombre, aussi sombre que son regard. Soumaoro Kanté était assis aux côtés de son épouse, sa peau brune ce contrastait avec la peau sombre de sa femme. Ses doigts étaient parés de bagues en argent, sous un boubou en bogolan orangé.
Sassouma se vit dans le miroir, et compris pourquoi la vieille dame était offensée. Pourquoi le garde l’avait cru sur parole. Dans le miroir, Sassouma apparaissait vêtue d’une robe blanche de servante du Sosso.
« Qui est tu ? » demanda calmement la reine, « comment as-tu pu rentrer dans le palais ? »
« Je suis… je suis Sassouma Keïta. La fille de Mansa Ibrahim, empereur de Niani. ».
A ces mots, son reflet changea, et elle apparut dans sa robe royale, déchirée et maculée de boue.
Le roi et sa reine se figèrent. Sassouma avait été un grand réconfort pour leurs enfants. La revoir dix ans plus tard, dans un tel état, était un choc.
« Sassouma, je ne m’attendais pas à ta visite, encore moins en pleine nuit, seule et aussi débraillée. Et par quelle magie as-tu… »
« Ma chère reine. » L’interrompit Sassouma, bien incapable d’expliquer quoi que ce soit. « Le temps presse. J’ai besoin de vous et de votre générosité. » Elle soupira et dit, « Il faut absolument que votre armée envahisse Niani, mon père souhaite plus que le contrôle du Mandé, mais Zazzau, et Sosso aussi. Il n’y a rien de bon en lui. Rien ni personne, sauf vous et moi, pouvons faire quelque chose pour l’arrêter. »
Le grand Soumaoro s’était mis à rire.
« Sassouma, Sassouma. » susurra-t-il, « Tu n’es qu’une gamine inexpérimentée qui a passé sa vie enfermée, que peux-tu faire pour le Mandé ? »
« Oh, grand Soumaoro, je ne veux point avoir une gouvernance sur le Mandé, la seule chose que je veux, c’est détruire mon père et contrôler Niani. Un potier, y a aujourd’hui, tenté un coup d’état. »
Soumaoro Kanté se leva brusquement.
« Ton père a toujours été un incapable, comment un potier peut – il tenter ouvertement de prendre le pouvoir ? Le Mansa est vraiment irrécupérable, et il croit pouvoir dominer le Sosso ? Nous allons t’aider. »
Sassouma allait enfin pouvoir se débarrasser de son père, mais à quel prix ?
#
Ina sorti de la grotte, ses vêtements légèrement mouillés. Elle était certaine que l’attaque aux alentours du palais n’était pas bien grave, ne comprenant pas pourquoi Sassouma était entêtée à savoir ce qu’il y avait derrière cette grotte.
Avant de quitter définitivement le jardin, Ina cueillit une fleur. Elle ressemblait comme deux gouttes d’eau à une espèce réputée pour donner des hallucinations. Ina voulait se persuader que ce qui c’était produit n’était en réalité que cela. Mais alors, où était Sassouma ?
Une fois au palais, on pouvait entendre les mouches voler. Personne n’était à l’intérieur, mais une masse de personnes s’était rassemblée autour du djéli personnel du Mansa, formant un énorme cercle autour d’une estrade. Ina avait du mal à entendre ce que disait le djéli. Elle s’approcha, et c’est avec stupeur que Balla fit son apparition. Ina lâcha la fleur sans s’en rendre compte et s’avança vers son frère. Il ressemblait au soleil qui se refugiait derrière la lune.
Il avait bien caché son jeu.
#
Mariam Camara est une lycéenne française, d’origine malienne. Elle écrit depuis ses années collège, et publie pour la première fois une nouvelle dans le magazine Omenana. Elle a toujours aimé le fait que les mots deviennent des phrases pour prendre un sens plus profond. Dans ses écrits de genre contemporain, fantastique, historique, et autres, elle aborde des thématiques sociétales anciennes mais toujours d’actualité, et souhaite offrir une réflexion sur le monde qui l’entoure. Dans sa première publication, Balla tu es mon épine, elle nous plonge en 1533, dans l’empire du Mali, en Afrique de l’ouest.
Ephraim Ndubisi Orji writes short stories from Nigeria. His work has been published in Eboquills. He was shortlisted for the Awele Creative Trust Award 2020. He is a lover of stories and stans the works of the amazing horror fiction god Clive Barker and the carefully crafted works of one of Nigeria's literary icons, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. He is presently a student of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and when he is not screaming the notes to a song, he is hunched over on his system or smartphone typing away the chaotic world thrashing within him.
Dike stared at his sleeping wife, watching as her chest rose and fell evenly, the stillness of her face altered occasionally by twitching brows, her pale skin shimmering within the dark interior of their bedroom. Tonight, the sky was a gaping void of blackness, without a trace of twinkling stars or silver moonlight leaking into their bedroom through its lonesome square window. He stared at her neck, slender and long, with traces of bulging veins, and imagined the dagger he had in his hand making a clean cut. He imagined the red blood that would look black against her pale skin, and the confused horror that would register on her face as pain fired up her nerves. He also imagined the haunted look in her eyes, the disbelief and betrayal etched in those pair of bright blues as she gaped at him, her stunned mind connecting the dots.
He fought the moan of agony that threatened to leave his swollen, tightly pressed lips. He had silently cried himself raw earlier, pleading with the forces that be to change her fate. But the goddess Ani, mother of all things fertile, had been clear; “The life of your soulmate in exchange for your manhood.”
And when he had gaped at the goddess, bewildered and uncertain, she had asked; “Do you not wish to father children of your own any longer?” Her ageless eyes shimmering with mockery, her vile intent unconcealed.
All he had to do was refuse her offer, choose his wife over his need to father an offspring. But the people of Ukorie had started to whisper, and rumours hung on neighbours’ puckered lips. Even his friends had begun to give him ‘the look’. A look he knew questioned his masculinity, a look they reserved for a man who could as well be a woman. How could a man of his status not sire a child after a year of being married? The women of Ukorie were not known to be barren, such a thing was unheard of, so surely, this childlessness had something to do with his loins. Perhaps a curse from a past lover who would not let go, or one from his lineage. Whatever it was, Dike’s reputation, and that of his family was at stake, he had to prove himself man enough, he had to prove he functioned as properly as every other fertile man in Ukorie. His entire legacy hung dangerously between generational shame and restored dignity. Surely Yeni would understand, she might die with a broken heart – as one betrayed by the man she had loved and trusted, but she would later come to see the bigger picture, she would forgive him; he hoped.
A drop of sweat, or perhaps tears, trickled from his face onto Yeni’s, and she stirred. Dike bristled, almost losing his grip on the dagger. His heart thundered within his ribcage as he watched her moved slightly, a soft moan escaping thin pink lips typical of people born with pale skin. He shuddered with relief when she did not wake. Once again, he drew himself over her, a looming figure of sweat and thick muscles, sucked in a deep breath, tightened his grip on the hilt of the glistening dagger, swallowed the lump of terror, guilt and shame lodged in his throat, and slowly lowered the dagger to Yeni’s neck.
“Forgive me my love,” he whispered.
Yeni stirred again.
‘Now!’ he heard the goddess Ani’s voice echo in his head.
His hand moved with the practiced precision of one who had killed too many times, the sharp silver blade of the dagger slashing across smooth pale skin, drawing blood. It happened as he had imagined it; Yeni’s eyes flew open, blue as the sea and alert as a cat. She opened her mouth to speak, or perhaps scream, but gurgled on her own blood. In the dark, it sputtered in waves of black against her pale skin, squirting all over Dike’s dark thick abdomen, warm and sticky, the stench of it, metallic and heady. Her eyes found his, and for a second, the confusion flickered within them, then instant realization. He watched as those eyes widened in disbelief. Then, as though an afterthought, her body began to thrash beneath him, her slender hands, once delicate and smooth against his hardened body as she caressed him into slumber on those many nights when he returned to her in exhaustion from the day’s labour, now clutched desperately at her gaping neck. Everything within him begged to look away, but he did not, he allowed the image of Yeni, thrashing and gurgling for life, to plant itself in his memory, an eternal burden he’d bear as retribution for her.
When Yeni finally stilled in death, her blue eyes, now devoid of light, remained wide open, staring accusingly at him. Dike released a ragged breath. His body trembled and sweat slicked across his skin. He ran his free hand over his sticky abdomen, feeling Yeni’s blood mixed with his sweat. The sob lodged in his throat like a rock, refusing to be released.
“Well done.”
Dike’s head snapped up. In a shadowed corner of the room, just above the bed, Ani’s slender form blended like a darker shadow itself. She stared at him through a face partially concealed by a veil of beads flowing from a silver crown made of colorful seashells, only her nose and full lips were visible. Her long braided hair cascaded around her like tendrils, twisting of its own accord. Dike’s hands trembled as he stared at her, his breath came in laboured gasps. Then after long seconds of unnerving silence, she spoke again,
“Lay your wife to rest Dike, and when you do so, make sure you solicit the help of Okeke the witchdoctor, you may perhaps be in need of his… abilities,” her voice was like trickles of water poured into a bucket, ancient and beautiful.
Drawing all the strength he could muster, Dike said,
“W-will I be able t-to f-father a child now?”
Silence greeted him, for Ani was already gone, as easily as she had been there.
Through the night, while surrounding neighbours and the rest of Ukorie slept, Dike knelt before his wife’s corpse and wept till his eyes puffed, his throat burned, and the first crack of dawn peeked across the sky.
*
Yeni was buried two days later. Dike snuck her body out of their home in the dead of the night, and, according to instructions from Okeke the witchdoctor, took her to the deepest parts of Agunji forest where Okeke already stood waiting for him with a group of shirtless sweating young boys, armed with shovels. They stood in a clearing; a gaping hole dug by the boys at its center.
Dike stood back and watched as the boys lowered Yeni’s stiff body into the grave while Okeke paced the perimeter, muttering words under his breath. Yeni had died with a broken heart, her trust betrayed, Ani had asked Dike to solicit Okeke’s help because he needed to bind her soul, in case she became vengeful and latched on to the mortal world using her rage as an anchor, refusing to move on to the afterlife. This was also why Okeke advised against burying her behind their home as Dike had intended, for the closer her body was to Dike, the more likely she was to return.
Once the grave was sealed, Okeke, a tall bald man dressed in pure white wrappa tied around one shoulder, flowing all the way to his feet, stood over the grave, his voice sharp and clip against the rustling breeze as he uttered guttural incantations. Dike watched this through eyes that still stung from hours spent weeping. Okeke circled the grave, a calabash containing a white substance in his large, wrinkled hand. He traced the white powder around the grave, forming a circle in the black soil. Somewhere close by, an owl hooted, the undergrowth rustled as nocturnal beasts lurked, some peering curiously at the group of humans in their territory, others scampering away just by merely catching a scent of them.
Okeke instructed one of the boys to hand him another calabash, then sprayed its content — dried leaves — over the grave, all the while his mouth did not stop muttering those guttural incantations. He stood back, inspected his work, and nodded his approval.
“Now cover the traces of salt,” he said to the boys.
They swung into action, carefully placing damp earth over the circle of salt.
“Are you sure this will work?” Dike asked the man as they trudged through the forest, heading for Ukorie village.
“Yes Dike, it is done, the salt will keep her bound within the circle if she tries to return, and the achicha leaves will inconvenience her. When she gets restless, or tired of being confined, she will have no choice but to move on to the afterlife.”
Dike nodded.
“B-but will i-it h-hurt her? The salt and the ach…”
“Achicha leaves,”
“Yes.”
Okeke chuckled.
“Dike, Yeni is dead, nothing can harm the dead, she feels no pain, at least physical, however, emotional pain is not like physical pain, it never just goes away, especially when it is strong, it lingers; which is why some souls need to be bound in order to prevent them from leaving the planes of the dead where they belong. Yeni died knowing you betrayed her, which is no fault of yours by the way, the gods made a request, you had to do what was required of you. However, if she is not bound, she might return for vengeance,”
At this, Okeke patted Dike in the back, his calloused palm hard against Dike’s bare skin.
Dike nodded and spoke no further.
Later that night, while he laid in bed alone, the lingering stench of Yeni’s blood in the still air, he stared into the ceiling and for the first time since Yeni’s death, gave in to the wave of exhaustion that caused his eyes to close.
*
He dreamt of feet. Filthy strong feet, thrashing at black damp earth like a chicken searching for insects in the undergrowth, only, these feet were human. The earth peeled off where the feet thrashed, and white shimmering powder came into view. The feet kicked at the white powder, scattering it across the floor, then paused. One heartbeat, two heartbeats, then charged for his face. One foot rose above him, revealing a filthy sole, and came down with a grunt, smashing into his eyes…
Dike jolted awake clawing at his face.
*
When the people of Ukorie asked about his wife, Dike told them she had gone to be with her mother in the west. They had nodded in response, a knowing look in their eyes, which was why when Dike took a new wife for himself three months later, rather than ask if Yeni was aware of this, they cheered and congratulated him. His friends gave him strong handshakes, the elders patted him on the back, and the women sang his praises.
His new wife was a young woman whose parents were low earning farmers from the northern parts of Ukorie, which meant she was not as pale as Yeni, but was several shades darker than himself. Dike had carefully chosen her for her round waist, plump breasts, and long legs, all of which were qualities of a body that would know how to make and nurse a child.
Her dark skin and full body were not the only qualities that contradicted Yeni’s. Where Yeni was feisty, sharp-mouthed and laughed carelessly the way most women of Ukorie did not dare around their husbands, Njideka was a typical Ukorie woman, silent and subservient, judiciously performing her wifely duties in a bid to please her husband. Even lovemaking was not as loud or as wild as it was with Yeni. She did not mount him and twist her waist the way Yeni did; the way he liked. She did not press his head against her nipples as he nibbled and suckled on them. She did not scream his name and writhe beneath his bulk with pleasure, she barely made a sound, only short, suppressed gasps as though afraid releasing the moan of ecstasy he knew rippled through her would offend him. And when he tried to teach her the art of pleasuring him with her mouth around his manhood the way Yeni knew how to, she had been awkward and stiff. Hence, lovemaking with Njideka was quick, unexciting, and quiet, save for infrequent, suppressed grunts. But Dike was hopeful, he had no interest in enjoying it anyway, all he needed was for her to conceive.
He had his plans laid out; after three children, if they were all boys, or two boys and a girl, he would resume bedding other women for the sole purpose of pleasure, and if they took in and gave him more children, though he would not marry them, for his dwelling was too small to accommodate more than one woman and he wanted no such responsibility of being forever tied to his concubines, he would take the children and place them under Njideka’s care, as was customary in such cases.
*
The first two months came and went with Njideka still seeing her monthly flow. No one thought too much of it, for sometimes it took a woman up to five months after marriage before conception. But four more months came and went, yet Njideka’s monthly flow did not cease. The looks and whispers began anew, this time less conspicuous than with Yeni. The anxiety crept up on Dike like a slithering serpent, haunting him on those nights he spent thrusting into Njideka. Each time he released, he willed his semen to penetrate whatever wall stood between him and her womb.
By the eighth month, Dike had had enough. He knelt before his altar and beckoned on Ani. She did not respond. His fury blazed like suppressed burning lava. The lingering fear lurked in the recesses of his mind that perhaps, Ani had deceived him. It was not uncommon for the gods to toy with humanity, which was why most never communed with them directly.
Dike pleaded and called to Ani Day and night, but she never came. Then on the seventh day, fueled by rage, he mounted Njideka, determined to shatter her womb if that was what it took.
For hours he pumped himself into her, and even when she began to sob in agony, he did not stop. Whenever he got exhausted, he laid beside her for a short while to regain his strength, and when he did, began the process all over again. This he did until darkness fell across the sky, and he finally collapsed on top of Njideka, exhaustion causing his muscles to tremble.
*
By the end of the ninth month, Njideka’s flow did not come. She held her breath, refusing to get excited too soon. Then the morning sickness began, and along with it, the headaches and constant exhaustion. By the third week of the tenth month, women around their home confirmed Njideka was with child. The tension that had heaped over Dike’s shoulder like a humongous boulder, came crumbling down. Ani had fulfilled her part of the bargain after all.
Njideka’s body adjusted as her stomach grew, her mother visited from the north to assist with house duties and look after her daughter. Across Ukorie, Dike was congratulated for finally proving himself a man worthy of honour. In the eighteenth month after his marriage to Njideka, she brought forth twin sons.
Friends and neighbours went wild with jubilation. Not only had Dike been blessed by the gods with twins, but twin sons? That was more than any man could ask for. Dike held a feast at his home, slaughtering three bulls: one as thanksgiving to Ani, the other two for his sons. People drank and dined, women sang and ululated, men jeered and got drunk, and when at last night came, silence returned to Dike’s dwelling as the men and women retired to their homes.
That night, Ani visited.
Her misty shadow-body materialized out of the dark. Dike bristled when he saw her, shoving his penis back into the wrappa tied around his waist. He had been in the middle of urinating in the backyard of his home when the goddess appeared before him.
Dike went on one knee, head bowed. Silence and stillness peppered the chilly night as crickets and frogs in the surrounding bushes scampered away at the presence of the goddess.
“G-great A-Ani, mother of the sea and all things fertile, I greet you,”
She scoffed and heaved a sigh.
“Rise mortal,” she said with distaste.
Dike rose. A smirk lingered on her full lips. Through the veil of beads, Dike caught glimpses of her face. When she did not speak, Dike spoke first.
“I-I thank you for blessing my home with such undeserved blessing, I asked for just a child, not even a son, and you gave me two sons all at on—”
“You fool!” she hissed, her voice like the sound of waves slamming against rocks by the sea.
Dike startled, confused.
“You mortals are so stupid and unwise, so full of greed and driven by your desires, you plunge into your own doom without thinking!”
What was she talking about?
Seeing the questioning look on his face, she scoffed again and said,
“I blessed you with no children, those two sons are no sons of yours, you fool! How could you not see it!” she hissed, “your wife has played you for the fool that you are, the curse that kept your loins locked up was never lifted!”
Dike blinked at her; his mouth suddenly dry.
“I don’t understand,” he breathed, “I-I made t-the sacrifice.”
Ani’s voice carried into the night as she laughed, bitter and resentful. She shook her head, her beaded veil clinking against each other.
“Tsk, my instructions were clear and simple; the life of your soulmate in exchange for your manhood. Yeni was never your soulmate, she was merely your wife!”
Dike froze, his eyes bulging in disbelief.
“Your soulmate is never always your lover, mortal, your soulmate can be a friend, a brother, a sister, and in some cases, if you are lucky, a lover. Yeni was not—”
“But you s-said… that night, y-you came to me, y-you said it was done,”
Ani chuckled.
“I said, ‘well done’ and then asked you to lay Yeni to rest, I never said she was the one. And don’t you dare question me mortal!”
Dike’s knees felt like they would cave from beneath him. Yeni had died for nothing, he had murdered his wife for absolutely nothing, all of it had been a waste, the curse still clung to his loins, unyielding.
“B-but w-what about my sons, the twins?”
Ani made a sound that might have been a chuckle, but it came out like gurgling water.
“Have you not been listening to me, mortal? Your new bride deceived you. She saw how desperate you were for a child and did what most women in this accursed village do in such cases, she bedded an old lover of hers in your absence, those sons for whom you slaughtered two bulls are not yours!” Ani laughed and shook her head, “you mortals never cease to fascinate me.”
Her words sank in, each one unveiling like layers of onions, causing his eyes to sting and burn. Not only had he been deceived by the gods, Njideka had deceived him as well. He trembled, his rage churning, contorting, and morphing into a foul thing that twisted his hands into tight fists. He glowered at Ani, his hands longed to grab her slender neck and snap it in half. Ani smirked at him, relishing his powerlessness and fury. She knew he could do her no harm; he was but an ant in the face of her powers, and this fueled his anger even more. His breath came in huffs, his chest rising and falling, thick muscles heaving, veins bulging across his biceps.
“So much anger, so much hate,” she chuckled, “mortals and their fickle emotions,” she said to herself, shook her head, and faded into the shadows.
Dike did not know how long he stood there, rage, regret and shame, coursing through his nerves. While Ani was a goddess and beyond his reach, Njideka was not. She had deceived him just as much as the ruthless goddess, played him for a fool, and would have kept up the act had the goddess not told him the truth. He would have raised two bastard sons in his home, completely oblivious to who had truly sired them.
Unable to contain himself, Dike charged for the house.
*
Njideka snored softly, her still protruding stomach rising and falling as she breathed. His contempt grew with each rise and fall of that stomach, all the useless nights spent thrusting wildly into this useless lump of flesh of a woman, wasted. All the nights enduring her dullness in bed when he could have had Yeni by his side. Oh, poor beautiful Yeni. Dike growled, his voice startling Njideka awake.
“Di’m, my husband, is that you?” she said, blinking sleepy eyes at him.
That stupid meek voice of hers too, how he hated it. Dike went on his knees, reached under the bed where he had hidden the dagger, he’d used on Yeni, and pulled it out. It was still wrapped in the thickly bound rag he had used to encase it.
“Di’m, what is it, is everything o—”
The words died in her mouth when Dike rose, the glistening dagger in his fist. Her eyes bulged with terror.
“D-di’m—”
Dike roared as he plummeted her with the dagger, blindly stabbing and slashing at her flesh. Njideka screamed, her hands going up to shield her face. But Dike was a big man, his muscles were thick and well built. With both hands clasping the dagger, he brought it down on Njideka. He heard her hand snap from the force of his blows, and she shrieked. He caught flashes of terror in her huge eyes as her blood splattered all over the room, and when she could fight no more, she went limp. Dike sank the dagger into her stomach repeatedly, sputters of blood raining on him. Once he was sure she no longer lived, he charged for the next room where the twin bastards slept with Njideka’s mother.
He almost bumped into the frightened old woman as she too made to step out through the door. She froze when she saw him, a petit figure in the face of his brutish build. His eyes darted to the babies tightly clasped in her arms and the small bag at her feet. His nose flared. She had been about to escape, the old hag, she had probably planned the entire thing with her stupid daughter.
Dike killed her easily, first yanking the boys off her arms and tossing them on the bed. They wailed. Then, he grabbed her by the neck and bashed her head against the wall, twice. The woman’s skull popped on the second impact, and her body convulsed, then went limp. He tossed the body aside and turned to the twins. He snatched the first child off the bed by the leg, letting him dangle, his voice shrill as he screeched in agony. Dike held the dagger over the child’s elongated neck. He sobbed, tears trickling down his face, rage, and compassion rioting within him. The boys had done nothing to deserve this, but neither had Yeni. Ani had played him, so had Njideka. The image of her tall curvy body on a mat, moaning and writhing as another man, perhaps younger and better looking than him, thrusting into her, flashed before his eyes. Dike snarled. These little bastards belonged to that stranger, whoever he was, wherever he was.
The rage returned, shooting through his nerves in blinding bolts of white twinkling stars. The cut was deep, swift, and clean. He did not wait to watch the baby gurgle on his own blood, he tossed the child aside and went for his twin. He held him up by the leg, then all at once, as though a veil had been lifted from his face, the rage slipped away, taking with it the strength and determination that had fueled him. His muscles caved and he dropped the wailing child on the bed. He trembled. He sobbed. He gaped in shame and disbelief at the carnage he had unleashed on his household; the dead twin, twisted in an awkward position on the floor, neck gaping, his mother-in-law, sprawled in one corner, brain-matter leaking from the gap in her skull. And when he dragged his feet to his bedroom, he wept at the sight of Njideka, mangled and bleeding.
That night, while the people of Ukorie slept and the only surviving twin wailed, Dike, a man who had once prided himself as one who had fought in the king’s army and returned with the head of their enemy’s general, a man who had once loved a pale-skinned woman, but for his selfish desires, had sacrificed her to a goddess who had tricked him, walked out of his home, bloodied and sweating, never to be seen or heard from again.
The End
Ephraim Ndubisi Orji writes short stories from Nigeria. His work has been published in Eboquills. He was shortlisted for the Awele Creative Trust Award 2020. He is a lover of stories and stans the works of the amazing horror fiction god Clive Barker and the carefully crafted works of one of Nigeria’s literary icons, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. He is presently a student of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and when he is not screaming the notes to a song, he is hunched over on his system or smartphone typing away the chaotic world thrashing within him.
Prof. Xonti of The University of Edinburgh, Parapsychology
Prof. Khota’s Notes on The Shadow World have been a passion project of mine for some years now. Having grown up in the communities he references, as well as having a passion for alternate dimensions as it were, I found this short description to be most compelling. Naturally, an alternate dimension that appears to coalesce with certain aspects of South African society intrigued me further, as such a reflection provides strong evidence for its existence. I also find Prof. Khota’s admission that the poor are seldom taken seriously in their needs, and with an often uniquely weak South African government, it is very likely these issues would be outright ignored in favour of other futile tenderpreneur projects, but I digress. Please, enjoy these collected notes of Prof. Khota’s horrific experiences upon passing into The Shadow World.
Notes on The Shadow World
Prof Nilesh Khota, previously of University of Cape Town
For some time now I have been attempting to broach certain subjects of degeneracy with the appropriate authorities, in hopes that my concerns around a certain parallel universe may be attended to. It is imperative that those with the power and resources to do so attend to this emergency.
Largely, these attempts have failed, with the authorities making light of everything I tell them. Thus, I feel it imperative to note in my ledger, certain horrors I witnessed, upon entering a portal that leads to The Shadow World.
I’ve found these horrors are not to be told lightly, or brought up in good company, as the reaction to them is often negative. I’ve found myself repeatedly described as overly cynical, or possibly influenced by some sort of mental illness or personality disorder. I have accrued multiple visits to various mental institutions, as I am an individual of science and evidence. No specialist has been able to conclusively diagnose me with any such mental illness or personality disorder.
Thus, I can only conclude my experiences in The Shadow World to be real. The constant undermining of my mental state from various parties, including close friends and family, seems largely to be an attempt at projection, to avoid the disturbing hypotheses I am presenting.
It is one thing to be undermined by a police officer, or an administrator of the City of Cape Town. It is something else entirely to have those closest to you hurl insults. Some have even disowned me, or taken to ruinous gossip and rumour mongering. Others have offered vapid positive advice, along the lines of vegan diets, and more exercise. I am unsure as to how a vegan diet, or attending CrossFit would alter the horrors I have witnessed though.
I must further note that upon entering The Shadow World I was always an observer. This being another reason most who accept my initial premise of The Shadow World’s existence still dislike the subject. They believe it futile, and thus juvenile on my part, to rave consistently of such a horrible place. If one is simply an observer when one enters, how can one interact with the realm to produce a positive impact? Of what type of matter is The Shadow World comprised? What if the matter of our realm, and that of The Shadow Realm are independent and can’t interact? These metaphysical conundrums have not discouraged me however. If I can enter, and observe, that is an interaction of sorts, and could develop into actual physical interventions. At least, I hypothesize.
Despite having been described by peers as having a bad attitude, there is an underlying optimism in me that those suffering in The Shadow World can be helped. In fact, I feel that it is our duty as good people to intervene in some manner when suffering is found. I would go as far as saying, in fact, that those who ignore The Shadow World are more inhumane and of a negative disposition than myself. They assume there is nothing to be done, without having made meaningful attempts.
Furthermore, I must remind you dear reader, that the complexity of the issue is precisely the reason I have, to my recollection, accrued over ninety-three attempts at correspondence with various governmental organisations, at the local, national, and international level. This includes institutes such as The United Nations who claim to promote international peace and human rights. Apart from the South African government, I have also contacted various embassies of First World countries, including but not limited to: The United States of America, Russia, Germany, The United Kingdom, and Canada.
Attempts to broach this issue as a humanitarian crisis have failed. I have received little to no response, and mostly accusations of insanity. Some have even slighted me by stating the issues I am proposing are of a supernatural nature, and such issues are not of humanitarian concern. What kind of short-sighted intellectuals are these, who assume there is no scientific explanation for The Shadow World?
Furthermore, I have become the laughingstock of the Political Science department at The University of Cape Town. My simple assertion is this: beyond the First World\Third World paradigm, there exists a Fourth World, or Shadow World if you will, with a politics that defies our current frames of analysis. They have placed me on sabbatical, banned me from teaching, and strongly suggested I do not pursue studies of The Shadow World any further.
Due to these various constraints, I will note some of what I’ve seen here, for some peace of mind, and perhaps to publish on a blog, or online academic platform anonymously.
Afterall, information should not be suppressed no matter how absurd it appears to be.
Some Notes on The Portal Location
Firstly, I would like to mention the location of the portal and the difficulty in entering it. Despite legislation and the clear demarcation of appropriate pedestrian crossings, my kinsmen have a preference towards crossing roads at their own discretion. These rogue crossings often occur on main roads rife with traffic, as well as busy highways. In Cape Town where I live, this phenomenon is particularly common on the N2 highway, which travels from the inner city, and all the way up the South African coast, past Durban, and into Ermelo.
Mere minutes out of the Cape Town inner city, right after the suburb of Langa, there is a popular spot for individuals to run across the highway at their discretion. If, for example, you are heading towards the Cape Town International Airport, with Bonteheuwel to your left, and Welcome to your right, it is likely you will witness this phenomenon.
That is where I witnessed the first disappearance. I witnessed ten more before taking further action. It appears, these highway crossers had accidently discovered the portal. It is difficult to notice people vanishing into thin air when you are trying not to hit them or other vehicles. In fact, this peculiarity is rather convenient in hiding The Shadow World’s existence.
In order to be completely sure that I was indeed witnessing people disappearing in the middle of the highway, I drove into Bonteheuwel, parked my car, and ventured over the bridge that connects Bonteheuwel and Welcome. Again, the irony is not lost that appropriate methods to cross the highway exist, but as mentioned earlier, South Africans tend to have their own ways of doing things.
I stood on the bridge for hours watching people run across the highway. Not all would disappear. I made a note of the starting coordinates of those who did. I also noted that the disappearances would occur exactly as the highway crosser vaulted over the concrete road barrier that separates incoming and outgoing traffic.
I always returned to my official government address after each trip, promptly after an hour. I have often wracked my mind over what these various individuals have seen and why they have not spoken up. Surely, like myself, after an hour or so, they were returned promptly to their home addresses, I wondered. It is here where I take a moment for an anecdote regarding the politics of the Western Cape, and South Africa as a whole.
Any academic worth their salt can tell of the great inequality this beautiful country is mired by. Along with this inequality comes a nasty racial element. The country is also mired by poor service delivery. It is my speculation that the majority of these highway crossers came from lower income areas, and like myself, are persons of colour. Even in my position of relative privilege, as a previously renowned academic, concerns are not often taken seriously by the authorities.
In the private sphere too, I have been undermined by white peers in various places, many of them with the combined intelligence of a panda and dodo, yet an ego the polar opposite size. Again, I mention how the reactions to my bringing up The Shadow World have been. Let us not reduce things to class and race alone, but I have a sneaky suspicion the others who have disappeared would have an even harder task of convincing authorities of The Shadow World’s existence. Some of them can’t even get basic running water from the state, so what chance would they have of convincing said government of a parallel universe?
Thus, I will leave these clear instructions and coordinates for those with the necessary scientific grit to pursue. For the brave, and those interested in the furthering of scientific study, I offer this method.
1. One must stand on one end of the highway at the given GPS coordinates
(33°57’30.0″S 18°33’07.3″E).
2. One must run at full sprint across the highway, making sure to not be hit by incoming traffic.
3. On reaching the barrier that divides incoming and outgoing traffic, one must leap over.
4. Upon coming down, one will enter The Shadow World.
The Shadow World
The Place of Unequalness
Where to begin, dear reader? Upon entering this place, I was indeed aghast. All things were abominably out of form. Human limbs overgrown and dragged around. Eyeballs taking up the entire skull, to the point where the brain has not enough space or form to function. Mentally inhibited and dripping with pus. Some growths offered praise and renown to the victim, and others nothing but suffering. Enlarged legs to perform athletic feats, providing praise, or emaciated legs, forcing one to crawl, or perhaps worse, withered bodies with which one could only lie in the same place, looking upward, until death.
Making matters worse, those with physical prowess took to regular abuse of those less fortunate. They went as far as to organize sporting events around said abuse. The architecture of this place had no sense, appearing surreal. One long housing form, no outside to speak of. Like a walking within an infinite cave, one would need to adjust their body to navigate, crawling here, walking there, jumping across random pits, or jumping up into crawl spaces. Gravity was rather questionable here, making the navigation of such a place possible in its randomness.
The mentioned sporting events would take place in large openings resembling enormous caverns, some of which I could not take the measure. Often enough I would poke a finger through a tiny opening, only to be sluiced through to one of these enormous caverns.
The grand sporting events that took place within these enormous caverns consisted of ritual abuse. Verbal mocking competitions for example, very akin to battle raps or roasting competitions. The physically superior would mock the less endowed to their greatest ability. The greatest insult wins.
These competitions could also take a most violent turn. Say perhaps, the individuals with overdeveloped legs would partake in stomping competitions. They would gather those most hobbled, those with just torsos as bodies, but still completely conscious, their eyes, noses and ears attached to their chests, still capable of feeling. They would gather these individuals and partake in rib breaking.
The methods of winning would vary. At times it would be those who could render their victim a bloody pile of meat first. Other times those who could draw bile, piss or faeces first. Other times, those who could elicit the biggest reaction from the invalid. Perhaps a scream, perhaps a limb twitch.
These competitions would go on and on, and often on being returned to my residence I would retch immediately, The Shadow World not even providing me the physical ability to react to the horrors. It would all out on my return to my own physical plane. Often, I’d be sickly for weeks after a visit to this place.
The Place of Anarchy
What can I say? Dear reader, what can I say of The Place of Anarchy?
Lawlessness. I was most thankful to be but an observer in this place. Killings were rampant. My field of expertise is not statistics, but, based on my observations, I would put the life expectancy of a human in this place to be 20 years of age. A plane of only veldt.
As it were, navigating this realm was simple enough. Walking through a long corridor of long grass and carnage. It would seem the corridor was narrowed simply so you could feel the carnage in all its glory. In fact, I feel I did experience much of the violence I encountered. Indeed, I felt as if I were in the State of Nature itself. The strongest man wins. The biggest barbarian. If I could say man? Indeed, they were genderless as mannequins. Mannequin persons forever engaged in barbarism.
Waist deep in violence, I would push on, my mind experiencing forms of pain inconceivable. I would only want to be out, but to exit that realm one had to keep walking through the pain. Endless beatings. Bare handed; for there was no matter to form weapons with. Just enormous brutes at each other’s throats, fighting over what, I could not understand.
They appeared to me at least to not require sustenance as you or I would, and thus I could find no logic to their actions. They appeared almost singular, if not identical. No strange differences to divide themselves, yet divided they were almost always.
Brutes would form bands to assault other brutes, and so forth, but to no end. Only to pummel the “enemy” to death, then turn on one another, and begin the pummelling anew. More peculiar still, despite the constant death, there appeared always a fresh supply of brutes to continue the orgy of violence.
Returning from this realm, I would be wracked with nightmares of blood. The endless swamp of limbs. I would envision these brutes coming for me in my home, beating me endlessly, feeling the pain of each kick and punch, unable to sleep for months at a time.
Admittedly, at this stage my health began to deteriorate. I suppose this contributed to the loss of my work. I would arrive dishevelled, half asleep, and have fits of pain I could not tell were real or not. Students no doubt found my random collapses peculiar. The pain would be so intense at times, that despite my efforts I could not hold back the wails of agony.
If anything, how my intellectual curiosity had me returning for more, I do not know. Perhaps it is why everyone thought me mad, but I was obsessed, compelled to understand, or find a solution to the plight of these humanoids I was encountering.
The Parliament of Clowns
This place, dear reader, was particularly obnoxious. It was far less ethereal than the other two, consisting of a grand citadel. Though enormous it followed the basic architect of a royal court of old. Elevated by platforms to the right were the five grotesque Jesters. Rulers of the plane. Rather than puffy hats and bells, their hats were reptilian in nature with tentacles, writhing about upon their heads. Their Jester clubs were of bone, adorned with the heads of screaming women, their eyes unsettlingly wide.
Their faces were reptilian too, and they would contort according to the strange mechanics of the various games they engaged in. Elongated beaks jutted from their faces, long as a hadedas, curved, and much like the hadeda, they would cackle endlessly at their games. The laughter was piercing, resonating in your brain, your ears would burn and bleed, yet there was nothing you could do to make it stop. Their bodies were reptilian scales of multicoloured patterns that flickered bright colours in the light, at times blinding to the eyes, forcing you to look away.
Before us was an orchestra and dancers. The dancers would not dance as much as fidget and shudder uncomfortably. They did not seem to follow the music, not that there was music to follow per se, just a single note droned by all; the brass, the strings, the woodwinds, one long unison note, never stopped. The choir, in a low chant would say, “we are above the petty laws of man.”
One must spectate, chained together with thousands of other people while The Jesters torture the selected ten humans over and over again. Well, at least these beings resembled humans more than those of the other planes. We seemed drawn from various races and cultures, wearing multi-cultured clothing. Suits here, kaftans there, head wraps, top hats.
The Jesters played peculiar games. One Jester would chop off the head of a human, then give another human the medical knowledge to fix the fatal injury and ease the suffering of the headless, the headless stayed alive through means I don’t know. However, another Jester would interject, providing tools too crude to perform the necessary operations adequately. We all had to watch in misery, while the ill-fated medical practitioner made botched after botched attempt at reattaching the head. The headless’ body would wriggle about, while the head would scream with each delicate movement of surgery.
Further still, The Jesters would sow together, three or four humans, sow together the other six, then pit them against each other in meaningless combat and squabble. They would squabble amongst themselves too. Falsely. They would perform mock sympathy for a victim, mock antipathy for another, gain their trust of one, then pit them against each other, switching roles, switching faces in some grotesque sport.
Their faces would twist in mimic of whom they support, then they would switch faces, until the miserable victim could no longer tell, who supports whom, or who is on whose side, but we depressed spectators would see it all, and must watch their trust and bodies being broken over and over.
End
These are the three realms I encountered in The Shadow World. I endeavour to continue my efforts, in order to figure out if there are further realms, and to see if I can locate those who have also travelled to The Shadow World. This is the end of my account and I can only hope it reaches the right hands so we might end the suffering of those trapped within.
Addendum
Prof. Xonti of The University of Edinburgh, Parapsychology
I am moving to investigate Prof. Khota’s claims attached herewith in. On arrival back in South African I unfortunately learned that poor Dr. Khota had succumbed to a car accident. As it were, the portal he claims he had discovered eventually proved lethal in a manner. He is hospitalized, and in a coma. His recovery is uncertain.
Now I must steel myself to make similar dangerous attempts at highway crossing in order to further my research.
Mandisi is a South African writer, drummer, composer, and producer. He currently resides in Hartebeespoort, South Africa. His fiction has been published in the likes of Afrosf: Science Fiction by African Writers, AfroSF V3 and Omenana. His poetry has been published in #The Coinage Book One, and his academic work has been published in The Thinker. He is also a member of the African Speculative Fiction Society. For updates and information on Mandisi’s writing and musical endeavours, follow him on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. He also runs a blog under his alias, The Dark Cow.
It is a very dark night, and Mbulawa sees himself exiting a gate near a big thorn tree. A few steps away there is a streetlight, and a woman in a flowing black dress is standing under its weak light, looking in his direction.
He wants to turn around and walk in the other direction, but it is too late as she has already seen him. The street is deserted, and a sudden gust of wind sends dry leaves skittering across it like imbibers not so steady on their feet, out for a late night.
Don’t be afraid, she says as he gets near her. Her face is serene, and her voice is soft like the rash of stars in the sky.
I am not afraid, Mbulawa replies, but there is a tremor in his voice. He walks past her, pretending to look aside, as if minding his own business. His limbs feel unusually stiff, in fact his entire body, as if his skin wants to crack, and there is a smell he cannot figure out, like something burning, that seems to be hovering over him – maybe a careless somebody has burned their cooking in the houses that line the street, the thought crosses his mind.
But this one thing is confusing him, almost making him panic – he cannot remember what he is doing outside in the night, or even where he is coming from besides that he had seen himself exiting that gate. Before that his mind is a blank slate.
A few steps away he looks back over his shoulder, and his mouth opens. The woman has disappeared from under the street light, just like that – poof. He looks around, but she is nowhere to be seen, not in the street, not anywhere near the houses, or the shadows.
A man is walking on the other side of the street. Dressed in a suit and a tie, he seems to be in a hurry, as if he doesn’t trust the night, and he keeps casting glances over his shoulders, now this one, now the other. Then Mbulawa sees the woman again. She has miraculously appeared behind the man, and is so near to him that if she were to reach out, she can touch his shoulder.
The woman looks across the street at him, and he hears her voice as if she is speaking right inside his ear. He knows I am following him, she is saying, pointing at the man in front of her. But he can’t see, or hear me.
But I can see and hear you, he replies after some hesitation. He still cannot stop his voice from trembling, the tremors seem to be riding it like a chameleon on a branch in the wind. And the man the woman is following makes no sign that he has heard this conversation – he just continues walking forward, and behind him the woman follows.
Of course you can do that, her voice wafts over to him, as you are now in my dimension.
He stops walking, trying to make sense of what she is saying.
You look confused, she says. She is now walking beside him, although he had not seen her cross the street. But that is normal, you will soon get used to it, she adds.
Get used to what?
In reply, she presses a finger to her lips, her eyes across the street.
The man on the other side of the street is now heading towards the gate of a yellow painted house that has a wire fence around it. He reaches it, there is the jangle of keys and a chain, and taking one quick look behind him, the man opens the gate, steps inside, the jangle again, and the gate is closed and locked. A streetlight in front of the house lights up its yard in a yellow light. The man walks to the front door, unlocks it, and taking another look over his shoulder, he steps inside the house. The door closes.
Where are you going to? The woman asks him, her eyes on the door across the street. You seem lost.
I – I don’t know. A stammer slips into his voice. I – I have forgotten.
Please don’t be worried. Her voice is soothing. You are not alone.
What do you mean?
You will soon know.
But why can’t I remember anything?
That’s normal. You will get over it too.
He is now watching the house across the street with her. He doesn’t even know why he is doing that – something must be wrong with him, maybe he should go to a doctor in the morning for a checkup, that is if he can escape the woman without anything happening to him.
Across the street, when the door had closed, he had seen the curtain on the single window that faced their way part, then fall into place again. A light has now come on in the house. There is another gust of wind, and more dry leaves skitter across the street.
The woman looks at him and smiles, but he keeps his gaze fixed on the lit window. From the corner of his eye, he sees her look at two small rocks on the ground beside her – and they launch into the air as if from a catapult. They arc into the sky towards the house they are looking at, and dropping on its roof, they rattle several times, the sound so sharp in the brooding evening as if it is inside his head, and then it dies away. He sees the curtain jerk, and the man’s face stares out, silhouetted by the light behind it.
A light tries to come on in Mbulawa’s confused mind. He is sure he knows the man, but he cannot remember his name, or how he knows him, just as he cannot remember anything else, but as he looks at the man, a strong smell of petrol assails his nostrils, although no car has passed by, and for an inexplicable reason he feels terror bubbling inside him, leaving him almost breathless.
Are you okay? The woman is looking at him.
I – I’m fine.
Across the street, the curtain closes, and the face of the man disappears.
The woman looks at another stone, and it too catapults across the street, there is the tinkle of breaking glass at the lighted window, and a moment later the door is hurled open and the man comes out, now without his suit jacket and tie. He is screaming:
‘Please leave me alone! Please go away!’
Then the lights in the windows of the houses on either side of the man’s house simultaneously come on, as if from a single switch. A woman in a skirt and white bra steps out of the door of the house on the left, and a moment later, a shirtless man from the one on the right.
‘What’s going on?’ the woman calls out, and two children, both naked, appear from behind her, but she pushes them back. ‘Please get back into the house and close the door,’ she says to them. The children disappear behind her, and the door closes, snuffing out the shaft of light that had been streaming from it.
‘A ghost was following me when I was coming home a few minutes ago,’ the man replies. He has stopped screaming. ‘Now it is throwing stones at my house!’
They are all bathed by the light from the streetlight, almost as if they are characters on a stage.
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ the shirtless man says. ‘You have started again!’
‘I’m telling the truth! Some of the stones broke my window!’
They all look at the window.
‘Your window is not broken,’ the shirtless man says. He has dreadlocks that are tied back. ‘This has to stop. Every night you scream you are seeing ghosts, and when we come out we don’t see anything. Then you say stones are being thrown at your roof, but we don’t hear anything. Now you are saying somebody broke your window, but it’s not broken. I have just about had enough of this. I’m now beginning to suspect there is something wrong with you!’
‘But, Mkhize,’ the woman in the bra says. ‘If he says he is being haunted we cannot dispute that. Maybe he is seeing the ghosts and we cannot because whatever they want to do is not directed at us.’
‘Haunted by what, Rebeca?’ Mkhize says ‘We are just wasting our time being sympathetic towards him when he is just being crazy and preventing us from sleeping.’
The man who is the subject of the conversation is now standing silently, as if he is listening to something that no one else can hear.
‘But what can I do when I am being haunted?’ he finally says. ‘I swear by the name of my dead grandmother that there is a ghost tormenting me. I could sense it walking behind me just after I had passed the cemetery.’
‘If that is the case then you must go inside the cemetery and tell it to stop following you,’ Mkhize says.
‘Did you go and see that sangoma whose address I gave you last week when this all started, Siziba?’ Rebecca addresses the man by his name, which does not sound familiar to Mbulawa.
‘I did,’ Siziba replies. ‘She gave me some herbs to burn in the house, but that has not stopped what is happening.’
‘Then you should go and see her again,’ Rebecca says. ‘Please tell her it didn’t work and she might try something else. Now I am afraid for my family, what if the ghost decides to start haunting us too since we are your neighbors?’
‘I’m not going to lose any sleep over that,’ Mkhize says. ‘I am going back inside to sleep, I have to wake up early tomorrow morning for work.’ He steps into his house, and a moment later the light in his window is switched off.
****
But what is happening? Mbulawa asks the woman in the black dress. They are still standing across the street, their eyes on Siziba and Rebecca
What is happening is what you are seeing, Mbulawa.
He does not reply for a moment. There is a now a flutter in his heart, and he realizes he is panicking. I need to go home, he finally says.
I will show you your home in a moment, the woman replies. I know you don’t remember anything just now, and no, you are not in a dream.
Why is it that I am able to see you? He asks. Is something about to happen to me?
She places a finger across her lips, and points across the street.
****
Rebecca is still talking to Siziba, who appears to have calmed down.
‘I think you should go inside the house now and try to get some sleep,’ Mbulawa hears her say.
‘But what if it tries to do something again?’ Siziba replies.
Rebeca walks to her gate, which is also closed, and she looks up and down the street. ‘I don’t think anything is going to happen.’ She looks across the street, right in the direction of Mbulawa and the woman, and he is sure she is seeing them. ‘I don’t see anything.’ she looks at Siziba again. ‘Do you have any salt?’
‘It’s all finished,’ he replies. ‘I have been sprinkling it around my yard ever since the herbs the sangoma gave me ran out. Please tell me, Rebecca, do you think I am losing my mind?’
‘You are not, Siziba,’ she replies, then her voice lowers. ‘Unlike our other neighbor,’ she nods her head across the fences towards Mkhize’s door. ‘There is no reason why I shouldn’t believe what you are telling us. Please wait here, I will get you some salt.’
She goes into her house, and a moment later she is back holding a cup.
‘There,’ she says. ‘Use this.’
Siziba steps to the fence and takes the cup, and pouring its contents into his hand, he sprinkles salt all over his yard, first following his fence, past the gate, the middle of the yard, then finished with this, he hands the cup back over the fence and wipes his hand on the seat of his trousers.
‘I can come over and sleep with you tonight,’ Rebecca whispers as she takes the cup, and Mbulawa can hear this too as if she is speaking in his ear. ‘The father of my kids is working night today.’
‘Not tonight, Rebecca,’ Siziba whispers back. ‘My mind is too full of other things. Maybe tomorrow night.’
She leans over the fence and kisses him on the mouth.
‘Please be strong,’ she says. ‘This might end up making it not to rise when we need it.’ She laughs lightly.
With that they part, each going back into their houses, and their doors close.
****
You said you wanted to see your home? The woman is asking Mbulawa. Please follow me and I will show you.
But why is it that I can’t remember anything? His fear of her seems to have melted away, at least for the moment.
You will soon find out, just follow me.
Then crossing the street, she leads him around the block of the house they have been looking at. And he cannot explain to himself why his fear of her has gone away. They are now walking down the line of houses this side of the block. Things are now beginning to seem familiar to Mbulawa, as if he has been here before. The woman has stopped in front of a house that is behind the yellow painted one, this one with brown bare bricks, and without a fence. There is no light on its front window. The woman points at it.
This was your last place of residence, she says. You used to rent a room here with your family, but someone else lives there now.
He looks at the house. There is a familiar feeling about it, and a sudden surge of memory overcomes him, but it is all garbled up like the tape of a cassette that has become twisted. Suddenly the tight feeling on his skins seems to have intensified, and that smell of something burning has come to his nostrils too. His knees have become weak, and he wants to sit down, but the woman touches his elbow.
And don’t worry about your family, she says, her hand still on his elbow. Your wife and child are safe with your parents in the rural areas. The boy is now grown up. You have been failing to ascend from your final sleep for about two years, but today is your day when you fully awaken and join us.
***
She is leading him away from the house, walking in front of him, and they are both silent. They are back across the street again, looking at the yellow painted house.
I have one more thing to do before we go away to where everything will be explained to you, the woman says
And then she disappears, and where she has been standing are now two black cats. They run across the street, and coming to the yellow house, they leap effortlessly over the fence, and while one heads for the front door, the other goes to the window. Standing there, they start howling, almost like distressed kids. A moment later the door bursts open, and the man comes out running, this time naked. He is screaming again, now louder than before. He runs to the gate, tries to vault over it but his foot gets caught and he tumbles on to the other side and rolls on the ground, he quickly leaps up and flees into the night, still screaming and arms flailing.
***
Everything is now dreamy. The darkness has become a thick fog, and it is convulsing and continuously shape shifting. The houses and the street have all disappeared, and the street lights are blobs of yellow floating moons. The woman in the black dress, barely visible, is walking in front of Mbulawa, and he is following. Then the whirls of fog start to change into recognizable shapes, people, animals, and something that looks like a terrifying monster looms ahead, but it quickly changes into a tree – it is the thorn tree at the side of that gate that he had exited from when he had become aware of himself. Now looking at it from this side, he sees that there is a tall steel arch over its entrance which has a sign on it written MAGWEGWE CEMETRY. The sign is broken in the middle with the CEMETRY hanging downwards, and swinging like a pendulum as if a finger has touched it. The woman walks in under it and Mbulawa follows. He cannot think of anything else to do.
This is your new home, the woman is saying, your final resting place after you were killed.
That was part of the memory that had assailed his mind as they had been looking at the house a while ago, the one the woman had described as where he used to live. A new feeling has come over him: acceptance.
I remember everything now, he says. They are walking between graves, some with tombstones, and some just anonymous mounds. The fog is intensifying, and he can now barely see the woman. It was that man, Siziba, who poured the petrol over my body after they had shot me, thinking that I was already dead. It was in some place far in the bush after they had abducted me from the street that day after the demonstration in the city. And after dousing me with the petrol Siziba used his lighter to set me on fire.
It is his last day today with a clear mind, the woman says. We were waiting for you to ascend from the first sleep after death so you could see what happens to him. He will never know any peace from now onwards, and so too his colleagues who are going around abducting and killing those whom they perceive as enemies of the state. We are now ready to visit the next one from his team, and this time it will be you taking the lead. Your body is all charred up from the burns you suffered, and that should be enough if the target sees you. We mean no harm to law abiding citizens, we are their spiritual guardians who have decided to make it their duty to protect them from those who act with impunity.
As she says this, she melts into the dark fog, which suddenly lifts, and Mbulawa finds himself standing at a bus stop. It is night, and a full moon is scrapping the sky. He is watching a man in jeans and a white shirt walking out of the ramshackle gate of a car park on the other side of the street, after briefly chatting to a night guard holding a lit torch and giving him something. He remembers the man. He is the one who had been driving the car after they had abducted him, whom he had briefly seen before they had thrown the sack over his head. There had been four men in the car, two in front, and two at the back. The ones at the back had forced him to lie face down on the floor of the car, their shoes pressing hard on his head and back.
Leaving the bus stop, Mbulawa walks across the street and follows behind the man, so close he can almost touch him, but the man keeps on walking, showing no sign that he has sensed what is behind him in the deserted street, for there is nothing to see for the human eye, not yet.
-End-
Christopher Mlalazi is from Zimbabwe and the author of the three novels, Running With Mother (2012) which has been translated into German, Italian, and Spanish (HarperCollinsMX), They Are Coming (2014), The Border Jumper(2019), and the short story collection Dancing With Life: Tales From the Township (2008). He is the co-winner of the 2008 Oxfam/Novib PEN Freedom of Expression Award for the play The Crocodile Of Zambezi, and an alumni of the Caine Prize Workshop, Iowa Writers Program (IWP), Feuchtwanger fellow (USA), Nordik-Africa Institute (Sweden), Hannah-Ardent Scholarship(Germany), Casa Refugio (Mexico City). He has an Associate Degree in Computer Science from the University of the People(Online study).
Matthew K Chikono is a writer from Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. His short fiction has appeared both imprint and online. He complied and edited a short story collection The Rules of The City. His solo short story collection, Dreams of Paradise, is set to be published in 2022. Matthew is also the writer for the Themba Comic Book series.
The boy didn’t look his age, he was seven summers old but looked much younger than that. His frail body, from head to toe, was covered with goat and cow skins. The animal skins were warm enough against the winter wind that had been raging for some days. The cold had frozen every bit of happiness in the village. The boy, plump and warm, had left the rest of the cold and hunger-stricken-children glued to their mothers’ breasts, mothers who were trying to warm their own bodies with single pieces of charcoal. That day, like every other day, the boy had come to talk to the fish. The fish were always happy and ready to give joy to their visitor.
The boy staggered upstream, skipping upon the rocks making sure not to get his feet wet. He could see his village a distance away, downstream. Thirty or so huts clustered around the Chief’s kraal, all of which were surrounded by a wall of stone and mortar. That was the only home the boy had ever known.
Of course, he wasn’t allowed to wander off that far from the village, but he knew no one would notice. Not his mother; she was the only healer in the village, always administering herbs to the old and the sick for the entire day. Not his father, the Chief, he was rich and always fixing the villagers’ lives. They did not care about the boy, but the fishes did. The fishes would console and give the boy the love he deserved. With this in mind the boy’s resolve to reach the pond where the fishes waited for him was strengthened. He could see the pond a few paces away.
Then, the pond exploded right in front of his eyes.
A large body of water rose some feet into the air before splashing back to the pond. The boy stood still. His happy fishes were thrown out of the water. Some of the fishes were stuck in the trees. The boy could not fathom what had happened. He watched the pond suspiciously from a little distance away.
As the murky water settled, the boy could see a large fish, twice as large as he was, inside the water. Surely that was magic. Then it popped its head from the water and started coughing and gasping for air. The fish had a human head, a woman’s head. A chill ran through the boy’s spine. He had heard tales of children abducted by mermaids only to be returned to their families decades later. The boy didn’t want to live in a cave under the water, eating worms the mermaid would offer him.
The boy took one step back. The mermaid swam to the edge of the pond. The boy couldn’t run away, not yet anyways, he had to see the mermaid’s hind which was said to be that of a fish. The mermaid dragged itself out of the pond and crawled to the higher ground with its own two feet.
The boy screamed. The only mermaid he had ever seen happened to have a woman’s head and torso but a pair of legs too. It was scary and deserved a scream from the boy. Hearing the boy scream, the mermaid turned to the direction of the boy and screamed even louder. It grabbed a stone and threw it in the boy’s direction. The stone missed by far and fell in the middle of the pond.
“No!” The mermaid jumped into the pond, and started searching furiously where the stone had sunk, “look what you have made me do.”
The boy didn’t know what he had done. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to apologise. He took that moment to observe the mermaid standing waist deep in the water. It was young and pretty enough to conform to the legendary beauty of the mermaids. He thought she could have been a mermaid, but her hair was short, black, and rugged. Her face was pale, not the usual dark complexion the boy was accustomed to seeing in his village. The boy thought she was beautiful and wanted to marry her. Impala skins, which was what she wore, were rare and reserved only for the noble village elders. The usual necklaces, beads and wristbands didn’t interest the boy.
The mermaid walked out of the pond, turning back after every step, hoping to find the stone she had thrown earlier. Between the glances the boy noticed the woman’s belly poking out of her animal skins, she was pregnant.
“Where are the rest of the villagers?” the mermaid asked the boy, who only pointed downstream with his shaky finger. The mermaid looked closely at the boy for the first time, unsure what to make of him, “What is your name, boy?”
“Khumalo,” The boy stammered back. The mermaid’s face saddened at the name. She looked past the boy, all the way to her own past.
“Khumalo. I once knew someone named Khumalo.” She recalled with sorrow.
The mermaid took one last glance at the pond and eagerly made her way down to the village, caressing her huge stomach.
***
Years of experience had taught Rati that it was easy to slice open a bream in one hand motion. That way she would spare herself from the fins that could easily stick her fingers together. She hummed the song her mother had always sang to her. Singing always made chores seem easy. In no time she had sliced open four breams and cleaned out the intestines and was ready to leave to barter with the villagers.
“Singing your witch song again?”
The voice startled Rati but she quickly regained her composure after she noticed it was Khumalo who had sneaked behind her again. She gave him a sly smile and continued with her fish.
” I told you not to startle me when I am doing chores, my mother doesn’t like it.” Rati said, pointing to her mother who was standing in the river staring intently at the waters.
Rati had lived on the riverbank with her mother for as long as she remembered. It had always been the two of them, well, three of them, counting Khumalo who had visited every single day. Since she was a baby Khumalo had come all the way from the village to play with her, none of the children wanted to play with her. She and her mother had never been welcome to stay in the village. Her mother had built a shack from mud and branches and had raised her daughter in it by fishing in the river every day. She was the only fisherwoman known in all the lands.
“I will tell you again, it’s not a witch song. It’s a hymn a trope-bearer uses to prepare the way. I told you what a trope is right?”
“You already told me, Rati,” Khumalo said with resignation,” it is the magical boulder that carried your mother to this land.”
Rati sighed. Despite her mother’s warning Rati had told Khumalo about the trope, a magical rock that needed incantations to open channels to travel to distant lands. Rati’s mother had travelled from those distant lands years ago. She had lost the rock on the first day she had arrived. If her mother was not mistaken the rock lay somewhere in the river. For sixteen years her mother had woken up every morning in search of the rock in the chilly water.
Her mother had told her it was a secret between mother and daughter; but Rati was of age now and would need a husband soon. Khumalo, being a Chief’s son and a close family friend, was a prospect she didn’t want to miss so why keep a secret from someone who would marry her?
“Khumalo, can you accompany me to the village? Rati asked. “I have to trade this basket of fish with the blacksmith”
She knew he would say yes. She had planned it all to happen that way. In preparation for her walk in the village with Khumalo, she had waxed the goat skins she wore. She had to make sure every other girl in the village knew the Rati was laying claim to the Chief’s son.
Khumalo, unable to say no to the prettiest face he knew, grabbed Rati’s basket and led the way, awkwardly glancing at her as she followed in his heels, a smile of triumph on her face.
*
It was just a pond, but they had already started calling her the lady of the lake, a mockery to what she did every day. Except when she was sleeping, she was always in the water looking for the trope. The fish just came to her but what she needed was the trope. She had been searching for it for sixteen years, every single day of them.
On that day she was standing in the water, searching for her way out. She stood up to stretch her back and noticed her daughter cleaning the breams she had caught earlier that morning. Her daughter was as beautiful as a mermaid, none of the girls in the village could compare to her.
On the night of her daughter’s birth, the lady of the lake had seen the beauty of what she had given to the world. A girl with no father, a creature who would suffer the wrath of the world. She gave the little child her own name, Rati. The lady of the lake was sure that her own daughter would suffer the way she had suffered. She was not happy about it, but it was the curse of being raised by a single mother.
Rati, the mother, noticed her daughter cleaning the fish, oblivious to the Chief’s son sneaking up behind her. The daughter was startled for a moment but relaxed a bit when she saw who it was. Then the two started to talk. She was too far to hear anything but from the way her daughter blushed, she knew everything there was.
“It’s a good thing that she fell in love with the Chief’s son. If she gets to marry him, she will live comfortably for the rest of her life,” She said under her breath.
As if on cue the two love birds started to walk towards the village. The boy carrying the basket with the fish whilst the girl followed behind him with a grin on her face. The boy looked happy. Khumalo, that was the boy’s name. The Lady of the lake felt ashamed of herself for not remembering the boy’s name.
On her first day on this strange land, she had met Khumalo, a seven-year-old boy then. He had startled her, and she had lost the trope, she didn’t blame him though. The boy had led her to the village. The villagers did not accept her into their home, she was pregnant but without a husband. They, however, allowed her to build her own shelter near the river. The boy had been fascinated by her belly. He had visited almost every day in her pregnancy months. Upon the arrival of Rati, the daughter, the boy had started visiting every day to play with the child. Sixteen years later they were about to get married. Rati the mother wasn’t disappointed. All she wanted was her daughter not tell Khumalo about the trope.
As Rati and Khumalo disappeared towards the village, Rati the mother then decided to take a break from her search. It was way past midday after all, and she had other duties to attend to.
Everything would had been easier if he were there.
She hadn’t thought about him in years, Sifelani, the father of her daughter. The last time she saw Sifelani, he lay in a pool of his own blood slowly dying from a stab wound. Rati the mother had only glanced once and continued singing the song of the trope bearer. The trope had opened the channels, she had escaped with her yet-to-be-born child. That was the day she had lost her husband and her peace.
As Rati the mother came out of her reverie, she heaved herself out of the water. Just then, she slipped and hit her face on a turtle’s back. She broke a tooth. She glared at the turtle; she hadn’t seen one in ages. She picked it up and closely examined it. The turtle was heavier than expected. It was just a rock. A hiss of disappointment escaped her mouth. She threw the stone near the fireplace, intending to make it a base stone for her cooking pots.
She didn’t notice the fire she had lighted thereafter melt the dirt around the new stone neither did she notice the familiar design of the trope appearing on the stone. She didn’t notice the trope she had hauled in the pond years earlier glowing beside the fire.
*
Khumalo walked slowly, his bare feet crushing dead Autumn leaves on the ground. Years had passed since he had visited Rati in his goat and cow hides. He now wore a cheetah hide; he wasn’t a nobody anymore in village. In his hand he held a long spear. The spear that the royal and the elite only held.
The well-trodden path was familiar to his feet, he could walk all the way with his eyes closed. It was almost evening as he made his way to the lone hut. A flock of birds flew away as he came closer to the hut. No smoke came from the vents or the entrance, Khumalo thought the house was empty.
For a while he thought of going home and coming back the following day, but he decided against it. Whatever was on his mind he had to talk to Rati that day. He was ready to profess his love to her.
He sat outside the hut and waited for her. Between the croaking frogs, the chirping crickets, and a distant laughter of hyenas, Khumalo heard a song. Someone was singing inside Rati’s hut. Without thinking much Khumalo barged into the hut.
From the dimming fire Khumalo could see a woman kneeling in front of a glowing stone. Strange sounds were coming out of her mouth. It took a moment to realise it was Rati’s mother. Sensing the presence of another person the woman turned around to see him glaring at her. She screamed and stood stork still, shocked.
“Khumalo!” She ejaculated, “you scared me.”
Khumalo kept his eyes on the glowing stone. He noticed it changing colour to black. It definitely was the trope.
“I didn’t know you were coming. I was going to speak to you at your ascension tonight. Congratulations Chief Khumalo!”
“Sifelani, Chief Sifelani. That is the name I am taking upon my ascension to the chieftain tonight.” Khumalo spoke softly, surprised at his own ability to keep his composure.
“Rati is not here my son, I will tell her you stopped by.” The mother said picking up the trope and neatly wrapping it in cowhide. She could see Khumalo eyeing it.
“That’s the trope, isn’t it?” The boy started,” You don’t have to lie, Rati had told me all about it. You want to travel to other worlds, taking Rati with you, and leaving me all alone?”
Rati’s mother was taken back by the gentle boy’s sudden outburst. She mumbled something about the trope not working well and leaving Rati behind. Before she could think of a good reply the boy struck her on the forehead with a log from the fire. She didn’t even scream; she just fell dead on the floor. Without giving it much thought, Khumalo grabbed the trope and dug a small hole in the fireplace. He hid the trope inside the hole and covered it with some ash. No one would ever think of looking there.
The realization that he had murdered a woman in her own hut suddenly dawned upon him. Not sure what to do next, the boy who was soon-to-be chief continued staring at the woman on the floor. The dim hut exponentiating the gloominess of the situation. He wasn’t sure what was happening, he stood there looking sheepishly until he heard a voice singing and footsteps approaching the hut.
“Mother?”
*
Chief Sifelani led the procession, his wife followed a few strides behind him,, then came the rest of the villagers. The villagers had been told that on arriving the river bank they had to stop whilst the Chief and his wife continued to make their way to the old hut.
“Chief Sifelani,” the woman called,” can we take a moment to rest?”
“I am sorry my love I keep forgetting your condition.” the Chief said, helping the woman to sit on the ground.
The woman giggled. She knew her husband loved her but hated it when she called him Chief Sifelani, he was always Khumalo to her. The husband caressed her stomach. She was heavily pregnant with their first child.
“We should continue walking,” the woman continued,” I haven’t seen my mother’s place in a long time.”
It was almost a year since Rati had left her home. The night she left; she had come back home from fetching firewood from the forest to find the Chief standing upon her mother’s body. Rati had almost lost her sanity then, begging her dead mother to come back to life.
The Chief had calmed her. He had told Rati how he had come to visit them and discovered Rati’s mother laying on the floor with blood coming out of her cracked skull. In between the sobs and the mourning, Rati had asked about the trope her mother had found. The Chief didn’t know anything, and they had searched everywhere together but to no avail.
” I will postpone my ascension tonight,” the boy had proclaimed,” I will find whoever did this to your mother and punish them. Tonight, come with me to the village, I will marry you and take care of you for the rest of your life.”
Rati had left to become Chief Sifelani’s wife. They had laid her mother to rest the following day. Chief Sifelani had searched for the murderer for several months but didn’t find him. A year later the husband and the wife were going to Rati’s mother’s hut for her final memorial rites. The dilapidated hut was still as gloomy as ever.
Rati walked inside the hut, repeating her mother’s name over and over again, praying to the ancestors to accept her mother’s spirit. She did not know any of her mother’s ancestors, so her prayers were short. The Chief stood at the entrance with a resigned look on his face, his mind wandering to distant lands he didn’t know much about.
“When I was born,” Rati said when she was done with the prayers,” my mother buried my umbilical cord in the centre of the fireplace. That way I was tethered to this place and I will always come back home whatever happens.”
Like a manic, the woman started to dig the fireplace with her fingers. The husband was slow to stop her. Instead of finding her umbilical cord her fingers hit the hard-cold trope.
“Khumalo,” Rati started,” this is my mother’s Trope.”
Chief Sifelani nodded slowly, not sure how it would end this time. He formulated a half-baked lie, but it died on his lips with some confusion.
“Do you know what it means?” She asked with awe on her face.
Yes, he knew what it meant. The world had been opened to her, and she would leave him. Even if he followed her, he wouldn’t be a chief but a nobody. If he stayed, she would take their child and leave him. She would leave him, she the only love he had known. He didn’t want to live without her, he knew he couldn’t live without her.
“I can’t let you do that,” Chief Sifelani said to the wife who had already started chanting the song of the trope-bearer,” Rati, I can’t let you go to those distant lands.”
Rati’s face fell, perplexed by her husband’s adamant answer. She stopped chanting in order to explain to her husband that what they had found was worth more than anything in the world. She turned in the direction of her husband to find him walking towards her with a blade in hand.
She froze. This was something she hadn’t expected. She threw the trope in Chief Sifelani’s direction with all her mighty. The trope hit home, and a moan of pain escaped his mouth. The blade fell first, then the man followed. She grabbed the blade and stabbed the man she loved. He screamed then groaned in pain. She didn’t stop stabbing.
The screams alerted the people they had left at the bank and Rati heard the sound of their feet as they ran towards the hut. She looked at her husband lying in a pool of his own blood. She sat on the floor and started chanting the song of the trope bearer. She could feel the trope getting warm, she could see it start glowing.
The footsteps reached the hut entrance. The trope was glowing but not working. Rati knew that her punishment for killing the Chief would be death. She couldn’t let them take her alive, it was better if she died by her own hand. She stood up, the trope in hand, dashed out of the hut and ran past the confused multitude. She jumped into the river; drowning was a better way to die.
*
Rati could feel herself swallowing lots of water. She went deeper into the water. No, drowning wasn’t a good option. Rati changed her mind and decided to get out of the water. Rati pushed her head out of the water and swam to the edge of the river. She crawled to a higher ground where the water couldn’t reach her. A scream pierced her ear. Startled, she turned and screamed back even louder. Thinking that it was one of the villagers trying to capture her. Rati hurled the thing nearest to her, realising a little late that it was the trope she had thrown. A little splash told her it had fallen somewhere in the water.
“No!” Rati screamed at the boy who seemed to be the one who screamed first. She quickly started searching the side she had heard the splash, “Look what you have made me do.”
The boy looked to be six or seven and Rati had never seen him before. She started walking towards the boy who looked nervous standing on the riverbank. The rest of the villagers were not in sight.
“Where are the rest of the villagers?” she asked the boy, who pointed down the river,” what is your name, boy?”
“Khumalo.” The boy stammered a reply.
“Khumalo. I once knew someone named Khumalo.” Rati said with a death-pale face, she recalled Khumalo the boy she had loved, the boy she had made a husband, and the husband she had killed.
The end.
Matthew K Chikono is a writer from Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. His short fiction has appeared both in print and online. He complied and edited a short story collection The Rules of The City. His solo short story collection, Dreams of Paradise, is set to be published in 2022. Matthew is also the writer for the Themba Comic Book series.
Stacy Hardy is a writer, an editor and a teacher. Her short fiction collection, Because the Night, was published by Pocko (London) in 2015. She collaborates with Angolan composer Victor Gama on multimedia musical works and her experimental one woman play, “Museum of Lungs” (2018 - 2019) was performed around the world. She is currently working on a research-and-performance-based collaboration on the geographies and biographies of breath with anthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan and musician Neo Muyanga, as well as the libretto for a new opera composed by Bushra El-Turk.
Possession of a tongue-eating louse is not in itself illegal – although laws to prevent the spread of foreign parasites in most countries make it borderline. Acquisition can be difficult. The louse requires certain conditions to thrive. A damaged or ill louse could prove dangerous, fatal in some instances. Dealers are a rare breed, hard to come by. Often you will find them in port cities, small coast towns in South America and along the trade routes that run down the West African coast – Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.
There is a lively trade out of the urban area that hems the Cape Town harbour. Seek out one of the small diners specialising in seafood. Walk the narrow streets spiralling with galaxies of cheap discount stores, electronics and cell–phone repairs, lingerie shops and gambling parlours. Look for an eatery whose purpose and origins are indistinct. A hole in the wall without signage, its trade only identifiable by the row of low narrow tables, the smells that emanate from the kitchen. Do not be put off if your entrance is greeted by cold stares or open hostility from the other patrons. Remember, you are the foreigner in this context. Take a seat close to the window. When the owner comes, place your order. Persist, even if at first, he feigns ignorance or pretends not to understand your request. Say louse. Learn it’s street names: pou de langue, língua comendo piolho, ulimi kula chawa, ulwimi ludla ulouse. Wrap your tongue around the unfamiliar syllables. Say them with intensity.
If you are lucky, you will be led down a back street or through a narrow alleyway. Another block, a slight shift in demographics, warehouses and factory shops, street kids breathing glue and drag queens selling blowjobs. A back room behind an internet cafe or a small office in a warehouse. If one is prepared to negotiate, one can usually acquire a fresh specimen at a reasonable price. Take care in choosing. On the table is an iron box. The seller sits, turns the box in your direction. Unclasps the lid and swivels it back on its hinge.
The louses greet you in unison, a dense rabble of exotic flesh. They seem longer and thicker here, away from the confines of the mouth. An inexperienced eye might not understand their writhing but anyone with expertise will immediately recognise it as a kind of language; the miming of speech executed with exuberance. Bring your ear closer as if to listen. From that low angle note the merchandises’ appearance. Pay specific attention to colour and texture. A healthy louse is damp and pinkish white. Lean forward and it will rise upward; tip reaching towards you, shaft shifting in a quickened twitch.
Select a specimen, a beautiful mauve shaded urchin. Hold the louse in your upturned palm, cup it. Outside the mouth, the louse loses all agility, moves the way an inchworm does, scuttling in lines, creases, over the folds in the fingers. Its body is armoured in intersecting segments, which, when contracted give it the appearance of a tiny abstract porcelain sheep, a pale knobby creature, like a spectre or an alien, something born of an unknown alchemy. Its head is a small bead, bald and deceptively human, with piercingly black eyes that seem to look into you. The louse has no real legs to speak of. Its underside is a dusted pink, a quivering thing with folds that seem uncannily familiar: an eyelid wrinkled shut, a creased elbow, the pleats of the labia edged in loosely strung doily scallops that dance when you finger them.
Once you have ascertained that the louse is the real thing, not a mutant shrimp or sea-slug, some form of doctored crustacean or isopod, you will want to test its readiness for implantation. Lift the louse gently by positioning your thumb and index finger on either side of the thorax. Bring it to your mouth. Gripping the louse tightly, part your lips. Give it a taste of your tongue. Sometimes just revealing the tip is enough, other times you might need to be more persuasive, to thrust it far out or even wiggle it. Occasionally a small lick might be what’s required to provoke the desired reaction.
If the louse is ripe for tongue-eating, you will feel it; the change in pressure between your fingers, the thorax once slackened, suddenly erect and thrusting, reaching forward towards the pink wetness offered to it. Perhaps it is the premonition of blood, a smell, maybe a taste. The reaction is unmistakable, a sensation not unlike gripping a small penis, that of a child’s maybe – an immature object suddenly alerted to the lure of desire. Pluck at it and feel it react, quiver for an instant, then swell with blood, grow hot and hard… ready.
No one knows exactly what the louse is. Scientists, when forced to comment, point to Cymothoa Exigua, a parasitic crustacean of the family Cymothoidae, regularly found along the Gulf of California and north of the Gulf of Guayaquil, as well as in parts of the Atlantic. Jumping species is a common occurrence in nature, especially amongst diseases and parasites. Anyone who keeps dogs will tell you. The flea, the head louse – these jumps happen so regularly as to be almost every day. But the tongue-eating louse’s jump is inexplicable. It is momentous. A giant leap, outpacing evolution, overcoming species division; a sudden unexplained flight from sea to land, from fish as preferred host to man; swelling and morphing into something that resembles its aquatic ancestor only loosely.
There are those who theorise that it is an artificial construct; a product of modern science, genetically engineered in a laboratory. There is a top-secret facility in the desert. There are people with guns and dishonest government officials and there are large sums of money at stake. A specimen escapes or it is stolen. A pair of tongs and a small Styrofoam cooler is all it takes. A man in a dark suit walks quickly enough to seem purposeful yet not so fast as to arouse suspicion. A certain customs officer, invited for a whisky in a ship captain’s cabin. There is a beach near an Africom naval base on the East Coast of Africa. A body washed up. A man with no fingernails or genitals; whose ears are stubs; whose eyes are missing and face is badly beaten; a man who, in spite of everything, possesses a lithe, wet tongue inside his mouth with which to speak.
It is said the louses spread quickly via port cities. Foreign sailors who take up the practice as a form of body augmentation to signify bravery and sexual prowess – a practice then, not unlike tattooing or body piercing in origin. The bars and brothels near the harbour are numerous. On weekends they fill with seamen whose only diversion is karaoke and drunken congress with the prostitutes that service the area. The interior is nondescript. There is a video screen playing K-pop. A sailor hunched at the bar drinking beer – a foreign brand, illegally imported and available only in establishments like these. You take a seat and he turns towards you. His smile is crooked, too wide. He lifts his beer, tips his head back, jaw ajar. And then slowly he parts his teeth to reveal it: a tiny head peeling out from lips, a lustrous white worm, erect and coiling its smooth segmented surface.
The louse is a natural kisser, a master even. It seems to know instinctively how to work with tongues, to pleasure them. Strange how easily the disgust becomes commonplace and then welcome, desirable even. It is best to begin slowly. To bring it to your mouth and feel that smooth topside caress your skin. Now part your lips. As soon as the louse senses the proximity of a human tongue, it begins to quiver. Allow it in. Place the root of the thing against your palate, tickle the frill-like pleats on its lower ventral side with your tongue. Instantly it responds, moving side to side, then arching up and bowing down, tensely, feathered fins dancing on the surface of the taste buds. Saviour it, somehow familiar, the metallic suck of the taste of the cut. Note the buzzing sensation, like eating sherbet, the soft fizz as the citric acid reacts with the bicarbonate of soda. It is the feeling of something alive and breathing; bursting and nipping and sucking.
The practice is not without its dangers for both parties. Sometimes during a moment of pure exalted pleasure, the tongue-eating louse might decide to jump hosts. Who can say what provokes it? Could it be the same desire that fills you, the same lust, a sexual drive that becomes unbearable? Maybe it is purely functional; the louse discerns something in the new mouth that makes it a more attractive habitat. We know nothing of its criteria. Maybe the teeth are in better condition, less eaten by cavities, the gums less diseased, the saliva more alkaline or acidic and thus more inviting.
The shock of a louse detaching suddenly is said to be a grenade going off; the blow of a lost limb, an epileptic fit or brain aneurysm; waking with aphasia. The mouth is no longer capable of mediating speech. You can make noise with your vocal cords but not the sounds of vowels and consonants grouped into words. You might try to scream, but the cry lacks direction. It is a throat scream, coarse and shrill, emptied of infection. It doesn’t end so much as fade into hoarseness.
You cannot tell your partner what is happening. You do not need to. The louse is already attaching. Its frontal claws hook into the soft flesh. It embeds itself and begins to suck. Your partner coughs out blood and looks up at you. He or she begins to emit small whimpers, trying to get at it, fingers groping their mouth. It is difficult, impossible maybe, as hard to grab hold of a louse as is to catch a tongue. Go ahead and try it. Grip each side of the slippery muscle. Pull all you like but always the tongue glides away. You are empty handed, index and thumb blood smeared and spit coated.
According to reports, the pain as the louse embeds is unique. At first it is just a stab, something like a cavity, like sticking a soft spot. Then a throbbing, a soreness that pulses from the back of your head to the front of your skull. It stretches, your neck and shoulders succumbing as your blood is sucked up. Your mouth burns. Your throat feels raw, teeth buzzing. Jesus fuck, a pain that’s audible, that rings in your ears.
If you are serious about hosting a louse, isolate yourself. Lock yourself off from the outside world like a junky going cold turkey. Prescription painkillers are essentials, as is Paracetamol for the fever. Prepare everything. Chain the doors and remove the sim card from your phone so that you won’t be tempted to call for medical assistance. There is little doctors will be able to do for you anyway. By this stage, your tongue will already be dead in your mouth. The once-infused organ, gradually withered, sucked into a shrunken membrane. Soon decay will set in and then that will be gone too. You will swallow your tongue, the little that’s left of it. Suck it down like a sausage skin or the waxy membrane on the top of milk left out of the refrigerator.
The first few weeks of recovery are hell. The mouth is inflamed, gums red. There is constant bleeding. You curl up within the sheets and pray to be saved from the aftershocks. The shocks are internal: your brain refuses to accept the new invader. It views it as a form of cellular anarchy, a disorder, an internal disrespect for the laws of nature. The body seeks to eject the intruder, uses every mechanism at its disposal, sudden chills and fevers as white blood cells swarm the area.
Even if you survive the initial shock, it does not become easier. The louse is like a foreign object suddenly implanted; a dental brace or a tongue guard but alive, tight and squirming. Speaking is impossible, eating too. In some instances, the louse lodges itself too far back, too close to the soft palate, setting off the gagging reflex, resulting in an ongoing nausea.
Your mouth is constantly flooded with saliva. You try to spit but your tongue refuses to cooperate, to collect the salvia up and eject it. Drool runs down your chin, your mouth foams. Your dreams are flooded with legs and feelers. Lice bite your scalp, your ears, lay pale eggs that hatch and grow even larger. At night you wake up coughing, drowning in your own liquids. You rush to the mirror, convinced you’ve chewed it, open your mouth expecting to find hundreds of bisected louse bits trying to wriggle out over your lips.
Hosts report trouble with hearing, the mouth and the ear being, as they are, intimately joined. The ear, erect and facing out, but screwed inward, linked to the mouth by way of the spiral of canal. The louse is never still and every movement registers. The mouth is a cave, an acoustic conductor, inside, the sounds ricochet and vibrate. Some describe it as the grinding of teeth or a grating inside as if misaligned gears are meshing in improvised patterns. Others hear insects, the mouth infested with thousands of beetles rubbing up against themselves, spiny legs grinding on hard shells. Most experience it more as sort of sucking or eating, the empty mastication produced by the coming together and moving apart of gums wet with saliva.
And then slowly, slowly, you begin to adjust. The sound becomes normal, internalised, no worse than your regular grunts and slurps while eating. You can swallow again. At first, just water. Then soft foods that you do not need to chew. Finally, your teeth develop a rapport with the louse. They learn to work together, the subtle tongue movements that characteristically complement mastication, previously unnoticed. Now you are aware of them, you can map how food moves about in your mouth. You can tackle more solid things. You learn to share the louse’s love for seafood: abalone, shrimps, fresh oysters.
Language is the last thing to come. For months after, you stutter and speak in faulty grammar. There’s this inescapable sensation of a presence being with you. Some describe it as a ghosting. Yet, it is more a sensation of weight than an airiness, a stone in your mouth, a heaviness that hinders nuanced articulation. Without your tongue, sentences lose their former precision. Words are laboured. Phrases are approximations, attempts, odd scraps of stray verbiage. Sometimes you think you hear fragments of a foreign language. Is it Arabic? Amharic? Berber?
It is best to start with the basics. The simple sounds a tongue makes so many times that they roll off it without any effort. Ma and ba and pa and da. These baby utterances, meaningless in themselves, are sounds the tongue finds easiest to give shape and voice to. The muscles at the base simply go through the paces. At first your voice may sound different to you, unfamiliar, alien. The voice of a foreigner, heavily accented. It may stutter or stammer or slur, a voice stretched into slow motion like when a tape begins to deteriorate.
Then it comes back. The alphabet. Songs. Prayers. And discovery! New words. Sentence constructions you never dreamed of. Strange couplings of nouns and adjectives. New ways of annunciating syllables. The vowels escape, round and malleable, in soft and encircling coagulations. The louse is alert, dextrous, the fleshy strips on the underside of its body wriggle with vigour. Say, Cymothoa Exigua, Cymothoidae, tongue-eater, and feel the louse respond in your mouth, lift in recognition, squirm with pleasure.
Is it the host speaking or the louse? Scientists will tell you the question is ridiculous. Of course, it is the host. The louse has merely learnt to interpret the signals coming from the stub of the tongue. In this way, the louse is like the latest artificial limbs fitted with myoelectric devices that use electrodes to sense muscular impulses in the residual limb; a control system that detects signals and amplifies them to power electric motors that operate the prosthetic limb as though it were human, a normal leg or arm. Similarly, the louse learns to respond to the movements in the muscles and the signals that pulse from the brain. This code is then interpreted into movement.
And yet the stories persist. There are rumours of hosts who acquired extraordinary speaking ability since the implant. This is not just a matter of tone and texture, but also in the realm of vocabulary and even poetics. A former postal worker who becomes a famous poet. A website that claims a previous president of the United States, known for his oration, was a carrier. A detailed analysis of the president’s speaking patterns. Two recordings, side by side, red circles marking the deviation in the sine waves. Pictures, obviously doctored. A gallery of the president’s smile, before and after, shifting from wide toothy grin to tight-lipped. There are close ups of something lurking, a white presence hunched behind the presidential teeth. Has the president been caught masticating a piece of fried squid at some Japanese diplomatic luncheon or has he been infected?
It is perhaps not accurate to use the term “infected” for hosts. Ideas regarding species and purity are changing quickly. Medical science is evolving. Little by little we are all crossing over. Pig hearts are commonly transplanted. Soon, prosthetics will not need to mimic the cheetah’s legs, they will be them. The yearnings of a snail will one day be shared by snail-men, part molluscs, part human; the speech of a crustacean, by a louse-man.
But it’s not just its verbal abilities that make the louse so sought after. Travel the brothels that dot the main road running from the harbour to the shanty towns on the outskirts. Look for a single red light in a doorway, xxx painted in the windows. Some of these establishments offer sexual relations with louse-infested prostitutes.
The girl leads you to a private room. Her hands are warm and dry, slim and weightless as a child’s, but her touch is deliberate. She opens her mouth to reveal her treasure. The louse is white, pearly textured, the colour of baby teeth, of calf fat, of beeswax. Its mandibles dance, minuscule but incessant. The louse is hungry. It is ready. Tentacles deployed and undulating.
A rush of foreign words escapes the girl’s mouth as she wipes the spittle from her chin. The secretion produced by the louse is infamous, a supreme treasure; a liquid ecstasy. The girl reaches out her hand and touches your lips with it, softly brushes them. She pulls her hair back then goes down. You close your eyes and feel it run chest to navel. It lingers there. The louse wants to burrow. The girl has to pull it back. Not just yet….
Your hand is on her head, willing it down. She pauses, looks up at you, mouth gaping, the tongue-eating louse now fully erect, its body distended, segments wreathing. Yes. The word emerges from your lips like something you can taste.
The girl drops. She unbuttons your jeans, pulls them to your knees. Your cock is hard. It rises to greet the louse. Two creatures in a rapt encounter, touching. Its feelers skim your dick, they dance under your foreskin and lick the head. The louse slides downwards. Its legs are like thousands of tiny electrodes plugged into the shaft. It wiggles between your balls, curls and coils around them, rolls itself into a fist and squeezes. You can’t take it anymore. You grab hold of the girl’s head; thrust your dick deep in her mouth. She opens to take it. The louse is waiting to embrace you. It massages the shaft as you thrust deeper.
As you come, the girl slides backs to the tip. She takes it in the front of her mouth and the louse digs its way inside your crease, drinks your come; writhing in it, bathing in it. The feeling is like a lapping but from within, like something tapping the flow at its stem. You pull out and shake it off. Strings of cum lash the bedding, then a drop of something else, darker, staining the sheeting, spreading in a circle that loses its edges in the wet of the splatter.
<<<<<>>>>>
Stacy Hardy is a writer, an editor and a teacher. Her short fiction collection, Because the Night, was published by Pocko (London) in 2015. She collaborates with Angolan composer Victor Gama on multimedia musical works and her experimental one woman play, “Museum of Lungs” (2018 – 2019) was performed around the world. She is currently working on a research-and-performance-based collaboration on the geographies and biographies of breath with anthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan and musician Neo Muyanga, as well as the libretto for a new opera composed by Bushra El-Turk.
Amadin Ogbewe is a journalist from the ancient city of Benin. He’s a lover of sitcoms and has works in Fireside Fiction magazine, Cast of Wonders, Dark Moon Digest, Expound magazine and others.
Madam Aisirhiowen could hear her crew muttering as they worked on their routine tasks around her. They were in a large empty space which had been converted to a workshop
“Madame Aisi is building something.”
“She’s hasn’t spoken in weeks; it must be massive.”
“She’ll be back in Igiogbe when she unleashes whatever marvel she’s cooking up!”
Their vaguely humanoid faces lit up when they spoke as the display lights behind their eyes intensified. Aisirhiowen smiled at their lack of subtlety. Her augmented transducers guaranteed that little much happened within 2 km of which she was unaware.
She opened another tab in her cranial browser and sent a link to the chattering crew: Sidetalk in the workplace; cause for alarm. They attempted to feign seriousness at their jobs again as they received the article.
She continued her complex design as electronic beeps accompanied her clicks of the 15D holographic projection before her.
Aisirhiowen’s bionic arms did not betray her ripe age of a hundred and fifty-seven years as she deftly manoeuvred half a billion light points through minute volumetric spaces in seconds.
She found herself reliving memories of almost a century ago. Living in Nigeria in the 2000s as a ‘Gen Z’ teen had afforded her a status of mystery thanks to her parents and older persons. Fix the house WiFi once, or help with setting up a Facebook page and you were a genius.
Aisirhiowen had however taken genius to another level as she became a computer engineer at age13. She’d gone on to build her first robot a year later with minimal equipment.
It wasn’t long before she began working for the government and it took even less time before her advancements made the government redundant. So, she got rid of the government.
She had set up Igiogbe and transformed the landscape into a digital utopia.
It had come as quite a shock when she was kicked out of the office and forced to take shelter in the same sector as her great-granddaughter.
Curiously, the later generations had not caught the techie bug like hers’ had. She often wondered if this was her fault.
After discovering near-immortality, it didn’t seem as important to pass knowledge to the younger ones. It had been much easier to hand them an iPhone or android than to explain the workings of modern tech.
“Where did I err?” she thought, her hands still working furiously.
“Ma Aisi!” Aisirhiowen recalled how her aged great-granddaughter had called out her name and hugged her when she’d slunk back from defeat with her tail tucked between her legs.
“Eloghosa!” Aisirhiowen embraced her. Metal meeting flesh.
Eloghosa’s frail hands clasped her bionic ones as her dark brown eyes started to well with tears. Her brown face was heavily lined and her braids had begun to grey at the edges.
“Where are your parents and grandparents?” Aisirhiowen had asked.
“They- they’ve all passed away, Iyé” Eloghosa said, unable to hold back the tears.
“Oh, poor child,” Aisi had sighed and returned her progenitor’s warm embrace.
“I hate to burden you even more but as you’re probably aware, I’ve been forced out of my seat. I need some shelter and time, to reboot and find a way back to Igiogbe” Aisirhiowen said, holding on to her sobbing great-granddaughter.
“Of course, of course.” she had acquiesced
She gave the signal as her crew went into the spacious house with all the tech they’d been able to cart away from Igiogbe.
She watched as Eloghosa’s face fell at the sight of the equipment.
No matter. Aisirhiowen knew she’d be back in Igiogbe in less than a week. She just needed to plan and create a solution.
#
The second week in, Aisirhiowen noticed Eloghosa’s demeanour, and how she tried to avoid the light – this was difficult as the lights were everywhere.
The bags under her eyes seemed heavier and she constantly twitched at slight noises or motions.
“What is wrong, child?” Aisirhiowen asked her, gently placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Iyé, It’s- It’s- just-” she started, gazing up at her great-grandma. “Never mind,” she said, her eyes darting away
“Tell me,” Aisirhiowen said.
“Screens, Iyé,” Elo said manically as her eyes snapped back onto Aisi. “Screens. So. Many. Screens” she pleaded. “They’re everywhere. Everywhere! I can’t take it anymore. And I can’t — I can’t sleep” She said, crying; at least it seemed like she wanted to. “I just want a little rest,”
Her eyes were widened and her pupils dilated but they were also dry as if she’d run out of moisture.
“Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay child,” Aisirhiowen said drawing her into her bosom.
The screens had to go. Aisirhiowen made the commands as she got back to work, her hands moved furiously as she computed and permuted. Her new urgency had excited her crew. They were sure madam would be storming Igiogbe with brand new tech.
When the crew had made the necessary adjustments to the large space, there were minimal display lights, and a large dark space had been evacuated so Eloghosa could be free of the screens.
After a while, Eloghosa told Aisirhiowen that she’d been sleeping again but Aisi knew this was not true as she could tell from her vital functions that whenever Eloghosa was in her dark dome, she was wide awake and pacing.
Aisirhiowen had gone back to work, her juvenile face screwed up in determination. Soon, she stepped back from her workstation, prompting her crew to forget their pretence of occupation.
“I just need one more component!” Aisirhiowen presently announced.
“What do you need, madam?”
“Where can I get it?”
“Say what it is, Ma’am, I’ll bring it to you.”
They all offered, excited to witness the new genius invention that would take them home.
“No, I will get it myself,” she replied as she draped a wrappa over her shoulders.
“But—” they’d begun to protest.
“Take care of Elo” she said, as she exited the door.
As Aisirhiowen walked to her destination, she realized that the outdoors was a whole other world she’d forgotten existed, but it wasn’t much different from what she remembered.
She had paid no mind to her surroundings on her way to Eloghosa’s after her ousting. And now Elo’s words echoed in her head.
“Screens. So. Many. Screens.”
The billboards, the windows, the traffic signs, Aisirhiowen had never realized how pervasive they were. If she had, she didn’t think it mattered, but now amidst all the screens, she could see one person or another with bagged eyes and premature lined faces.
There were a lot of Eloghosas out there.
She got to the scrapyard which was thankfully a great distance from Igiogbe. She had to hack an electronic door to get in. After hours of searching, she found the last component.
As she made to leave, the sound of shifting metal suddenly permeated the space as humongous objects started to levitate out of the debris of scraps. There were 4 standard Igiogbe Q8 combat drones.
“I should have terminated you when I had the chance, Owen,” a woman’s voice came from the drones as Aisirhiowen stood, surrounded by them.
The gigantic drones were shaped like pentagons with laser guns and energy blasters trained on the youthful great grandmother.
“Decided stealing my seat wasn’t enough, Uwaila? I should have known” Aisirhiowen said as her heart pounded faster in its metal cage. Her jaws clenched as she began assessing possible exits.
“It was a necessary retirement and you seem to have reneged on our agreement to stay retired” the hard voice said. “What are you doing here, Madam?” She asked.
“I made Igiogbe, I created this world, I made it what it is and my thanks is to be pushed out of my own home?!” Aisirhiowen screamed at the drones as she tucked her component into a compartment in her lap.
“Your arrogance persists Owen, creating a thing doesn’t mean it’s yours ad infinitum” Uwaila spoke, “The state is bigger than you and you’ve spent so much time inside yourself, you can’t see what’s going on around y—”
“I am your god!” Aisirhiowen retorted.
“Well, colour me an unbeliever,” Uwaila said in a raspy voice. “We can’t do this again, you didn’t listen before, you won’t listen ow. I only want to fix our problems; problems you can’t see with your perfect deified eyesight. The eyes of god cannot glimpse our sufferings, they’re just too far away,” she added.
Aisirhiowen’s frown deepened and her hands formed fists.
“Surrender what you’ve acquired here and I might consider letting you leave with a few of your parts,” Uwaila warned.
Aisirhiowen ripped off her wrappa, exposing her enhanced body as she drew out a baton from her side which lengthened into a glittering spear. She whirled it around till it aligned with her arm outstretched and in battle stance.
“Yes?” she whispered as the drones rearranged around her.
They attacked.
Aisirhiowen got her shield up before the bullets started raining down on her. The electronic bubble around her fizzed and whirred as the bullets continued to hit.
She knew her shield wouldn’t last long while receiving heavy fire at such close range. She launched her spear at one of the drones but it manoeuvred out of the way.
The spear changed direction mid-air and attacked the drone again as she manoeuvred it with controls in her arm. The drone then turned its fire at the spear but it evaded the bullets, scoring several hits. Two other drones joined the first and started firing at the spear.
Aisirhiowen sent the spear far into the stratosphere as bullets followed it before bringing it down in a different trajectory and straight through the fourth drone firing her just as her shield went down.
The drone exploded with the spear, leaving Aisirhiowen without a weapon or shield as she faced three drones. They started to fire energy blasts at her.
She dodged the blasts skillfully as scraps of metal blew up around her. She continued to evade till she hit a wall of stacked metals and went tumbling in the debris. Her component had fallen out and one of the drones swiftly swooped it up with an elongated arm.
“Stop!” Aisirhiowen screamed.
“You risked your life for this?!” Uwaila asked as the camera scanned the object. “This is worthless!” She added.
“Then give it back,” Aisirhiowen said.
The drone tossed it away as an energy blast took off Aisirhiowen’s left hand. She screamed. Just then, the drones approached her, thick metallic ropes shooting out of them.
One grabbed her remaining hand, and the other two took one leg each and began to pull.
Aisirhiowen’s screams continued.
“You forced my hand, Owen,” Uwaila said. “Your desperate drive to take back power is your undoing.”
Aisirhiowen strained as her joints began to creak. Her braids had fallen over her face, obscuring it but for her glowing eyes. Suddenly, some compartments opened up on her chest as miniature versions of her started to scramble up the ropes to the drones.
“Ah. Your famous Pico hackers,” Uwaila said. “You mean to take control of my drones but you’ll find that like it was when I kicked you out of Igiogbe, I’ve evolved. I’m better than you now, so go ahead, give it your best shot.”
The pico hackers soon disappeared within the interior of the drones. Aisirhiowen smiled. “Thing is, my hackers are retired. I found that Suicide bombers are more effective.”
“What?”
“Detonate.”
The detonators went off at Aisirhiowen’s command, causing the drones to explode.
“I’ll be waiting for you in Igiogbe,” Uwaila vowed as the last of her drones dropped to the ground. Aisirhiowen crushed it with a heavy foot. She could imagine Uwaila in her control room in Igiogbe lashing out at an innocent monitor. The petulant cyborg was always more emotional than she was rational. Aisirhiowen didn’t think rational was such a terrible quality anymore. Even before she got her bionic enhancements, she’d always been more robot than she was human. Maybe Igiogbe was better off.
She sprayed her amputated arm with a silver aerosol hidden within her body’s many compartments.
She pulled out the main body of the device she’d been building at her great grand daughter’s.
With one arm and the last light of the setting sun, she completed her work in the abandoned scrap yard.
Hours later, she put on her wrappa and swiftly tucked the device inside as she made her way back. She decided to take a longer route, to be cautious and also to observe the people of Igiogbe.
The screens were just as ubiquitous as they were on her trip to the yard. She glimpsed sullen eyes, weakened souls, and a city unalive and undead.
Subconsciously, Aisirhiowen began to plan all she would do.
With her wounds concealed under her wrappa, she returned to her workshop. Her crew stared at her as though she would disappear if they let her out of sight for a second. They hoped she’d finally let them in on her secret project.
She pulled out an orb. The 7-sided object shone with a metallic lustre. It looked like it was made of mercury but it was translucent. In the middle of each face, there was a circle through which diffused colours of light emanated, bathing the room in different hues.
“Is that an uhmm…uhmm?” One of The crew murmured, his eyes never leaving the glowing orb.
“What’s an uhmm?” Aisirhiowen asked him.
“Uh… I don’t know. That?” He said pointing at the orb.
“I guess, it does need a name.” Aisirhiowen chuckled. “Why, yes, this is an uhmm”
She stepped into the darker part of the large space as the light from her orb surrounded her in a dome of colours.
Eloghosa sat at the edge of her bed, her eyes glued to her great grandmother and the object in her hand.
“What-, What is that?” She asked
“An uhmm apparently,” Aisirhiowen said wincing as she favoured a leg.
“What is an uhmm?” Eloghosa asked
“My greatest invention,”
“Where’s it’s screen?”
“No screens this time,” Aisirhiowen said as she gently passed the orb to her.
Eloghosa stared at the uhmm in her hand.
“The light. It’s so… so pure. Pure and warm,” she said cradling it.
“What’s in it?” she asked as she blinked, her first time in weeks.
“Whatever you need,” Aisirhiowen said, her one arm holding her side as she watched her granddaughter.
“It’s beautiful,” Eloghosa said as she lay on her side, the orb nestled in her palms.
A dulcet tune began to emanate from it. The graceful sound filled the space as the lights danced to its melody.
Eloghosa’s blinks became slower till her eyes finally began to roam beneath her closed eyelids. Her breathing seemed to complement the mellow sound and twirling lights. Aisirhiowen pulled the bedcovers over her granddaughter, who still had the orb in her hands.
“Pack up the equipment, we leave immediately,” Aisirhiowen said to her inquisitive crew.
“What – Are we going to take back Igiogbe?” One of them asked excitedly.
“I am never going back and our nation will be better for it.” Aisirhiowen said, “It took longer than I would have liked but I see now, what Uwaila and her supporters tried to show me.”
“She stole your nation!”
“Yes. Yes, she did,” Aisirhiowen replied, her eyes unfocused. “But I suspect, not to keep,” she heaved a sigh, then continued, “Nevertheless, times have changed and not for the better. I more than anyone should have noticed.”
“I – I – I don’t understand. I thought you were building some kind of weapon,” a crew member stammered.
“I was,” she said “But I decided to help my great-granddaughter before going back to conquering. I thought the weapon was the primary task and Eloghosa the secondary. I was wrong, there will be no more weapon.”
“S- so, what are we going to do,” another asked.
“We’re going to do the work,” she answered, looking around at their equipment before she focused on her team. “It’s probably not the kind of which you’ve had dreams. Not the kind of work that puts your name in the archives. Nor the one that gets systems named after you.
“No. Not that kind. You won’t cure incurable diseases or build great weapons. No. After all your hard work and labour, perhaps all you’ll have done … is help a troubled soul get a night’s sleep.”
She smiled as she stroked her great grand daughter’s hair. The frail-looking woman had a faint smile on her face as her body rose and fell gently.
As the crew watched the duo, their confused looks grew determined and they began to do as the madam had commanded.
Amadin Ogbewe is a journalist from the ancient city of Benin. He’s a lover of sitcoms and has works in Fireside Fiction magazine, Cast of Wonders, Dark Moon Digest, Expound magazine and others.
Tariro Ndoro is the author of Agringada: Like a Gringa, Like a Foreigner. Her essays, poetry, and short fiction have been published in many anthologies and literary journals around the world including AFREADA, The Kalahari Review, Moving on and Other Zimbabwean Stories, and Omenana. Tariro currently resides in Harare where she is trying to survive the apocalypse.
They say it should not have happened, could not have happened. In the first place, the autopsy was proof that she died by blunt force trauma to the cranium after sustaining multiple contusions to her ribs. There were unmistakable signs of struggle – she’d fought back, clawing at his skin with her nails and biting when she couldn’t punch but, in the end, he’d been stronger.
The republic police received a call about a domestic dispute at exactly 2200 hours, arrived on scene at 2330 and declared her dead at 2347 on Wednesday the 23rd of March 2008. A seasoned officer checked for her pulse and many neighbours bore witness. Revai Matanga was a dead woman.
The particulars were taken as follows: she was 19 years of age, she weighed 63 kilograms and she suffered before she died, even before the fatal battery. There were half-healed bruises, there were welts and, the coroner noted, any marital coupling she may have had with her husband must have been by force.
In addition to the evidence on her body, there were statements from her neighbours, and even her husband’s sister had testified against him in the court of law, but in the end, he’d walked free on some technicality – the technicality being a bribe paid to a magistrate the day before the trial was concluded.
They say she could not have been the one who did it in Mexico City, 15 November 2011. But her DNA was found at the crime scene and, DN, they say, never lies. Not that they would have linked her to the crime at first, but CCTV footage kept finding her there. There being Mexico City, Barcelona, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, everywhere. Even the Kremlin held a redacted file, privy only to the highest cleared investigators, that spoke of Krasnaya Shapochka – the Red Hood.
Not that it was possible to see the colour of her clothing on most security feeds but a profiler from The Netherlands could confirm with 89% certainty that the build, gait, and mannerisms of the perpetrator pointed to one UnSub (unknown subject) working alone.
“Even the idiosyncrasies of the crime scene, the separation of entrails, the spilling of blood, point to one perpetrator,” said Anna Jansen in a special briefing for Interpol. She didn’t mention the word serial killer, for it tended to make people panic but any investigator worth their salt knew what it meant when there were multiple murder victims in multiple cities with staged corpses.
And so, unbeknownst to Revai’s family (and because it was against the custom) the republic police exhumed her body by cover of night and concluded that: a) she was indeed still dead and b) she had not escaped her coffin.
“How could it have happened?” her relatives asked when the police kept asking questions, but the international police were beginning to think it was the only thing that could have happened.
There was the fact that the second wife of the first victim, a Bruce Lancaster from Salt Lake City, Utah, wouldn’t meet the eyes of the investigating officer. Her body was bruised. Bruises she’d tried to cover by pulling her jersey tighter around her shoulders as she stared intently at her overly polished shoes while her fingers played at a loose thread on her old couch.
Yet the detective who worked homicide had started off at Special Victims and knew the signs. Bruce Lancaster had died because he was a wife beater, pure and simple. In the end, lack of means and opportunity meant they couldn’t pin it on the Vic’s wife, but in his own mind, the detective pinned it on her till his dying breath. He had a gut feeling about such things.
The Guatamalan detective who questioned the prematurely aged widow of Juan Calabar had reported a different story – the widow cried, he wrote in his brand-new notebook, but the stepdaughter seemed visibly relieved at the shopkeeper’s death, almost smiling her pleasure but only held back by propriety, while the widow kept sniffing into a handkerchief and asking, “¿Por que?”
She wore a brown dress, and her hair was tied back into a severe bun. Her daughter sat stoically next to her, rubbing her shoulders in a circular pattern, a mysterious gleam in her eyes. The detective could see that she was all bruised skin and broken bone, and by the way she shied from his booming masculine voice, he concluded that a man was at the root of those scars.
The detective put her down as a person of interest, but the sheer force of power needed to enact that level of violence? That ruled her out. She was a slip of a thing and by the way she shied from his gaze, he doubted that she could have created such a gruesome crime scene. But if not her, then who?
They say it was a serial killer. The manner of death, the MO as one officer rambled, was similar in all cases: blunt force trauma to the cranium, the murder weapon being an axe, bruises, and contusions consistent with grievous bodily harm before the final blow. DNA under the fingernails of the victims showed signs of struggle. Hard struggle.
These pronouncements were made by a New Orleans cop who drawled around the piece of peppermint gum he chewed. With his tall frame, wrinkled suit and newly bare ring finger, Alfred La Haye was a walking cliché. He even had the coffee breath to go with his persona. It was obvious to anyone who looked that La Haye was recently divorced and married to the job. The bodies of many victims kept him up at night, this one in particular. The body had been found by a homeless man behind a dumpster, his corpse carved like an animal – the entrails set aside. La Haye had lost his diner breakfast to the asphalt in the alley. Although he’d lived in New Orleans all his life, he felt there were some things a man must never see, that corpse being one of them. It was a good thing the uniforms had cordoned off the area.
After he’d regained his composure, La Haye surveyed the crime scene. There was skin under the man’s fingernails. Red fabric intermingled with his navy business suit. La Haye concluded that the “perp” was careless, leaving DNA and fabric behind at the crime scene.
“He’s quite the amateur,” he said later in his warbling accent as he teleconferenced the so-called profiling expert.
Anna Jansen, the analyst from Netherlands disagreed, “A lot can be gleaned from this type of UnSub. The UnSub left their DNA there on purpose. Such UnSubs feel the need to be heard and have probably felt silenced in the past. I would suspect the UnSub to be a victim of a previous crime that went unpunished, or at least they see themselves that way. I would even hazard a guess that such an UnSub may visit the crime scene or try to keep track of police investigations. Such UnSubs may even attend their victim’s funerals in disguise.”
She said “they” but deep down in her heart, she knew it was a woman, despite the M.E.’s reports about weight and force and drag. She had been there before… she remembered the hand of a superior officer wandering into her clothing while she was drunk at an office party, only to wake up naked in his bed the following morning with no recollections, but the year had been 1989 and no one would have cared so she’d kept it to herself.
“We should call him the Deadbeat Killer,” Adebayo Avery said to a group of fellow reporters. The reporters were “up to here” with the police because the police weren’t revealing important facts and what’s more, were dragging their feet in the investigation. Yet the latter was not entirely true.
The FBI and local PDs set up boards with names places, dates, vics until they ran the DNA sample found under a victim’s nails on an international database and concluded that America’s Deadbeat Killer was the Castigadora de Bestias who was wreaking havoc in Latin America and The Viking who was killing sex traffickers in Europe’s red-light district.
“He is a big blond man with muscles and a goatee beard and carries an axe, a very big axe,” the wide-eyed sex workers told the police whenever they were questioned. They shrunk deep into the reflective blankets that shielded them from shock and drank the tea the gendarmes gave them greedily.
The perp looked nothing like the sex workers described, and they knew it, but the police believed them readily enough, what with the coroner’s report about force and drag and weight differentials. Besides, there was a code on the streets – The Red Maiden saved them, and whatever it or she was, they wouldn’t repay her kindness with disloyalty. For the first time since they’d all been drugged and kidnapped, there was a chance to return home or live their remaining lives with some semblance of peace.
In Africa, they hadn’t named him, still burdened by cases of femicide and theft and gang-related violence but Aiden Randera, SAPS veteran in charge of the Cape Flats confirmed that crimes against women had gone down by 5% since the first sightings of DieRooi Poppie. Most said she was an urban legend, but Randera considered her a miracle.
He’d been battling femicide since even before Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk got the Nobel Peace Prize and if some skirt was going to take the work off his hands, then he wasn’t complaining. The last part, he told the reporter “off the record” while patting her shoulder like they’d been friends since the Y2K explosion.
They all said it was a miracle and secretly, to their wives and girlfriends and lovers and brothers, they admitted that the Deadbeat Killer made them sleep safer at night, knowing there was one less sleaze on the streets but to the cameras and microphones and reporters and paparazzi, they condemned “any and all forms of vigilantism”, saying every man, deadbeat or not, was innocent till proven guilty and if any woman had any charge, any case of assault and battery, gender-based violence or workplace harassment, then she should report it through the “proper channels” but the senseless killings should end.
They say only the minority of abusers are ever put behind bars. The actual figures, of course, vary from country to country. They say, “Look what happened to Cyntoia Brown.” ‘They’ being the army of women on the internet who were pissed off by the statement given by the FBI’s Assistant Special Agent in Charge, ASAC Cho’s statement on the 8 o’clock news, the video having been reshared on Twitter and WhatsApp and Tik-Tok and Reddit.
For a while, ASAC Cho had hunted down their IP addresses, saying it wasn’t a case of single vigilantism but perhaps the day had come when women got so angry that they decided to find vengeance and so they all donned the red hoodie, the way all members of Anonymous donned V’s mask. That way they’d all have alibis for their abusers’ murders. That way they’d be everywhere and nowhere and invincible. ASAC Cho was wrong.
Today
I know different. I was hired to find the killer by the widow of a particularly rich deadbeat. At least, that’s what I tell them when I interview the widows, the cops, the profilers.
The evidence leads me to a sleepy old town called Redcliffe. Southern Africa. A country by the name of Zimbabwe. What Interpol and the FBI didn’t tell members of the public, but what I managed to glean using the 21st-century resource of hacking the internet, is that the DNA under the men’s fingerprints was female and belonged to a Revai Matanga. Born in the village of Hwedza, married at the age of 15 to a local businessman and then bludgeoned to death at the age of 19 for not cooking the correct relish for dinner that night. A senseless killing.
“She didn’t even want to get married,” they say. I’m talking to a gaggle of girls I meet chilling near a service station. Sleepy town, not a lot to do. After the metalworks shut down in the nearby town, everyone here is underemployed and itching to leave. Here, the teenagers can buy snacks and gossip until one of their parents comes looking for them – which is unlikely at 4 in the afternoon. Dusk has not descended yet.
“She was just a girl, but some of these men think they can cure STDs by sleeping with virgins. Her family was poor so…” the girl shrugs nonchalantly when she says this but, in the undercurrent, there is an unspoken message: Revai could have been me, Revai could have been any of us. I’m glad she wasn’t me.
“She hasn’t been here in a year,” another girl says, to erase the last statement.
No one likes to acknowledge that the world is ugly. I’ve learned that in all my years on this trail. I don’t tell the girls that sometimes serial killers circle back to their hometowns, it gives them a sort of closure to come back as powerful avengers but these girls, sixteen going on nineteen still have their naivete and I won’t be the one to burst their bubbles.
The girls say that the murder weapon was an axe. That the whole neighbourhood heard her screaming while her husband wielded it, but no one thought it was their business to intervene until her body was carried off in the white republic police van with blue and gold stripes. Then it was their business to spread rumours about it to this day.
“Zvakaoma!” One of the girls exclaims. It is a word they use when the conversation is heavy, and they have nothing useful to add.
There are details that don’t appear in official records, that I only know because I came here after the first Interpol hit suggested it might be her DNA, her corpse, her body. For instance, her first bed was a sad affair – a simple double bed with dirty blankets on it and no bedspread. Her neighbour remembers this detail as Revai often spoke of it. As a village girl, her family hadn’t afforded beds and simply laid down blankets on reed mats. Revai didn’t often think of herself as a wife, only when it was time to visit the marital bed – and then she would freeze, tense, and sometimes pray she was elsewhere.
***
Notes from my interview with the neighbour also referred to a lot of skinning that Revai did:
“Her husband slaughtered animals. Revai said he was too stingy to buy meat from the butchery, even though he could afford it. So, every weekend, she was in the kitchen cutting and cleaning goats, rabbits, chicken, sheep; always separating the meat from the entrails – in one bucket the liver, in another the intestines, the rest of the carcass in a green metal dish. Her hands were always a bloody mess. Their house always smelled like blood. That’s why I didn’t realise that day. I was used to the smell.”
“Sometimes we sat under that mango tree in the afternoon,” the neighbour points at a gnarled specimen that no longer bears fruit. “She watched the girls coming home from school. Here, there were korokozas – gold panners, you see, men who drove these big cars around the neighbourhood. The girls jumped in and came back with new clothes, new weaves, pizza, money. Sometimes it didn’t end well though. When the girls got old or pregnant, the men abandoned them. Revai just frowned and said she’d stop the men one day; she’d kill them in the act. Redcliff is her town and she felt rage for it. Of course, she scared me with her ferocity, and we never spoke of it again.”
“Never?” I asked.
“Never. But you see, her family… these are things that must not be said… but I believe she’d want to say them.”
I nodded to indicate that she must continue but when I brandished my pen, she pushed my notebook away.
“They beat her grave. They weren’t supposed to. Revai once ran away from her husband. That was after she lost the baby. Her husband followed after a while. They always do. So, when she ran away her husband threatened to take back his roora and her father – he has seven other children – told her to return to the city. Can you imagine?”
I could imagine it, so I nodded.
“So, anyway, when she died, he mourned her like normal. Some say he felt guilty, and others say he was too greedy to think, but the coroner said she was killed, and the judge said she died of natural causes, so her family decided to consult the spirits. Her father wouldn’t have it.”
“Her sister told me they did it the wrong way. It was her mother and sekuru and a distant cousin of her father’s stood for the paternal lineage. They called her spirit home, but it was not their right. They asked for her to name her killer but … nothing.”
By this time, she is whispering, and I angle closer to her. There is load shedding tonight and the only source of light we have is an old paraffin lamp. The neighbour positively looks like a ghoul and the yellow light dances across her face, igniting shadows on the ceiling.
“Then what happened?”
“The next day her husband was found dead in the house – his head was kicked in, his entrails separated, liver in one bucket, intestines in another, his corpse in the green metal dish. The house reeked of blood.” She shifts closer to me. “That was the first time they exhumed her body. There was nothing in the coffin.”
“But…”
“But the second time she was right there wasn’t she?”
***
They say, there have never been survivors, but there must have been, for in her neighbourhood and in her province, there are stories of a hitchhiker.
“She wears a red hoodie,” they say, “stops men on their way home from bars.”
“No, she wears a red trench coat in winter and hitchhikes along Harare Road.”
“You’re wrong. It’s a dress that she wears, and she follows men home from the bar. Anyway, she’s not all bad,” one girl says, “I feel safe at night.”
That’s how I like to think of her, as an unsung angel, caped in red, thumb jacked into the starless night.
They say, “She looks 19, and has looked 19 since she started haunting the neighbourhoods. Ever since she died, she has never looked older!”
“She stops the men’s cars, okay, and they take her on a drive to, like, wherever she wants them to go, then in the middle of nowhere, she tells them, ‘Stop the car, yes, right here.’ And they must think she wants to stop for a quickie (at this the neighbourhood girl looks down in shame for a second, but my eyes are not judgemental) or something because she was pretty cute before she died. That’s why it made her husband jealous. Aichengera, you know?”
Indeed, I know. I’ve interviewed her surviving relatives and they all agree on her husband’s jealousy and rage. Her image in CCTV footage is grainy at best but I can attest to her beauty too.
This particular homicide takes place near her death place. Twenty kilometres outside the town of Kwekwe, not an hour’s ride from where she died. Appledew Farm, to be exact, although given the arid conditions here, it’s more of a cattle ranch than an apple orchard. The officer commanding Midlands Province allows me to ride shotgun because someone at Interpol told him I would be joining him in the investigation. The woman who hired me as a PI has boat-loads of money and even more influence. She wanted me to find out why her husband was killed by the red one and I told her I’d investigate. I could have told her a long time ago that he was implicated in a trafficking ring but then I wouldn’t have a cover and I wouldn’t have money to travel the world. Besides, it’s her dead husband’s money I use to follow the trail, so I feel zero guilt.
The officer picks me up at the service station, as Interpol asked him to, I see him sneer at my short stature and large tote bag before pasting on a fake smile.
“I thought you’d be taller,” he says, “from your passport photo.”
“I thought you’d be handsome,” I retort, and then giggle before he can take offence.
This is a high priority case – the vic happens to be a popular businessman with relatives in high places so they won’t let any old inspector investigate. Heads will roll if the real killer isn’t caught, hence the presence of the commanding officer. He has all the confidence of a man who has never been bested before and I laugh inwardly because I personally know he won’t catch her. No one ever has, not even the coffee consuming La Haye.
“So, HQ sent you down here to consult?” He must still be hung up on my height and deceptively young looks.
I nod. He looks doubtful but shrugs. He can’t fight his superiors, and he knows this. He turns the volume up on the sungura music streaming from his radio before hitting the tarmac. He turns into a bumpy dust road before speaking to me again.
“A small girl like you shouldn’t come to crime scenes,” the policeman says, in heavily accented English, and I bristle because I’ve already told him I’m twenty-nine – a woman – but his types like to establish dominance. He thinks he knows everything about me but these smug types often overplay their hand, I know more about him.
I look out the window for a while, where the landscape is eerie as the sun dips into the horizon, casting an orange pall. The sparse trees turn to dark silhouettes. Something like a jackal or a wild dog cries out. My skin tingles.
“As a matter of fact, crime scenes can get ugly. My first crimes scene was so ugly, I vomited my entire breakfast – eggs, bread, baked beans.”
“I know,” I tell him, pissed that he’d given me a whole shopping list of his morning appetites. I did not need to know that. He was a small-town detective when Revai Matanga was killed, and he turned a blind eye when her relatives begged for justice. He even went farther, burying evidence and making sure the statements in the case file disappeared the night before an enquiry declared that there was no evidence of foul play. Revai’s husband paid him well. Two hundred US dollars was a big bonus for a civil servant back in 2008.
“She only targets violent men, so I have nothing to fear,” I add, feeling a surge of adrenaline.
He turns surly. I’m not kowtowing to his leadership enough. This could get ugly.
“I’ll say it again, crime scenes are ugly, and women like you have no stomach for crime scenes. Women have no stomach for anything.”
There is a lull in which his police radio and the car radio both turn silent, and it is just the two of us in the wilderness. The sky has darkened to a deep blue now and we should have arrived at the crime scene a while ago, instead, the road seems to extend itself onward like a Sisyphean loop. I refrain from responding to his words. The interior of his Ford Ranger is filled with the overpowering aura of smugness – this is a man who has never known fear. It will make everything easier.
“Neither do men. You lost your breakfast when you were called out to investigate the husband’s murder,” I tell him.
“What? You’re a social behavioural consultant from the States. What do you know about my case history or how many murders I have investigated in my time?”
I am undeterred by his insignificant question, and I throw two bloodied hundred-dollar bills into his lap, “You lost your breakfast when the grave was empty and then when it wasn’t.”
His hands tighten on the steering wheel and the car swerves dramatically. The commanding officer sweats even though it isn’t hot. He seems to notice for the first time that the sky has turned to pitch. He checks his phone, but the battery is dead. He glances briefly in my direction and for a fraction of a second, I see the fear of God in his eyes. And now at once I look both foreign and familiar. He makes to grab his service weapon from its holster, but it isn’t there.
The grey coat I wore when I entered his vehicle has transformed into a luminous cherry red. I smile and my teeth are sharp talons. Superintendent Karimanzira’s pupils dilate then constrict in rapid succession. He has finally caught on – there is a monster in his car and for the first time in his life, the monster isn’t him. He has solved the case of Revai’s corporeal disappearance and of her husband’s murder and if only he could call someone at Interpol then he’d be promoted big time but –
Reading his thoughts, I smile when he acknowledges that there won’t be a call to Interpol or any promotion in the near future and, for a while, he just keeps driving, his hands and feet moving of their own accord as if he has become a puppet, enslaved to someone else’s intentions. At the first juncture in the road where there are no signs of life except snakes and hyenas, I command him to pull over before zipping up my cherry-coloured jacket and heaving the axe out of my unassuming tote bag and he has no choice but to comply.
I could tell him he’s been weighed on the scales and found wanting, but that would just be too much of a cliché. I could also tell him about how I was reborn in a body that wasn’t mine when my family called my spirit home, a body that is always shifting – unassuming by day yet terrible in the nighttime, but I do not have time to illuminate these things for him. I simply follow the impulse.
“Get out of the car,” I say, and he complies though his eyes flash with hate and fury. I follow him to a secluded tree where he kneels before me, awaiting judgement. I swing my axe.
Tariro Ndoro is the author of Agringada: Like a Gringa, Like a Foreigner. Her essays, poetry, and short fiction have been published in many anthologies and literary journals around the world including AFREADA, The Kalahari Review, Moving on and Other Zimbabwean Stories, and Omenana. Tariro currently resides in Harare where she is trying to survive the apocalypse.
After watching comic-based movies for over thirty years, I can confidently say—the best superhero films are not superhero films. They are simply genre films featuring people with special abilities.
Case in point: Captain America: Winter Soldier. Logan. And now, The Batman.
DC needs to learn to keep a lid on their casting choices—or maybe not. At this point, people ranting and screaming at the heavens because of Batman and related characters casting choices is nothing new. Hey, I ranted at Heath’s casting as Joker—but I learned my lesson. So, when Batfleck’s turn came about, I held my peace.
The result?
An incredible performance that didn’t get its time in the spotlight.
We all know the story; personal issues interfered with the original plan to have Affleck direct and star in a stand-alone Batman movie that would have had Deathstroke as the main villain. That would have been insane; as both characters are well known for their physicality and combat abilities. Besides, the warehouse scene in Dawn of Justice gave me one of the several things that had been lacking from live-action Batman films:
A Batman who can actually fight.
Another thing that has been so conspicuously absent in these/those movies is actual detecting. For a character who is hailed as ‘the world’s greatest detective’, to the point where one of his deadliest and oldest rivals refers to him like that, the movies have failed in that regard.
Till now.
The Batman is a standard mystery crime thriller; someone is running around Gotham murdering the rich and the privileged ala the corrupt. He leaves breadcrumbs for the police and a certain vigilante to find – or the tail end of a rope for them to tug on, and unravel the biggest corruption scandal in Gotham since…well, since Gotham.
The vigilante in question has been around for roughly two years; his methods still need a lot of work. The most obvious tell of this is the fact that there’s no clear distinction between the mask (Bruce Wayne) and the man (Batman) yet. Bruce broods. Bats broods. Bruce is obsessive. So is Batman. He seems to totter on the edge of complete insanity, needing ‘one little push’ to completely lose himself. And somewhere on the fringes is Batman’s batman, hovering, unsure of his place in the ungodly mess that is his charge.
Gotham itself is a city devouring its own tail. It is gloomy, seedy, with the sun barely seen during the 176-minute runtime. Bruce himself provides the narration for some of the film, providing context and exposition. Zoe Kravitz’s Selina Kyle is a pleasure to watch—something even Bats acknowledges in one of the ‘that was weird’ scenes. The character can be fun, but we cannot have much of that in this joyless movie. Her bisexuality was introduced—but they did not beat us over the head with it. And both the stars have on-screen chemistry in abundance. Sparks and hearts flew off the screen every time TheCat and The Bat shared a scene. I do like how their relationship is teased but not explored any further.
Matt Reeves’ The Batman is soooo good for so many reasons. The dialogue is excellent, James Gordon is more visible here than in any other movie version, though he seemed more like Bats’ sounding board than his own man. It’s always nice to see the more human members of Bats’ rogue’s gallery – Falcone, Maroni, Collin Farrell virtually disappear into his Penguin, sounding like an early-day Rob DeNiro knock off. Gil Colson is supposedly Harvey Dent’s forerunner—and Peter Sarsgaard plays him like a college teenager on his first date with his crush. Alfred is the guardian who is confused about his ward’s choices but loves him, nonetheless. And a bonding moment promises a closer relationship between the two, which will probably lead us to the Alfred we all know and love.
The Riddler, whose name has somehow become Edward Nashton is played to perfection by Paul Dano, who I have thought of as ‘disturbed’ for a while. I’ve always found his babylike face creepy, and he dials it all the way up with growls and grunts and sudden screams.
I couldn’t help but notice how Reeves draws parallels between Bats and Riddler. They both stalk people. They both embrace theatricality. They both keep meticulously detailed ledgers.
And Riddler admitted to being inspired by Bats. If only he knew….
Pattison’s Batman realizes he still needs a lot of work; this is clear for all to see when, at the climactic moment, he is made to realize running around a city in black and calling himself ‘Vengeance’ may not be the smartest choice.
I’m not even going to talk about the bike. The Batmobile. The gadgets. The functionality of the Batsuit. However, it is worth mentioning that it’s as though Reeves looked at Nolan’s trilogy and went, ‘Grounded, shey? Hold my cape!’
And the cinematography?
The Batman is a lovingly and gorgeously shot movie, frame by frame. Several shots in it feel like a picture come to life, and symbolism is rife within the shots. Greig Fraser of Dune fame deserves an Oscar for this one!
If I could offer Reeves some advice, though; it would be to
LEAVE JOKER ALONE.
Everybody has a narrow view when it comes to Bats and his rogues’ gallery; as though Joker is the only villain he has! Reeves did a great job with Riddler, now do some other guy like The Ventriloquist or Ra’s or Killer Croc or Clayface or Mad Hatter or The Court of Owls or Hugo Strange or Black Mask or Calendar Man or Lady Shiva or….
Point made.
The Batman may be a hard sell for ‘regular’ moviegoers who only know Steve Rogers because they’ve seen Avengers Endgame, and people who are not movie buffs may find it long and boring. But I guarantee anyone who watches with an open mind will be entertained.
After all, is that not why we’re here?
Seun simply loves to write. An award-winning writer/copywriter, he is the author of nine books including Saving Dapo, a local bestseller. He has written all sorts of things; poetry, tv/movie scripts, speeches, love letters, music, album reviews, and movie reviews – including the one you just finished reading. He has created, co-created, and written a number of campaigns and TV/radio spots for brands like MTN, First Bank, Sterling Bank, KIA, Oraimo, etc. He also teaches creative writing, and is a creative consultant and troublemaker. When he is not writing, he is thinking about writing, and when he is not thinking about writing, he is drinking vodka, eating shawarma, reading a book, and or watching life happen. Find him online @seunodukoya or www.seunodukoya.com.
