The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021)
Page 8
I zoom into the photograph. Before proceeding, I grab her picture with my hand and throw it into the web on another window, hoping the scan will reveal her online identity. I watch the loading icon, a silver light zipping around a circle, and finally a picture comes up. Her name is Gorata Tau. She’s studying for an MBA in China. I flip through her photographs. She’s on the metro. She’s in front of a street with fairy lights. She’s smiling at the camera, and behind her is Canton Complex in Guangzhou with steely skyscrapers. I feel faint, my armpits sticky with sweat. I switch to the other hologram window to read the chats:
Boothang69: I love you, boo. Couldn’t stop thinking about you. 2:44 AM
You: Send me a picture. I miss her, the warmth between your legs. 2:45 AM
Boothang69: How about a hologram connection like last time? 2:45 AM
You: Babe, you got me going crazy. If only I could feel your body. I miss you so badly. I need you back home. 2:45 AM
Boothang69: Ya know, soon I’ll be there. Isn’t she taking care of you? 2:46 AM
You: She’s so stiff. She’s not like you. 2:46 AM
Boothang69: You won’t have to wait so long. One more year left. 2:46 AM
. . .
You’re really cheating on me. I don’t believe in a fight that some women get into with other women because the guy wronged you. Your partner is the one who committed adultery. What is the point of fighting someone outside the relationship, as if he can’t find another one? Am I then going to hunt down every single woman you cheat on me with? No. This war is between you and I. I scroll down to last night’s messages, which only confuse me more.
Boothang69: Babe. You up? 2:34 AM
You: Ja, aren’t you in class? 2:39 AM
Boothang69: It’s 8:40, the lecturer’s running late. 2:40 AM
You: You feeling better this morning? 2:41 AM
Boothang69: Fuck, no! 2:41 AM
Boothang69: Where is she? 2:41 AM
You: Hibernating. Jesus, she’s a lot of work. She’s not acting according to our plans. 2:42 AM
Boothang69: WHAT?? 2:42 AM
Boothang69: Did you find out why she logged you out from the ThoughtBox? 2:43 AM
Boothang69: Hello? 2:46 AM
Boothang69: Where are you??? This is bugging me. 2:49 AM
You: Sorry. It’s almost 3 AM. She was just up for a glass of water. I was still talking to her. 2:50 AM
Boothang69: What? She can eat now??? Isn’t that dangerous? 2:50 AM
You: No. The glass was empty. She sees it as filled with water. She “thinks” she can eat and drink, but her plate is always empty. 2:51 AM
Boothang69: Oh, that’s a relief. 2:52 AM
You: I didn’t want to tell you this because ur stressed with classes, but the monitoring-and-remote-controlling chip is not working . . . I can’t hear her thoughts. 2:55 AM
Boothang69: What the fuck! 2:55 AM
Boothang69: Since when? 2:55 AM
Boothang69: Why are you only telling me this now????? 2:56 AM
Boothang69: Oh, modimo. We’re fucked. We’re seriously fucked. We can’t have her running around unsupervised. Do you understand how in serious shit we’ll be??????? 2:57 AM
Boothang69: Why are you taking forever to respond? This is FUCKING important! 3:07 AM
You: I’m sorry, babe, I was on a call with a client. 3:13 AM
Boothang69: Jesus, we need to bury her. 3:13 AM
You: People around here know her. If she disappears again, I’ll be their first suspect. I’d hate it if you got punished too. 3:14 AM
Boothang69: My aunt was taken in, incarcerated. She hung herself in a fucking toilet. I can’t go to prison. I won’t survive. 3:14 AM
You: I won’t let it come to that. I’d rather take the fall than have you suffer. I love you, s’thandwa same. 3:16 AM
Boothang69: I told you we should’ve never given her an identity. Never. We should’ve hidden her, tied her in a basement or something. 3:16 AM
Boothang69: I don’t trust her. What the fuck was she doing yesterday? 02:40 AM
You: She says she was working from home. The gardener said a professional-looking woman visited her. 3:19 AM
Boothang69: Why the hell are you so calm? I did this for you. 3:19 AM
You: I know, and I appreciate you for that. Babe, you need to relax. I have her under control. 3:23 AM
Boothang69: We can’t get caught, ja. 3:23 AM
Boothang69: This shit is stressing me the fuck out. 3:25 AM
Boothang69: I can’t sleep. 3:25 AM
Boothang69: If they find out who she is—Jesus, I keep seeing her face on the news. It’s driving me mad. 3:25 AM
Boothang69: Where the hell are you? 3:28 AM
Boothang69: You’re not taking this seriously. 3:35 AM
You: I’m sorry, babe, I was on another call. Just why does she have to be goddamn difficult? 3:38 AM
Boothang69: You and that fucking job. You’re always busy! 3:39 AM
Boothang69: Fuck this. I’m getting on a flight tonight. 3:39 AM
You: Wait. What?! 3:40 AM
You: What about your dissertation? Your studies? 3:40 AM
Boothang69: Are you kidding me? There’ll be no future with this bitch acting out. We need to sort her out. Clearly, you need manpower. 3:41 AM
You: I’m really sorry. I hate disappointing you. 3:41 AM
You: You still there? 3:47 AM
You: Babe, she’s made a lot of money for us in the past year, which paid for your studies. Let’s just run her for another year. Just be patient. 3:52 AM
Boothang69: No. I am coming home, finish and klaar. Get everything ready. 3:52 AM
You: Ok. 3:53 AM
You: What should I prepare? 3:59 AM
You: Hello? 4:07 AM
You: Um, have a safe flight. I love you. 4:17 AM
. . .
The floor is cold under my feet. The knobs of the cabinets have eaten into my back and my spinal cord hurts. I stretch out my legs, refusing to face what I’ve just read. The hologram glows in front of me and the bathroom darkens, clouds overshadowing the sun. These messages are from last night, which means she’ll be arriving tonight at the latest. Why are they so concerned about me and my diet? What identity did they give me? Who is this woman? Why do they need me under their control? What the hell is going on? They want me to disappear. No. No. You wouldn’t do that. I stare at myself in the mirror, your words with your mistress running through my mind:
I told you we should’ve never given her an identity.
She’s not acting according to our plans.
We’re seriously fucked. We can’t have her running around unsupervised.
She can eat now??? Isn’t that dangerous?
I keep seeing her face on the news.
If they find out who she is . . .
If she disappears again.
Let’s just run her for another year.
Who are they referring to that they’re so afraid will find me? You keep seeing my face on the news, and it makes your mistress sick, but how come I haven’t seen my face on the news? If I disappear again? Am I a missing person? Did you take me in?
I press my hand against the mirror and I feel like a stranger. “Who are you? What have you become? What has he done to me?” I ask, staring at my reflection. I draw my arm back, strike it into the mirror. A sharp sound; glass cascades into the porcelain sink. “Who are you!” I shout at the mirror. I bang my arm again. “Who are you?” My face distorts into anger and confusion.
When I look down, night-like liquid spills down the white of the sink. I do not bleed like other people. My blood is not red. I have no menstrual cycles. I do not consume food nor liquids. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? I look at my arm. A shard of glass has sliced it open. The skin is folded back, like an orange peel. I pull it further back, inspecting what lies beneath my skin:
In my arm, there are fiber cords and not veins.
There are tubes and steel but no bone.
> So what is in the rest of my body?
Sensors,
processors,
actuators
in my limbs are responsible for my tactile reception
that my brain-search can identify.
I inspect the flap of skin:
this is lab-harvested biological tissue and muscles,
fused with technology,
with a venous network of nano-sized sensor-wires
meshed onto my endoskeleton
inside me, there are nanobots used for cell regeneration.
Aluminum alloy lies beneath this skin like bone.
I fold into myself on the floor. “Who are you?” I cry to the cloud-eclipsed sun.
I drag your tongue
You didn’t come home.
You stayed at work. Showered at work. Slept at your desk.
Twenty-four hours I’ve sat here waiting for you. You tell me you’ll be home tonight.
For one year, you continued this other life, sending each other nude snapshots. I remember our friends during our game nights, lightly telling me over shots how I’m obsessed with you, that I have the peculiar OCD to tend to your every need. Maybe I crave pain. Maybe sadness feels like home. Maybe it’s nice to blame you for something. It feels safer to be in your realm than outside. It’s the only environment I know, from childhood to adulthood. I keep choosing people like you, as if you are all twins in love with your dominant role. Your wrongs make mine feel lesser, make me feel like the perfect human being. Hey, you abuse people. At least I’m better. I may flirt with a guy, keep him wrapped around my finger, but I’d never do anything as bad as that.
But this. The thing I learn about you. You have crossed the line and that is bullshit. Here’s the thing that no one knows about your charm and your pull-the-crowd humor: you’re the obsessed freak. Obsessed with pussies and demands. Mollycoddled by mummy issues. The sexting. The pictures. Naked bodies. Exchanging these illicit texts. The lies—the damning lies about who I really am. I unpack the ThoughtBox, I autopsy it and rummage through the deleted thoughts. The bare truth in postmortem form lies on my living room floor. You’re a bastard. And I need answers:
Who am I?
Who is that woman?
What is wrong with my body?
After everything I have done for you. You do this to me? I stare at it, the evidence of you begging her to send you a picture of her vagina, whilst telling me you love me. Not only me. But you’re begging them. Many girls. Girls who want you to stop asking, who tell you to think about me. But you’re persistent. Our neighbors—God, you begged her, wanting to kiss it. Even our friends. Bloody bliksem, no wonder they gave me strange stares when we were together. This is not only embarrassing. You’ve torn the dignity off my body. You’ve left me naked. And everyone knew. Everyone. Except me.
I search every nook and cranny of news reports online and offline just to find something, something that connects me to something honest and real. And there it is, a hidden report you’ve confiscated from our viewing; it’s a nineteen-year-old woman who disappeared on her walk home from work. Three years ago. Three! When I enlarge the missing-person picture, it is me, except the name is different: Olerato Mosime.
Who are you? What is beneath that skin of yours? Can I flay you like I did the cats in my old neighborhood? See if you have bone or blood.
I don’t want any explanations.
I don’t want your voice and your lies.
I want you dead.
When you enter through the door, I’m not your shitty little submissive girlfriend. I knock you out with a fucking pan. The fucking pan you chided me for misusing. I want the pain in my heart to be a bomb in your body. But what is my plan? To kill you and then what? To kill you because you cheated? Because you two kidnapped me? Because you’re planning to do far worse to me? Because you’re both screwing around with me, trying to control me? And what have you done to my body? Why is my blood black?
I take your life because you took mine. No, you took three years of my life, wasted them, you fucker. And what about my family? My poor family who’ve suffered so many years. Anger, I’ve never felt anger like this. What have I become? I crumble onto my knees. Ashamed of myself. Embarrassed. This is not me. I am not cruel. How can I let this relationship turn me into this ugly thing? You customized me like a sex doll, only I had a mind of my own.
Lies or not, I dial.
The operator answers. “999, what is your emergency?”
“Hello,” I wail, swiping blood and tears from my face. “Please, I need help. I was kidnapped three years ago. I just killed my kidnapper in self-defense. I need help, please.”
6
“The Parts That Make Us Monsters” © Sheree Renée Thomas
Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books: May 26, 2020)
We didn’t want your nail clippings or your blood. Your laughter, or tears, would do. That strange light you saw drifting where a shadow should be, was the promise mother made when she bore us. Where we lived, there would always be sun. Where we go, there would always be light. That star never scarred or scared us. Even in the face of our father, the sun’s blistering gaze, we were the daughters of night.
On that first journey across the waters, we held each other close. When we shut our eyes we floated on azure sleep, lifted by wave upon wave, until the darkness behind our golden lids became lonelier still. Before they trapped us, we bathed in leaves, bark, stones, and spice. We sang no fear. We knew. Ancestors descend when needed. Spirits rise when called. It was the way of the world, the way day follows night and moon, mother said, it was moon who follows ocean’s call. For it was the water that carried us in the womb and water that reigns supreme.
When they chased us from the village into the forest, when we fell into the arms of ghosts, we knew we would have to feed, our worries and our appetites, replanted in strange, disordered lands. With lowered eyes we watched the traders, whose skin was the color of clay, the wet earth that came from waters, the moon clay our mother and her sisters used to mark their territory. From the way the ghosts moved, the way they stared through us, barking out words that sounded like insanity falling, we knew. The clay moon ghosts believed wherever they walked, wherever their square toes landed, was their territory. We sang the song of our mother, sang the songs that came before. Force marched through a door of no return, we wore our chains like an elder’s gold, carried our song inside, still waters flecked with shards of moonlight. Three days later we entered the dark maw of what the ghosts called ship. We lay in the bottom of the belly with the others. We lay in the noise and the filth with the mothers, and the sisters, and the daughters, listened to their dirge song of shrieks, moans, the twisting of tongues, the deaths of worlds yet born. We did not speak with words but with feelings. Ours was the language of survival, flight.
Mistress Godwin was a laughing girl, a mere child, barely a woman when we joined her. Her cheeks and eyes still flushed with the sounds of mirth. Disappointment had not yet clawed its way into her heart. Her breasts were hard blossoms yet to break earth. Mistress, we sang, Mistress Godwin, but she did not speak or smile. In this strange land, dead tongues no longer answered us. God wins, we laughed, god wins, we cried. The sound of our pleasure frightened the blackbirds in the trees.
When they found her, her skin had grown pale, her temples the color of sour milk. We only meant to take a little, but the hunger had long since overtaken us. We wanted to taste the sound of her laughter, to let the womanchild’s joy fill the hollows that hid deep inside. Like the ghosts, we took too much, and just like them, we were not ashamed.
Thirst is thirst.
When the good mistress grew still and joined whatever cold ancestors that claimed her, we dropped the slop bucket in the field, left the dough rising in the wooden bowl, abandoned our chores. We drained the others and fled, taking their laughter with us. Into the wild forest, we ran, cousin to the bush that once betrayed us. We hid in wildness. We hid in plain sight. In
hickory and peepaw and loblolly pine, in the light that has always claimed us.
We waited. Sparkling light where shadows should be. The blackbirds visited, kept us company in the silent years when even the first ones marked our hunting ground in the language of their fear. Croatoan, they later said, croatoan carved into the heart of a tree. But no tongue has found the right tones to name us. Twenty years later, finally, the blackbirds crowed good news. When the new beast arrived, it bore one hundred and twenty souls, but none like us were in its belly. We took what sustenance we could from the joyless ones who struggled to make the dry-bone land home. In time, their parched throats would rival our own, for the old gods of this land refused to send rain. And thirst is thirst.
Leaf, ghosts, earth, light. We suffered together. Finally, when we had grown so weak, our light only the spark of fireflies, twenty and odd men joined the colony. A few suns later, a woman appeared. Angelo. Angela. Their ebon skin and eyes stirred memory, the ghost of their laughter refracted light of our own. The sound, infrequent as it was, reminded us of home. And because we are our mother’s daughters, we left the men and the lone woman who could be kin. After the journey across the big water, their bodies held such little joy, we were ashamed to drain them. We knew. Even in strange lands, old seeds release fresh roots. Eyes stinging with memory, we fled again, taking the silver shards of light with us.
We left temptation and the shadows and something close to sorrow. We buried thirst and the seed of ourselves deep within the forests. And the years passed through us. Past the cypress and the oaks. The memory of laughter floating around, dust motes in sunlight. With time, memory became our only home.
The old home was a memory time would not let us forget.
Some night-days we dream. Our thoughts are upside down.
We hang from our feet in the limbs of thick-boned trees.
The blackbirds come and sing to us. They say we have become the language of fear, the hushed gasps and breath around open fires. But the stories they teach are wrong. Darkness is not the only thing to fear. Sometimes the dark is hidden in light. Once girls, we have grown old here. Once girls, our hearts have become hard like the mottled bark of the strange trees that grow here. There are layers to this loneliness. We feel its bite. Its teeth are sharp. Hard things hold beauty, too. The world we live in is a fire. The people we love all burn. Ever hungry, our red gum smiles hide the empty pit within. We know. Legends rise from all the broken places, emerge from the stories and the memories, the half-remembered and the ill-formed, all melded together, united in one. In this land we are like moons who have lost their water. We no longer hear the ocean’s call. If water no longer speaks to us, are we still our mother’s daughters?