Peter says, “The letter proves nothing.”
Mino thrusts the paper in my face and I can see from the others’ expressions that I’m not the first. I take it and skim-read. It’s from a company called Aporia, who claim to be the council’s contractors, congratulating us on the successful installation. It doesn’t mention what of. “What’s the problem?”
“How can they congratulate us when we don’t know what it is? Did you ask for this thing? Do you want it here? Do you even know what it is?”
I shrug and say, “I don’t care.”
Peter walks over to it and kneels to inspect the object. He runs a hand over it and I see Mino flinch as he makes contact. “It might be dangerous,” he says.
Peter calls back, “It would have signs on it if it were dangerous.”
Mino snaps, “Signs? You need to know it’s dangerous first,” adding to me, “Did you get this letter as well?”
I shake my head, trying not to laugh. His cheeks are flushing and sweat is beading at his brow. “I haven’t had any post for a few days.”
Hajid asks me, “No post at all? We haven’t either.”
“Ok,” I reply, not sure what else to add.
“Because I’d like my letter. You know, when it arrives.” Hajid stresses that last, labours the point for me. It’s unlike him, rude. I wasn’t aware he was capable of it.
“Sure, as soon as I get mine I’ll let you know.” He doesn’t reply, just folds his arms and stares at me. I give the letter back to Mino and leave them to bicker.
Peter says to me as I pass, “What do you think it is?”
“We need an idea of what it’s for first,” I reply.
“Maybe it’s for monitoring our internet usage?” he says.
Lucya shouts at him, “Idiot! My country can do that without shit like this, yours can too. You won“t find anything out by poking it.” She waves a hand at him in disgust then fixes me with her uneven stare, the shadowed orbit of her missing eye too intense to meet. “Leave it to the wanderer.’
* * *
I order some form of avocado and bread, although I’m unclear as to how the verb on the menu relates to food. Rather than cook things this place seems to want to mechanise it with smashing and lacquer and polish. Before I can complain, Jenna takes the menu away from me.
“I’m not going to find work,” she says, “the job centre was like a brown purgatory this morning. I saw two white people, and both of them told me there weren’t any jobs. For me.”
I feel my gorge rising as I snap, “That’s fucking ridiculous,” too loudly, catching both of us by surprise. “Sorry,” I continue, “Not sure what that was. But what’s going on, do they want you to be homeless?”
She stares past me at the streets, making me aware of the noise outside. The pulsing growls of engine cylinders and exhausts huffing out noxious acronyms. “I had a letter from my mother. She said she would rather die now than live her time out there. She said limbo is too violent a place to keep people.”
“But they will get out one day, you’ll make it happen.”
“I won’t. I’m in the same place as them, it’s just the walls are further apart.”
“I can only imagine,” I say, feeling weak.
“No, you can’t,” she replies, “but thank you for trying. I have a favour to ask though.”
“Anything,” I tell her.
“When we visit your mother, I need to use her garden. It has to work and everything here poisons things. I need trees and sunlight, and to not be disturbed.”
I’ve seen her try spells before and she’s always equivocated on whether or not they worked. The smokes and incantations meant nothing to me but she always came out at peace, as though the effort was enough for her. I see her eyes scattered now, her frame hunched and the air of exhaustion clinging to her like autumn mist. I think of mum, and the smile she takes even now when shuffling her cards. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for witches.”
Our food arrives, pre-soldered, and we eat in silence. Jenna looks distracted and I find my mind wondering back to the object. Back to Hajid’s face earlier, and the feeling he was accusing me of theft. There has been a shift in the world, where Jenna is unemployable and Hajid harbours aggression. These things aren’t right. It reminds me I need to tell Jenna: “My neighbour, Barrington. He asked me to apologise to you. He didn’t say what happened, just that he was sorry.”
She says, “Fuck that prick.” Barrington who always smiles, who helps Lucya carry shopping a mile from the supermarket. Barrington who barbecues meat as long as the sun shines but never seems to eat any himself. Is it the world making us sick, or the other way round?
Then just like that she says, “Do you want to know what happened to my hands?”
I feel the breath jet out of me in shock. After all these years, she wants to tell me. “Why now?” I ask.
She replies, but doesn’t answer, “It’s the first thing I remember. It was in a village, somewhere in the north. I still don’t know where. It’s all flashes and images but I remember my parents, my blood parents, were in danger. It’s all dread, like I was created out of fear instead of born.
“There was this big fire and we were nearby, I remember being in a crowd but I don’t have any faces. Just this wall of shadows and features, all shadows. We were doing something important, it was one of those moments that felt significant, but I didn’t know why. I was just some kid in the middle.
“I remember a flash, a big explosion, and I can still see the way the fire bloomed like a tree or a flower above us all. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Next thing I knew I was elbow deep in the fire grasping at something. I can still feel it now, like crumbling dust, but real intense pain. I pulled this… thing out, it was just a stubby bit of wood, and clutched it to my chest. When I woke up I was in Kumasi, in the hospital. And they told me my family had died in an accident.”
I watch her reach over to me, captivated by the tight brightness of her skin, the way it pulls so taut over her knuckles and joints. It’s only as she wipes my tears away that I realise I am crying. “I have to do this,” she tells me. “I won’t lose them again.”
* * *
The clattering letterbox coughs two envelopes the next morning. A matching pair: one for me, the other for Hajid. I feel a flush of anger at the postman, too lazy to separate neighbours’ post, as if we’ll finish his work for him.
I rip at my envelope so it comes away in uneven pieces and I see the same dirty yellow colour paper. Aporia. Heavily padded writing, the substance of which is buried deep in the fourth paragraph. They call it ‘the receptacle’, then mention its broadcasting function but not what it’s sending out. The discrepancy irritates, the inability to compose even a simple letter.
I knock on Hajid’s door more loudly than I intended and he yanks it open. We stare at each other for a second before speaking, years of friendship suddenly destabilised by arrhythmia. I remember myself and smile, saying, “Both got delivered to me. They arrived just now.”
He takes it from me and opens it carefully, reading it whilst I stand there. “This makes no sense.”
“I thought that. How does a receptacle broadcast?”
He squints at me, says, “Not that. The date is for next week. Did they install it early or is the date wrong?” He starts to shut the door, muttering to himself.
I call in, “I’ll see you later.”
The door whips open again and he stares at me with wide, strange eyes. “What does that mean?”
“That I’ll see you around. I’m going home.” I point at my door, a few meters away.
He replies more quietly, “Yes. Something strange is happening here. You don’t see it, away all the time. We’re not ourselves.”
I tell him, “Barrington said the same thing to me.” But he’s shut the door. The wind gusts along the balcony and a crow caws from its rooftop view. The block is quiet.
* * *
Outside the station a man pu
lls his shirt off and waves it in a fist at bemused travellers. He’s old enough that the muscle drips from his frame. His voice is blown out, an exhausted throaty bellow that offers no distinction to his words. A bemused couple are walking away a few steps at a time, turning back to tell him they don’t know what he wants, what his problem is, but he only shouts back.
Buses swing past them, their headlights in the twilight catching my eye. I blink them away and the old man seems to jump in these moments, flickering across the space in his rage. The intense halogen lights puncture my vision so I hurry past as he howls one last inanity.
The train is too busy, so I stand, trying to read in the little space I have. I feel the press of suits, cheap artificial fibres brushing with silk. Papers rustle, pages flitting into my face, disappearing with half-enunciated apologies.
A taxi ride to the door, the key to the lock, the lift to the catch. Klara emerges from the living room and tells me all sorts of things that I forget. I am suddenly exhausted, the illusion of the city having been preserved so long this time by the pressure on the train. Then she disappears, leaving me alone with my mother. Just the two of us until Jenna arrives tomorrow.
I cook and we eat watching TV in silence. After I take the dishes, mum strokes her crystal ball incessantly. I take down her cards. The Chariot and The Hierophant are on top. The necessity of focus. Transformation.
It’s when I’m helping mum into the chairlift that I tell her, “Jenna’s coming to visit tomorrow, just like you asked.”
She says, “I know.”
“You remember Jenna, my friend. You met just before you got ill.”
She says, “I know.”
“She’s going to cast a spell in your garden. It’ll be like when you were young.”
She turns to look at me and says, “I know.”
I want to believe her. The idea that she might really know is too precious to entertain. I test her instead: “Do you want to watch her do the spell?”
She says, “I know.”
* * *
Clear skies mean the day after is warm. We eat breakfast in the garden, watching tits and finches on the feeder, listening to the hum of lawnmowers across the village. After we eat I follow them and drag mum’s Flymo out of the shed noisily. She looks around at the sky, the plants, at me, as I mow the lawn. Soon her patch of nature is tame and tidy once more.
Jenna arrives just after midday, laden with shopping bags, smelling of herbs. I see mum’s head lift as she catches the heady fragrances, the collected bryonies, Lady’s Mantle, saxifrages, camphor and countless others. And we sit at the table again as Jenna tells her countless trivialities.
Mum lifts her hands up a couple of times as Jenna speaks, fingertips flicking in the air, chasing away shadows. She seems calm, maybe more focused than yesterday.
Eventually Jenna runs out of things to say.
She gets her bags, checking through them, arranging things in piles on the table. “Why did you mow the grass?’ she asks.
“It needed doing.”
“Honestly, Simon. You don’t understand it at all, do you? No matter, it won’t make a difference. I’m going to get started.”
I watch as she sets everything out in a carefully arranged pattern around her. She places candles and piles of herbs, flicks liquids along interconnecting lines, pausing to sit and chant quietly. Finally she takes a deep breath, turns to wink at me, and lights the herbs on each point of her symbol.
She kneels at its edge and starts to chant again. Something in her droning voice is hypnotic, making me feel drowsy. I watch her shoulders rock from side to side. I listen to the bees in the flowers. I hear the distant roar of a plane. It takes so long to realise that mum is trying to lift herself up, her arms pushing against her seat.
“This isn’t a kind place,” she hisses, the purpose in her voice shocking me. She gives up on standing and grabs at my sleeve. “Things are hidden here. Stop her.”
There is an explosion. A great gout of fire blossoms for an instant, lurid against a green and pleasant land. Jenna is blown back by the shockwave, left curled around her middle on the lawn like a sleeping cat. The garden barely notices, the flowers and bushes flexing with the gust, the birds scattering to higher branches in the trees.
The thing left in the wake of the blast is terrible. It is a great black hound, as tall as I am, its forelegs huge muscular blocks. Matted, dank fur gives way to vicious iron hooks in place of its feet. Spots of rust, or blood, dot the surface and the silence is sudden and complete. Even the bees are quiet.
I hear mum whisper, “The dog.”
Jenna says, “Asanbosam.”
The beast smiles, revealing metallic teeth, and speaks with a deep and rich voice: “Asari Akarele.”
Some primal instinct screams at me to remain still and hope it will pass me by. The hound shifts from paw to paw, leaning its weight against some invisible barrier as if testing it. Its eyes flash in the day, too bright, bringing their own darkness to define.
Jenna pushes herself upright then starts to scurry backwards, away from the beast and towards us. She is panicking, speaking quickly to herself, “Asanbosam cannot travel, I brought it here. I contain you with my name, Asari Akerele, take my name as payment. You are changed Asanbosam, you are changed.”
And it leaps. There is a tearing, shattering sound, as if the air itself has fled from the monster in panic. It lands too gracefully in front of Jenna and drops its head to sniff at her. Jenna freezes, then starts praying, lifting the scarred mess of her hands to the monster in supplication. She speaks the Lord’s Prayer, then things I don’t understand and finally just, “Oh God, please, no.”
The rest is too fast. The beast lunges at Jenna and snaps its jaws around her wrists, tearing them into stumps with a yank of its head. She gasps, a powerful and desperate sound, before gulping in more air with a raw scream. The dog licks at the stumps, its massive tongue overlapping, dragging across her torso at the same time.
The first card flashes in the air, and the beast recoils as it impacts. It is not enough. Jenna manages one more breath before it snaps at her, lifts her bodily up and starts to swallow her down. there is a biting sound full of shearing metal and cracking bone.
The next card hits, then another and another and the growling thing staggers. The cards come more quickly until it is the whole deck flying like lightning. They embed themselves in the beast’s flesh and as the last cuts deep it howls. And simply. Disappears.
My muscles remember their purpose, and I hurry to where Jenna was to find only blood on the grass. Nothing more of her remains; the earth feeds well today. I turn to see mum standing, her arm outstretched, a look of fire in her features. She collapses.
I hold her, cradling her head as the sounds of the afternoon returns. Bees buzz. Birds tweet. She whispers, “She didn’t bring it. The dog is ours.”
* * *
I don’t stay in the house. As soon as the EMTs told me what I already knew, that mum is dead, I left. This land is my birth-right, now my responsibility, and I don’t know what I shall do with it. Can I sell a curse? Is it right to let other people live there, knowing what I know? But can I keep this grave? It will only ever be that to me now.
I write to Jenna’s family but a week later I haven’t heard anything. Their limbo has become Hell, not transforming, but finally revealing its true nature. My life has become something lesser as well. I don’t go to work. Instead I walk the streets, listening to the noises. The chaos and cacophony seem much more simple now.
One of these days I come back to the block to find Hajid in the garden, kneeling at the object. He is digging. He doesn’t hear me approach so I call to him, “What are you doing?”
“Things are different, and they shouldn’t be. I won’t let them do this to us.” He stops digging and looks up at me. I see he is using spoons, realise I have no useful tools in my flat either. He meets my eye and says, “I have been a rude shit to you. You have to me. That’s not right.”
“I heard about your friend,” he says. He thrusts a spoon at me. “This thing is an abomination. The ground doesn’t need it. I don’t need it. You don’t need it.”
“I–” I can’t say anything. I take the spoon and dig. Hajid finds the first sign. It’s a bright yellow plate around a foundation block that says Do not tamper with. Contains hazardous materials. If uncovered call Aporia Continuity Services, then a phone number.
Hajid says, “Fuck Aporia,” and spits on the plate. “We dig it out and destroy it.”
“I don’t think we can destroy it,” I tell him.
“Then we give it back to the council. Find the manufacturers. This is our home. If they want to destroy it they can come here and do it in person.”
I tell him, “It might be here to protect us.”
I dig.
PURE POETRY
by Lars H. Hoffmann
“I am sure you understand,” said the captain without turning and facing the poet. “It takes up valuable resources to keep humans alive. Nourishment, air, water. We don’t need any of that. We make it just for you.”
The poet did understand. Well, he sort of understood. It was true that keeping him alive required resources, but it wasn’t like the Mechans were short on anything. They could make as much food and water as they needed. Couldn’t they?
“You see this here little device?” continued the captain. He signaled a small roundish object sitting in an alcove off to one side. The poet nodded even though the captain had his back to him. The Mechan could observe him from any angle through viewpoint lenses or the eyes of any one of the Mechans in close vicinity. The poet had always wondered what it felt like to be able to observe, listen and perceive through the eyes and ears of those around you. In this way, the Mechans worked like one large perceptive organism, even though the processing of the input was done by the individual. “That is a scrubber. It sits there in its niche waiting for the right time and then it rolls out and cleans floors, walls, and ceilings. It has a purpose. It is a useful device. Without it the ship would slowly fill up with dust.”
Kzine Issue 21 Page 2