He takes his time, thinking it over, as if we had hours, days, weeks left to live, and not seconds. Finally, he leans forward. Our lips press together, ever so slightly before the winds whip me away. Doka reaches out to save me, but he loses his purchase as well, flipping over and over, all the while reaching for me, futilely. We pass through the wide gap and into space. Immediately, my face starts to burn and swell. My vision turns to pinpricks, but before it blinks out altogether, I get a glimpse of the view Doka had been so stuck on. It is amazing.
Deadly amazing, yet peaceful. As far as final resting places go, this isn’t so bad, I suppose.
Death must be reaching for me, because now I’m starting to hallucinate. My eyes are failing me, because it seems as if a whip slaps around Doka’s waist, and then he’s no longer in my view. I twist my neck, my muscles already stiffening from the penetrating cold. He’s being pulled back to our Zenzee. I maneuver myself, but kick without resistance. Doesn’t matter, because next thing I know, I’m being caught by the waist as well and pulled back inside.
My whole body feels as though it’s on fire now, as is my brain—whether from lack of oxygen or confusion, I don’t know. I try sitting up, only to be forced back down, a cool salve going over my exposed skin. By the time I catch my breath, I see Baradonna beating against the pucker of the third ass to get it to seal back up. I still can’t breathe, but as my lungs ache for air, at least I don’t feel like I’m about to pop. Bakti’s mom shoves a re-breather into my mouth and I suck at it like a wash hoglet at its mother’s engorged teat. My thoughts start to cohere, and I look over and see I’m lying next to a puppet gel version of myself. Am I back at my wedding night again? Did I die out there in space, and this is some kind of fevered afterlife dream? I touch the puppet’s face.
“So lifelike, right?” Bakti says to me over the re-breather’s comm.
When I said I was having coherent thoughts . . . I lied. “What are you doing here?” I ask. “Are you dead too?”
“We’re here to save you,” Bakti says. “Now strip out of your clothes so we can get them on these puppets.” He tosses us a couple of thin shifts. I will my hand out to catch them, but my arms don’t respond, and they land in the puddle next to us.
“How did you find us?” Doka asks.
“You know I worked the second ass for a stretch,” Baradonna calls back to us, still wrestling with the ass, almost sealed up now. “I know these anal fissures like I know the back of my hand.” She points over to a fissure not far from us, big enough for her to pass through.
“We’ll toss these puppets out the ass, and everyone will think you’re dead,” Bakti says. “You can come back with us, live in the camp. We have a secret room to house you both. We’ll keep you safe.”
“You’d do that for us?” I ask him. “Even after what we did?”
Bakti shrugs, as if he’s impervious to hurt. “You made a mistake. One moment of indiscretion isn’t so insurmountable a thing to overcome.”
Doka and I stare at each other, somehow managing not to make any eye contact. One moment of indiscretion had already turned into two, maybe even three, depending on when you start counting. And if I’m being honest, making sound decisions isn’t exactly my forte.
“Maybe this is something we should talk about when we’re somewhere that doesn’t smell like rotten ass,” I say.
Baradonna agrees with me wholeheartedly, and after she shoves the gelled bodies into our suits and robes, she drags the puppets toward the sphincter. She pries it open wide enough to wrestle the first puppet out without evacuating the whole ass again. “One down,” she says, taking a quick breather. “One to go.” But before she can continue, the sphincter leading to the second ass starts to shudder. Baradonna notices and tries to work faster, but the purple flesh has become stubborn, some sort of involuntary contraction perhaps to prevent all the asses from being open at once?
Doesn’t matter. A couple seconds later, all four accountancy guards are rushing at us. It takes them a moment to put together what’s happened and also to realize that they are now outnumbered. Maybe that didn’t matter too much at all, because as soon as they lay a finger on Baradonna, she becomes enraged and starts swinging at them. She takes the first one out with a punch to the throat, her hands moving so quickly, I don’t realize she’s made contact until the guard is falling. One of the others attempts to put her into a choke hold. She rears back, using the guard for balance as she kicks the one in front of her, then shoves all her weight into backpedaling until the guard choking her gets slammed up against the ass wall. The guard gets the wind knocked out of her, and she falls to the ground, struggling to catch her breath. The remaining guard stays back a few steps, more wary than the others.
“Seal up the ass,” Baradonna barks at Bakti and his mother, nodding toward the second ass, though her eyes stay locked with the guard. “Fancy meeting you, Genda,” she says to the guard. “I’m pretty sure it was your antics that got me stationed here in the first place.”
“It was your own fault,” Genda says. “You should know when to go around prying into details and when not to. That’s accountancy guard basic training.”
They move together, working around the ass as though they’re locked in a dance, arms out, fists locked tight. Bakti and his mother work together at the rim, tugging and pulling until it tightens back up into a perfect pucker. Hopefully, the third ass is now primed for one final expulsion. Baradonna rushes at Genda, knocking her forehead into the bridge of her nose. Blood erupts, covering them both, and Genda falls down.
Baradonna leans over our new hostages, wipes Genda’s blood off her brow. “They’ll be looking for two bodies out there. We’ve released one already. We just need one more. Now, that body can be another gel puppet, or it can be one of you . . .” Baradonna looks the guards over, one by one by one by one.
“Please . . . ,” one of the guards says. “We won’t tell anyone.”
“Good, because if I hear a single whiff from anyone doubting that it was Doka and Seske’s bodies floating out there, I will come for you.”
“But what are we to say when you all show up—”
“You worry about yourself,” Baradonna snaps, “and we’ll all be fine.”
“We weren’t even here,” Genda says, scrambling back onto her feet, ready to make a hasty exit. “Everything went according to procedure.”
“Good, I knew I could count on you.” Baradonna says, patting her on the cheek. She then reaches into the guard’s pocket sash and pulls out her tablet. “I’ll be taking this.”
And with that, she dusts her hands, then returns to shoving the second puppet into space, and for all practical purposes, Doka and I are now dead, both for a second time.
Part IV
Surviving Symbiosis
Our lives became entangled long ago, and as our worlds grew, so did our interdependency. The ways in which we were tied together were so complex that undoing those knots seemed unfathomable. And yet, in but an instant, they’ve been severed. I wonder how long we would have lasted if we’d realized how simple it was to break free of this symbiotic relationship, and just like that, escape into an unknown future.
Queen of the Dead
Doka
Of Cold Shoulders and Hot Combs
I pull a red bean from my pile and hold it delicately between my fingers. I slowly raise it above the fourth Katsito stack from the left, twelve beans high so far, and set it down gently. When I release, I hold my breath, nervous that the stack will fall. It’s staying so far. I back up quickly and bid Seske to go.
Seske picks up a black bean from her stack, choosing the obvious second stack from the right. She moves even slower than I had. Katsito is a game that requires both slowness of mind and slowness of movement—the perfect game to play when you are a refugee within a refugee camp, where time is your only asset.
“You’re sure you want to go there?” I ask her.
Seske startles at my words, though they are barely above
a whisper. We haven’t spoken since we started the game nearly an hour ago now. “Hush, you! I almost knocked over a stack.” She scowls at me.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “Carry on.”
She goes to set the bean, then notices the trap I’d laid for her. She grins, then choses the first stack. “You’re prolonging the game,” she says to me, keeping her voice low as well. Katsito is a game of quietness as well. “You don’t want the satisfaction of winning?”
“Oh, I still plan on winning,” I tell her. “Just looking to raise the stakes, see how high we can take this.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned in our four months of living in Bakti’s mother’s back room, it’s patience. And while Katsito is a competitive game, there is a cooperative element to it. To create this landscape of stacks requires trust in the beginning, while you’re planning strategies that won’t unfold for twenty or thirty more moves. All of that concentration could be undone by one wrong play. Winning by default holds no honor. It was the titillation of the end game that made all the planning worth it.
I take another red bean and stack it upon my last.
“Oh, no you’re not,” Seske says to me. She must see what I’m really up to now. She examines the board from several angles, then bites her lip. “You’re trying to bull square me.”
“Trying to, no. About to, yes. You have no way to block me,” I say smugly. Seske holds eye contact with me, a rarity these days.
“I wish Bakti had never taught us this game,” she says too loudly. The beans on her end of the board start to rattle.
“Shhh . . . ,” I tell her. The stacks wobble, but soon the beans calm back down. My heart’s still beating hard, though. Can’t ruin the game now.
Seske aims a “don’t shush me” look in my direction, then places her bean in a desperate attempt to ruin my bull square.
I must be nervous, because when I go to select my next bean, it slips out of my hand and goes sailing across the board, nearly knocking into one of the stacks. It slides to a standstill. Seske picks it up and extends her hand to me, palm up. When I take the bean from her, we touch, lingering a second too long before I pull my hand back.
I don’t know how, but in that moment, all my strategies drain from my head. I look back at the board and can’t find where I’d intended to do my bull square, though a minute before, it was all that I could see. I search the stacks, then look pleadingly at Seske.
“You lost it, didn’t you?” she whispers.
“No,” I say.
“Then go ahead and place your bean.”
“I will. Just give me a minute.”
She stares at me. I stare back.
“Is it just me,” Baradonna says from the corner, face lit a ghastly blue from the glow of her tablet, “or is there, like, a whole lot of sexual tension in this room right now?”
Both Seske and I startle. I often forget Baradonna is here; she’s so quiet, always fiddling with accountancy numbers of some sort and typing her accountancy guard secrets. Her deep, rough voice spooks the beans. Seske and I try to settle them, but it’s too late. Several of the beans buck and topple the beans above them. The stacks start to fall, crashing into others, until the whole board is leveled.
“Baradonna!” we both call out.
“Sorry? Did I talk too loud? I’ve been staring at this screen so long, I’m afraid I’ve lost my internal filter.”
I sigh. “I hate to tell you this, Baradonna, but you’ve never had an internal filter.”
The bells on the front door ring, and we instantly go quiet. Seske and I clean up the game pieces as quickly and quietly as we can while Baradonna stashes her stolen tech, then we move from the cramped back room into the even more cramped back room closet. We’re all pressed up against one another. Usually, we stand with Baradonna separating Seske and me, but in our hurry, I’m pressed up to Seske, nose to nose. I keep my thoughts from wandering, and instead focus on the fact we’re hiding for our lives. If anyone discovers that we’re here, we will face horrible consequences, as will Bakti and his whole family.
The family often has visitors. Tirtha is a pillar in the community and people come to her for advice or help or just to chat. Sometimes the visits are short. Sometimes they run for hours, and by the time we get out of the closet, we’re so cramped up that its painful to move.
We strain to listen to the conversation so we can guess how long this visit is going to be. Suddenly, I feel Seske’s body go stiff against mine.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
Seske doesn’t say anything. I look up at Baradonna. She’s tight-lipped now, but I can tell by her expression that she knows, too. I listen harder. Then I hear it. It’s Adalla.
“Move,” Seske says to me. “I’m going out.”
“You can’t,” I say, suddenly becoming like a wall between her and the outside world. “If she sees you . . .”
“She won’t,” Seske says, attempting to shove me aside, but I don’t budge. “I just want to get closer, so I can hear better.”
“You can’t do that, Seske. We can’t risk it.”
“Don’t let me by and I’ll scream. How’s that for a risk?” She stares me down, calculating eyes full of pain and already ten moves ahead of me. I step out of her way.
“Don’t let her see you,” I warn again.
Baradonna and I watch as Seske moves toward the door to the front room, staying well hidden behind the beaded curtain. She clutches herself as she listens.
“She’s crying,” Baradonna whispers to me.
“I know,” I say.
“Kallum’s doing well,” Baradonna reports to me. “So is the baby. He’s really close to walking.”
“Baradonna, please . . . ,” I say, shaking my head.
“Sorry, I thought you would want to know.”
“I do, I . . . don’t know if I can handle it, though. It reminds me there’s a whole world out there beyond that door. A world that thinks I’m dead and probably has already forgotten about me.”
“I doubt anyone’s forgotten about you,” Baradonna says, snuggling me close. She preens the ends of my twists, and I find myself feeling like I’m back at home. As close to home as I’m going to get at least. But deep in my heart, I know that this will never be enough. We’d escaped our punishment, but being trapped here with Seske is a whole different sort of torture.
Twenty minutes later, Seske comes rushing back into the closet, and not half a minute later, Bakti draws back the beaded curtain to tell us it’s safe to come out. We venture into the back room again and are joined by Tirtha.
“I take it you heard everything,” she says to Seske, knowing she’d been eavesdropping.
Seske nods.
“She brought a gift for me. I think you should have it.” Tirtha presents Seske with a silk shawl. Seske breathes it in, probably hoping to catch a whiff of Adalla still on it, but she’s left disappointed. It’s a Klang shawl, probably bought here in the market.
“Thanks,” Seske says anyway. Tirtha gets up to leave, but I reach out to her.
“Wait!” I say. “We can’t stay like this forever. Can’t we get out and go for a walk? See something other than these walls? I promise we won’t talk. We can cover our hair. Just for a few minutes?”
“It’s too risky,” Tirtha says. “What if someone asks you a question? What if your hat gets knocked off? You’d be spotted immediately.”
“Well, we can learn to fit in. Teach us. Like you taught Kallum to fit in when he was aboard your Zenzee.”
“Adhosh remembered,” Tirtha says, placing both hands together in prayer, then to her chest. “I can teach you, if you are willing. But it will not be easy. And if you do not meet my standards, then you will not pass this door. It is my family that you risk. Do you all agree?”
“I’ll do everything I can to impress you,” I say, then I look at Seske. “Please. We have to do this. How many more games of Katsito are you willing to play with me? I don’t want to die holding a red bean in my palm. Th
ere’s no going back to our old lives, but we could make a new life here.”
“I’m willing,” Seske says.
I look up to Baradonna. “And you?”
Baradonna shakes her head. “I don’t belong here. Best chance I’d have of fitting in is if you draped me in beads and called me a door. Best thing for a forgotten person to do is stay forgotten. But don’t worry about ol’ Baradonna. I’ll find a nice little spot in the third ass, secluded and out of the way. And if I’m ever feeling up to it, I’ll go and haunt the living on occasion. Maybe I can even get my own folk tale, be the next Baxi Batzi.”
“You’re sure?” I ask, shoulders slumped. “You know I’ll miss you.”
“We’ll miss you,” Seske adds. She hugs Baradonna. I join in.
“First lesson,” Tirtha says. “There are no such things as goodbyes. Only, until next times.”
I nod, dabbing the tears out of my eyes. Baradonna rises back up to her full height, then rushes out the door. I blink, wondering if she’d been standing here at all.
Three months pass, and every moment that Tirtha doesn’t spend entertaining guests, she spends teaching us the ways of her people. We learn their language, at first being taught as if we are children: we learn the words for mother and father, siblings, and family. Basic objects and silly songs. We rush Tirtha to teach us more age-appropriate things, but she insists on teaching us in layers. Too much context is lost otherwise, or so she claims. We learn to chew our vowels differently, to hold our posture differently. I have to throw everything Baradonna taught me about reading people out the airlock, because here, everything means something else. Head tilts. Hand gestures. Mannerisms. We learn their family structures, looking something like trees when they’re laid all out. Two parents usually, and two or three children typically, though there were more variations than we could count on one hand.
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