Pet

by Akwaeke Emezi

  Jam rolled her eyes. “Not unpleasant?”

  “Your world is unpleasant, your truths are unpleasant, the hunt is unpleasant.” Pet looked at her with its goldblank face, and thin tendrils drifted out of its mouth. “But unpleasant things must be done for unpleasant purposes out of unpleasant necessity.”

  Jam stared. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Pet stopped for a moment and inclined its head at her. “Job description.”

  “Okay, so none of what you’re saying makes any sense whatsoever.” She was voicing more than she normally would, but it felt okay. “Why are you here?”

  “To hunt, little girl. I already told you.”

  Jam paced and spun, throwing up her hands. “No, why are you here? Why are you in my house? Why did you come out of Bitter’s painting? How am I supposed to keep my parents from finding out about you?” Her parents. She’d forgotten about them, but at the thought of explaining how she’d helped pull a giant creature out of a canvas and into their house, Jam flopped down on the floor and pressed her face into her hands. She shouldn’t have messed with the painting without her mom’s permission; now look what had happened, now this thing was here and hunting, whatever that meant, and Bitter was going to blame her, it was all her fault. “I’m going to be in so much trouble!” she wailed.

  Pet was tilting its head again, humming gently. Its face was as solid as a mask, the interlocked feathers unmoving, yet the way it moved its head, those small angles, they communicated a world. In this case it seemed confused. “What do you mean, keep your parents from finding out?”

  Jam looked up at it. “What do you mean, what do I mean? Just…just look at you!” She gestured to Pet’s hugeness, Pet’s horns, Pet’s creatureness. “They’re totally going to freak out!”

  “Don’t be silly. Your mother painted me.” It put down the sketches it had been looking through, and Jam watched its hands, Bitter’s dead hands, touching the sketches that had been drawn by Bitter’s alive hands, which had painted these dead hands, which were putting down the sketches drawn by the hand that painted them. Her head was hurting. “I should tell her I’ve arrived,” Pet said, and Jam jumped up, a current of alarm galvanizing her.

  “Oh no no no no.” She waved her arms at it. “We’re not doing that. That’s a hard no.”

  Pet cocked its head at her briefly, then started toward the door. Jam ran and blocked it, stretching her arms out past the doorframe. It seemed incongruous in that moment for her to be facing down a seven-foot-tall creature with gold claws and bloody horns, but anyone who had ever seen Bitter lose her temper would probably agree that between Pet and Bitter, Pet was the less scary option. “No! I need you to stay here until I can figure something out, please! If she finds out about this, I’m so dead. I’m not supposed to touch her paintings before they’re dry, let alone pull something out of one!”

  Pet reached out to lift Jam, with Bitter’s obscene dead hands around her ribs, and set her aside firmly. “You will be safe. Don’t worry.”

  Jam groaned. “I don’t mean that she’s literally going to kill me—”

  Pet opened the door and stepped out, bending its neck to clear the doorway. The tip of one horn put a gouge in the paint as Pet walked into the house.

  Jam stared after it, her mouth open. “Never mind. She’s literally going to kill me.” The studio air around her didn’t disagree. Pet’s footsteps were singing through the floor like mallets striking an ocean of drumskin, and they were heading straight for her parents’ bedroom. Jam stayed frozen in place for a few seconds before forcing her legs to move and running after Pet, who was already opening the bedroom door and stepping inside. There was a click as it flicked on the light switch, and then the soft ringing of its voice.

  “Apologies for interrupting your sleep,” it said.

  Jam whirled through the door just in time to see both Aloe and Bitter sit up, sleep slithering away from them, leaving that unpleasant disorientation of an unexpected awakening. Aloe gave out a startled shout, and Bitter’s cry was brief and sharp, a stab into the bedroom air. Jam was expecting them to go unhinged, to scream endlessly at the thing standing before them, but there were a few moments of shocked silence instead as Pet stared at them and they stared at Pet. Finally Aloe broke the silence, his eyes narrowed and his voice tight.

  “You can’t be serious,” he said. Jam pressed herself against the dresser, practicing being invisible and waiting for when she, specifically, would be in hot water, as Aloe liked to say. Her father dragged his hand over his face, then massaged his eyes with his fingertips before looking at Pet again. “Mba, it’s a lie. This has to be a joke.”

  Not taking her eyes off Pet for one second, Bitter stretched out a hand and blindly patted their duvet and pillows before finding Aloe’s arm and squeezing the flesh of his bicep. “You seeing what I seeing?”

  Aloe jerked his arm away and flung the covers off his legs so he could get out of the bed. “Are you actually mad? Of course I’m seeing what you’re seeing! Am I blind?” He pressed his hands to his head and paced next to the bed, then turned to Bitter and smacked his palms against the mattress. “You said this nonsense would never happen again, Bitter!”

  Shock hooked into Jam like a riptide. Wait, again? Again?!

  Bitter was still staring at Pet. She raised her shoulders slowly and let them drop. “I don’t know how this happened, Aloe. True talk. This…this can’t be real.”

  Jam’s father was shouting now. “Don’t talk rubbish! Is it not your painting that’s standing here in our bedroom? And you’re opening your mouth to tell me you don’t know how this happened! Are you serious?” He stopped, abruptly quiet, and sagged. “I should have never let you finish painting it,” he said, his voice dropping. “I knew this would happen. I could feel how hungry it was to become real.”

  Bitter just kept staring at Pet, and Aloe slapped his forehead, pitching his voice loud again. “It’s as if I learned nothing from last time!”

  Jam stared at both her parents, numb and confused. They weren’t terrified. How were they not terrified? How were they talking about agains and last times, actually having an argument while Pet stood there patiently, its face as still as metal, almost a statue cast against the pale tangerine of their bedroom wall. Bitter turned her head to glare at her husband, and Jam could almost smell her mother’s temper as it began to stir, boiling in her chest under her silk nightgown.

  “You know, boy, my ears must be plug up. I could swear you just tell me something about letting me paint? Like you does give me permission to make work?” Her voice was snakesweet and precise.

  Aloe glared right back at her. “My friend, vex if you want to vex. Me, all I know is that I am looking at that monster you painted with your own hands. Looking at it with my own two koro-koro eyes as it’s standing in front of us, and you want to come and say it’s not your fault? Try it!”

  Jam’s parents were too heated to notice how Pet hissed and crackled when Aloe used the word “monster,” but Jam felt and heard it not only in the sound waves that bruised the air but also in the floorboards of the house, a hackled warning that neither Bitter nor Aloe was paying attention to. It was amazing how they had clearly seen but were ignoring Pet. Jam wanted to move, to say something to them, to sign something to them, but she was fixed in that corner, made of stone. Whenever she was really scared or freaking out, the same thing always happened: she began to dissociate, reality loosening around her like a hammock deconstructing itself, spilling her out into sands of nothingness.

  Jam pressed her fingers against the dresser, trying to ground herself, trying not to cry, but it was hard, it felt impossible. Her parents were fighting, yelling at each other in front of her, in front of Pet, who had pulled back into its aura of lethal, who was now a snarl embodied, danger that she had brought into the house. All this was her fault, all of it, and she ha
d broken their world, allowed something else into it, allowed not just Pet but conflict between two parents who usually did nothing more than lovingly bicker, and now nothing felt safe and nothing felt okay and it was all her fault. Jam squeezed her eyes shut, the dresser like dreamwood under her hands, all the sound blurring into one raucous whine in her ears. Her fear narrowed and hardened into something numb and old; her pulse loosened. She dropped her hands to her sides and opened her eyes to a world that wasn’t real anymore. Her parents were puppets, animated before her, and Pet was turning its head slowly, as if it could smell how quickly she was floating away. Jam watched as it stepped in and pulled her with a feathered arm, placing her body against its streaked fur.

  Its hands were chilly, but its torso was warm, unexpectedly so. She hadn’t thought it would be; she’d thought it would be cold, like lonely paint or something. There was even a pulse under the fur, a slow and powerful beat that pressed against her flesh. If she hadn’t gone numb, then she might have been frightened, but nothing matters when it’s not real.

  Bitter was defending herself to Aloe now. “I’m telling you, I couldn’t have made the painting come alive! You don’t remember the last time? It takes blood, Aloe, the work does always take blood before something like that could happen.”

  “Are you sure, Bitter? Not even by accident? Not even one drop?”

  “Not even a drop! I make damn sure of it, ever since then. You think I want to call up a monster?”

  This time Pet growled aloud, an angry beastsound that shredded the air in the bedroom. Both Jam’s parents snapped their heads around, their faces suddenly taut with fear. Jam felt the vibrations of the growl rattle and rumble through her, leaving a trembling aftertaste. Bitter’s hand flew to her mouth when she saw Jam being held by the creature, and Aloe’s skin went gray.

  “No,” he said, “no, not my daughter. Let her go. Let her go!”

  “You two are scaring her,” Pet said, its voice level. “Are you not ashamed, are you not full of shame, see how shameful you shamelessly shout about me being here, not once thinking if your child was safe, without noticing her, you shame things, where are your eyes, they are not clouded by shame, but maybe they should be.”

  “We thought she was sleeping,” Bitter whispered, her voice thick with frightened tears. “Jam-jam, sweetness, you all right?”

  Jam nodded but didn’t move. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to run to her parents now that they were looking at her again, now that she wasn’t invisible, or that she wanted to stay next to Pet—it was that neither option seemed to matter very much at the moment. Bitter stepped forward, her gaze flickering between Jam and Pet’s motionless face.

  “I could take she from you?” she asked, stretching her arms out to Jam but talking to Pet. The creature hesitated, then nodded and lifted its arm, letting Bitter pull Jam away and back, closer to the bed. Aloe wrapped his arms around both of them and kissed Jam’s head over and over. His gray T-shirt was soft against her cheek and smelled like lemons.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “We didn’t know you were in the room. Are you okay?”

  Jam nodded, her neck almost automated at this point. Bitter and Aloe exchanged quick looks, reunited in their protectiveness over their daughter.

  “What do you want?” Aloe asked Pet, his jaw hard. “Why did you come here?”

  Pet’s head swiveled thoughtfully. “Here to hunt. Hunt the hunted. Hunt as a hunter.”

  Bitter kept staring at it, as if she was just admitting to herself that it was really there. She put a hand on Aloe’s shoulder, her face slack with shock. “They always come for a reason, remember?” Her voice trembled and faded as she spoke.

  Aloe shook his head, shadows swirling in his eyes. “That was a long time ago,” he bit out. “We’re not doing that again.” He glared at Pet, “You can’t be here.”

  Pet dipped its head. “And yet…”

  “I said no. This is a new Lucille. We’re safe. There are no more monsters.”

  Pet’s mouth stretched in amusement, and a sheet of smoke dripped out. “You keep lying that lie, liar.”

  Aloe stiffened and Jam looked up at him. “It’s not a lie. This is Lucille.” He said it like it was a prayer he was clutching in both hands.

  Pet turned its head slightly, more toward Bitter. “You are the one who made the door.”

  “I didn’t make no key,” Bitter countered. “So how you pass through, creature?”

  Pet raised a long arm and pointed with Bitter’s corpse finger at Jam. “The girl. She bled.”

  Bitter looked down and took hold of Jam’s face, her voice ringed with alarm. “Yuh get blood on the canvas, doux-doux?”

  Jam lowered her eyes. “Accident,” she whispered, then rubbed her fist to her chest, palm down, an apology.

  “Nothing to be sorry for, sweetness. Nothing at all.” Bitter hugged her tight, her face old with worry.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Aloe added, and his voice shook only a little.

  Bitter looked back at Pet. “So what you here for, then? What is it you want?”

  Pet crouched down and slid its spine from side to side, as if stretching. “It is not a what. It is a who. The why is monstrous. The when is here.”

  Jam drew away from her parents slightly, stepping closer to Pet. Aloe began to reach to pull her back, but Bitter stopped him. “Leave her,” she whispered. “It can’t hurt her; she the one who brought it over, not the one it looking for.”

  “Oh, it’s now you want to trust it?”

  His wife cut her eyes at him. “You know, you does real act as if you weren’t there when all this happen first time,” she hissed. “I know you does like to forget things when it convenient, but turn on your brain and use your sense. You remember how this work.”

  Aloe grimaced but didn’t argue. He took Bitter’s hand instead, and they watched their daughter.

  Jam stood in front of Pet. Her stomach was knotting up. If Pet had come to hunt someone, it couldn’t be a coincidence that it had come through her and her mother. She switched back to talking to it in her head.

  Can you tell me who you came to hunt? she asked.

  Pet’s head angled down to face her. A monster, it replied, and Jam’s stomach plummeted. They looked at each other, a silent understanding thrumming between them. It was an answer she’d been expecting, without knowing she’d been expecting it. Of course there were still monsters, Jam thought. Could you really make something stop existing just by shoving it away somewhere else?

  “Jam, what are you doing?” Aloe’s voice interrupted, and Jam held up a hand to silence him.

  Who’s the monster? What does it look like?

  Pet hummed, a light vibration shaking through the room. I don’t know yet, I am rife with unknowns, part of the hunt is to make the not-known known. Not just to me, or us, but to the not-knowers, so that they may know, the truth is in the knowing.

  But how are you going to find it, then?

  Pet’s voice turned sarcastic again. I feel, little girl, that you’re rather missing the point of this being a hunt.

  Jam glared at it. Every hunt has to start somewhere, she snapped back. You have to have a place to begin.

  Pet reached out with its impostor hand and absentmindedly picked out part of Jam’s sleep-flattened afro with its fingers. It was something Bitter would do, almost as if the hands had retained some memory of her mother. I do have a beginning, it admitted.

  Jam folded her arms. Okay, then. Tell me.

  Pet withdrew its arm and patted down a reddened tuft of fur on its chest.

  The house of Redemption, it replied.

  CHAPTER 4

  After that, Bitter and Aloe sent Jam to bed. She tried to argue with them, but her parents were firm, paying attention now, putting space between her and Pet.

  “We coul
d handle it from here, sweetness,” Bitter said.

  It’s not fair! Jam signed. I want to stay. I’m the one who brought it over!

  “You’re a child,” Aloe said, his voice a thick line. “It’s two o’clock in the morning, and your mother’s painting is standing here in our bedroom.” He shook his head, irritated. “It’s enough. Go and sleep.”

  Bitter rolled her eyes. “It right there, you don’t have to keep calling it a painting.”

  “I will call that thing whatever I want to call it,” Aloe snapped, and Jam shot a worried glance at Pet, expecting it to react to the hostility in her father’s voice. But Pet hadn’t moved; it just kept watching them with its implacable face, its weight loud loud loud in the floorboards, translating directly to Jam’s feet.

  Bitter pulled Jam into a hug, kissing her face. “Go to sleep, doux-doux. Come morning and all will be well, I promise you.”

  Jam didn’t believe her, but the silk of Bitter’s nightgown was soft against her cheek, and Jam felt a wave of exhaustion drag over her. The spike of the past hour or so began to plummet into a crash, adrenaline abandoning her body. Bitter kept an arm around her and steered Jam toward the door.

  “Taking the girl to she room,” she said, directing her words at Aloe, pretending that she wasn’t talking to Pet, getting its permission to remove Jam. Everyone could feel how the creature was focused on the young girl, the way its edged protectiveness was biting through the air. Bitter was being careful.

  Jam twisted around to look at Pet. Will you be here in the morning? she asked, just between the two of them.

  It gave her a golden nod. What must be hunted must be hunted, whether it is night or day, no matter how long it takes, it answered. I will be here, little girl.

  She nodded and let Bitter take her to her room, let her mother tuck her into bed the way she used to when Jam was smaller. It felt comforting this time, a memory of a ritual that gestured safety.