After Hope Dies

by Lilly Haraden

  Mousey voice: ‘I want to work.’

  Minder: ‘Nobody’s forcing you to work.’

  Frankie pushes herself into an unconvincing fake smile and tries again, ‘I want to work; I know I can do it.’

  Minder pats the girl and nods slow, soothes, ‘If you say so. You’re a brave one. Let’s have a bath together and then I’ll take you home. Next shift will be a good one for you, I promise. I’ll pick a good client. Give Dani back her jacket, ok? Good. All right, up you get. Let’s head out.’

  Off they go, hand in hand. Out of the office. Dani turns to Janelle and shakes her head. Says to Janelle, ‘I heard it all.’

  Janelle feels insubstantial. Fake. Horrible and dark. She lurches from the couch and vomits a stomach-full of black, hard shale onto the floor. As soon as it touches the concrete it vaporizes and disappears. Dani dodges the mess and comes in beside Jan, makes circles on the girl’s back, keeping her calm as she vomits evil…

  ‘You’ll make a good Minder one day, you know?’

  Oh my god…

  Janelle wipes her mouth clean and sits up, lethargic now. ‘Can we go home?’

  Dan asks, ‘No baths? Don’t want to talk with the other girls?’

  ‘Carry me outside, like you used to?’

  Dani smiles. ‘Ok.’

  Arms around her neck. Big circles on her back.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  A kiss on the cheek. Thoughts elsewhere. Dani drives off. See you, big sis.

  Janelle starts to wonder…about Dani…

  It’s an hour after midnight and well into Power Down. On a clear night like this, you can maybe see the stars, although there are not many left to wish upon. Janelle sips cold cocoa out in the backyard, lying flat with her head to the sky. She wonders. Has she confined Frankie to an early death? Will she be abused too heavily, get hooked on a client’s meth and made to do abominable things for money?

  What about Mirror. Is Janelle herself responsible for the deaths of all those people in another world? Poor Mr. Davis, that pharmacist, even Ross, that nice lady’s store…the men who raped her…well…no, fuck them, actually. Fuck them. Oh. See Jan? Are you really so different?

  Is what the Mirror said a hurtful truth or a hurtful lie – that their desires are not mutually exclusive, that one resides inside the other? Like a yin and yang bearing the same shade of gray. It’s just a circle, then, one that looks like the dark night sky. Does Mirror even care that her English teacher is dead? Does Janelle? She barely gave it second thought when Bax announced it…

  Could such animosity really reside in her heart? Had she wanted them all dead?

  And the awful truth about her work. How could she not see it before? It was so obvious. But old Janelle surely knew. Of course. And did she care? But what scares her most is the thought that her big sister…

  Janelle sits up and sips her cocoa. A little sapphire falls into her lap. This is something she’ll have to live with for a long time, this knowledge. Perhaps it’ll fester and seed inside her belly, growing through the veins and lymph tubes like a tree, spreading fruit in her actions. Maybe one day she’ll cough up a piece of evil coal. Maybe.

  Janelle sighs, sets her cold cup down on the back step and walks the yards over the yard. At the fence, she stands and hurls herself up, catching a glimpse of the man next door. After Hours Power glows in his window, the special electricity pumped especially and expensively. The man’s playing away in his own world but stops abruptly, pushing back in his chair and stretching, moving over to the window, hand rotating in pain. He cradles his right wrist as if it’s been bitten by a snake.

  Janelle catches the eye of Hugo and the man softens, slumping his shoulders, cradling his wrist gently, just staring back at her. She waves with one hand, pushing all her weight to the other for balance. Hugo waves back with a flick of his fingers.

  Upstairs now in the darkness of a sleepy-eyed room. Janelle undresses in front of her mirror (blinds closed) and sees her oily reflection come alive. Copper-dark hair pulses all mute and calm in the night. Maybe it’s time to set things right. Half naked, Jan walks to her dresser and takes up the scissors once more. She grabs a handful of the white girl poison…tests a little edge with the teeth of the blade, just to see if…

  The color cuts clean and down it falls to earth like snow.

  Janelle’s heart beats faster and faster. Girl sets the scissors in deeper now, deep, readies the metal for a final cut and…

  And…

  Come on, Janelle. Do it. You can’t be a real black girl with that jacked up shit you call an excuse for a weave. Cut the poison out! Cut away that monster’s white girl bastardization and show your true colors.

  Her heart tumbles over with the final decision – the weight of it making her breathe sharp and short. That certainty is this:

  She and Mirror are in no way the same. They do not share the same voice.

  Jan returns the scissors to their resting place and flicks out her beautiful hair. A wave of dark, golden color roars back in the night. Girl smiles. She is beautiful.

  But one other thing is certain: Janelle knows her dealings with Mirror and the supernatural will not end tonight. Indeed, as Janelle wraps herself up in the warm embrace of sheets and sweet smells of a tiny perfumed room that is hers and hers alone, she cannot fathom how the events of her past days will come back to haunt her.

  Well…

  It will start with two cranes, two beautiful birds the size of broken pieces of sky. Soaring down from on high to land silent on the fence between Janelle and Hugo. Together, shared in their bills, rests a letter all folded up neat and penned in beautiful script.

  Janelle bolts upright, hearing something she should not. Looks to the window and sees her two saviors. Here stands Hope, and here stands Despair. A sweet feeling licks her blood. That piece of paper between their beaks…

  This letter will lead her to a Taiwanese-school girl: a melanin-drinking vampire.

  But first – ah, you’re going to love this – we’ve got to deal with Hugo.

  Story 2:

  Hard R

  Whitewash

  You know, it’s a strange feeling when you get a confirmation of the anti-real. Example: selling your soul to a daemon in exchange for fast reflexes and experiencing the world in her beautiful, crazy, naked light. Example: defending your neighbour from a crazed monster girl wielding the giant hand of a clock. Each event is a little (or big) chip in the whitewash that covers reality. But when you think about it, this whitewash isn’t merely covering the incongruous or the incompatible, the parts that don’t quite tessellate. There are elements of reality that are so shocking that their actualisation shatters whatever you thought reality once looked like. It is corrosion. In the wake you’re left to deal with all the pieces that simply don’t fit back together in any meaningful way. Everything is an absurd mess. But you’ve spent most of your life dealing with this, haven’t you? Feeling apart, not a part. Different. An outlier trying to adapt to an ever-shifting reality.

  Isn’t that right, Hugo? Just like when your big brother was arrested. On that day, you learned a very valuable lesson: reality is a fickle construct, tempered by an alloy of complacency and assumption. Because it’s difficult to match someone like Shaun, quiet Shaun, studious Shaun, wouldn’t hurt a fly Shaun, off to college Shaun, wouldn’t mess with no niggas Shaun, ending up being a meth dealer. Because it’s difficult to match someone like Hugo, big Hugo, brooding Hugo, arms like tree trunks Hugo, pop a nigga in the face if you look at him funny Hugo, black as the moon Hugo, with the reality of who Hugo is. Trying to make sense of reality and, crucially, trying to work against it was, and is, absurd. Hugo is absurd.

  Take a look.

  Back inside now. Hugo closes the front door and shrugs cold night away. Straight for his room; saving the life of Little Miss Slut next door was morally worthwhile but he’s got a job to do.

  All the worldly comforts of his kingdom come into
view as the door swings open. ‘Welcome home, master’, say a chorus of crayon girls all over the walls, in rows in front of the computer, from the ancient Blu-Ray stands and books on the shelves. Hugo plonks himself down on the chair and feels the hydraulics give underneath, sliding his butt closer to the ground. The man pulls a lever and rises to the correct height and the correct posture for work.

  He’s last to join the clan chatroom. Internet’s too expensive to afford fast connections for crystal quality casts so they make do with the public 2Mbps connections. Hugo adjusts his headset and webcam so he can make sure his teammates get a good look at him. Here’s how the screens are set up: left panel is filled with the faces of his teammates, central panel is Osu and right panel is a streaming control panel (OBS), currently non-operating because the clan are doing a private practise.

  ‘Guys, sorry I jumped out.’

  Three white boys and a Chinese girl arranged in a square like a weird Gorillaz album. Eric’s in the top left of the screen, team captain, blond and beautiful. His smile crackles through all the way from Rhode Island. Confidence is King: ‘Take a look at our scores. We seem to do better when you’re not here.’

  Hugo pulls up the replay. They’ve been working on a modded Maware! Setsugekka insane (8 point something star). He smiles. ‘I don’t need to look at your replay if it says you got ninety-nine point three percent.’

  Jason leans back in his chair and makes two ‘ok’ signs with his hands, says, ‘One hundred percent for me, bitches.’

  Hugo nods and passes out congratulations, although this is just a warm up, really.

  If you’ve never seen Osu before, which is more than probable, think of it like this: you are a frog. In front of you is a screen rapidly filling up with ants. Touch the ants in the order they appear to get points. Longer streaks without mistakes make for tastier ants and fuller bellies. You’re eating ants in time to music. If the frog/ant metaphor doesn’t tickle your fancy then jump onto YouTube and type in “Osu beatmap insane maware” and you’ll get the idea in a couple of seconds (try the second hit; first is ok too). You should be able to do that – you’re an adult.

  When a tournament is announced of this ant-eating contest, pre-approved maps are distributed to teams. Teams will then practise the maps until they know them like the backs of their hands. Now, every Osu map has a standard play through, which is doable, but then the mods apply: double timing, invisible ants, reversed map directions, reduced visibility. Modded maps get bigger points. This is what they need to practise now, for there’s money to be won.

  ‘I’m going to dive into double-time,’ Hugo announces. Eric shakes his head and quips, ‘Heads up: nobody’s completed this map in double-time without the no-fail mod.’

  ‘See how we go then.’

  ‘Ha, check out the balls on this one,’ jokes Sushan.

  Hugo starts up the private stream and waits until it buffers live with his Osu feed. Teammates join one by one. They paste dicks and raise your dongers into the chat box. Real mature, Bradley. Geez, those are old as fuck memes…Those memes could have grandkids by now. Shit. Anyway, Hugo starts the map.

  Contrary to what you might believe about bending time, Hugo doesn’t perceive the world as slowing down. Quite the opposite. He feels himself speed up, and not just in the way his fingers move to catch the circles as they come alive on the screen. Having the hands move in time to the rapid-burn rhythm is only one facet of the dance. The other comes from the mind, to be able to process the fast motions and dole out reactions. It’s a giddy feeling. Sort of like watching a time lapse video where the world moves at hours per second while the scenery stays the same. Clouds wash over the sky like a second ocean, lights zoom bee-like through city lanes, blood cells blur between vessels. That motion, that understanding, that overarching sense of movement. A sweet latch on the tongue and kick to the heart where every action is purposeful and lands with precision. His mouse glides across the anime-themed mousepad, left hand tapping ZXZXZXXX in time to the circles.

  Targets bloom before his eyes and he shoots them down like fireworks, click click click. The pattern becomes as intuitive as breathing. Hugo has to force himself to make mistakes. While he is easily top five in Eastern USA, nailing double times on a first attempt is beyond anybody. He thinks it wise to knock out a convincing A instead of S rank, lest he be accused of cheating. The last section of the song rolls in – boulders and avalanches on the neon screen.

  What’s that? Pain? A pain growing inside the man’s mouse hand. First a cramp, then a seizure, then more. Fuck, not again.

  The song ends and Hugo pulls back, clutching his wrist with his free hand, bending down out of sight of the camera for a moment as the migraine comes, holds. Little voices of teammates call through the lost earphones. His head splits open, right arm sawn in two like Asuka’s last defiant moment in Evangelion. Hugo roars through closed teeth but the pain will not go away. Blood splashes from his cracked body. There is no blood. Lit oil burns his fingers alive! Flesh melting, eyeballs squeezed tight.

  Hugo breathes the pain away and ignores the spout of congratulations from his comrades. With his unaffected hand, Hugo shuts down the feed and types left-handed into the chatroom that he’ll be right back. Eyes and ears down, Hugo splits from the room, faster than ever in his life. Eyeblink. In the bathroom now, door locked, right arm in the sink with the tap running full stream over a burning arm.

  Here it is. The unreality:

  The demon is unwinding his arm. Its form resolves like an ugly photograph developing in chemical code. Monster black on human black. A crusty layer of sin-dark skin sloshes away like baked sand displaced from the shoreline. The nerve networks glow as lines of glassy and electric blue. Pain multiplying, twisting the bones over themselves like knitting needles wound and wound together until they snap! Crack! Hugo roars into a closed mouth.

  His arm is falling apart. Creeping liquid panic touches the back of his eyes and everything turns black. Blackout.

  On the floor and cold, newborn eyes on the ceiling now. Mold and dirty tiles. Did he fall? How long has he been out for? The sink is overflowing. Hugo raises his right arm and feels the fireant colonies work under his hide. Pain. Pain. But at least his arm looks normal. The man hauls himself upright and turns off the tap with his good hand. Hugo Hugo in the mirror. It’ll take an hour or two for things to reset, for the warfare between spirit and flesh to cease and break fire and truce once again. This has been happening far too often, with increasing frequency.

  He needs to see Para. She will have a cure for this paranormal malady.

  But in the meantime can he continue to work? Ponder this, young man in the mirror staring back dazed with Russel Hobbs white eyes (Russel Hobbs the Gorillaz drummer, not Russell Hobbs the kitchen appliance company). What, did you just run a marathon? Shut up. Now ponder this. These attacks are becoming much more frequent and much, much more painful. So, time to stop the anime-themed rhythm game that is most likely exacerbating all this pain? Time to forfeit your family’s good source of income? Are you prepared for that? Because, you know, this monster in your arm isn’t going to up and leave. He’s a part of you now. He owns your soul and showers you with gifts. Hell, this daemon is practically the reason your family still eats and lives and shits together.

  Take a walk through the house and you’ll see Dadda on the couch with his faraway eyes on the television. He can afford to watch it at night because of the work you do but really he watches it all day when the community power is running. He just sits there with his useless legs propped up on the couch, pooling blood in those limp sausages until they’re fat enough to burst. Mumma next to him – ah, she works so hard as a chef for Deliver Lite, the church-based food catering service that delivers Nutritious Meals to thousands for cheap. But, of course, such cheap meals don’t provide much monetary lubrication for a company in this part of the world. Really it’s more like volunteer work.

  See how Mumma and Dadda turn to you with a little glint in t
heir eyes. Guardian angel, provider. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for gifting us a son like Russel Hobbs with his Russel-Hobbs-sized body and his uncanny ability to shirk off the stereotypes of being a huge, gangbanging nigga. Thank you for blessing us with a son who is a reclusive, anime-obsessed, young-girl-perving internet geek who makes money in such a niche way as to be simply unreal.

  Chip chip on the face of reality.

  ‘Do you need anythin’, son? Or you just gon’ keep standing there staring like a big ol’ statue?’

  ‘Na, Momma, I’m good. I’m good.’

  I’m all good, Momma. Everythin’ is fuckin’ fine. You know what I’m gon’ do? Go to my room and smoke some kush or whatever normal black people call weed [Check: I think it’s lean now? [No, lean is Codeine and soda]] while chillin’ to my man, Kendrick ‘K-Dot’ Lamar….Honestly, what should black people do inside their rooms? Hugo doesn’t know. Like, video games or posting a selfie on WeChat or pirating Chinese TV. But anime? Oh sure, there are black anime fans with monumental amounts of paraphernalia. And – get this – even the odd well-adjusted African American who imbibes in the occasional Kill La Kill or Erased. Manga and anime work their tentacles into all corners of life. Twitch is full of them, too – the black streamers and gamers. But surely, none of the black fans live in the cookie-cutter doldrums beside him, right? Pop down to the local store and strike up a conversation with the clerk about autumn’s anime schedule? Hey, did you check out Lexer’s new stream? See, again, who knows? Hugo certainly doesn’t know. The only place he can communicate with people like him (but who may not look like him) is at the arcade or on the internet…

  For somewhere out there, there is a mythical creature akin to a unicorn in both rarity and implausibility: the black man who isn’t bound by cultural or social expectation and can do whatever the fuck he likes. Hugo is that person but by a single degree of separation. Beyond the username and beyond the screen, he is stuck with a body stuck inside a house planted in a district located in a city that has written the lore on how young men should behave. That law doesn’t have much room for unicorn-like individuality. Nowhere in this weighty tome of ‘Council regulations regarding Negro ethics and standards, fourth edition, revised and updated for the modern world’ is there much space for Flip Flappers or, right now, as Hugo settles down into his chair to drown his sorrows in anime, something like K-On. Be poor or be you, but don’t be both.