by Nick Wood
The sadness starts to fill my chest. The wind bursts past us and through us in a surging howl of distress. We stagger for moments and his body is torn from me, lifted up over the bank, careening into a low hanging fever tree.
As for me, I lie flat on the bank, elbows braced against the rough grassed crest, screaming after him. His body lies still, his eyes closed. Yet all I can do is think of my mother.
I cry as rain pours down on me.
Something is stripped off my head and I gasp at the burning light above my blinking eye.
“Wat die fok are you doing, boy?”
It is Brand who stands over me, his lips twisted with rage, but his eyes are leaking. Or… crying too?
He flings his right arm across his face and swings abruptly round to leave the room, forgetting to untie me.
The metal door clangs shut and I am left with myself and the stale smelly air.
What…?
It hits me then.
Brand must have lost someone too.
I listen to the distant high chatter of a ghostly uthekwana bird, flitting beyond the walls, but growing softer and more distant all the time.
Mama?
It has been quiet for a very long time, I think, before the warden comes in to release me and take me back to my cell.
This time stepping stiffly in to Room 619, I close the door quietly behind me, spirits lifted a bit that I am unshackled and have been allowed to wear some blue corduroy shorts.
The vision in my painful right eye is blurred but sufficiently good enough to allow me some depth perception and I am surprised as to how big the room actually is. Much bigger than the cell I have lived in for almost six months now, with no trial as yet in sight.
The man sitting in the small wooden chair with his back to me is not Brand.
He pushes the stool back, stands up and turns to me.
He is a dark man, perhaps even darker than me. And I can see he is also not a nice man – a dead man, suited in neatly efficient blue overalls, but with a smart grey jacket on top. His brown eyes do not even bother to look at me.
“Detective Brand is busy elsewhere and has asked me to take over our conversation,” he tells me in isiZulu., “He also tells me you’re a smart shit and that I must be careful. These white men can be funny can’t they, umfaan?”
I do not smile. I am not his friend.
I can tell by the way he holds himself I have no chance against him physically. Where would I run to anyway? Room 619 is always bolted behind me, with an armed guard outside. Hope has long since emptied itself from my chest.
The large man gestures me into the leather seat and I hold back a wince as he hangs heavily on the straps before securing them.
“What is your name, brother?” I ask, hoping for a label to hang onto.
All he does is sit and stare at me.
“I have no name,” he says eventually – and I know this will be a long afternoon.
Between us, the Black Box sits, a dark hole in a dark room, the bulb above us is dull and flickering erratically as if it is about to die. I find myself trying to find a pattern in the flickering light and silence, but there is none.
The man with no name continues to stare as if waiting for me to talk, so I oblige him.
“Why do you fight for the white man when all he does is abuse us? Why do you not fight for us, your own people, my brother?” My words are muffled by the swelling of my lips, but I can see he has caught my meaning.
He leans back in his chair and pats his belly, bulging against his overalls. “You are sharp on only one side, like a knife. I have no wish to be one of the wretched of the Earth, my brother.”
I do not think of myself as so clever, but I guess that he has also been in our training camps – perhaps in Angola, perhaps in Zambia.
“Askari!” I snap and he smiles for the first time, albeit a brief rictus of his lips.
“Let’s get on with this, shall we?” He looks bored, standing up to reach across and clip the electrodes onto my head. “Let’s explore this unknown land inside your head, no?”
He fastens his own net-scalp and then sits down heavily, flicking the switch with the thick thumb on his left hand. He, at least, sits opposite me, now inviting a level gaze.
I dig my fingers into my palms, resisting the surge of drugged sleep.
Then I give it to him, holding my mind still, empty, calm. I stare at the shiny surface of his brown eyes; his left eye slightly darker than the right one, the whites of his eyes a faded yellow. I stare and share our struggles, our pain, our fight, but keeping it distant, remote, away from any names that may be caught and harmed.
And he laughs.
He laughs so much he is doubled over in his chair, capped head resting on the table between us.
I realise that not even the flies are his friends.
The table quivers with his laughter and I jerk my head back sharply. Pain shreds my scalp as the leads snap tight against the Black Box, which slides and judders on the shaking table. I watch without breathing as it teeters, about to fall, to break, and to end any further sharing of anything at all.
The man’s big right hand snatches across to hold the Box firm and his left hand steadies the table. He is half-standing, leaning forward with his menacing weight, and he is no longer laughing.
He looks straight at me and I feel terror. The lead hangs like an electrical whip around his shoulders; in his steady eyes, I see my end. He rips the lead from my head and holds it like a garrotte between his hands.
This, I cannot win.
I close my eyes.
He laughs again, a low rolling chuckle.
Terrified, I shout Mother’s name.
But she is long dead and I am indeed just a silly boy.
In the darkness, I sense the man hesitating.
My eyes are wet when I open them.
The Askari has stripped the leads from his scalp and is standing straight, but looking at the door.
A shadow without solid form stands there, a deeper darkness that swirls and – as it gathers density – slowly takes shape.
The Askari fists the leads in his right hand, rubbing his eyes with his left, but then swings to face me.
“What muti have you slipped me, boy? What poison has your mind fed me?”
But it is the bird I watch – a big bird – strutting towards us both, with long, thick bill and serious intent.
The man swears and swings a boot at her, but there is only empty air.
We are alone in the gloom.
He gives a shuddering laugh and then turns to me.
“I don’t know what the fuck that was – but I will give you one last fucking chance. Think about it, all alone in your fucking cell. Tomorrow, if you do not speak, you do not live. Stay fucking well, friend…”
He knocks and the door opens. He straightens his jacket sleeves as he leaves.
As for me, I am shaking.
I just know for sure the… bird… was female.
I know too from the Psych One course at college that we both saw it – ‘consensual validation’ they call it – reality.
Can it really be?
“Mama!” I weep, but the only answer I get is the warden coming in to release me, for what I know will be the last time.
He gives me a tissue, even though he is busy flicking through his cell menu with his right thumb and I catch the flash of internet porn.
As for me, I don’t wipe my face, fearful I might wipe her away as well.
Mother.
Busisiwe.
This is not a bad cell, even though I am alone here.
It has a reed mat, although a little short for me. But it has a soft mattress, which eases the burns and bruises on my back just a bit. Such little bits are always very welcome.
And it has a rough grey blanket, which I fold neatly every morning.
The cell even has a tiny wooden bookshelf, a little crooked, although I have no books.
The reed mat is a little thin maybe, but it takes so
me of the sting out of the soles of my feet too.
Most of all, though, it has a window – broken by my fist – but there is no way out through those bars, so they have spent no rands on replacing it.
And the little window looks down on a courtyard. A concrete courtyard where we walk three times a day, stretching our limbs, smelling the breeze and slapping our bare feet – often wet on the last of the day’s walk, in the aftermath of the evening summer storms.
And in the middle of the courtyard is a tree. A big tree, but struggling and bent, surrounded by wire fencing, so that prisoners can’t touch it.
Through the window, through the bars, I watch birds dance in the scraggly branches as the sun sinks low.
Then they are gone.
I look around – oh yes, and there is a toilet too, a hole in the floor on the side of the cell, with an ineffectual cord to flush the worst of my blood and shit away.
The sun has disappeared, as it does. A few clouds cluster in the growing damp darkness.
I only half-hear the rattle of slop on a tin plate being pushed through the flap in my door – for lately I am becoming fearful of ukudlisa, both bewitchment and poisoning, even though my mind is modern.
So indeed it has been a good while since I have either eaten or been hungry.
A half-moon starts to leak through the bars.
I record the last of my thoughts and place the digi-disc from Father on the bookshelf, wiped clean of the inside of my bowels.
Room 619 tugs my thoughts and I know the end for me is very near.
No one leaves room 619.
Everyone knows that.
I sink to my knees.
There it is again – a high pitched, but brief, squawking sound – and this time it comes from outside my window.
I crawl and drag myself up against the window bars.
For desperate moments, I see nothing and am frightened I am losing sight in both eyes now. Then milky moonlight bleeds softly into my eyes and I see the tree.
I am not alone.
Perched ungainly on the top, swaying slightly in the breeze, is the squat shape of the uthekwana bird. She turns her shovel shaped head and stares at me with black-holed eyes, just for the briefest moment – and then she leaps and flaps into the darkness above.
The swirl of her wings whips a breeze through my broken window.
She calls me from the night sky and I know she is heading for a river or lake, high up, over on the Ukhahlamba Mountains.
There is no way to follow and I turn back to my small but familiar cell.
It is indeed not a bad room.
I know every burning, aching bump of that floor mattress. In the end, I have always found a way to fall asleep.
But, after this night, there will be no more sleep – unless I talk.
The faint cries of the uthekwana bird are fading on the wind.
I cannot talk.
But I want to live.
And I am so tired of being alone.
My body feels like a shadow as I turn back to the window.
There is a way out – but it is too small.
Am I mad? Or am I dying? I have a sense I must do the impossible, if I can only just believe enough.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, crunching my shoulders together, butting the bars with my face. I squeeze, harder and harder, until the pain lances hotly along my cheeks and I feel blood leak onto my shoulders as my ears rip slowly off my head, with a white-hot shredding noise. My nose is long and hard though, punching out the last of the glass pane - and with a desperate shriek I pull, lever and kick myself up and through the window.
Glass shreds my arms and sides and I scream and tumble downwards.
It is six stories down.
I do not want to die, so I open my broken arms.
And, catching the last gasp of a dying thermal, I soar upwards.
I am… flying?
I hear a loud shriek in the sky above me, a flash of light spurts down from the muggy darkness.
Below me, the prison ignites, with an explosive and fiery detonation. uMgungundlovu Prison burns, as if with the fires of Hell.
Red-orange flames sprout and roar and I smell the hot stench of rising smoke.
– and it seems even room 619 burns.
As for me, I spread my wings and spiral higher on the heat of those flames, trailing feathers and blood.
My mother calls ahead of me and I follow, as we fly on through dark and wet clouds, to new lands where I have never been.
In the muggy darkness I sense a host of us following Mama, ghost birds on the wing.
It is then Unkulunkulu speaks, a Voice from out of the darkness above: “Speak Sibusiso – name your friends and bring them back to life – give them substance alongside you in their flight – all of you, comrades on the wing.”
Birds do not speak easily, so I open my mind instead to give weight to the many of my friends who have fought alongside me in the Struggle. It will be good to have their company on this journey ahead, which I sense will also be a long and hard one.
Screeching and shooting from out of the clouds in front of me comes Mother and I spin and roll to avoid her sharp beak, as she hurtles past.
“Say nothing,” she says, “Trust no one.”
“Even you, Mama?”
“Especially me,” she swings around and flies on ahead, “I died, remember?”
I hesitate. Yes. I remember.
“Speak! Bring your friends to life now – or else you fly on alone.” The Voice is from the darkness and I see no one.
How can I trust the darkness?
I sigh and bend my wings, beating hard to catch my mother, the cold murk around me now sadly empty.
So it is we sweep out of the clouds and Mother is climbing, climbing, high into the sky in the face of huge snow-capped mountains, glowing gold in a new dawn.
“I’m not an Egyptian vulture, I can’t fly so high,” I call after her.
Mother’s voice floats back to me on the cold breeze. “I’d say you’re doing fucking well just getting off the ground, ’Biso – from now on, it’s just a matter of scale and effort.”
“Stay, Sibusiso. I can keep you alive. But if you fly any further you will die!”
It is Unkulunkulu again, a Voice from the sky above me – and I sense God speaks some truth too. No, I do not wish to die.
Mama has become a dot in the icy sky as she climbs, as if looking to find a way through the Barrier of Spears, the Ukhahlamba Mountains that seem intent on staring us down.
“’Biso…” filters down from above.
So high – and I just want to live.
I hesitate and hang on the air, torn between the sucking vortices of two competing voices – and one of them carries the stamp of God.
But there is so much in a name – and how words are spoken.
“I’m fucking coming, Mamma!”
So I strain and beat the air again, climbing higher and higher in the teeth of a wind beating off the mountain face. My wings ache, but up and up I fly, steadfastly ignoring the Call of God.
Cosi cosi iyaphela… Here, I rest my story...
Chapter 20
Message Spinning Across the Free Internet:
Sibusiso Mchunu is Alive and Well… On the Web
(Free Mchunu…!) #BlackLivesCount
About the Author
Nick Wood is a Zambian born, South African naturalised clinical psychologist, with over a dozen short stories previously published in Interzone, the NewCon Press anthology Subterfuge, Infinity Plus, PostScripts and Redstone Science Fiction amongst others.
Nick has also appeared in the first African anthology of science fiction, AfroSF – and has followed this up with a collaborative novella co-written with Tade Thompson, which appears in AfroSF2. Azanian Bridges is his debut novel.
Nick has completed an MA in Creative Writing (SF & Fantasy) through Middlesex University, London. He is currently training clinical psychologists and counsellor at t
he University of East London in England. Nick can be found at: @nick45wood or http://nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz/
Marcher
Chris Beckett
Marcher is Chris Beckett’s most powerful and socially aware work to date. Drawing on his experience as a social worker and lecturer, the author paints a chilling picture of the treatment of ‘others’, those who don’t conform, in a re-imagined Britain that is uncomfortably close to our own.
Charles Bowen is an immigration officer with a difference: the migrants he deals with don’t come from other countries but from other timelines. They bring with them a mysterious drug called slip which breaks down the boundary between what is and what might be, offering the desperate and the dispossessed the hope of escape and threatening to undermine the established order.
Bowen struggles to keep track of his place in the world and to uphold the values of the system he has fought so long to maintain but is increasingly coming to question.
One of Britain’s most innovative science fiction writers, Chris Beckett is the winner of the 2009 Edge Hill Prize for his short fiction and the 2013 Arthur C Clarke Award for best novel.
“Beckett explores the conservative, fear-driven mentality of restriction and repression… Beckett’s hall of mirrors could not be more timely. When pressure becomes unbearable something has to give.” – Amazing Stories
The Moon King
Neil Williamson
All is not well in Glassholm. Amidst rumours of unsettling dreams and strange whispering children, society threatens to disintegrate into unrest and violence. The sea has turned against them and the island’s luck monkeys have gone wild, distributing new fates to all and sundry. Turmoil is coming…
“The Moon King is a mysterious, luminous read, full of intriguing characters... Beautifully written and thoughtful. Sure to be one of the best debuts of this or any other year.” – Jeff Vandermeer
“The Moon King is adult, literary fantasy at its best.”
– The Guardian
“The sort of book that creeps into your dreams.”
– Chris Beckett
“The Moon King has you hooked from the start.”