by Chris Kelso
Maybe if he’d been more forthcoming when Suzie was alive she might not have left him. If he’d just stuck it in her the way Kricfalusi probably did. He couldn’t help but think like this even though it achieved nothing. His head throbbed a little.
Josie looked back up at Tom’s face and said—What’d you think of the exam then?
—Fuck, Josie, I . . .
—A demon of the first kind, eh? Relax, I won’t tell anyone you fuck dead bodies.
—Really?
Josie shrugged.
—So, how many have you killed?
Tom’s face fell to shock, he was instantly offended.
—How can you even ask me that?
—Have you eaten any part of her yet?
Tom bowed his head, nodded.
—Just one of her organs, the liver I think. I can’t really remember.
—Huh! Well there ya go . . .
—And I think I tried some of her blood. I’ve been injecting myself with her blood, only because I loved her, you gotta believe me.
They both stood in silence for a few seconds, allowing the intensity of the situation to dim a little.
—What are you thinking Josie? Are you going to call the cops or . . . ?
—Heck, I’m just thinking, like . . . yano when you think you really know someone, like, they seem so predictable?
—I guess. I just wanted her to be part of me. When I was eating her, I don’t know, it felt like something more intimate than sex . . .
—You should really try getting laid man . . .
—Please don’t tell anyone, you can’t tell anyone. Leo will kill me!
—Sure, all you have to is, like, something for me . . .
Tom’s testicles crawled. He knew what Josie wanted him to do.
3.
Hell’s farmhouse was like something from a horror movie. The crutch of a deformed sycamore split into twisted boughs of shrunken heads that dangled just above the roof. Tom and Josie saw the grid of mown grass and bare soil of the plantations that promised to hide all manner of atrocious nightmares from clear sight. Josie picked up a shrag from the ground and started bending it nervously.
—We don’t have to do this—Tom reassured her.
—I want to do this. Stop being such a baby . . .
A sudden silver varnished the trees, the moon was out. The Gangles were silent but still present. Tom felt the wrought iron railing that led to the woodlet. He was cold, his head still felt ready to burst.
—Why do you want to come down here again?
—Cos of the murders you dummy.
—Josie, this is dangerous! Mr Hell is an alleged reptilian psychopath!
—Then you two should get along, like, totally famously . . .
The two made their way towards the farm house. Tom had no idea what Josie was trying to achieve but forced himself to go in order to keep his side of the bargain. Walking behind the girl, he thought about how easy it would be to kill Josie. She hadn’t expressed any fear towards Tom; she seemed comfortable letting him trail behind her.
Tom thought there must be something in that kind of trust.
They approached the porch. Suddenly, Tom noticed Josie frozen in her tracks. He peered over her shoulder and saw something floating over them like a mirage.
A tall being, stooped in shadow. It had the look of an old sawbones. Hatch-marks on its fingers showed in the moonlight as it came into view. It was Mr Hell…
Hell had been snorting something, it spangled his top lip like powdered sugar. He didn’t seem embarrassed about it.
—Little late for trespassing, don’t ya think?
Tom and Josie were frozen to the spot. Mr Hell plucked an apple from one of the under-branches and held it aloft by the burr-knot. He presented it to Tom, who reluctantly took it and scrutinised the offering.
—Eat it—Hell insisted.
Tom took a big bite. It tasted good, crisp with a subtle dryness.
—What’d you think?
Through the fear, Tom’s face was a beaming plate of joy. Hell took this as his answer. Josie was still studying the old man’s face with an architect’s eye. Scars overlapped on both cheeks and he had one eyebrow missing. Hell’s face was like a Halloween mask, and a tatty looking one at that. Tom noticed his ancient ugliness too; he was everything expectation and dread promised. Had his apples not been so delicious he would’ve surely turned and ran. Tom saw the same blank stare present in most of the other antagonists in his life; Leo, Mr Alhazred, Suzie when she smirked . . .
—Pruned in winter while the trees are dormant and thinned to perfection. This orchard is my life.
Tom was still crunching his apple, trying to savour its taste. Hell knelt down to meet the two teenagers at eye level. When he spoke his breath smelled of soil and natural decay. He focused his stare on Tom.
—It’s all I have.
—More than some—Josie added.
—I’ve been banished from the place I used to call home.
—Why?
Hell twisted his neck until the sinew looked ready to snap. It eventually made a loud crack that made Tom wince.
—I know about you…
—Know about what?—Tom took an instinctive step backwards. There were traces of the sweet apple still on his tongue.
—Help me . . . —Hell asked with his limpid, pleading eyes.
—Help you? To do what?
—Think about it, what are you good at?
—I dunno, not much! Math, science maybe? I don’t know a single thing about working in an orchard . . .
—Killing women, that’s what you’re best at. I’m no good at it. It’s the Teiidae you see. I haven’t got the nerve to disobey ancient values like that, but you can summon the anger and resentment needed to extinguish a female life.
Josie snorted and muttered under her breath.
—You believe that do you?—she spoke to Hell, who continued to ignore her.
—I can only kill children, adult males, and small animals. Women are the final hurdle. I can’t kill them, they all seem so maternal to me.
—That’s because of the Teiidae, right?—Josie asked.
—It’s a sneaky female trick, plucking feeling from the foulest of souls.
—What makes you think I can do it?? I can’t kill women!—Tom protested.
Mr Hell gave Tom a knowing grin—he knew, but how did he know?
—You are talented boy, I can sense it in you. You can kill and consume flesh like a true monster of the night.
Tom felt pride swell inside of him then considered its source. Hell inched closer, nudging Josie out of the way. He spoke in a faint whisper.
—They used to mock me too you know.
—Who? The Gangles?
—The Gangles, women, people, all of them . . .
—Why do you want to kill women?
—The truth of the matter, is that I want this town culled. I want us to take it back…
—From the Gangles?
—From the Gangles and the people who live there. The stretch of land isn’t rightfully theirs, it belongs to us. The Old Ones bequeathed it to our people centuries ago. The town went by a different name back then; The Nameless City, we can call it The Nameless City . . .
Tom looked sceptical.
—The birds sense our reptilian ancestry. They can taste our darkness like rotten maggots in their saliva. We were forced to retreat to underground chambers until there was only a few of us left . . . and the people living there right now are all hooked up to the same virtual reality headset, intruders one and all. It’s time we woke them up . . .
Tom felt uncomfortable for a moment when he thought about his father or Mr Kowalski coming to harm.
—The Gangles don’t like our people, we are the reptiles. The sea was once receded, there was no pier. The Nameless City was like a desert.
—Am I a reptile?—Josie asked, half kidding. Hell kept talking as if he hadn’t even heard her.
—This is all
I have left boy, growing Adam’s fruit . . .
Tom could see the white fiends gathered on the roof, listening. Hell clutched the boy by the shoulders, his long fingernails subtly penetrating Tom’s flesh through fabric.
—The birds, they shit on everything, take what they want, just like those fuckin townsfolk! If you don’t fit in they leer at you, they can sense how weak we have become! The gulls are attracted to the stench of humanity, of servility and slovenliness, that’s why they allow those people to live there. Every organism of reptilian lineage in Shaver Point is considered a trespasser, doomed for a life of utter misery.
—Jesus—Josie was ready to leave. Tom saw the flung arrows of her expression but was unmoved.
—Let me tell you something. There is a battle going on out there, between the oppressed and the oppressors. What’s your name?
—Tom . . .
—Tom, you know what it feels like to be oppressed don’t you?
—I guess . . .
—And what about your little girlfriend, does she know oppression?
—I’m not his girlfriend—Josie said, snapping to attention. She seemed a little agitated that Hell was only now acknowledging her existence.
Hell’s eyeballs ping-ponged around in their sockets.
—I’ll deal with the children and animals, I’ll give you some salt bags to fend off the Gangles. When they eat salt their heads explode. Tom, you can take the women. I’ll capture them one by one and you expunge them accordingly.
Tom’s head ache returned. Hell stood up from his kneeling position.
—You’re getting migraines . . .
—I get them a lot.
—It’s the Gangle siren that does that. It’s how they hurt us.
Josie butted in—Okay, this is just getting kind of, like, fucked up now. Tom, it’s one thing to kill some cheerleader slut, but killing the women of Shaver Point? I mean . . . really?
—Every man has his palms run through with nails—Hell looked straight at Josie when he said this.
—Stop! Stop saying shit! Tom, you’re not really gonna, like, listen to this nutjob are ya?
Hell put his hands on Tom’s shoulders and spoke to him as a father would his only son.
—You want to belong to something ancient and great? Show me what you can do . . .
Tom turned to Josie.
—What, you think you’re some kind of fucking Holden character now? Out to kill the phonies, right?
—The phonies . . .
—Tom . . .
He advanced on the girl, grasping the slender column of her throat with strangler’s hands, bearing down on her until her legs bent and she began to fall backwards. They wrestled on the ground for a few minutes, Josie’s nails tearing into Tom’s wrists . . . Tom thumbing the larynx until Josie started making rasping sounds, a final cry to the Gangles for help . . . until she finally submitted to him.
Hell stood still, frozen with pride and shock.
—She was a Gangle . . . you heard her make that sound.
Tom released his grip and Josie’s head fell limp. He did have a migraine again.
—It’s all cultural conditioning. The people of Shaver Point are as cruel as the Gangles; they have a mentality of privilege, subjugation and wanting to dominate . . .
Tom knelt in the dirt next to Josie and resigned himself to his inescapable destiny. He belonged here, even if he felt cold and alone on the inside. That might never go away. His temples pulsed and two veins branched off down either side of Tom’s face, his brain opening for the first time, skull separating, nose breathing in the fetid stench of murder and savouring it in his throat, in his heart, in his viscera eyes . . .
ANOTHER UNINSPIRED, POORLY WRITTEN METAPHOR FOR SOMETHING NO ONE CARES ABOUT, OKAY . . .
These days he just couldn’t understand a single word she said. She thought he wasn’t listening, but he was—or maybe he just wasn’t listening hard enough, depending on how you look at it . . .
Bee opened her mouth and a silent word fell out. Terry sat on the edge of the bed and pulled up his jeans. He asked Bee to repeat what she just said. She opened her mouth and, once again, only a muted gasp emerged. Bee’s face looked pained when she saw Terry’s confounded expression, as if she’d said exactly what she wanted to say and he still wasn’t getting it. She stood up and stared at him across the bed. She made a serious face, pointed to her mouth (as if to say READ MY LIPS) and started forming the shapes of what words were supposed to sound like. Terry still heard nothing. She pointed to her own ears, begging him to listen closely.
—I’m sorry Bee, I got nothin’.
The girl threw her hands in the air, blew her cheeks in exasperation. Fractals of light came through the shades and stretched out in an intense stillness. Terry tried to explain.
—I know you’re talkin’ but I honestly got nothin’ . . .
Bee ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Terry climbed over the bed and pressed his ear to the door.
—Bee, honey, just try and make a sound ok?
Nothing.
—I can see you’re trying to say something to me and, by Christ I want to know, believe me I want to know! Is this about Mephisto? This isn’t some game to make you feel dumb, believe me . . .
Nothing.
—Bee, we’ve been married for four years and I’ve always been able to hear you. The minute we stop understanding each other is the day we go get a divorce, right?
Terry had said this with the intention of being funny and intentionally melodramatic but it prompted the smashing of a mirror instead.
—Bee? Bee is everything ok?
Terry paced the room for a few minutes then decided he’d have to ram the door in. He took one big run-up from the door at the other side of the room and shoulder-barged his way into the bathroom. The lock on the door snapped clean off, the jamb splintered. Bee was sitting on the edge of the bath with her face buried in her palms. Terry went over to her and knelt to her level. He noticed the shards of glass all over the bathroom floor reflecting back a distorted portrait of the couple. Terry swallowed hard and placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. She shrugged him off.
—Bee, honey, I love you, do you understand what I’m saying?
Bee was unresponsive. This all felt like some white-water dream.
—You know, it’s true what they say about a person, that they die twice. Once when they stop breathing and again when the last person they knew says their name for the last time. As long as you’re around whatever Mephisto stood for will still be . . . alive.
Until now, he’d always been able to win her over. Terry realised the full seriousness of the situation for the first time. Bee opened her mouth again but was choked back with tears. She gave up trying and ran out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. Terry got up slowly, almost completely defeated, and followed after her. She was scribbling something down on a pad with a make-up pen.
—What are you writing?
Bee held the pad over so he could read her message. Terry screwed up his eyes then stood up straight like he had a pole up his ass.
The pad read—I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOU!
A PAIR SO RAPED
They say the creature clutched her by the arms
Until the timber of her delicate bones
Began to splinter and crack and sing
It whispered awful things, masculine things
Into her in some soft bastard language,
Not Latin, but not dissimilar
Mind like a steel trap
The rape of HER was a travesty
A monster’s spoil of war, taken
Taken, taken, taken, taken, taken, taken
HE TOOK her
She had been scarred through from mind, body to soul.
She also suffered persistent gynaecological problems.
The rape of HIM was an embarrassment
To a patriarchal society
‘Is he still a husband?
Isn’t he no
w a wife?
How can he protect me?
How can I ever feel protected again?’
Wandering the chiaroscuro through the smoky sfumato
Head jacked on its axle
Looking ever up at the dizzying ablaq above
Ribs of rock
Leathern eyelids
A chrysalis . . .
BAPTIZM OF FIRE
“Our flag shall be a symbol
That truth and justice reign,
In peace or battle honour’d,
And this we count as gain,
To hand on to our children
A banner without stain.”
Nigeria We Hail Thee (1960-1978)
1.
Obi Bamgbala walked through the parched suburbs of Old Lagos.
The streets pulsed with activity to the beat of the boy’s frenzied heartbeat. Since his emancipation from the Slave State, Obi had struggled to settle into the city. Although he had escaped work in a forced labour enclave, he had entered into a new world of servitude, where society had been weakened by greed and poverty.
Obi watched the people go through the motions, like a clockwork colony of insects—folks carried baskets of cloths and trays of food to their respective stalls—a file of cruisers and tandem mope heads clogged the lanes; by the wayside, groups of scammers negotiated in various ancient dialects that were unfamiliar to Obi.
He did not yet know this world.
All the clamouring voices startled the young boy at first. Under the Slave State’s watchful eye, Old Lagos was an intimidating authority, but soon Obi noticed the comparisons with his old city of Okpella in Edo State. Often the marketplace was of similar discontent. He came to realise that every strange fruit or herb sold in Lagos was something he had seen many times before back home. Obi delighted, as he had done in Okpella, at the vast range of antiques, jewellery and crafts. On Sunday, Obi and his aunt would buy from the booths—Egusi, rice, pounded yams, satchels of banga soup paste, fried plantain for Dodo and delicious fruit called agbalumo.
While the former capital bustled with an impatient commotion, in a way it was comparable to the Yoruba drummers who marched the markets beating their talking hourglasses. Lagos music was just a more acquired taste. Edo market itself was located beside the deafening Benin Abuja Road. Obi did not take long in adapting.