CONTENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

PROSE

THE ISHOLOGU

Jonathan Kincade // 3617 words

What truly separates good from evil? When a senseless act of violence unleashes an ancient evil on a community, it’s up to one bokor—and his undead accomplice—to make things right.

GLOSS

Kola Heyward-Rotimi // 3356 words

For Ace and zeal, The Clipper is more than a glitch; it’s an escape, a refuge from reality. But when developers patch their refuge out of existence, Ace has to figure out how to break reality one more time.

THE DAEMON KING OF ENGIM

Rafeeat Aliyu // 7370 words

Saya is a talented wizard who has dreams of being a fighter, but there’s a problem: women aren’t allowed to fight. She makes a deal with a capricious deity who says that they can make her dreams real...but is Saya prepared to pay the cost?

NOTES ON THE PLAGUE

Shamar Harriott // 3119 words

A mysterious plague is killing black people. Amidst this tragedy, a small group of hopeful survivors tries to figure out how to retain their will to survive without the ability to touch—or trust.

THE RAT KING OF SPANISH

Nicky Drayden // 7849 words

A sweeping viral epidemic is changing the very fabric of humanity, and Alicia is one of the few unaffected humans remaining. In the midst of humanity’s change, will she find a place to belong?

POETRY

NEST

B. Sharise Moore

THE BASKET WEAVER

Soonest Nathaniel

EXTRAS

CREATOR SPOTLIGHT

THANKS

January 2019

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Dear FIYAH Readers,

Goodbyes are difficult, but they’re also best done without much fanfare. So, beginning January 2019, I will no longer be editing FIYAH. Instead, I will be leaving the magazine to work on my own stuff, and to enjoy the abundant blessings of living in a time when certain spheres of publishing seem to be finally embracing Black storytellers (if only momentarily).

This has been an amazing experience, and I’m thankful to have spent the last two years working with the team to build a marvelous magazine. It has been an honor to help incredible Black authors polish their stories into something truly magnificent. It has been a blessing.

No successful endeavor is ever undertaken alone, and the magazine will continue to flourish without me, that is for certain. Troy L. Wiggins has been amazing at picking up the slack of the past year as I pursued my own writing career and will continue to steer the ship. Moving up to Executive Editor will be DaVaun Sanders, who has been on our team from the start and has an excellent eye for stories. FIYAH’s tireless social media team, art folks, and slush readers will still be hard at work, and in light of the mag’s World Fantasy win I expect that you will see more amazing things in the coming years. I look forward to them as well, if as a subscriber, not as an editor.

For me, FIYAH was born out of a need to do something, and a keen rage at an industry that mostly chose to ignore the elephant in the room. I’m glad that energy helped to build a legacy for Black SFF, and I hope you will join with me in supporting FIYAH far into the future. Because, as always, the future ain’t going to write itself.

Best,

Justina Ireland

∙ ∙ ∙

This is DaVaun Sanders. I’m the new Co-Executive Editor at FIYAH, and I want to welcome you to the ninth issue of FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. Thanks for diving into 2019 with us, whether this is your first time copping an issue, or you’ve savored every story since day one.

Let’s take a minute to love on Justina Ireland. She’s stepping out of her editorial role with FIYAH for all the right reasons: namely, her work is blowing up! Our community couldn’t ask for a more tireless advocate for black authors and readers, a warrior who never backs down from calling out publishing’s wrongs. We know Justina will be successful in all her pursuits and she is dearly missed.

Looking forward, I couldn’t be more grateful for our resilient FIYAH staff, a family who cares about this work down to a molecular level. I’m thankful for their trust in me as we build on a phenomenal year. We’ll continue fighting for every last inch of platform that our writers’ work deserves, and ensuring our readers receive nothing but the most explorative, game-changing stories the world has seen yet.

This issue is a fresh approach for us: general submissions, versus our themed offerings of the past. We wanted the stories pressing on folks’ souls and as usual, our submitting writers delivered! This issue features Jonathan Kindcade’s “The Ishologu,” a patois-infused dark fantasy following a bokor and his familiar’s hunt of a murderous creature. Kola Heyward Rotimi’s “Gloss” explores life, love, and belonging within the margins of a hostile space. Rafeeat Aliyu’s “The Daemon King of Engim” is a tale of heroism, adventure, and godly trickery. Shamar Harriott’s “Notes On the Plague” is a haunting account from survivors of a deadly plague. We close out the issue with “The Rat King of Spanish Harlem” by Nicky Drayden, a novella that explores microaggressions within the Latinx community as a disturbing virus reshapes society forever.

Dustin Alexander Bolton laid down this issue’s cover art. B. Sharise Moore’s “Nest” and Soonest Nathaniel’s “The Basket Weaver” are our first poetry offerings of 2019.

Writers: Some of you chose us for your first ever submission, or consistently send us your work every open period. We see you. Your growth. Your determination. Your love for this challenging craft. We expect to see more of your phenomenal stories in our inbox this year.

2018 was difficult, but amazing on so many different fronts. All of that is due to the people who believe in us and this work. Thank you for your readership, submissions, donations and support. We’re just getting warmed up.

Enjoy the issue!

DaVaun Sanders

Executive Editors: Troy L. Wiggins + DaVaun Sanders

Poetry Editor: Brandon O’Brien

Acquiring Editors: Brent Lambert + Danny Lore + Kaleb Russell

Layout: LeKesha Lewis

Cover Artwork by Dustin Bolton

All material in FIYAH is copyrighted to the original authors and may not be reproduced without permission.

THE ISHOLOGU

By Jonathan Kincade // 3617 words

Mi walked the Mississippi, in search of the one dem call Longinus. The river wound along the boulevard, the bank a dozen feet below the cold guardrail. In the day zealots sounded warnings of witches and monsters on it banks. At night they prayed at home, gris-gris locked in death grips.

Couldn’t say when Mi last prayed.

What are we doing here, bokor? Achebe asked, materializing next fi me. First he was a shadow rising from the ground, then an ochre man clad in nothing but a hide skirt. His appearance rattled the teeth fi mi bangle. The black metal absorbed light, bitter cold around mi neck, a schism in space save the teeth chained fi it. “Money.”

I fail to see how this will help me rejoin Gran Met.

Achebe scowled, the Ichi scars on his temple and cheek creased together. The zombie astral’s speech moved fi the rhythm of a pounding in mi head. The rye hangover from last night’s set at The Nile. Mi ignored him. He disappeared after demanding wi went back fi Auntie and simply took our money from dead hand. His silence meant he watched, ever there. Never could decide which was better with him, voyeur or interloper.

Ahead, a staircase led down fi the bank, where they were laughter on the wind before anything else.

Three boys, a few yards in the distance. The one furthest away perched on a wooden post at water’s edge. His acorn cheeks twitched with amusement and his oversized hoodie flapped against the wind. The other two lingered in front of him, their king.

“Like hell you did,” shouted one of the standing boys.

“What happened next?” asked the other.

The seated man stuck out a vulgar tongue and broke into a wide grin. They all lapsed into another fit of laughter that traveled downriver.

Mi sauntered closer, hands crammed in mi jacket pockets, boots crunching through brittle earth.

“Looking for Longinus.”

They snapped fi attention, glanced from one another fi me with faces of uncertainty.

“I suggest you turn around nigga, while you still can,” one said.

Mi took dem in. Dissected dem. Awkward bulge at one’s armpit. Bulge at the other’s hip. Armed.

“Got business with Longinus. Seems that’s you.”

The seated man’s face twisted into a lake of fear and anger. He shot from his perch, glanced at his bredren, and waved at me.

Mi moved when their hands did. Shoulder holster had fi go first, less distance quicker draw. A swift punch at his throat left him sobbing for air. Mi dropped fi the ground and swept his feet from under him. He fell backward into the dirt, continued gasping.

Mi scooped a fistful of dirt and flung it in the other’s eyes. His jaw turn cardboard beneath mi uppercut.

“How about this, motherfucker?”

Longinus confronted mi with the barrel of a pistol. His finger caressed the trigger and he snarled past hesitance that swam in his narrowed eyes. The hammer pulled back.

Mi called fi Achebe through mi thoughts. Lend your hex!

Achebe stayed quiet but mi bangle chattered with his presence. Where else could a zombie astral go, other than the fetish fi which it is bound?

Mi die here and end up another black man on a slab.

Longinus bit his lower lip while Mi pressed Achebe. Nothing.

You’ll go fi some evidence lockup where you sit alone for who knows how long? Until some rasclaat hipster buys you at auction, ignorant what you can do.

A sigh ran past mi ears, like the rush of wind, and Achebe chuckled humorlessly.

Fine.

The hammer slammed down as Longinus squeezed the trigger. But the crossroads had already opened. Mi ashe flowed through the bangle. The hex traveled into the world and the pistol misfired. Recoil arced it toward Longinus’ nose.

“Fuck!” he wailed into crunching cartilage.

The gun dropped fi the ground and he clutched at his fractured nose. Blood poured past the seam between his hands and flecked the dirt.

“Think wi can talk now?”

“Fine, fine. Just no more of that Black Bruce Lee junkie shit.”

His boys’ hands crept toward their guns. He waved dem off. Mi shook mi head.

“Auntie sent me fi handle your problem.”

His eyes went wide. He gurgled a damp, sanguine note and swallowed. “Why didn’t you just say that, man?”

“Never gave the chance. Was you, mi just be glad this ended everything criss.” Mi crossed mi arms. “Whappen?”

Longinus nodded through tourniquet hands.

“Few days back, we traded shots with some Dixie Boys. Now Lonnie and Kareem are talking about going to war.”

Mi sucked mi teeth and turned fi leave these boys from the block fi dem death. Who would miss dem when gone?

“Mi not here fi get caught in some turf war.”

“Listen,” Longinus pleaded. He raised a conciliatory palm and inched another shaky hand toward his pocket, from which he pulled a smartphone. After a few taps he turned the screen fi me. “It wasn’t us that killed them Dixie Boys. I caught some bodies but ain’t never seen shit like this. You ever see anything that could do this?”

The phone displayed an image. Corpse on a metal slab. Strangely beautiful purple-red cauliflower formations bloomed at the neck and head. The rest of the body shriveled.

Achebe emerged beside me, rested his spear pole on the ground, the contrast between his skirt and Longinus’ fitted cap like a pop painting. Old world superimposed on new.

“Where were the bodies found?” Mi asked.

“At one of our spots not far from here. We’ll take you there.”

“No deal, Mi work alone.”

Not alone, bokor. Achebe scowled.

“Look man, something happened to our boys and we owe the piece of trash that did ‘em in. We don’t go, you don’t go.”

Longinus pointed a thumb at himself then jabbed at me with his index. His other hand clamped at his face.

This ran deeper than he could desire fi know, a reminder of mi placement in concentric worlds. Mi thought about mi empty wallet and hungry belly. Auntie’s money wouldn’t find its way there if mi couldn’t do the job.

“Fine, but you do what mi say.”

Wi made our way fi the road and through the neighborhood that stretched inland from the riverbank. Unlit, two-story homes lined the street. After passing a few, Longinus stepped toward one. An old Impala parked out front. He led us through an alley that ran along the side of the house, motioned fi one of his boys, and said “Stay here.”

At the back, he slid the door aside and entered. A kitchen.

“Do whatever it is you do, man,” Longinus said before retreating fi another room. The boy left too, fi another part of the house.

Mi roamed and worked through what mi knew.

A few dead boys, done in by something worse than a strap, found in a dirty trap house. Papa Rawlins’ words ran through mi head as if he was with me: always start at the beginning.

Mi examined one of the bodies, wrapped in tarp, and wondered. Hex? Or crossroads?

Both. Neither, Achebe responded.

Alone, mi addressed the zombie aloud. “Impossible.”

Look closely at the neck, he said. There is a small incision but the wound is dry. No blood remains.

The Old World bokor was correct.

The neck revealed pinpricks that probably went unnoticed by anyone who didn’t know fi search for dem. It was a bloodletter killed these men, a fact that narrowed things down but still gave no clues about species.

Nothing mi had encountered left a bloom.

“That makes this engazi from the crossroad. Not hex, not voudou magic.”

Those men were slain and devoured by an impundulu.

The word bounced fi mi mind.

Mi thought back fi early lessons on cryptolinguistics but couldn’t place a creature fi the word. Was it Xhosa, Zulu, or something else? These thoughts were interrupted by the longing that pooled in mi chest. Return fi the Parish, fi walk the dank halls of the houngan asogwe’s study and delve into bestiaries where engazi were fairytale ideas on a page.

It is better not to dwell on matters past, Achebe whispered.

An icy twinge of guilt displaced mi longing.

“Tell me what you know. How can it be both hex and engazi?”

Because, bokor, behind an impundulu is always the mamba that directs it to feeding ground.

First a bloodletter. Now, a witch that could control it. Bondye, unknowable, preserve mi. Achebe cackled.

Glass shattered, a lullaby on broken violin. A soft thud followed and a shadow flew across the doorway.

Mi rushed the doorway fi see the shape of a man slip downstairs. In the next room Longinus’ boy swayed on his knees, one hand at his throat, overtaken by a cluster that bloomed and reddened like a nature movie on fast-forward. He gurgled before crumpling to the ground.

The impundulu stalked the house.

Mi bolted downstairs after it, paused in the kitchen. The bark of gunfire traveled from the backyard, followed by a howl. Then, nothing.

“The fuck’s going on here?” Longinus asked. He stumbled into the kitchen, rag pressed fi his face.

“Remember that ting about doing what Mi say? Stay put.”

Mi steeled miself at the door. Reckless, battling an abomination mi knew so lickkle about. That went against all of the teachings, but so did many other things mi thought Mi never do. You told mi younger self, he would have said fiyah fi yuh.

Fool.

Mi cast these thoughts aside and stepped into the night.

The backyard, deserted. Mi crept forward, scanned the area but found nothing. After a few steps, something behind mi bunks the ground like a dumpster lid being slammed shut. The other boy’s corpse. Shriveled, battered from a drop that splayed his limbs, elbows and knees bent in reverse directions.

When the air shifted, instinct and education kicked in. Something seared mi back like hot iron just as Mi went into a forward shoulder roll. Mi turned around fi spy a humanoid creature with charcoal skin. Yellow eyes and clawed, bloodstained hands gave the monster away. It licked a claw and broke into a salacious grin.

Mi dropped into the ginga stance, swung mi arms in front mi face opposite the rhythmic, triangular footwork that prepared mi body for other maneuvers.

It lunged and Mi sidestepped. The creature cocked its head and Mi prepared fi its counterattack. Mi ground mi teeth when it dashed fi the back door instead.

Longinus emerged from the doorway, pistol raised. He sneered, showered the creature with rounds. Dem did nothing fi slow it. The clip ran empty and Longinus’ face turned dread. He backpedaled, tripped over the door frame.

Mi harnessed mi ashe, leapt at the creature, and grabbed its reared arm. The impundulu jerked stop, but turned fi dig a raptor-taloned foot across mi thigh. Mi grunted in pain and let go, no Ogun.

The creature roared and dashed through the alley, out of sight. Hadn’t expected a fight. Ongle easy prey.

Mi chased it but only found the desolate alley. Mi searched the dim space when mi foot landed in damp grass. Mi didn’t need fi see. Blood.

Mi returned fi the backyard fi check on Longinus. The laceration on mi thigh burned but Mi counted miself lucky.

Longinus knelt over his companion’s body, palms outstretched. Tears streamed down his chestnut face but he made no sound.

Mi glanced at the dead man and frowned.

This is no time for sentiment, bokor. Follow the trail! Achebe roared in mi head.

“What the fuck was that?” Longinus asked, rocking in place.

“That’s why you shouldn’t have come.”

Mi knew what it was fi lose bredren. Mi could have offered fi let him speak with the dead, but that would just make him realize the cruelty of survival.

“Walk good,” was all Mi could say, tempted fi cut mi losses.

There were other ways fi get bread than fetching things for some witch. Mi was filled with the abysmal sense the woman had not been forthcoming about what she actually stood fi gain from mi completion of the job.

Mi was certain of something, though. More would die if the impundulu roamed free. The creature needed fi be dealt with, which meant mi needed fi go after the mamba.

Mi returned fi the front yard and picked up the blood trail. It wound its way through the neighborhood in splotches that thinned the further Mi traveled.

Tell me, bokor, how will you deal with the mamba when you find her? Achebe came out and walked next fi mi.

“Just ask her fi stop, nicely.”

The zombie astral’s laughter boomed in mi skull.

And you expect that to work?

“Not at all. But Mi aim fi try it before a dagger between the ribs.”

That will be the only way past this.

“Maybe you could be a likkle more helpful in telling me tings,” Mi shot back.

Achebe sighed and heaved large shoulders.

Impundulu are Old World engazi. In my time they stalked villages for cattle. When those were gone they turned to humans. Mamba collect the blood for their arts and impundulu are allowed to feed. The familiar is passed down from mother to daughter.

“What happens if she has no daughter?”

Then the creature is slain. Without a mistress it becomes Ishologu. They feed with impunity such that even one could decimate a city. I fought one in Timbuktu, when I was bokor, and bested it by setting the witch’s hut ablaze, as well as the neighboring ones.

“Wonder how many that killed.”

Less than the impundulu would have. For that and greater feats I was made living spirit. Ancestor. More than you can say, banished one.

Mi ran a hand through mi hair, frustrated with this schizophrenic conversation.

Fi slay engazi, those bloodseed creatures let through the crossroads by the loa Met Kalfu, was one thing. Dem only drove injustice and preyed on the living. A witch was a human who sometimes helped and defended others.

This is the cost of serving the loa with both hands, Mi reminded miself. Bondye, preserve mi.

The blood trail disappeared in front of a red-bricked house. Dark and unlit as the other homes, it still stood out. Calling fi wi.

At the side, a sliver of soft light came through slats intended fi keep out prying eyes. A small, neat hole marked the window’s corner. Mi peered through but, saw nothing but light.

Mi circled fi the back, where the door creaked open with little effort.

Darkness swallowed the inside, except for the soft glow that emanated from the end of the hallway. A mundy home. Only the rich scent of sugar cane and the pungent taste of blood gave it away as a place of rituals and decoctions.

Mi moved through the entryway, toward the front, and glanced back every few paces. The glow brightened as Mi approached the back. Mi turned the corner, shook in surprise at the sight.

An altar rested at the back wall, on top of which rested votives and an inhuman skull. At the center of the room stood a ring of candles. Though some still burned weakly, most had melted down fi waxy stubs. Amid this ring rested a woman’s corpse.

A problem solved. Another made.

Mi wondered how fi defeat a monster that no longer had an owner. The earlier battle showed that facing the impundulu head on would be foolish. Mi might slay it yet. Much would be paid in the process, and not necessarily fi mi. While Mi couldn’t doubt the effectiveness of Achebe’s ways, they came with great cost.

“Can impundulu turn on their mistresses?” Mi asked him, paced the room.

Only if the mamba doesn’t direct it to feed elsewhere. That would be like living with a lion without feeding it the lamb.

Mi stooped down fi inspect the body, gingerly lifted an arm. Cold, but not stiff. Rigor mortis had passed. No smell yet. She had been dead a little under two days.

“This one hasn’t gone rabid,” Mi observed.

Do you know what it is to be a slave? The creature still grows accustomed to its newfound freedom. It is probably out hunting now, emboldened by its encounter with you.

Mi gloved hands traced their way up the body and toward the neck. There, a bloody pinhole larger than those left by the impundulu. Mi reached around the base of her skull and found a larger hole on the other side. Entry and exit wounds. Mi lifted the body fi a seated position that lined up with the trajectory of the hole in the window.

The mamba had died the victim of stray gunfire.

Mi turned fi see that mi boot had effaced the veve of the crossroads, scrawled in chalk across the wood floor. Mi knew it anywhere, even half drawn. It belonged fi the loa, Met Kalfu.The witch must have sought him for supplication in some dark ritual that had not ended well for her. Kalfu had a way of twisting one’s own words against dem, causing participants fi form pacts of which they were scarcely aware.

Mi knew that firsthand.

If the ishologu was still settling into freedom, it might still obey its mistress. Mi considered mi options and formed a plan. Uncertain of how much time Mi had before it returned, Mi set fi work. Mi raided the mamba’s supply of Boneset and Marjoram. Common rootwork herbs whose tincture would help mi stay conscious long enough fi maintain wide enough access through the crossroads.

After that it was nothing fi do but meditate and wait.

A predatory hunger filled the room as the creature returned. It lumbered through the doorway, eyes wide, fangs bristling, like Mi had thrown it a surprise party.

Mi swigged the tincture and began channeling ashe through mi bangle. It created an indivisible coil between mi own will and Achebe’s. A bruised, purple aura wrapped around mi.

Achebe raged within, which lit every nerve in mi body with searing pain.

Mi shut mi eyes, focused, and directed the energy toward the dead mamba. Her body began fi animate. It lurched from the ground, twisted erratically.

Zombies were usually summoned when the spirit was banished from the body. A ritual involving tetrodotoxin, toad back, and bone powder. But Mi wanted fi pull the spirit back into the body. Either way left nothing more than a flesh puppet with ephemeral tether.

The ishologu froze in front of me, claw extended, and stared at its mistress’ animated corpse. It cocked its head like a bird, took her in.

“Mistress? Thought you were dead,” the ishologu hissed, gutturally.

The corpse cocked its head like a bird and took in the creature. It opened its mouth fi speak and when nothing came out Mi hoped the vocal folds were intact enough for the plan fi work. Speech finally came, a choir of agonized voices.

“Hurtssss.”

“Control your creature,” Mi roared. “Do this for mi and you will have your rest with Gran Met.”

“…Please…”

“Do as Mi say and banish your creature!”

The strain of the spell took its toll on mi body. Blood trickled from mi nose and down mi lip. The ishologu glanced at it with a look of hunger.

“Mistress, does he hurt you?”

It stepped forward, but Mi held mi ground. Less from bravery than an inability fi move while casting. It hesitated when the corpse spoke once more.

“Do…I…seem…dead?”

“No mistress.”

“I have been…meditating…I tire of this place. Leave…this one. Go to…Port…Eads. Wait for me…there. Do not roam…do…not feed. Sleep among the reeds…if…you must.”

The ishologu looked from its mistress’ corpse and back fi mi, confused about what transpired. What did this creature who meted out death truly know of the living? Sentient but not sapient. It let out a soft whimper, like a beaten Rottweiler desperate fi tear into something smaller and weaker than its abuser. Like that, it slunk from the room.

“Please…so much pain…”

Mi maintained the spell over the body until Mi was certain the creature had departed. When Mi finally released it, the body crumpled fi the floor. The spirit had departed but the pain that racked mi body lingered.

You expect that to work? Achebe asked.

“Just have fi hope the ishologu can’t go crazy if it doesn’t know it’s free.”

Foolish.

Mi thought back fi Achebe’s question, whether or not Mi had known what it was fi be a slave. He lacked a specific pain that was everyday knowledge for Black folks fi the New World. One day Mi would tell him about that wicked passage, but also about the many warriors who fought in the war that came after. Toussaint. Frederick. Malcolm.

But not this day.

“Maybe. But at least wi can tell Auntie that the job is done. Time fi get our rasclaat money and move the hell on.”

In the back of mi mind, though, Mi couldn’t help but wonder whether Achebe was right. All Mi had done was defer the problem fi another day, another bokor. Would dem find a way fi deal with the creature before it caused more death?

Mi made mi way back through the house. At the front Mi took out mi phone and dialed 911, fi report the witch’s homicide.

Now what are you doing?

“Mi taking your suggestion. Burning down the witch’s hut.”

As fire consumes a forest,

as a flame sets the mountains ablaze

Achebe chuckled with genuine amusement as Mi strode from the house singing the psalm.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT JONATHAN KINCADE

Jonathan Kincade is a musician, scholar, and self-professed storytelling nerd. He is currently pursuing a PhD in English at UCLA, where he researches and writes about narrative design in fiction, video games, and film. His editorial work is featured in the Tapas comic, “The Tuneful Tales of Milly Melodia” and in story development for scripts that are now movies in theaters and on Netflix. An NDA prevents him from sharing the titles, so you’ll just have to take his word for it. He hopes to have his very black Sci-fi novel completed soon but in the meantime you can reach him on Twitter @minustimes.

GLOSS

By Kola Heyward-Rotimi // 3356 words

There I was, drink in each hand, and a new kid had gone and froze up right in my path. Judging from her stillness, she was a first-timer. Default pose and everything: feet (hooves in her case) planted on my chrome floor, head locked straight ahead, hands hovering just from her hips. The only parts of her body that pulsed with the bass were the neon blue tattoos arcing on her collarbone. I sighed at the glasses in my hands and decided to put my sangria to the side.

With a thought, one of the glasses disappeared and left my hand free, reaching for her shoulder. My contact made her jerk to face me, made her eyes go all wide. She must’ve thought she looked real cute with the no-pupil look and you know what? I couldn’t judge. We all made fashion blunders the first time. I didn’t raise my voice because I knew she could hear me over the DJ.

“Hey sis, raise your arm for me.”

She looked down at her limb as if she’d forgotten it existed. It’s not like she had an advanced build. Except for the hooves, she was sticking close to the basic shit. Didn’t matter in her case, not with The Clipper this packed, this alive, vibrating all around us. First-timers occasionally got like this, and I occasionally had their solution.

The girl broke from idle with a gasp. There we go.

Her ebony skin was set in motion and it fractured against The Clipper’s lights. Colored rays, puncturing the anti-aliasing with their razor edges, flocked to her movement and lit her up. That smooth appendage went and got replaced by a glittering dark crystal, and her fingers, uncurling, lagging with each twitch, shuttered their way through a metamorphosis. Closed fist to outstretched hand, her palm cupping radiance beamed from the ceiling.

The light show on her arm had the girl frozen again—but in the good way. In the way I knew she’d enjoy herself. She turned to me and grinned, revealing all-black teeth. Her smile faltered when I didn’t return it. Didn’t know what she’d expect when she got obvious ripoffs of my merch all up in her mouth. Whatever bootleg vendor she’d bought the mod from got everything down except for the enamel. In the Clipper’s glitched lighting systems it should be glowing, but there was none of my signature shimmer. All dull and dead.

“Hey man,” she said, her voice undercut by audio fuzz on her end, “I love the place already. Thanks.”

Her face walked the fuzzy border between vagueness and familiarity. She had the face of high school kids years ago, of distant cousins that had pulled up the family driveway for cookouts. It had to be the braids sprouting from her scalp. Every black girl had rocked those in the late ‘20s. And now I could see that face brimming with the joy—the hunger—of The Clipper. I gave her back a smile with my own obsidian teeth and I could feel how they gleamed. With a pat on her shoulder, I let her go to lose herself in the rose-colored lights and the dancing bodies passing through each other.

Guess I wouldn’t be banning first-timers today. Damn, I hated being such a good host.

The other glass of sangria appeared in my empty hand and I glided across the floor. The DJ chopped their way to the next stage of their set. Lights washed with green as the bass warped, shook, dropped. Two hairless, naked bodies glowing bright blue—lightheads—whooped to the heavens as the tempo ramped up an exponential slide. There were even larger screeches coming from up ahead. Warmth tingled under my skin, and it wasn’t from the edible I’d taken half an hour ago. These guys weren’t excited about the music, either. Only my boyfriend could make the crowd lose their minds like this.

Sure enough, my angel was doing his routine on the levitating platform in the center of The Clipper. Pixel glitter rained on zeal’s outstretched wings, and I mean the real shit. We’d dug through endless dead forums and ripped those pink/white gifs straight from post signatures. They jumped through their stages of reincarnation. A white square, blossoming into a sharp little star, flaring with color, reverting. zeal’s black wings collected the stuff and grew a shiny armor. His wings were as flat and uniform as shadows, and they curved around to drape his dark brown shoulders. zeal stared at his audience with eyes too glazed to be real. He didn’t care how we watched, how the lip gloss shimmered slick across his full lips. A crown of golden, unrefined polygons sat atop his cornrows. zeal’s wings unfurled to shadow us, and we cheered our king.

I rose to his level with the glass outstretched. Through his dancing and his concentration, zeal saw me. The corners of his mouth ticked upwards, so slight that it could’ve been a problem with his facial modeling. As his fingers curled around the drink, the world winked out.

It wasn’t instant. Blink fast enough and you would’ve mistaken it for a flash. But no, we were destructed in waves. The environment wiped clean, black as zeal’s wings, and it left all of us tethered to nothing. We weren’t given the time to complain, to pause things and figure out what the fuck happened. Because we were next, our surfaces peeling back to be consumed by the void around us until we were stripped to glaring pink wireframes. The polygonal junctions that made up our bodies were rendered free of their textures. Then pared back. Back. Back.

Curves were now collections of flat surfaces, then those were gone. I watched zeal’s face become a flat plane against nothing, and then become the nothing, and my arm, extended towards what had just been a man, a single pink spike like a cut through flesh, and then we were all booted out.

∙ ∙ ∙

We thought it might’ve been a raid. It wouldn’t be the first time. The Clipper was an obvious target, a square piece of land carving out a little nook in the game map. Because none of us wanted shit to do with the rest of the community, because I was black and gay and on a whole different level of can’t-bring-myself-to-give-a-fuck, we’ve had our fair share of stupidity come through. I didn’t name this place for no reason though. The first glitch I’d encountered while exploring my corner of the map was how our hitboxes were practically nonexistent. So when the raiders came they screamed and flew into our dancing, passing right through us.

Raiders weren’t capable of booting everyone out though, like what had happened to us. That would be a server-side problem, and that’s why I was suspicious. Unlike some, I listen to my intuition, real closely. When I logged back in and I woke up in my penthouse on the opposite side of the map, it didn’t come as a surprise. Not even the 2D announcement pasted over my vision from the dev team. Yeah, I wasn’t surprised. I just sat on my recliner. Empty.

The announcement told us everything we needed to know. Apology, declaration, and excuse all rolled into one. The shutdown had at least been global, not targeted, but it was one of what would be many. They were rolling out massive updates. Infrastructural stuff.

The dev team was fixing some bugs.

zeal teleported to the left of me. We faced my floor-to-ceiling view of the Amber Forest while the day/night cycle did its thing, painting the canopy and the user-built structures rising from it in ruddy sunset. zeal’s eyes were glazed over, so he had to still be looking at the message. I talked to him anyway.

“Well that’s it. They finally had enough of us.”

He blinked at the sound of my voice. When zeal and I broke from idle, it was something real. Something significant. Because when our bodies went still, they fell into those real rigid animations. The slight rotations of the wrist, the chest rising in perfectly timed cycles. Movements trying so hard to be natural they intentionally missed the mark. What can I say? We were old school. You could nearly see the moment when the software gave the reins over to our controls.

zeal turned to me, one of his wings brushing the back of my recliner.

“They had enough of us? Come on now, Ace. They don’t care enough about The Clipper or us to get fed up with anything we do. They just forgot we’re even in here. Forgot what we’ve built.”

“I mean, we knew this shit was gonna happen.”

I wished I had more to say, to do. There wasn’t much to it though. Logged in, logged out. I always felt like I was living on borrowed time. Guess the dev team had decided to cash in on it.

“The major parts of the update have already been put in, right?”

“From what this says, yeah.”

“Let’s go check The Clipper out,” I muttered. zeal didn’t have much to say about that. I never liked it when he didn’t respond to me—or gave me them one word replies he blurted when he was extra surly. I might’ve liked those even less.

It made me uncomfortable to be outside of our corner of the map for too long. We were all way too delicate out here, like zeal’s soft and multi-layered feathers. I caressed them to get his attention.

“I gotta see it,” I said. “Just to see if we can maybe make it work. You can call me a fool all you want after. How there’s no point. Nothing special left.”

“Shit, Ace. What’s in it for me? I was gonna call you a fool either way.”

His lips brushed the top of my scalp and warmth trickled down my neck. At least that hadn’t been changed. zeal’s kisses didn’t need this world’s updates.

I stood with him to face the forest. The twin suns melted into the mountains on the horizon, shadows marking their territory across dappled treetops and clouds of bats swarming the sky. Mist played in the cooling rays and rose from the forest in an endless animation, never dissipating. The dev team couldn’t shut their damn mouths up about the “realism” of their environments, but they couldn’t get their weather effects right?

“Teleport?” zeal asked. I shook my head.

“Let’s take our time.”

He took my hand and we flew through the glass. We were much slower, much more vulnerable, traveling through the map like this. zeal and I could take any shots that came our way, though. And there were a lot. Everyone logged in around this time of night and the map sparkled with explosions and beams shooting from fallen bodies. From up here we probably passed for birds unless someone had a good scope. Meanwhile, we could watch their patchwork mayhem from our arc against the purpling sky.

Not every space on the map was a combat zone, but I put my home in one. Wasn’t because of the thrill or access to weapons or whatever. I shot a gun like, once—in the tutorial. Honestly, I just think the Amber Forest is one of the prettiest locales around. A few hits against my shield was worth those lovely shades of orange.

We slowed as we approached our valley. In the span of the reboot, it had been taken from us. Not by any other users or something, since nobody here was that much of an idiot. It was in the lack of corrupted, dimensionless shadows, in the disappearance of our janky, overlapping rock textures, that I saw our loss. The Clipper had been moved from its nook in the angling sides of the valley. Now it sat where it should’ve always been, respecting the boundaries of the map’s landscape. It wasn’t a disruption anymore.

From outside it was a massive, square building. At least my black texture still shimmered on the walls. I’d take my blessings where I could snatch them. The Clipper remained a massive shadow, all right-angles and weight.

zeal dragged me down. I should be the one to lead us in, assess the damage. This had been my idea anyway, from the beginning. I couldn’t find any resentment, though. Everything kept getting colder, the world turning its back. A sob grew in me when we pressed against the wall. Solid. Dead.

We found the door and let ourselves in.

I’d never seen The Clipper so still. Didn’t help that it was completely empty except for the two of us, but I’d experienced that many times before. Sometimes zeal and I would get fed up with our guests and a few commands later we’d have the place to ourselves. That was different. Not like the stillness of the strobe lights, or the static textures, or the too-high polygon count defining our bodies in some sort of plastic attempt at reality.

The floor shone with the default chrome presets, and the floating platform had crashed into it. It had deformed the surface and stretched our reflections into unrecognizable mannequins. The only thing left with spirit.

“Gross,” I said. zeal stood on his old stage, now level with the floor. A spotlight activated and swiveled to shower his body in uniform, bleached illumination. There was no style to him anymore. He was just as plain as the environment, fitting right in place. They took all our flaws away.

His wings were unfurling and I had to stop him before they reached their full span, before he could begin for real. I dashed up to stand in front of him, grabbed his hands. Shook him from the glaze he always hid under when he got into the dance routine.

I didn’t have to tell him that he couldn’t. I didn’t have to tell him why. zeal let his wings fall back over his shoulders.

“Let’s get a drink.”

We walked to the counter lining the walls and two glasses appeared in our hands. There was no way to actually get drunk, but the dev team could get the taste right. It burned like the fluorescents that gridded the ceiling. zeal sighed.

“I’m sorry, baby.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah. But now we’re all so ugly.”

We were. He was. Mom always told me not to lie so I couldn’t reassure him. zeal talked to me while avoiding my face.

“Got a plan yet?”

“What?”

“We can’t do nothing.”

“I know.”

“So?”

He wanted to hear me say it first, and I felt anger grow hot in my cheeks because of it—but it was my responsibility. I was the one who had to say yes.

“I’ll leave it up for a little bit,” I said. “Maybe someone will do something with the design. I’ll take the shield off.”

zeal nodded. “But I wanna know about your plan. Not the plan for this shit.”

Fuck him. He shouldn’t make me cry here. Not where so much joy had been spilled, soaking us in this world’s happy mistakes. I knew what he had to hear, though. I don’t know how but I kept my voice steady enough to trick myself into thinking that everything was okay.

“Would you visit me?”

“I do every day.”

“No. Not in here.”

I let him think. I pretended his silence was lag, the only glitch the dev team couldn’t take from me. Because one day, this world would be seamless and perfect and work in all the right ways. One day, a delay with the present would be the last thing I got.

“You know I love you here,” zeal said, “but you can’t expect the same out there. I’m not the same.”

I attempted a smile. “What, you not black?”

“All I know is I’m not an angel.”

My face fell. He wasn’t telling me anything new. zeal had to know I could hear the occasional gunshot bleeding through his mic. Or the near constant hum of police drones undercutting his audio, just the slightest buzz. Once there’d been a crash in the background, something big—and I’d seen his face go slack. First with the shock of whatever I couldn’t see, then with his character logging out. When he’d returned hours later, he’d gone back to his false carelessness.

I’d never asked what ghetto zeal hailed from. That question had been hurled at me all through boarding school, before I’d learned to hide my slang and love from white boys who hadn’t known any better. Who hadn’t wanted to know any better.

Besides the point, I guess. All I’m saying is I wouldn’t be the one to take zeal’s fantasy away. We made new beauty here, broken and glitching. Flaws that aren’t pretty bore me.

“Come visit me,” I said. “I’ll DM you my address.”

zeal nodded, drained the rest of his drink. Then there was nothing left for us to do here. Some sort of aircraft flew overhead, and its sci-fi sound effects rattled the ceiling. Any movement from outside set all of this emptiness shaking. zeal and I laughed at the vibrations trickling through our elbows planted on the countertop.

“What’s the point of this game again?” he asked. “Like, what’s the main story?”

“Come on now. I haven’t paid attention to it in years. Making out and breaking the world was way more interesting.”

“This what happens when you give niggas computers. Wild.”

Hey, their mistake. I pecked zeal on the cheek and stood from the counter. “Imma go give them a cute parting gift so they don’t forget us. I’ll see you later.”

“Where you heading to?”

“Back home. And after that, I’m really heading back home. Can’t wait to uninstall this thing.”

“Fuck no, Ace. You can’t walk away without a goodbye.”

“You gotta learn to listen.” I wrote my apartment number in the air with a fingertip, and sent the glowing letters zeal’s way. They dissolved along his chest and a mail icon popped up over his head. The wink was too much, but I couldn’t resist.

“I said I’ll see you later.”

∙ ∙ ∙

How do you stop a world from forgetting you? I wasn’t sure, but I had a damn good guess. Whenever I took up too much space at work, back in school, in the streets, eyes came my way, fingers went to pursed lips. Now it was time to be loud.

I went to work, the Amber Forest providing ambient war noises. It took me a minute to figure out the image I wanted, my farewell to all of this. The ideas were too sophisticated. Elaborate departure letters, detailed renditions of The Clipper, you know. Then I realized that I could just be childish.

The dev team had their update, so I also had mine. Across the map, all the users of the merch I sold, the merch that bought me this floating penthouse and my extravagant lighting systems, would get a free upgrade. I never released any of my work before I tried it myself, though. I applied the new texture on my obsidian teeth and faced a mirror.

I’d have the screenshots, but this would be the last time I’d truly inhabit this avatar. There was a lot that I’d miss. The cropped hair curving just above my little white devil horns. My bright red irises. And that was okay. I would lose a lot, but I had to remember to smile.

The texture on my teeth had been destroyed. It was gorgeous. Every tooth had a shitty middle finger printed across its surface, some image I’d ripped only minutes ago from a random site. This world would be filled with my shitty jpg artifacts, made a collective joke. And of course the dev team would fix it—but not before the screenshots flooded the forums and the videos were uploaded across the internet. Not before we could all rage and laugh together.

zeal was right. They really shouldn’t have given us computers. Black boys and glitches love each other too much.

ABOUT KOLA HEYWARD-ROTIMI

Kola Heyward-Rotimi is an undergraduate student of Computer Science and English at Amherst College. His speculative fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, and he is a Pitch Wars 2018 mentee.

THE DAEMON KING OF ENGIM

By Rafeeat Aliyu // 7370 words

It was rainy season in Karmashe and the butcher families were in town. Having burned through six years of magical training with Baba Gudi in just four years, Saya was one of the few of her age group in town at the time. She had graduated through the ranks of magic quickly, leaving behind others who were still learning how to One-Step and bring about a good harvest.

She spent her evenings taking her younger siblings to the night market. There, they watched the butchers dance and fight. Spicy grilled meat, fried rice cakes and beer of rice and honey easily flowed. Mati, tall and nimble on his feet, shone in matches as he flung opponent after opponent to the floor.

Saya recognized him immediately, a familiar face from before she left for Baba Gudi’s tutelage. In due time, Saya left her younger ones to explore the market while she went to reconnect with Mati. Spending days with him opened her eyes and Saya saw fighting in a new way. Matches were always the highlight of the seasonal visit from butcher families. One night, after they met at a stream, Mati told Saya one thing she had never heard before.

“You know, not long ago, women fought too.” Mati said.

“Really?” Saya asked.

“Ask your family elders about Byol. She was a great fighter.”

And thus, the seed was planted. In the two years it would take for the rest of her age-group to graduate from their various apprenticeships, Saya would master the art of fighting. However, the burly man who trained Mati and the other butchers would not allow it.

“We can’t let a girl fight with these boys,” he said, his bloodshot eyes boring into Saya. “If they have to hold and grasp you, they will be aroused and unable to concentrate.”

Saya thought of the way the wrestlers grabbed each other in the heat of the fight, sometimes pressing their muscular bodies against each other in a bid to throw their opponent to the ground.

“So do they get aroused when they fight among themselves?” Saya asked.

Needless to say, the coach was offended. He went straight to Saya’s compound and a family meeting was called. The elders, along with Saya’s mothers and fathers—from both sides of the family—met in her birth father’s welcoming hut. The open sides of the hut let in air while everyone ate and drank to their contentment. Then Saya was called in to stand in the middle with the entire clan sitting in a circle around her.

“Why do you want to fight?” Baba Talatuwa, the second in line to the oldest in the family asked. “We are magicians, not butchers or fishermen. Fighting belongs to those groups.”

“Actually,” Ma Ladiyo, Saya’s birth mother called out. “Fighting belongs to everybody and if my daughter wants to learn, there must be a reason.”

“Yes,” Pa Cindo, her birth father agreed. “Our Saya has already mastered magic, why shouldn’t she master fighting if she so desires?” The elders grumbled. “We no longer live in the times of Byol before magic and fight were separated thanks to the Law of One. Remember our family code.”

Flow wherever the tide leads.

The elders always agreed that it was easier to align with whatever the ruling powers of the day ordained. Since the time of her grandmother’s mothers, the influence of magic had been dwindling due to the introduction of the new religion; the Law of One. The Law of One was as far away to Saya as flying was to a snail. Karmashe still heavily relied on magic and remained connected to the deities.

That night in Ma Ladiyo’s hut, Saya lay in her mother’s arms. “I don’t even have to be accepted by them,” she said, a huge pout on her face. “I can just watch and learn.”

“My shining jewel,” Ma Ladiyo replied. “Look at how thin your arms are. I don’t want you to die from a blow to the head.”

“But Byol…” Saya protested.

Ma Ladiyo caressed Saya’s cornrows and hugged her tighter. “Why don’t you focus on practising your magic instead? Your tattoos are still fresh and Inna’s gift thrums through you.”

“But I want to fight.”

“What did you learn from your mentor?” Ma Ladiyo’s voice took on a stricter tone. “Did she not teach you about listening to your elders and why we flow with the tide?”

Saya remained silent, but Ma Ladiyo wasn’t done yet.

“Or is it that butcher boy?” she asked. “Remember that he’ll leave town soon. The elders say butchers are handsome but are like birds, attracted to shiny things like you, my precious tourmaline.”

“I’ll practice my magic.” Saya groaned, snuggling deeper into Ma Ladiyo’s embrace.

∙ ∙ ∙

Yet the esteemed Baba Gudi, her mentor, had also told Saya that she could do anything she wanted. And now Saya felt the need to fight. The itch to fight would not let go, even after Mati packed his knives and rained kisses on Saya’s face while swearing he would return soon. She went out in search of Manzo the Messenger because They always had solutions for any problem. If there was one thing Saya had learned at Baba Gudi’s, it was how to reach out to deities for help. Manzo was the One always eager to help humans, so Saya roasted chicken quarters and cooked beans in a spicy sauce. She placed this offering under the moringa tree by the river. She chanted Manzo’s praise names often, calling Them with her sweetest voice, but weeks passed with no sign of the deity. One day Saya was tying her wrapper around her waist after a swim, when Manzo appeared from behind the shrubs near the river bed.

“I heard you were looking for me,” They said. They had taken the form of a short bear.

Saya immediately knew that she was in the presence of a deity, for in Karmashe, animals did not usually talk. She would not act like a princess the way she did with her parents, neither would she stay mute the way she had to be in front of the family elders.

“I apologize that you have met me without a proper offering,” Saya fell to her knees and bowed her head. “Indeed, I have been looking for you.”

“And what for?” Manzo approached Saya. “I am ready to help you in whatever way. You can repay me later.”

“I want to learn how to fight like the great Byol,” Saya said.

“Hmm, that’s not a problem,” Manzo said, pointing a furry paw across the water. “Can you swim?”

Saya craned her head towards the other end of the wide river. Across it was Tokawa territory. She turned back to Manzo.

“Yes, I can swim.”

“Brilliant!” Manzo shook with glee. “If you can swim to the other side of this river, you will be able to fight.”

“Really?” Excited, Saya swung back to the water and lifted a foot to jump in, then hesitated. She drew back and looked for Manzo but They had already disappeared. Saya frowned at the clear water. Manzo never helped anyone without a reason—every child playing in mud knew that. At the same time, the deities kept their word and Manzo had just told her she could pay Them back later. Saya already saw herself throwing her opponent to the ground and reveling as the crowd cheered. She would surprise Mati by wrestling with him when the seasons brought him back. Saya jumped into the water and swam. The swim took longer than she expected, and she emerged from the water gasping for air. Manzo was there waiting.

“You made it,” They laughed. “You see those tall columns over there in the west? They mark the entrance to Engim. You can fight there.”

Saya reached for the cloth she’d wrapped around her waist. That was when she noticed that her body was not hers. The crisscross of tattoos that travelled up her inner arms were gone. So were the ones that wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. Manzo had transformed her; now muscles bulged underneath taut skin. Her hips, which had spread out to the delight of elders who crooned about her future childbearing capabilities, were leaner. When she touched her thighs, they felt like wood. She was now built to wrestle like Mati. Saya laughed in delight.

“Thank you, Manzo! The One with swift feet, The One who is addressed first, They Who have all Knowledge,” Saya hastily read out Manzo’s praise names and watched as They seemed to glow brighter.

“Go and fight, Saya,” Manzo instructed. “You’ll love this.”

Saya did not need any further encouragement. She rushed toward the columns.

∙ ∙ ∙

There was a match going on when Saya entered the town. The streets were empty and quiet when normally the town square would be bursting with activity among its market stalls. In the evening sometimes, there was the night market, which was typically dances and performances. Regardless of the event that occupied it, the town square was a space of revelry and, often, debauchery. From afar, you could feel the warm energy that emanated from it.

This time, the energy in the air felt subdued as Saya raced through the town looking for the fight. A sharp sound caused Saya to stop in her tracks. It was the call of an elephant, and it made Saya want to run and hide. She pressed on until she reached the square, where Saya saw a still crowd gathered. Women crossed arms over their chests, using their hands to prop up their chins. No one acknowledged Saya.

Saya retraced her steps back to a tamarind tree a few miles away from the square. She touched the trunk tentatively before she remembered her new gift. Saya scaled the tree as naturally as if she had been climbing trees all her life, instead of staying in the shade reciting good luck spells.

The tallest branch dipped dangerously under Saya’s weight. Apart from a few leaves obscuring her vision, Saya could see the match and the action.

There were no drummers to set the blood of the audience and the fighters running. Instead, two women blew into long metal trumpets that made a terrifying sound. The trumpets were so heavy that each had to be held by three women, balancing it on their shoulders. The women blowing into the trumpets puffed their cheeks with the effort. When they let go, they stumbled a few paces back.

As she scanned the full square, Saya’s eyes were drawn to a seated figure covered in a glittering red and gold cloth, flanked by stern-faced women holding long swords that curved like the leaves of a banana tree. A fighter.

The referee, who was dressed in a multi-coloured tunic, stood reciting a praise poem in the middle of the sacred circle where all fights took place.

She hit the gong once. “We welcome anyone to challenge the King,” she said, voice booming through the still crowd. “Giwa! The elephant who crushes any opponent. Anybody who waits for the elephant waits for death. The Daemon who destroys forests and invades towns.”

Saya shuddered. Who would dare accept a challenge from someone with such terrifying praise names? Under the veil, the so-called Daemon King trembled. She stood to her feet and the veil fluttered to the ground. Saya’s mouth fell open at the Daemon King’s size. She stood as tall as a tree and as wide as a house. Her muscles bulged through skin-tight blue trousers and the even tighter top she wore exposed her wall-flat stomach. She wasn’t even looking in Saya’s direction but Saya could feel her forceful presence. The King began a dance of fervour, fluttering her arms and lifting her legs. Each stomp of her feed made the ground tremble and the leaves of the tamarind tree dance.

No one accepted the challenge. The King’s guards sprang into action. They charged into the crowd and dragged someone into the ring. The woman screamed as they dragged her. They’d clearly selected her because she was tall, and her limbs looked thick and powerful. The opponent knelt in front of the King begging for mercy, but no one paid heed. Among the crowd, Saya could see someone weeping, a hand clasped over her mouth to keep the sobs in.

The King’s herald, now acting as the referee, took a swig from the gourd secured around her hip and spat the liquid out, spraying it over the opponent’s head. Suddenly, the woman leapt to her feet in a daze. She bent her knees and lifted her arms, ready to battle. The King’s guards wrapped her right arm in cloth and cord till it resembled the end of a ladle. The herald hit the gong once again and the fight began.

They squared off, feinting, eyes never leaving each other. They held that pose for minutes, each woman gauging her opponent, their spear hands swinging low at their sides. Despite her bulk, the King moved so quickly it was hard to keep up with her. The King dealt a deft blow and knocked her opponent to the ground. The woman immediately got to her feet but the King gave blow after blow, her spear hand moving as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. When she dealt the final blow, the opponent lay unmoving on the sandy ground.

“The undisputed winner!” the herald sang. “Elephant! Daemon King! As long as She is undefeated, She is the ruler of this land.”

The crowd was quiet as the King’s musician’s rallied and played their frightful tune. Saya gripped the tree trunk so hard, it splintered.

“Our reigning champion, rightful ruler of Engim, Sheme, and surrounding lands!” the herald bellowed, her voice carrying through the wind to Saya. “Who else wants to challenge Our King?”

Saya shook in terror-tinged excitement. Usually, she’d have no choice but to sit this part out, but now she was bigger, stronger.

“I accept this challenge!” Saya called. She jumped off the tree and the earth shook when she landed. The crowd murmured at Saya’s approach, but she pushed her way into the sacred circle. Up close, the Daemon King wasn’t so big.

The herald laughed. “You may be foolish or wise,” she sang. “Weak or strong, you are no match for the Daemon King.”

The King barely glanced at Saya, but her guards rushed forward to prepare Saya for the fight. They wrapped a short piece of cloth across Saya’s exposed breasts. Then they fashioned her right arm till it became a spear. The grumbles of the crowd reached Saya’s ears.

“Foolish girl.”

“She’ll surely die.”

“Why did she have to go and prolong our suffering!”

Saya tuned the naysayers out. It was the same with people at Baba Gudi’s who doubted that a small girl could best them in magic. She had seen this so many times before and now Saya was in the heat of it. The herald hit the gong, clapped her hands, and the next match was ready to go. Saya crouched low, holding her shield hand up and flexing her other hand wrapped as the spear. It was heavy and already her hand felt numb. She kept her eyes on the King while swinging her spear low.

In her head she calculated her move. Saya was still calculating when the King hit her. The impact shocked Saya but she remained on her feet. The King shifted away while Saya stood. The earth tilted before her eyes, first left then right. The King approached again. This time when she landed a blow to Saya’s head, the world spun faster. Saya fell flat on the floor and the crowd groaned. Face down in the sand, Saya’s entire body burned.

She was going to die. Her mind raced to recall the words, the magic that would keep death at bay for her.

Death, you never sleep.

Do not allow me to sleep.

Evil shrinks away at the marks on my skin

“Oh Merciful King!” the herald sang. “You slay your opponents!”

Saya should have been on her feet, revived, energy flowing through her veins. Instead, sand clogged her nostrils and mouth. Blow after blow rained on Saya while the herald continued her praise song.

∙ ∙ ∙

The interior of the hut was dark and cold. Its small windows were too high to let in enough light. Saya sat with her back pressed against the cool wall, still alive. Mati had told her how he couldn’t move for months after a particularly vicious fight. He had needed an experienced magician to heal him. Saya expected excruciating pain, but there was none. She stood up from the adobe bed and headed outside where the sun told her it was late morning.

Her hut was one of many that had been arranged in a circle. Just ahead was the welcoming hut with its open sides and roof of fresh green palm fronds.

“You are finally back with us.”

To her right, a woman knelt in a small vegetable garden, a woven basket beside her. She looked about Saya’s age.

“Thank you so much for bringing me here and healing me.” Saya assumed this must have been the person that saved her.

“No worries,” the woman replied. “We get enough girls like you running here and getting beat up.”

“How many days have passed since the match?” Saya asked.

“About two months.” The woman plucked some green leaves.

Saya jerked her head back.

“It took all of us here to heal you,” she continued, attention trained on her garden. “And honestly, we’re not sure how you made it. Do you have magic by any chance?”

“I do have magic. But it didn’t work back then,” Saya said frowning. “Maybe some of my magic did work. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“It must have worked, or else you’d be dead like poor Iriya,” the woman shrugged. She picked her basket of vegetables and stood up. “It’s enough that you’re alive. I’m guessing you’ll want to return home soon.”

Saya clenched her fists. She thought of her home and her parents, who she already missed dearly. She thought of the way the world had shifted when she was hit. How did Mati rush in to fight after being hit? Then there was the fact that her magic wasn’t working as it should here. Her tattoos were missing and Saya felt naked.

“Actually, I do think I’m ready to go back home now,” Saya admitted.

The woman looked Saya in the eye. “We can arrange that,” she said. “Where are you from?”

“My name is Saya and I come from Karmashe,” Saya explained. “It’s on the other side of the river, east of here.”

“There is no Karmashe on the other side of that river,” the woman rested on her haunches. “How did you get here?”

Suddenly Saya couldn’t meet the older woman’s gaze. “Manzo lead me here.”

“Manzo, as in the Messenger?” the woman exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

“I am a gifted magician,” Saya bristled at that question. “I recognized Manzo clearly.”

“So, you let Manzo trick you?” she said. “You must not be a great magician as you claim.”

“How do I get to that river from here?” Saya had heard enough.

“If you head north,” the woman pointed with her chin. “You’ll see those columns leading to Engim town. The river is to the east.”

“Thank you very much for your help.” Saya bowed to the woman.

The woman studied Saya. “I wish you all the best. If you ever need anything, ask for Tasalla of the Calla Lilies.”

Saya bowed once more. Because she came here with nothing, she departed with nothing. The compound was surrounded by sparse woods. Saya followed a worn footpath, the sunlight streaming in from the light canopy, warming her skin. The heady scent of flowers filled the air. Saya eventually saw the columns and veered east.

When Saya reached the river, she saw that it stretched farther than her eyes could see. At home, she could easily see the Tokawa side. Tasalla’s words from earlier rung in her ear, mocking her.

You let Manzo trick you.

Saya shrugged. She leapt into the water and started swimming. She kicked her arms and her legs against the current. They were growing weak and heavy when she saw the shore. Saya swam towards it, relief burning in her chest. She emerged dripping wet from the water and in a short moment her relief died. She was still in this strange body and over in the east, two ivory columns stood guard.

∙ ∙ ∙

Finding her way back to Tasalla’s was easy. This time there was more activity in the open courtyard. The girls tending the fire in preparation for a meal waved at Saya. Others were filling clay pots with water.

“We’re glad you’re alive!” they called.

In the welcoming hut, Tasalla sat with a strange woman—a diviner, by the white ring circling her right eye.

“I had a feeling you would be back,” Tasalla said.

Saya did not reply except in greeting. She sat in front of the diviner, wondering what the woman saw with her forward-looking eye. They had to stand on ceremony, it was always the same with diviners. But instead of shells, this diviner threw freshly cut flowers. They fell on her divination tray in a cacophony of pink, red, purple, and yellow.

“You can’t leave here,” she announced after peering down at the tray.

Saya landed squarely on her behind.

“Not until you defeat the Daemon King,” the diviner continued. “That is why Manzo has brought you here.”

“But I can’t fight!” Saya protested. “You must have seen what happened.”

Saya blinked rapidly at the memory of the way the Daemon King bore down on her.

“You were given this body as a gift,” the diviner said. “All you need is the skill.”

Then she turned to address Tasalla. “We’ve been having so many girls come. The King must have offended someone.”

“And where are those girls now?” Saya asked.

“They died,” the diviner said without preamble. “Look around you. Here everyone has either lost someone to the King or has been hurt by her in some way.”

There were more than a dozen women of varying ages milling about the compound and its many huts.

“How many men must have died?” she asked.

“Not men. There aren’t men here. Our ancestors left them at the end of the world.” the diviner shook her head. “But Manzo is crafty indeed. Tasalla knows how to fight. So does Laraba. You can learn from them if you want.”

“You’re also welcome to stay here,” Tasalla interjected. “Manzo doesn’t have to use you further.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Weeks later, Saya sat on the sandy beach near to the stream behind Tasalla’s compound. Under the blazing sun, Saya shivered at the impossibility of the task before her. It was hard to keep track of the days here—it felt like the sun stayed in the sky longer than back at home. Here, Tasalla said they were in the tenth year of the Daemon King’s reign.

No one in Karmashe had heard of a Daemon King. Saya missed Ma Ladiyo’s hands plaiting her hair and oiling her scalp. She missed the way Pa Cindo grilled yams, plantains and potatoes that they ate with onion-infused palm oil under the full moon. How many weeks had passed and she still didn’t know how to fight? This in spite of her body, so big and beautiful and strong.

Presently Laraba, one of Tasalla’s children, urged Saya to get on her feet.

“Are we tired already?” Laraba asked, a huge smile on her face.

“No!” the others chorused in response. Saya joined in even though she was tired.

“Break is over!” Laraba said. “We’re just going to run a few more laps before we start.”

She immediately pulled away from the group, her strong legs kicking up sand. They jogged forward first, then backward. When Saya had first joined them, she would always stumble when jogging backward, and if the other girls laughed at her Laraba would admonish them. Laraba urged them through push-ups and other routines. When it was time to start their practice match, someone ran to call more people to come and watch.

“Saya!” she jumped when Laraba called her name. “Why don’t we spar?”

Despite her fatigue and earlier thoughts, Saya found herself returning Laraba’s smile. She stood facing Laraba, as always in awe of Laraba’s broad, handsome face and the hair she wore plaited into a crest.

“Remember, we fight for fun and not for power,” Laraba said as she usually did before practice. “Today, we’ll wrestle.”

Saya launched forward as soon as the referee clapped her hands. Saya wrapped her arms around Laraba’s trim waist, her head pressed close to Laraba’s bare skin. Due to her flat chest, Laraba chose not to wear a top when sparring. She staggered backwards and Saya thought she finally had the upper hand. Yet in the blink of an eye, Laraba had flung her to ground.

“You rush in too soon,” Laraba said, extending a hand to help Saya up. Saya stood without Laraba’s help.

They went for another round and then another. Saya lost them all. Afterward, she sat under the shade of a locust bean tree waiting for the other friendly matches to end. In the shade, Saya traced a finger in the loose dirt. The curved lines and crosses contained magic, a script from her time at Baba Gudi that now seemed so long ago. As she did this, Saya let her mind roam and imagined living here forever. Tasalla was caring and Laraba kind. Gwamma, the diviner, could be brash…yet she had sewn flowers into all the clothes Saya now wore. There was food and laughter despite the undercurrent of fear that the Daemon King would reappear and continue to legitimise her rule through death.

When Saya and Laraba were introduced, Laraba had hugged Saya so hard she imagined she heard a bone crack.

“You were brave to accept the King’s challenge,” Laraba said.

Saya tried to protest, but Laraba insisted. “All of us here should have done that.”

Later that night, Saya discovered that she was going to be sharing a hut with Laraba. From her adobe bed on the opposite wall, Laraba told Saya of the King, her mighty horse and her entourage of praise singers, trumpeters and soldiers. Laraba spoke of the King’s soldiers rounding up everyone in the village and forcing them in the square to watch.

“That’s why everyone is scared of the King,” Laraba said. “The most annoying thing is how we’re always brought out there to watch.”

“Why engage in senseless battle over and over again?” Saya asked.

“To keep us loyal.” Laraba shrugged. “I never understood that.”

Under the locust bean tree, Saya shook off the memory of meeting Laraba, and bit her bottom lip to keep it from quivering. “If I was any more ignorant, I would have said Manzo put a spell on me,” she murmured.

But because she was the smartest girl Baba Gudi had ever mentioned, Saya knew she had to take some responsibility. Saya pouted at what she had written in the dirt, small magic to help with sleep. To chase away the sadness that now hung over her heart like a veil, she read the script out loud.

Lots of sleep is what we find at the locust bean tree.

The black pepper say that insomnia will go away.

Deliver me from sleepless nights.

Almost immediately, Saya felt a pinch behind her right ear. She yelped, drawing the others’ attention.

“Saya, are you okay?” Laraba asked in her booming voice.

“I think an insect bit me,” Saya replied, even though there was no bump behind her ear or any sign of blood.

∙ ∙ ∙

Every other day, the fighters in the compound went to fetch water from the spring furthest from Engim. It was a whole day’s journey. On one of those days, Laraba was helping Saya balance a clay pot on her head—she already held one in each hand.

“When did you lose your earring?” Laraba asked.

“It’s lost?” Saya shrieked and almost threw the pots down in her haste to confirm. When she touched her left ear, it was bare. A precious gift from her mother, ivory encased in silver that pulled down at Saya’s earlobes.

“From when your Pa killed an elephant single-handedly,” Ma Ladiyo would say throwing a shy smile at her husband.

They agreed that Saya should return in search for her earring while Laraba went forth to ensure no one worried about Saya’s late return. Saya approached the stream and carefully placed the full clay pots on the muddy bank. She set the last one on her head down when Manzo appeared in his familiar form. The bear, fur black, red, and brown all at once, emerged in a spray of water. Had Saya not let go of the pots, she would have thrown them at Manzo. The Messenger had not shown Themself to her since she had first reached the other side of the river.

“Manzo!” she shouted.

“Is that how you greet a deity?” Manzo growled. A paw was extended and Saya’s earring dangled from one short claw.

“Put it back in the water!” Saya said. “I don’t want to be indebted to you.”

“All right,” Manzo turned and, to Saya’s chagrin, flicked the earring into the water. She gaped at the water till Manzo moved his muzzle, pointing towards her ear. “It’s there.”

Slowly and hesitantly, Saya lifted a hand to her left ear. She tugged her earring.

“Manzo the Messenger,” she bowed, keeping her eyes on the stream. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I wanted someone who can recite magic and you were the best of Baba Gudi’s class,” Manzo said.

Saya’s hands shook. “But I can’t work magic here!”

“Now I wonder if you were really the best of your mentor.” Manzo sat and scratched Their ear.

Saya bristled at the insult, but Manzo just continued. “Why must you humans twist things up so?” Manzo asked. “When Inna taught you magic, she did so with…”

The sentence hung, waiting for Saya to complete it. Inna, the Owner of all words was renowned as a powerful witch and businesswoman in the court of the deities.

“Poetry, the gift,” Saya replied, then she continued. “But the words are ineffective without the conduit, the tattoos.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Manzo let Their bear head hang. “Inna is tattooed all over her body because she likes the art. Your ancestors just imitated her.”

What was the penalty for accusing one of the pantheon of lying? Saya wondered. She smacked her lips dismissively. She had swallowed sand as she replayed the words that would save her from the Daemon King. She had also almost died. Between the two of them, the only one who would have seen Inna was Manzo. Yet Manzo’s dual nature was not to be trusted. She had already made that mistake.

“Why would I lie about this?” Manzo read her mind. “In fact, I never lie. I have never lied to you from the beginning. You wanted to fight, and I gave you an opportunity to. If you didn’t have magic and that will to fight, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh Messenger,” Saya all but scoffed. “You’re saying this is my fault?”

“Precisely,” Manzo said. “As much as humans are held by their will, we deities are held by our word. You know this. And remember you owe me a payment. The path home will be opened to you once you defeat the Daemon King.”

Impossible, Saya thought.

“No it’s not,” Manzo said, fur bristling.

“How on earth do you expect me to fight her?” Saya wiped beads of sweat from her upper lip.

“See how hard you’ve been training,” Manzo said. “I’m telling you, use your magic. Cheat if you must. Remember, this is just between me and you.”

“I’m sure once I get home, you’ll expect another payment,” Saya said, ignoring Manzo’s mention of the Sky Mother.

“Indeed, and I’ll be sure to give you gifts beyond your imagination.” They paused and then thought it through. “But we’ll have to sign a contract on that. I don’t want another Daemon King on my hands.”

“You are responsible for the Daemon King’s power, too.” Saya would have spit at Manzo if They weren’t a deity.

“An honest mistake!” Manzo laughed. “We made a deal and she hasn’t kept her word. Why am I even telling you all this? The Daemon King will be in Sheme, fifteen mi south from here. Go and kill her if you want to return home.”

“Wait, I won’t be killing…” Saya started, but Manzo had already disappeared.

∙ ∙ ∙

Saya thought over what Manzo had told her. One didn’t need tattoos for magic, they had said. Only the words. But the words would need to take something in return before acting, Baba Gudi had instructed.

Saya had been taught that the price of each poem she could recite to invoke magic was the pain of the tattoos hammered, pressed, and rubbed into her skin. They were beautiful and crude. Saya’s tattoos covered most of her body, the one she’d had before. They announced wherever she went that Saya wielded magic.

Here in Engim, there was divination and healing. Tasalla had said everyone in the compound had healed Saya. In their training, whenever someone was hurt, Laraba would press her hand and the person would heal in the blink of an eye.

At night when everyone else was sleeping, Saya asked Laraba.

“What do you give in return for healing here?”

“A scratch,” Laraba replied.

When Saya pressed further, Laraba continued. “Have you noticed, sometimes Gwamma doesn’t emerge from her hut till midday? She has to sleep after divining.”

“How many scratches do you have for healing everyone you’ve trained?” Saya asked.

“Many. It’s just a wound on my body. It’s not permanent and eventually heals. We shared the burden when healing you.”

Saya could hear traces of impatience in Laraba’s voice. She sat up, closed her eyes and recited a short poem for the first time here since she had failed to imbibe herself with energy in her first battle with the Daemon King.

She began:

To let Manzo see at night,

There must be a reason.

Only the firefly can move without care.

A flame bloomed within the lamp embedded in the mud wall.

“What!” Laraba rose before Saya could and hastily blew out the flame. Soon after, Saya felt a cramp in her leg and remembered that day under the locust bean tree, the pain behind her ear. Now that she thought about it, she’d slept exceptionally well that night. Saya leapt up and ran outside to practice some more.

Before that night ended, Saya understood. There was no way to revive the dead as she had been taught by Baba Gudi—like she had tried to on herself in the confusion of the first fight with the Daemon King, the scratch would be too deep. But that did not mean the dead could not be utilised in some other ways. Saya flipped over possibilities of using this magic to defeat the Daemon King.

∙ ∙ ∙

At sunrise, Saya prepared for the journey to the place Manzo the Messenger had described.

“You’re not ready,” Tasalla warned. “The King will crush you in the blink of an eye.”

“I know,” Saya said. “But I’m also ready to go back home. I’ll have to keep trying.”

“You know the only reason the King didn’t kill you is because you were the only person stupid enough to accept her challenge,” Laraba interjected.

“Laraba, you should be getting ready too,” Saya said as she wrapped her clothes in a bundle. “We’re in this together.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Laraba huffed. “And neither are you.”

“I think you should,” Tasalla said. “Make sure she doesn’t get herself killed.”

“I’m ready,” Saya had secured her bundle, which was filled with everything that she had received through charity from the people here—much like the other orphans that formed Tasalla’s community.

“Wa-i, I should get Gwamma to bless you,” Tasalla disappeared from their hut. Saya pulled Laraba up from the stool she had been sitting on and hugged her tightly.

“Won’t you come with me?” she said. “I have a plan and it’s going to work. I promise.”

Laraba rolled her eyes and turned to pack her own bundle.

Fifteen mi south of Engim was Sheme. They arrived early, for no one had seen the Daemon King yet. Despite this, fear was in the air. Saya and Laraba rented a room off an old woman in exchange for filling her human-sized water pots and repairing her hut’s leaky roof. That night as the sun went down, Saya and Laraba sparred.

When the Daemon King arrived with a flurry of those trumpets that made it seem like angry elephants were bearing down on the village, Saya was ready.

They did not wait for the soldiers to round them up and push them into the square. Saya and Laraba were at the front of the circle, while the rest of the town moved toward it reluctantly. Ceremony had to be maintained. The King’s veil shuddered with each of her breaths. The herald, now familiar, continued playing the role of referee. Saya tapped her feet.

The gong chimed. “We welcome anyone to challenge the…”

“Me!” Saya stepped into the sacred circle.

The herald looked flummoxed and stared at Saya with enlarged eyes.

“You!” The King stood to her full height. “You’re still alive.”

“If you want to kill me, this is your last chance,” Saya taunted. She crouched and raised her right hand, which was already wrapped into a spear.

The King grunted. She performed her dance and took her fighting stance. The herald hit the gong and retreated to a safe corner of the circle. They watched each other for what seemed like hours. Saya didn’t back down but kept her gaze on the King, this self-described Elephant that was bulky and fast as her praise song went. When the King struck, Saya stepped back, dodging the blow. Exhilaration filled her. Somewhere in the crowd, someone yelped.

The King attacked again, swinging her spear towards Saya’s head. Saya dodged it again and swung her own spear. She missed. The King struck her square in the face. Saya stumbled but remained standing. The King came for her again and Saya raised her hands in defense. They grabbed each other and held on for a breath before separating. Saya stumbled backward at the force of the King’s shove. She struggled to control her breathing and keep her eyes open.

Use magic, Manzo had said.

Saya imagined them watching, a bear standing on their hind legs in the crowd. She was prepared:

We always know where we’re coming from.

Just as we do not know where we are going.

Inna says we will worship Arhaza

Manzo says he will lead them.

I call just one person

And four hundred will answer me.

Spectres of light emerged from the earth and the sky. They rushed towards Saya: all the fighters the King had killed. They came willingly. Saya raised her arm, readying for the impact, but they settled on her like a thousand butterflies caressing her skin with their feathery wings. With this extra ability, she looked at the King and saw her for what she truly was.

“Wait!” the herald shouted. “No magic allowed.”

But Saya was already swinging in attack. The King pulled away only for a minute then launched into a counter-attack. Saya ran, pushing the King back with her free hand. She dashed under the King’s arm and stopped when she was behind the Daemon King. Saya spun and leaped, striking the King in the back of her head. The King fell to her knees.

The entire crowd was still and quiet. Then in the next moment, everyone roared in delight.

“You cheated!” the herald rushed at Saya. “You used magic!”

“You use magic too,” Saya pointed at the King laying behind her. “Show them who you really are. Tell everyone here why the King doesn’t speak but you do.”

“Saya, watch out!”

Laraba’s warning came as the King was already pouncing on Saya with full force. The blow struck Saya in the head, close to where she had been hit the first time. Saya swooned. Laraba jumped into the sacred circle and attacked the King, who tried to scramble away but couldn’t escape. Laraba hooked an arm around the King’s neck. While the King struggled and tried to attack, Laraba struck her face with her free hand. The King crumpled to the ground.

Meanwhile, Saya recited another poem. As she whispered the magic words, a sharp pain cut through her arm. She continued, and soon enough the magic of the Daemon King and her herald unravelled before everyone’s eyes. Their human forms peeled away to reveal nymphs that were as small as clay pots. Before anyone could react, they flew up in the sky and disappeared.

The soldiers gathered around Saya and Laraba. They lowered their curved swords and then their knees to the ground.

“Whoever defeats the Elephant is the new King of this land,” one of them said, voice shaking.

Saya lifted Laraba’s hand the way she had seen Mati’s hand raised several times. “The new King of Engim!”

Laraba stiffened, then tried to pull away from Saya.

“King Laraba is the just and kind,” Saya composed a praise song as the spot. “She is the female son of Engim. She who lifted me from the sand.”

∙ ∙ ∙

The good news spread through the land. After her recovery, Saya prepared to return home. Her entire right arm had been broken and bruised after what she did to expose the Daemon King. Manzo remained hidden after the decisive battle, but she was confident that They would keep Their word. On the day Saya found her way to the river, Laraba, Tasalla and Gwamma stood behind her.

“Here goes nothing,” Saya said, dipping her feet into the water. On her head was a large calabash filled with flower-strewn clothes and gifts that Tasalla and Gwamma had given her.

“Don’t curse us by looking back!” Gwamma called.

“I won’t!” Saya said. This place was so much like home, she was familiar with the tradition of saying opposites at farewells. “I won’t miss this place. I know that I will see you again.”

She started her crawl, swimming slowly and surely. Keeping her eyes trained ahead of her, Saya continued. The flow of the water changed, and a bear was swimming beside her. She swam with Manzo and when she emerged from the other bank, the first thing she saw was the moringa tree.

Saya squealed. Then she looked down at her body, saw the familiar lines of her tattooing and threw her head back and laughed. She ran home clutching the calabash to her head. Saya’s feet slowed as she neared the family home, suddenly unsure of how her family—the elders in particular—would react. To her surprise, the compound was empty save for Ma Ladiyo who was spinning cotton in front of her hut.

“My jewel!” her mother cried when she saw Saya.

Saya threw her arms around Ma Ladiyo’s wide shoulders.

“You were gone so long,” Ma Ladiyo sobbed, running her hands over Saya’s face.

“Manzo put me through a trial,” Saya explained. “Where is everyone?”

“The elders have been summoned by the chief,” Ma Ladiyo shuddered. “I think it has to do with the Law of One, but let’s put that aside for now. Did you enjoy your adventure?”

“Yes! I learned how to fight,” Saya said. “Like Byol!”

“Come, let’s go to my hut before anyone else sees you,” Ma Ladiyo’s face lit up. “I want to hear all about this!”

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT RAFEEAT ALIYU

Rafeeat Aliyu is a horror and speculative fiction writer based in Nigeria. Her short stories have been published in Expound Magazine, Omenana, Queer Africa 2 and the AfroSF Anthology of African Science Fiction. Rafeeat is a Clarion West Graduate (2018). You can learn more about her on her website rafeeataliyu.com.

NOTES ON THE PLAGUE

By Shamar Harriott // 3119 words

Content Warning: Suicide

Where were you the first time you heard about it? Heard that someone you knew, had known, had met at a club in the city or at a party in Greenpoint was sick? Had caught the plague? Where were you the first time someone you knew died?

These are the questions that preoccupy us now. We go to dinner and the only thing we can think to talk about is who’s got it now, when they found out, what doctor they went to, who they think—or who we think—they got it from, who they slept with, do any of our partners overlap with theirs. One theory, but transmission is not strictly sexual. It is passed on through touch, that much they know. We keep a safe distance from each other. We check ourselves in bathroom mirrors, in storefront windows, in the reflective bodies of passing cars, looking for any sign that it has reached us. The things they tell us to look for: lesions, sensitivity of the skin, swelling, in the groin or the armpits, discharge from the pores, bloody or clear. We watch for signs, in ourselves and in each other. Freddy says we’re standing on the edge of a rabbit hole, like Alice, he says, going down, down into a dismal wonderland.

Paul Andersen went down the rabbit hole last night.

Paul Andersen committed the crime of touch.

He caught it, Freddy speculates, from Jonas Rivera who caught it from Bruce Heading who caught it from the bartender at Tropico. That chain might be accurate. Freddy’s good at things like that. Paul’s wife called this morning. Joe refused to answer the phone, so we let it ring. He sat by the window and watched the traffic pushing out toward Manhattan. I sat by the piano, watching the clock. This is what our lives have become: silent moments frozen in frightened tableau, looking everywhere except at each other or at the ringing telephone. I answered when she called back.

He did it, she said. That muthafucker finally did it, died and left me.

Tati, I said or tried to say.

I looked at Joe; he looked away. This is another tableau: the silent looking away.

I’m so angry, she said, so fucking angry, and embarrassed, I mean, you know none of my friends have spoken to me since? They don’t answer the phone. I go to visit them and they slam their doors in my face. They’re all convinced I have it, all because of him.

Joe made a list when the first person he knew caught it. It began with one name on a page of his datebook. That was Randy Carroll. Now there are ten names on that page. All put down the moment the diagnosis was disclosed. All crossed out. No dates, because the dates are not important. Paul Andersen was the last name on that list. Joe crossed him out just as I hung up the phone. The CDC will be there soon, they will burn everything Paul owned, they will burn everything he’s touched, even the house; they will take his wife to the Island, she will not return. Joe’s list is evidence of their existence. He put the list back in his desk drawer and we did not speak to each other, not about the list not about Paul not about his wife not about the weather or the traffic pushing endlessly out toward Manhattan. We did not speak at all.

∙ ∙ ∙

This thing. Freddy calls it a plague. Joe calls it vengeance. The vengeful angel with the fiery sword, the fire of Sodom brought to flesh. We go to Paul’s house on Long Island. Nothing left now but the burned-out shell and the orange sign in the front yard: skull and crossbones, scarlet letter. It is Sunday, three days after the phone call. Tatiana is sitting in the smoldering backyard with the dog at her feet. The light is cold blue steel.

She says, We hid when the flamethrowers came. It’s all gone, everything…what am I going to do?

Leave, Joe says.

She looks at him. And go where?

You can’t stay here, Joe says. If they find you—

Florida, I say, my voice sharp as jagged glass in the silence. They don’t burn in Florida. They have colonies. They have the land for it.

Colonies, her voice rises.

In the Everglades, I say.

I’m not going to a colony! I’m not infected!

Joe says, Would you rather be sent to the Island?

That muthafucker ain’t touched me in months! I’m not infected!

No one’s saying you are, Freddy says in that soothing voice, that voice like warm water on a summer night. But you gotta start thinking smart, with your head instead of your emotions. If they find you here, they’ll kill you, they’ll burn you just like they burned everything else. He holds her; she weeps in his arms. She clings to him and makes a sound like rolling thunder, deep in the back of her throat.

∙ ∙ ∙

On the ferry back to Freddy’s house in New London Joe lights a cigarette, looks at it, pensive, fearful. He tosses it into the water. He leans over the edge. I watch him. He watches the water, watches himself in the waves being churned and split by the propellers.

Freddy coughs.

∙ ∙ ∙

We try not talk about Paul (cremated, no funeral). We try not to talk about the ones who have gone. But somehow, they come up. Someone somewhere says something and they are all there at the table, on the dance floor, in the living room, all the ghosts that have gone down the rabbit hole. Joe makes his lists, crosses his names, sits in silence staring at the cigarettes he is afraid to smoke. There are other ways of bearing witness.

∙ ∙ ∙

The first one I knew to get it was Frank Russo.

That was last winter.

This is a photograph I have of us standing outside a club (the inscription on the back says it’s Miami, the year I turned 23): Frank, greenish-blond and wide-grinned, white slacks and sunglasses, blue velvet blazer shocking against his dark skin, those androgyne features. I choose not to remember Frank; this photograph is the extent of my memory of him. Entirely conscious, this denial of his existence. What I can never make myself forget is the phone call I got the morning he died, the morning they found him in that awful way. Joe and I were living in the apartment above Christopher Street. It was snowing.

It’s time, Frank said.

Time for what? I asked, but I must have known.

I love you, he said.

I didn’t say anything. If I did I can’t remember now.

∙ ∙ ∙

Have you seen that article in the Times? Freddy asks. He is calling from a payphone, he says, in New Haven. Last one in the world, he swears. I don’t ask what he is talking about: I know. Joe has seen the article. Joe has been reading the article since this morning, obsessively. Once at breakfast, twice before lunch, once after. He is reading it now, sitting on the red vinyl seat by the window. Touch disease affects African-Americans, the article says, 2,200 and counting. But the casualties always seem greater to those in the killing field.

Black men; no women. Not yet.

Joe laughs. It’s a fucking genocide, Freddy says.

They can’t kill us all, Freddy.

They can try.

∙ ∙ ∙

Joe is sitting at his desk in the corner. I am lying in bed, with the sheets up around my waist. I swivel my hips, inviting him. I say Joe come here. He doesn’t move, only looks away. I cross the room to touch his shoulders.

He shrugs me off. I kiss his neck.

He recoils.

He says Let’s not, okay?

I ask why not.

He says Because I wanna stay alive.

∙ ∙ ∙

When Freddy is diagnosed, we make a bet. Who will die first, Freddy or Alex Gorey? Alex Gorey is in his sixth month of “treatment.” We visited him in the Touch disease ward at St. Vincent’s every Saturday for the first two months, brought him flowers and meals (no one would go past the doorway). But he doesn’t eat anymore, and flowers seem morbid in such anxious silence. Freddy’s back is covered in lesions. Thick pustular shapes, leeches against his light skin. We sit in the living room, Joe in his window seat, and we count them.

Five. Just on his back. Three up his left arm, two down his right. Four on one leg, two on the other. One on his palm. One on the bottom of his foot.

Hardly any skin.

Disorder. Entropy.

Joe says how could he let it get this bad.

Freddy says at first he thought they were bruises.

He doesn’t know who he got it from, can’t remember the last seven people he’s touched, the circumstances surrounding each encounter. It seems like a cruel joke. Freddy, who can tell you exactly who Paul Andersen got it from, and exactly who gave it to the man who gave it to Paul Andersen, Freddy who can so clearly and certainly map the genealogy of disaster, cannot tell you something as simple as who he got it from, who gave him the plague.

∙ ∙ ∙

Joe sits motionless in a bleak shaft of light.

Joe always sits motionless in a bleak shaft of light.

He watches the crowd. The thinning crowd.

Smaller every day.

The afflicted have vanished from the streets, gone into hiding.

We can spot them now from twenty paces.

The walking dead.

Zombies in regimented motion.

From home, to the hospitals with the fascinated doctors and the frightened staff, back home, their heads bent, hoods drawn down to mask the dead weight of their faces.

People we used to know.

People we used to see shopping in the Bodega at the north end of the block.

Metamorphosed overnight.

Gone down the rabbit hole.

Gone.

∙ ∙ ∙

Freddy’s house in New London: small, obtrusively neat, chrome slipcovers, Basquiat prints. As fragile as the atmosphere of a Bergman film. A thin sheet of dust settles over everything. Dead leaves collect in the swimming pool and the windows all reflect the harsh, white heart of winter.

Fucking pitiful, Freddy says. He is watching his hand in the mirror. It rises and falls against the glass. The glass recoils.

Stop, I say.

Look at me. He undoes his robe. This image comes to mind: Auschwitz. Footage seen during grade school, the liberation, c. 27th January 1945. His body only shadow and bone. The skin hangs like a loose suit—a peach-colored caftan. A costume. Death masquerading as some phase of life.

Joe leaves the room. Joe, I know, is thinking of Auschwitz too. Joe is always thinking of Auschwitz and Dachau and Belsen. Joe’s great-grandmother was in Belsen. The white one, that part of his history he is ashamed of, that part he tries so desperately to conceal. Joe thinks we are all in Belsen now. All lined up for the gas chambers. All lined up to be shot. Like tin soldiers on a mantelpiece.

∙ ∙ ∙

Alex Gorey died. That’s all. No phone call, only a small obituary in the back of a small newspaper no one reads. A Tuesday funeral; appropriate because Alex Gorey was a Tuesday person: cool, reserved, always tired but somehow obdurately hopeful: Service to be held at the First Congressional Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky. Cremation to follow.

I gave Joe twenty bucks.

∙ ∙ ∙

The sonic suicide note, Freddy says on the phone, it’s the wave of the future.

It is midnight. The apartment is dark. The window seat is empty; Joe is in bed.

There is that unnatural stillness about everything.

It all goes to mist in my vision.

I’ll miss you, I say.

Listen, he says. If they ask, it was an accident. Promise me.

I promise.

I’ll see you around, babe.

The world slides into apocalypse.

From the doorway I whisper, Joe wake up.

What?

Freddy died.

He turns away from me, goes back to sleep.

I lie down on the rug in the hallway.

We are both unapproachable.

We are separated by walls of cellophane.

Pieces in a lonely museum.

I am the visitor, he is the exhibit.

∙ ∙ ∙

An accident. The accident being pills. Accidentally swallowed. Swallowed accidentally. One then two then four, swallowed that way until the bottle was empty. The final entry in Freddy’s notebook: Where do the gods go when blight strikes? Does Ishtar descend to the Dance of the Seven Veils or does she stay to watch the plague?

I take the sheets off the bed and mop up the vomit and hide the pills and call the people you call when someone you love is dead. They come to take the body away, I say a prayer to St. Adrian.

∙ ∙ ∙

These are the names from Joe’s datebook: Randy Carroll David Beckett Stanley Whitelaw Eric Bond Thomas Gould John Deron Derek Forbes Anthony Schmitt Paul Andersen Alex Gorey Freddy Sauren. The page is marked August 17, 20____.

There is nothing beyond that. No future appointments to be remembered and kept, no dinner dates or business luncheons because really the world—our world—ended the day Randy Carroll was diagnosed: August 17, 20____. This is how we live now: on a single outdated page, lost among unspeakable names.

∙ ∙ ∙

I’m leaving New York, Joe says. This time I am the one sitting in the window seat. I am trying to remember what it feels like to touch him, to be touched by him. I am trying to see what it is he sees, feel what it is he feels, what holds him here. There is nothing. Only the heat of the sun on my legs.

I guess you wanna stay, he says.

You can’t outrun a plague, Joe.

He says, I can try.

∙ ∙ ∙

We make love.

Once. Twice. A final time.

Painfully. Violently. Dispassionately.

The red string that binds us is slowly severed.

The sun rises. He rises behind it.

We detach.

∙ ∙ ∙

Fourteen months later, he calls from Atlanta. Midmorning; midsummer. Laurels in a crystal vase on the window seat, catching the tragic light. The zombies still in the street with the hoods on their heads, their ranks growing, slouching toward that inevitable thing.

It’s me, he says.

Hi.

Listen, I can’t talk long. I just thought you should know.

Know what?

I have it.

I don’t ask the regular questions (How long has he had it? When was the first sign? Where? His face? his leg? his back? his cock? Who did he get it from?). I let him hang up.

To the bathroom.

Study myself in the rimless mirror.

A pimple below the shoulder.

Soft purple under brown skin.

∙ ∙ ∙

A memory. California, that year we were still children. Joe and me dancing barefoot to Jamila Woods in the back of someone’s flatbed, back when they still had flatbeds, back when people still danced. We hadn’t known each other very long. Joe was living with this guy in a house in South Central. We took mescaline together. My first time, his second. I was a butterfly, pink-winged and shot through with honey halos. I melted into the sun. Joe was made of sand; he shifted in my vision. It seems impossible that we were ever that happy.

Joe’s roommate killed seven women that summer, then put a gun in his mouth in a Bakersfield motel. I cry for them because I cannot cry for Joe.

∙ ∙ ∙

Fall. Season of ghosts, season of anticipation, season of death. The phone has been ringing for months. I have not answered. I know what’s coming. I have been avoiding it, but certain things are, after all, inevitable. In the mailbox there is an obituary page from an Atlanta newspaper. A photograph circled in red ink: Joseph Scott (anglicized from the German Schotsburg). I call the number written on the package. Some funeral home. A woman answers the phone, suspicion drips from her voice.

I ask when.

She says three weeks ago.

I ask where.

She says he collapsed in the bathroom at Northside.

When’s the funeral?

He’s already been cremated. He wanted you to have his ashes.

No, I say. I don’t want them.

We’ve already sent them to you.

∙ ∙ ∙

The urn is cheap. Gold with turquoise inlays. Joe hated turquoise: he thought it was cheap to affect Native culture and resented people who did. Feathers, turquoise, Navajo rugs: Relics of genocide. I put it on the kitchen counter and go into the bedroom. Joe’s datebook is still sitting on the bedside table with the pen propping it open, just the way he left it. I write his name. I cross it out.

∙ ∙ ∙

A final confrontation with the mirror.

Single lesion in the hollow of my back.

I touch it.

It undulates.

(Where do the gods go when blight strikes?)

∙ ∙ ∙

I drain two bottles of red wine. The last we bought, the occasion being Freddy’s 30th birthday, now five years old. I put the empty bottle on the counter and prop the note against it. (Originally for mother. Now to whom it may concern.) I take a few more sips from the one in my hand. I write my name in Joe’s datebook and I cross it out. I am wearing one of his shirts; his smell still lingers hash and alien on the soft fabric. These are the things I take with me: Joe’s urn, an old photograph of him and Freddy and Alex and me on Jones Beach.

I unlatch the window.

First the photograph, kissed twice and given to the wind.

Then the ashes by the handful until the urn is empty.

I press a gray thumb to my forehead.

It is Ash Wednesday and I am leaving church.

A church of spirits. A church of half-lives.

I toss the urn; it shatters.

I climb out onto the ledge and watch the ashes rise like snow on the wind and sail out over the buildings. The sidewalk gleams like Bethlehem steel. Someday I might have the courage to jump, to follow Joe over the city and into the sky. Someday.

But not tonight.

Tonight I’ll live.

I climb back inside.

I am the exhibit now. The lone figure in this sad museum. The curtains billow in the acrid wind and for a moment they look almost human, they look almost like him. I reach for the bottle; there’s no more wine. I close the window,

tear up the note and put on my coat. I take the stairs to the ground floor, slip out the back. The wind is knifelike; it cuts me. I turn my collar up and head north toward the Bodega.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT SHAMAR HARRIOTT

Shamar Harriott is a Jamaican writer living in South Florida. He is the recipient of the 2017 Debra Vasquez Memorial Award for Excellence in Poetry. His work as a poet can be found in Panku, Vagabond City, and Ghost City Review.

THE RAT KING OF SPANISH

HARLEM

By Nicky Drayden // 7849 words

Content Warning: Blood | Body Transformation | Sex

My boss stares at me over the half-wall of my little slice of cubicle hell. His face is all wrong, and I mean besides the glaringly red bump on his jaw. It’s like the muscles that held his permanent scowl in place have finally snapped from years of undue tension. For the first time in my four months of employment at Blanchett Capital Recovery, Mr. Lawless isn’t angry with me. This couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

I nod to acknowledge him and continue with my call. I’ve got my very first hot account on the line, not my usual lot of back line leftovers with little hope for collection. She’s a sweet old lady who’d cosigned an auto loan for her deadbeat son. Maybe if my boss sees me successfully smooth talk this debtor, he’ll give me a few more weeks to get my metrics up to where they need to be.

“So you’re prepared to pay this debt in full?” I enounce into my headset, daring to look directly into my boss’s eyes. He stands there, unmoved, and scratches at the bump next to his ratty goatee.

The old woman had told me the hard luck story of how her son couldn’t hold down a job, and I’d listened to it longer than I should have, all but ruining my average handle time for the day’s calls. But I had a feeling about her, and that feeling was about to pay out.

“Yes,” the woman says cheerfully. “I’d like to settle the debt.” The warble in her voice reminds me of my grandmother, but I push the thought away before nostalgia and guilt derail me from my objective.

“How would you like to reconcile your debt, Mrs. Fisher?” I ask. “We can do a one-time payment, or we could arrange monthly payments for a small fee.”

“Jam,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“I’d like to pay in jam. Strawberry. Homemade. Let’s say ten jarfuls each month?”

“Ma’am,” I whisper, turning my eyes down into the deepest, darkest pit of my cubicle, riddled with a tangled nest of power cords and crumpled papers from my cubemate’s daily inspirational calendar. “That is not a suitable currency. Maybe there’s an IRA you could tap?”

“It’s very good jam,” she pleads.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fisher. I just—” my hand trembles as I click the END CALL button on my monitor. I look up at my boss. This is it. The day I lose my job.

“Alicia, just the bruja I was looking for,” Mr. Lawless says, smile smeared from ear to ear.

I raise a brow, suddenly on edge, even more so than I was before. The Othering, it’s always a cold slap to the face, even when you’re used to it. “Why are you calling me a witch?”

“Oh, um. I meant to say ‘woman.’ In Spanish. How do I say ‘woman?’”

“Mujer, but ‘woman’ is fine, too,” I offer, trying to keep the ice-cold glare off my face, the bitterness out of my voice. I am hugely unsuccessful. The awkwardness swells between us, but like usual, somehow the fault falls solely upon me.

“Oh. Well...please come with me to my office. We need to discuss a private matter.” Mr. Lawless turns and weaves his way through the maze of cubicles. The ceaseless chatter of my coworkers drowns out my thoughts. I hurry along, head down to avoid their stares.

His office is a shrine to cheap metal filing cabinets and precariously stacked binders. The window overlooks an alleyway and a set of brimming city dumpsters with “NO BABIES” stenciled on the front. Somehow the smell has managed to seep inside.

I wrinkle my nose, settle into the hard chair across from his desk, and watch as he brings up my all-too-familiar metrics on his computer—steadily rising bars of red well below the green target line. Last week he’d suggested that maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this job.

“Are you happy here?” Mr. Lawless asks, index fingers aimed at me like dueling pistols. “Because it doesn’t seem like you’re happy.”

Happy? Do I enjoy sitting on my ass all day, getting yelled and cussed at for $11.75 an hour? “Yes,” I tell him, because I like being able to almost afford living.

“Good,” he says. He smiles, on him, an unnatural act that puts his cheek muscles through some small trauma. “Alicia, you’re a decent worker. You show up on time, have a feisty attitude. I think with the proper motivation and some coaching...” He clicks his mouse, and the metrics update, projecting out the next six months with steadily rising bars that extend well above the acceptability line. “...I think you could be a great one.”

He scratches again at the bump on his jaw, and then a chill runs through me as I realize the cause of his abnormally blissful demeanor. “You got bit by a mosquito, didn’t you?” I say before I can stop myself. “One that carried the Jovi virus.”

He smiles again. I cringe and press back into my seat. What the news feeds lack in concrete information, they make up for in sensationalism, so I’m not sure what to believe. Up until two weeks ago, I hadn’t heard of toxoplasmosis. I’ve never had a cat. Never been pregnant long enough for someone to warn me about it. They say the Jovi virus might be similar if not related, causing those infected to become sedate, happy. Less likely to run from dangerous situations, just like how those rats that get the disease become oblivious smiling targets for cats. If rats can smile.

“Relax. It’s not contagious,” Mr. Lawless says. “It’s a parasite, actually, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Don’t you want to be happy, Alicia? Really and truly happy?” He stares at me wordlessly for a full minute, every second of which I’m melting under the heat of his monstrous grin.

On my break, I run to the bodega around the corner and max out my credit card on five bottles of the strongest DEET they have.

∙∙∙

“Tomorrow, Mrs. Chan. Tomorrow!” My key scratches the pad of my apartment lock as I frantically try to get in before my hobbled landlady can make her way down the hall. She’s surprisingly spry for an eighty-seven-year-old. I open the door, slam it shut, and rest on the other side. Moments later, her cane raps against splintered wood.

I ignore her ranting, her threats, as my eyes ease over to Javier, festering contently in the gray wash of light from the windows, exactly where I’d left him this morning.

“Please tell me you got work today,” I say to him, then duck into our kitchenette and open the fridge. Beer. Butter. A half jar of Smuckers knockoff. Soggy fries and a few bites of burger. A science experiment grows way back on the lowest shelf—a couple oranges leftover from our last big splurge at Aldi’s. I snag a beer, pop the tab, and take a long, bitter guzzle.

“I got work today,” he says, peeling himself from our pullout sofa and crossing the expanse of our apartment in three and a half steps. “Rob called me in to help clear out some hogwood on Ward’s Island.”

“How much?” I ask.

“This much,” he says. I turn, expecting to see a short stack of bills in his hand, but instead he holds the ends of a necklace. My grandmother’s necklace—more of a trinket than an heirloom—but it was my only connection to El Salvador, my grandmother’s homeland.

I choke on the gasp I take, and my hand goes to the spot on my neck where it used to hang. Pawning it eight months ago had been the biggest mistake of my life. The second biggest was marrying Javier.

“Where? What? How?” I manage against the grittiness of my breath. I close my eyes as he fastens the clasp. As the cool metal of the pearl and labradorite settings hit my chest, peace overwhelms me, and I feel whole again. The thin, silver chain was always getting caught in knots. I cling to the fond memories of my grandmother hunched over in her chair, trying to unkink it with her arthritic hands. She was too proud to ask for help, and I knew better than to offer.

“I was getting rid of a few tools last week and saw it was still there.”

“Tools? Which tools?”

“Nothing I can’t buy back in the spring when business picks up.”

I cringe. I hate this, the selling off of our lives, bit by bit. Sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier to walk away from it all. From Javier. From this apartment. From my job. I wonder who I could be. I wonder if there’s some version of me that could be happy.

“So do you like it, mamita, or are you mad at me?” he asks. Javier smiles the disarming smile of that cocky twenty-five-year-old I’d foolishly fallen for so long ago, his dark brown skin still smooth and flawless despite the time he’s toiled under the sun.

There’s still enough of a smoldering spark between us that our lovemaking isn’t a complete chore. He’s generous. Overly generous, and as I reach down to brace myself, I feel a bump on his shoulder. I shudder, from fear and not pleasure, but Javier misinterprets and becomes more intent.

“Stop,” I tell him. “Stop, stop.” I tap the top of his head, and he looks up at me.

“What?” he says, eyebrows arched, mustache glistening. His nose twitches like he’s about to sneeze, but he never does. “Did I do something wrong?”

“The job today?” I say, a lump in my throat. “Were there mosquitoes?”

“It was a marsh. We were eaten alive. Why?”

Why? This is not the Javier I married. Not the bitter, guarded, selfish man too unconcerned to ask about my day, the man who’d shrugged at me and then burped Corona fumes the last time I’d told him I’d miscarried. My fists clench. Sometimes, when your hate grows with a slow and steady burn, you get accustomed to it, and you don’t realize how messed up your life has become until you’re all tangled up with no way to escape. I’m leaving you, I want to tell Javier. I’m packing my things right now. Don’t bother trying to find me. But I don’t say these things, because looking into those deep, sympathetic eyes, this isn’t the Javier I married.

A smile slips across my lips. “No reason,” I say, settling into my pillow, ignoring the pinch of worn springs at my back. I close my eyes. I am not proud of the thoughts I have. My Javier is dead. I won’t lie. I’ve half-wished it more times than I can count. I probably should be more concerned about who this stranger is, milling about my pleasure bits so adeptly, but then the crack of gratification bites into me like a whip, and for a brilliant, immeasurable moment, all the tangles of life get swept away.

∙ ∙ ∙

For the first time in a long time, my life is bearable. By the end of the week my cubemate gets bitten, along with my morning bus driver. This is significant because next to my husband and my boss, these two women were the biggest stressors of my day. My bus driver I noticed because I went three days in a row without her slamming the doors as I’m huffing up to the stop, leaving me in a choke of exhaust. My cubemate Rachel, I didn’t notice her change at first because she’s annoyingly cheerful to begin with. She’s a white girl who’d watched one too many Destinos episodes, and insists I say her name with a rolling r so hard it could only be pronounced by a vibrator.

“If you’re a little behind,” Rachel had said to me this morning in one of the rare moments when we were both off the phone, “I can pull your drop report for you while you get in a few more calls.”

“Yeah, Rachel,” I said with the appropriate number of Rs. “That’d be great.”

“Latinas like us, we need to look out for each other, verdad?” She’d smiled, framed by the soft light of her desk lamp, its shade covered in candy-colored calaveras. With her alabaster skin and wiry red hair, she’s about as Latina as a bowl of Lucky Charms, but I was so moved by her offer to file my report that I managed not to roll my eyes.

In my thirty extra minutes of time, I get in four more calls, two of which I settle for fifty-five cents on the dollar. That brings me to a total of twenty settlements for the week, which is still awful, but it’s six more than my previous record.

“Oh,” says Rachel after I hang up. “It looks like you forgot to doc this account.”

I look over at her screen. I see the phone number, recognize the name. Jam Lady. I’d hung up on her and hadn’t bothered to document the call. I’d thought I was losing my job.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” I look Rachel in the eyes. “Gracias,” I say, and she beams at me. I cringe on the inside as I realize my accent is far worse than hers.

I go to click “Refused” on the form, but then find myself redialing the number. The phone rings and rings, and a nervous panic overtakes me—memories of the last time I’d made my daily call to my grandmother, two years, two months ago now. “Noni” I’d called her, never Abuela, as my mother had drilled into me, and by the time my mother left, Abuela didn’t seem to encompass the role she’d taken in raising me. Unlike the last time I’d called my grandmother, Mrs. Fisher answers, out of breath, but cheerful, nonetheless.

“Hello?”

I’m sobbing at the sound of her voice. “Noni—” the name escapes my mouth before I can catch it. Of course, I know it’s not her, not even close, but that doesn’t stop my heartache from piercing me like it was merely hours old. It takes me so long to compose myself, I’m worried she’ll hang up. “I mean, Mrs. Fisher,” I finally say. “Mrs. Fisher, it’s me, Alicia from Blanchett Capital Recovery. I talked to you earlier in the week about your son’s debt.”

“Oh, yes, dear. I remember.”

“I’m sorry I hung up on you.”

“Nothing to worry about. I know it was a ridiculous offer. It’s just, I’m on a fixed income, you understand.”

I do. Her sob story isn’t any different than the hundreds of others I’ve heard—no different than my own, with three-fourths of an English degree I can’t afford not to pay for—but the kindness in her voice and the familiar lilt of her words soothes the rawness inside me. “That’s why I’m calling you back. We’d like to work with your offer.”

“Really?”

I look at her debt. $3,459. We’ll call it an even two thousand once I knock it down to settlement level. Then I run the numbers in my head. Not her numbers. Mine. I know we can’t afford the $120/month payment, not even close, but at this point, the only thing I have left to lose is myself.

∙ ∙ ∙

Javier is supportive of my insane idea, and that makes me doubt myself that much more. He didn’t flinch when I told him about pawning my wedding ring. Didn’t care I’d be giving our money away to a complete stranger.

“If it makes you happy, that’s what’s important,” he tells me at the Penn Station escalators as I wait on line for the agent to check my ticket. Javier has packed me a lunch and a library book to read on the hour-and-a-half trip to Trenton. He peers into my eyes like he’s summoning my soul, and says, “Alicia, I love you more than any piece of metal. You’re a strong, confident woman. Follow your heart. It will not lead you astray.”

I kiss him before he can say anything else. It’s the only way to stop him from being so damned annoying. I grab his ass, pull him close, and feel something twitch in the back of his jeans.

“What the hell?” I pull back and wipe the saliva from my lips.

“Oh, yeah. That,” he whispers. “I’ve got a growth. Some kind of mole or something. I picked up some salve from the botanica. I think it’s clearing up a little.”

“But it moved!” I yell at him.

“It does that.” He grimaces, embarrassed at the attention we’ve attracted. The ticket agent waits for me with an extended hand and a twisted brow, clearly not infected, or “affected” as Javier insists I call them. “You’re up.”

“But—”

“I’ll go get it checked out if it gets worse, but it’s not bothering me any.”

“But—”

The agent clears his throat. Javier turns me around and gives me a gentle push.

“I love you!” he shouts as I force myself forward. I feel his big, goofy grin on the nape of my neck. The unceasing cheerfulness I can learn to deal with, but I’m fairly sure that Javier, the man I didn’t marry, is growing a tail.

∙ ∙ ∙

I make my way up to Jam Lady’s front porch, holding the railing for support. My hand trembles as I buzz her doorbell. I wait. Buzz again.

“Ma! Are you going to get the damned door or not?” comes a gruff, male voice.

The lock clicks a few moments after that, and a friendly face greets me. She’s just as I’d imagined her—a frock of white hair, sturdy black framed glasses that are probably as old as I am, and a generous turkey waddle that only accentuates her old lady charm. “Alicia!” She says my name as if she’s truly happy to see me. “I’m so glad you made it. I hope it wasn’t too much of a burden for you to get here.”

“No, not at all,” I lie. If I sell her jam, that’ll cover my ticket here and about halfway back.

“Come in, come in. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Water, please,” I say, looking into her living room, dank and cave-like with its dark hardwoods and exposed brick. The curious choice of brown wallpaper catches my attention, riddled with daisies that at one point must have been a cheerful orange, but time had dulled them to the point of despair. My eyes stick to her son, late forties, leaned forward and playing a video game on a flower print sofa. He doesn’t acknowledge me, and I’m glad for that. I look around, searching her décor for any commonalities it shared with my grandmother’s old place—like the little Christ portraits held up by ceramic bunnies or the satin curtains embellished by hand-sewn pink ribbons or the plastic plaques with her favorite bible verses glistening in fake gold. The closest I get is the impressive collection of candles in Jam Lady’s fireplace, though they lack the familiar face of the Virgin Mary. “You have a lovely home,” I say.

“Thank you,” she says as she returns with water and a slice of toast smothered with jam. “Here, have a taste.”

I do. My mouth waters as I take the first savory-sweet bite. “Absolutely delicious!”

My eyes flick to her son again, who’s yelling obscenities into his headset as simulated blood and gore erupt on the screen. I’d like to think that this trip was completely out of the charity of my heart, but the truth is, I came up here because I needed someone to talk to again—needed it like I needed air. Pain wrenches my hand, and I realize I’m clutching the pendant on my grandmother’s necklace, silver prongs digging into my palm. I take a deep breath, let it go. “Is there somewhere private where we can discuss the details of the arrangement?”

We sit in the dining room, door closed. On the walls hang several trophy fish, and old black and white photos of a man on a fishing ship with an impressive catch at his feet. I present her with some official-looking documents. Ten jars of jam every month for five years. I’ll use her signature to forge the real documents back at the office.

“You were married?” I ask, nodding at the picture of what I assume to be her late husband.

“Forty-four years,” she says wistfully. “Eli took good care of us. Since he’s been gone, it’s been a struggle. What about you? Husband? Kids?”

“No kids,” I say, a sear in my heart. “I’m married. At least for now.” I’m not sure why it is I feel I need this white woman’s blessing to end my marriage, like her opinion is worth more than my own. Then again, if I’d listened to my grandmother and dumped Javier while we were still dating, then I wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

“Oh?” she asks. And I tell her. I don’t hold anything back. Halfway through, I’m sobbing so hard, she places both of her hands upon mine and asks if she can make me some coffee. I wipe the tears from my eyes and nod, finding myself warmed by her sympathetic smile. But then I notice how her face is all wrong. No laugh lines like the ones that dug deep into my grandmother’s cheeks, but instead a curtain of wrinkles at the mouth, suggesting a lifetime of bitterness. “It’ll be just a moment, dear,” she says as she stands and then heads for the kitchen. Beneath her floor-length skirt, something twitches, and as I look closer, I see what looks very much like the tip of a rat tail peeking beneath the hemline.

∙ ∙ ∙

Javier does the one thing he said he’d never do. He takes a desk job. Soul sucking, he’d always called it. Every day the same eight hours, plus the 35-minute commute on the subway each way. But he does this for me, to make me happier. I guess the least I can do is overlook his tail. When he comes home, I show him what I’ve done...cut a small hole in all his chinos and stitched the sides so they won’t fray.

“It’s a part of you,” I tell him. “You shouldn’t have to hide it.”

He tries them on, then hugs me tightly. His tail drapes over my shoulder, the tip flicking up to caress my cheek. I steady myself, expecting to recoil or screw my face up in disgust, but I do neither.

This Javier, this man I didn’t marry, if I’m not careful, I think I might fall in love with him.

∙ ∙ ∙

A few weeks later, Javier brings Simon home, a brawny Chinese guy in his mid-twenties. They enter our apartment awkwardly, stepping together like they’re best friends from summer camp. It takes me only a moment to realize why.

Behind them, their tails have gotten tangled together.

“We were standing next to each other on the train,” Javier explains.

“Then I go to get off at my stop,” Simon continues seamlessly. “And we’re stuck together, just like this.” He gingerly holds the knotted tips of their tails. It’s a mess of skin and hair and coagulated blood, wounds already starting to scab over.

“We didn’t have time to untangle it then,” Javier says.

“I was running late for a meeting,” Simon adds. “With the ad execs at Bergdorf Goodman, and I couldn’t have them waiting.”

“Wait, what?” I say. “You mean this happened on your commute to work?”

The men nod bashfully.

“But it’s okay,” Javier adds. “We’ve got it all figured out. We’ll go to his job Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Mine on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. We’ve already talked it over with our bosses. And we’ll do the same for where we spend the night. His place, then ours. We can alternate Sundays.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” I say. “Here. Let me just...” I lunge for their tails, and their docile faces go rabid.

“No!” they both say, recoiling from my reach.

“Okay, fine. I get it,” I say, even though I don’t. It’s Tuesday, so I spend the night staring up at the ceiling. Javier lays in bed next to me, and Simon lays on a pallet of blankets on the floor, out of sight, but definitely not out of mind.

“Mira, Alicia, I know we’ve been through a lot of adjustments lately,” Javier says. “But I just wanted to thank you for being there for me, for supporting me the way I never supported you.” His hand touches my belly. I flinch. “I know you want to leave me. I’ll understand if you do. But I’m no longer that man. I love you, Alicia. Give me a chance to prove it to you.”

Tomorrow night, I’ll be alone. And two nights after that. I’ll have plenty of time to think. Maybe this little entanglement isn’t such an awful thing. It’ll give me a chance to figure out who I am without throwing away a decade of memories. “Okay,” I say.

Javier’s leg slips between mine, and he pulls me in tight. We’re quiet beneath the covers, a slow and delicate grind of flesh, hushed giggles, and deep kisses measured by the tempo of Simon’s snoring.

∙ ∙ ∙

“So what do you think?” Simon says. He looks at me from across the table, my spoon still plunged into my mouth. My eyes go wide at the warm, spicy, peanut-flavored medley dancing upon my taste buds. “Good, right?”

He’s made his mother’s pad Thai for us tonight. Turns out he’s Thai, and one hell of a chef. Does all sorts of cuisine, but I can tell the pride he has for serving the food of his people. Or maybe that’s just me projecting. I won’t lie. I’ve always had a thing for Asian guys. I try, unsuccessfully, not to get caught up in his lopsided grin. He’s cute, funny, has a great job at a Midtown consulting firm. “Delicious,” I say, saliva pooling in my mouth.

He brings board games over each Saturday, the highlight of my week. The three of us, we play, laughing so hard into the night that the neighbors complain. Then we sip wine, in the dark, in the quiet. Simon stumbles as he prepares his pallet, and laughter erupts once again.

“Maybe,” I whisper into Javier’s ear, “Simon doesn’t have to sleep on the floor.”

That night, our bed is warmer than it’s ever been, and I’m drowning in a sea of mouths and a tangle of limbs. I finally come up for air, gooseflesh prickling from head to toe. Could this be my life? Could this be my chance at happiness? I’m still flushed and on the verge of wheezing, but I’m eager to dive back in so I can find out. Next to me, the waves continue to beat in a perfect and insurmountable rhythm, and suddenly, I find myself stranded alone on the shore.

∙ ∙ ∙

I have a record day at work the following Monday. Seventeen debts settled. In full. I catch stares as I hang up from the last call. So I’d yelled a little, cursed. Threatened lawsuits and jail time. Said some things I wasn’t proud of. Can’t I be angry? Don’t I have a right to be?

My ears still burn from Javier’s words. “We are only making the most of an awkward situation. We’re trying to do what’s best for everyone.”

Apparently, Simon’s girlfriend had invited Javier into their bed on the second night he’d stayed over. Javier gently explained to me how it wasn’t cheating, but that Simon was simply an extension of himself, and vice versa. And then I’d asked him the question that ended everything.

“Do you love him?”

Javier smiled. “I love him as I love myself. It’s nothing like the love I have for you.” He attempted to touch my cheek, and I’d slapped his hand away.

In reality, it wouldn’t have mattered what Javier said, laying there with Simon’s chin perched on his shoulder, calmly raking his fingers through Javier’s pubic hair like it was a damned Zen garden.

“Alicia?” Mr. Lawless says, knocking on my wall. “Are you okay?” He looks genuinely concerned.

“Yes,” I say, smudging the tears from my eyes.

“Can I see you in my office?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to call that man a—”

“No, no. It’s not about that. Just a general meeting about a change of policy.”

I enter the office, this time, seven of my coworkers are with me. Our numbers are all charted out, and mine, I’m proud to say, are the second highest.

“Team, these numbers are impressive,” my boss starts. “Or would have been several weeks ago, but we’ll be moving to new metrics soon.” He clicks the mouse, and the chart dissolves. “You eight are the only ones who haven’t been accepting barter as a means for payment.”

I look around the room again, and from the terrorized frowns on everyone’s faces, realize that we eight have not been “affected,” probably the only ones left in the company. I scratch at the mosquito bites I’d gotten Sunday. Spent the whole day on the dank shores of the Triboro bridge, and yet, I feel nothing new, nothing different.

“If someone makes an offer, and they sound sincere, take it. Mark the account as paid in full. Schedule a pick up. I.T. is working on integrating this into our current system, but it could be some time. Everyone understand?”

The others, they nod. Just a bunch of unhappy people trying to fly under the radar, now that the unaffected are in the minority, but me, I can’t help but ask the question that needs asking. “If we’re no longer collecting money, how are we going to be paid?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Mr. Lawless says to me. He approaches, arms spread. He wraps them around me, pulls me in tight. “Hugs,” he says, his hot breath dangling in my ear. “At least until the barter distribution center is up and running. Look, I know this is a lot of transition, but we’re only trying to do what’s best for everyone.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Mrs. Chan raps on my door. On Wednesday, in the middle of the day. I twist the knob with my left hand. My right is still tender from battering my boss’s jaw. She smiles at me. I invite her in, let her have the choice of the remainders of Javier’s tools in exchange for another month of living here. I don’t think I’ll be able to stay much longer than that. Our bed is full of ghosts, now. It smells like them.

Javier and Simon hadn’t returned on Tuesday. It’s better this way, I try to tell myself.

I wrap up one of Javier’s spare extension cords for barter and make the well-trodden jaunt over to the 96th Street Library. I print out a hundred copies of a flier I design on the computer:

Unhappy? Alone?

Let’s be unhappy together.

The first meeting of the Gloom and Doom Society will meet at

Bloom’s Cafe

350 Lexington Avenue

March 20th, 7pm

∙ ∙ ∙

That Friday, half a dozen people show up. I don’t know whether to be excited or saddened by the turnout. I wonder if this is it...all that’s left of us sitting at this six-top under the watchful eyes of deli meats, pickled cucumbers, and autographed headshots of celebrity has-beens. After introductions, we spend thirty minutes yelling at each other, just to remember what it feels like. It’s exhausting though, and soon we resort to bitching about the affected and their damned happiness, our voices dropping to hushed whispers as the tail-toting staff sweeps up around us.

There’s a white guy sitting across from me, Gordon, who looks like he’d just stepped off the shoot of an Abercrombie ad. Skin tight t-shirt tucked perfectly into starchy indigo jeans, and a metallic puffer jacket that I can guarantee has never been zipped up, even in this forty-two-degree weather. His whole ensemble looks as if all the machismo that remains in the city is being kept contained by the cinch of his belt.

I’d written him off as just a pretty face, but then he raises a thoughtful brow and asks, “Why us? What’s so special about us that makes us immune?”

I smile at his naiveté. He thinks we’re the fortunate survivors, and not evolutionary dead ends. What’s wrong with us? is a better question, but I don’t correct him, because now he’s moaning over how his girlfriend had gotten tangled up to some dude at her job, and then to her father.

I cringe, uncross my arms, and lean into the dreadful details of his story.

“I was going to ask her to marry me,” he tells me after the meeting as I’m wrapping up our tab with three pairs of Javier’s tailored chinos. Gordon pulls the ring out of his pocket. It’s stunning, facets lit up like moonlight on the river under the café’s cool blue lights. He slides it to the waitress and orders a couple cheesecake slices to go.

“You up for dessert?” he asks me, thumb tucking into his front belt loop.

The sex we have is heated and spiteful. He leaves me with bruises, though I’d dealt him my fair share as well. Whatever void I was looking for him to fill is left empty.

∙ ∙ ∙

I barter the fancy argyle socks Gordon had left behind for a pregnancy test. The little plus sign reminds me too much of Simon and Javier, tails crossed. My obstetrician had told me to come in next time as soon as the pee had dried on the stick. I can’t face her. I can’t even face myself. I’m 100% sure it isn’t Gordon’s. Pretty sure it isn’t Simon’s.

I’m a blubbering wreck, my snot and tears streaking across the covers of the decade-old Rhetoric and Composition textbooks I trade for a ticket to Jersey. Jam Lady welcomes me with a hug, and I fold myself into it. I don’t care who she was before she was affected. She’s who I need right now.

“Sweetie, you seem plenty smart for a ‘Latina’,” she says to me over cups of coffee, sugared and creamed to within an inch of being dessert. “You’ve gotten yourself into this jam. It’s up to you to find a way out.”

“What the—” I grit my teeth, trying to get angry at her, but then I see that she’s right. I mean, beneath all the scare quotes and racist bullshit. I think of my grandmother, her swollen fingers working at the knots in her necklace. No matter how hopeless the kink looked, she’d always gotten through them eventually. It’s easy to paint her as a saint now, but I remember the way she’d fussed when I’d first brought Javier home. Did he have to be Puerto Rican? Did his skin have to be so dark? Imagine your poor children, she’d said to me. “I...” I stammer. “I’m not sure what I want to do.”

“Well, whatever you decide, you need to find him, and tell him,” Jam Lady says as she spreads a slice of toast for me. “He’s the father, and he has the right to know.”

“He hasn’t been home for weeks. I don’t even know where to find him.” I’d checked the obvious spots. His mother’s apartment, his office. Simon’s East Harlem luxury condo a few blocks from our place. I mean my place. “If he cared—”

“He cares, sweetie. More than you could ever know.” She leans in close. I feel the sharpness of her breath and notice the same about her teeth. “If he hasn’t come home, it’s because he can’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘he can’t?’”

“Well, there’s a chance he’s taken up in a Kingdom.” Her tail whips under her skirt and she sighs. “Perhaps it’s better that I show you.”

She takes the creaky stairs to her basement, one at a time. The stench hits me well before we reach the bottom, warning me of what’s to come. In the corner, in the darkness, I hear the rhythmic squelch of sex. There’s a mass of human forms, at least seven that I can count. Eyes look up at me, lit by the glow of a handheld video game. It’s Jam Lady’s son.

“Ma, is it suppertime already?” he asks of her, eyes locked back into his game, elbowing the amorous couple beside him as their entwined bodies press into what’s left of his personal space.

“Just a few more minutes, hon,” Jam Lady says, then she tends to a stack of bedpans, her tail whipping dangerously close to the knot binding the others together. Two of them wear the scrubs of home health aides. It’s only a matter of time before Jam Lady gets caught up too, and then what?

I should stay. I should help her in her struggles, a woman tending to these people, and who’s on the verge of needing help for herself. I try to force the words out of my mouth, to ask her how I can be of service. “Why don’t you tie your tail up?” I ask her instead.

She flicks it again, her long, silken tail running over the matted, bloodied hash of the other tails. It is then I recognize that her longing to be entwined is just as strong as my longing to be free.

∙ ∙ ∙

My stomach flutters for the first time as I descend into Lexington Avenue Station. I’m overcome with a feeling, something like happiness, a feeling so foreign I immediately disregard it and focus on the ache in my arches, the strain in my calves, the grit of the entire city in my lungs. I’ve never bought into the bullshit about a child bringing you happiness, but that never stopped the wanting.

I wonder if I’ve been sent on a fool’s errand, trying to find one person in a city of millions. Still, I press forth, clutching Javier’s picture in my fist, creases worn throughout. It seems half the island has taken permanent residence down here. Bartering stations pile with tube socks, Yankee candles, and ten-dollar handbags. People scurry and scamper from one pile to the next, trading with no rhyme or reason. I try to catch their attention, try to pitch my voice higher, the way they talk. Try to fit in.

I don’t. They squint at me, noses twitching. Whiskers doing the same. Sure, they’re nice about it, but I can’t help but see the pity in their eyes as they realize they have what I never can.

“Have you seen this man?” I ask.

They look. Eyes beady and wide. A nervous shake of the head, a hasty smile, a whip of the tail, and they’re off. Until finally someone, a young boy, snatches the picture from me, looks harder.

“Yeah,” he squeaks. “I’ve seen him. In the Kingdom on the A train.”

“The A train? Which A train?” I can’t even imagine the number of trains running that route. “Did you catch a number? Or graffiti? Or something?”

The rat child shrugs. “Sorry.”

“But you’re sure it was him?”

The rat child nods. “Washed his body myself. I noticed him because he seemed a little...” He chatters his long, jagged rat teeth in that way they do. I try not to be repulsed, try to be more open-minded than my grandmother had been, try with all my heart not to see the world as us versus them.

I leave him there, his little clawed hands clinging to the picture of Javier like it’s a winning lottery ticket, payment for his service. I weave my way through the press of bodies, then come to the turnstiles. In front of each sits a pile of small trinkets. I hesitate, then lay my grandmother’s necklace among them. It hurts to lose that part of me, but I can’t keep allowing myself to get caught up in the idea of her, and if I want to survive in this new world, I can’t keep getting tangled up in her ideas of who’s worthy enough. Who’s Latina enough.

Or ideas of who’s human enough.

I board the A train with hundreds of others. The dank humidity of the platform is replaced by the ice cold of the car. No Kingdom in here, but I make a series of hops between cars, each time reveling in the pressure change, the danger, the hypnotic click-hiss, click-hiss, click-hiss of the express.

Six times I make this trek, front to back, then hop off to catch the next train. This time, as the train pulls into the station, I see a blur of naked figures through the window as the train skids to a stop. I immediately make a run for it, my feet beating concrete so quickly that I’m there right as the doors whisk open.

It is dark, but it smells clean, sharp. Faces press up against the windows of the car. I’ve seen packed trains before, but nothing like this—less of a crowd, and more like a structure. Every limb has been placed in a very particular manner to provide support to the people wedged around them—very left-hand blue, right-foot red. Faces smile despite the obvious discomfort and the fact that one wrong move could send them all toppling.

More people file in past me, dressed in loose, white linens. They walk with purpose, carrying baskets. I watch as they slip effortlessly into the Kingdom, applying antiseptic oils over everyone’s bodies. Food offerings come next. A teenager passes me with a basket of oranges.

“Can I?” I ask, my hand laid upon the basket’s handle.

She smiles. “Of course,” she says, relinquishing her grip. “But your clothes...”

I look down at myself. I’m filthy with sweat and dirt from tracking Javier down these past few weeks. I can’t remember the last time I showered. The last thing these people need is to be exposed to my germs. Without a moment’s hesitation, I shed my clothes, though it feels more like shedding the remnants of my former self. I anoint my skin with a generous dollop of antiseptic oils, then proceed, glistening from head to toe as I slip into the tangle. I step carefully, over knotted tails, between legs, duck under outstretched arms. I spot him way in back looking morose, lost even. The flickering fluorescents break through the shadows to brush his face with light.

Then he sees me. “Alicia!” Javier says. His hands reach for me, and I realize that in my nervousness I’ve dropped the oranges. They roll around at our feet. “Oh, how I’ve missed you,” he says into my shoulder. “I was coming back. I swear I—”

I stand stiff in his embrace, and then his hands notice the small mound my belly has become. His eyes alight. “Are you?”

I nod. “About eighteen weeks,” I say. His brow strains from doing the mental calculations in his head. “Yes, she’s yours. She’s...” Perfect, my obstetrician had said, smiling brightly. I hand him the sonogram that had cost me the last of my jam. Javier’s finger traces over her face, her ten perfect toes, her ten perfect fingers, and then the long sloping tail she’s clutching.

“I’m leaving you,” I say flatly, attempting to ignore the anger brewing in my heart. Some part of me, a big part of me, wants this to hurt him. Wants this to crush him, to grind his soul down like he did mine for so many years...but that’s not who I want to be. “I promise I’ll bring her to visit you after we’re settled.”

“You can’t leave. Not now!”

“You said you’d understand if leaving was what I wanted. This is what I want.” I tug back and my oiled skin slips easily from his grip.

“I—Please,” he says, his voice unsteady. “Just think about staying. I promise, you’ll be treated as royalty. They will love you as I love you, and they’ll love our child even more so.”

I make the mistake of looking deeply into those eyes that charmed me so long ago, and those lips that entangled me with half lies and broken truths and slanted indifference. I sense the warning signs, but my heart lurches for him just the same. Those years weren’t all bad. There had been moments of happiness. Moments curled up next to him, so content. Doubt surfaces, like a parasite in my mind, reshuffling memories in his favor.

Jam Lady was wrong. I shouldn’t have come here.

I turn, make my way back through the tangle. I carefully weave through them, skin-to-skin...mine cold, smooth, and clammy, theirs bristly with hair...fur? With each step, I’m closer to being free. To being me, whoever that is. An entire lifetime of possessions has been bartered away. I don’t even have the shirt on my back anymore, but I do have everything I need.

I’m nearly through, but then I notice docile eyes turning upon me. No words have been spoken, but something has changed. I see Javier’s grin on the woman next to me. His stare bends the gray brow of an elderly man. I move faster, but with calculated precision, the peaceful web of his Kingdom constricts around me. Fear whips through my body, igniting the instincts I should have listened to years ago. I fight through the barricade of flesh, and I’m inches from emerging on the other side when Javier’s hand grips my wrist.

“Wait,” he says, his teeth slickened with blood. In his other hand he holds what’s left of his tail, end gnawed down to a pulpy stump. He’s come undone from his Kingdom, from himself. “Please, give me one more chance. I could make you so happy.”

His grip loosens, and suddenly we’re hand-in-hand, fingers entwined.

“I know you could,” I tell Javier, the man I didn’t marry. “But the kind of happiness I’m looking for isn’t something that someone can make for me. It’s something I need to find for myself.”

I step back out onto the platform, trembling. From regret? Relief? Both? The train doors close, and the Kingdom whooshes away, Javier’s face pressing up against the window. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to admit to myself how close I’d come to saying yes.

I know it won’t be easy, finding a place where I fit in. Finding a way for my dreams to exist in a world that has already forgotten what I am. But I’ll trade, barter, and swap my way into my new life, no matter how long it takes. I’m a foreigner in my own land. I don’t understand the customs. I can barely speak the language. But there’s not a knot ahead of me that I can’t untangle now.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT NICKY DRAYDEN

Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she’s not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. Her debut novel The Prey Of Gods is set in a futuristic South Africa brimming with demigods, robots, and hallucinogenic hijinks. See more of her work at nickydrayden.com or catch her on Twitter @nickydrayden.

NEST

By B. Sharise Moore

In 2015, world renowned anthropologist Dr. N’Kiyah Battle and a five-person crew set out to observe the Impundulu, a mythological bird said to summon thunder and lightning with its wings and talons. Written below are her final accounts of the expedition.

October 23

6 a.m. We meet

waterfalls cloaked in laughter.

Above, pink slivers

impale the swollen clouds. No

bird, yet already in awe.

October 24

Deep in the mountain’s

flesh lies an imprint of twelve

-inch talons. We lean

close, listen to its rhythm

like a talking conga drum.

October 28

After three days of

silence comes a wide-eyed shriek

of discovery.

Screaming red electric barbs

poke from a thin copper shaft.

October 29

We search for the dance.

Residue from a lightning

strike, fairy rings are

gold smudged static and ash. Star

stained messages from beyond.

October 30

Hours of digging

brings a shiny jagged shell

to the surface. Wrapped

in bejeweled barbed wire, it

throbs. Angry as a warning.

October 31

At last, we reach a

castle sewn with silver twine,

pearls, teeth, bloody thorns.

Eager students, we hoard bits

of pulsing legend in jars.

Suddenly, the day

burns black. Then, lavender splits

the sky. We bolt past

brambles, jostle our newfound

treasures between sweaty palms.

Is this how it ends?

Caught in a primal killing

field? Pulverized by

a mythical screech? Rotting?

Dead and buried in a nest?

November 4

They find us four days

later: disemboweled, picked to

grisly bone, carved in

pieces. Half-blind and dying,

I clutch a white-hot feather.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT B. SHARISE MOORE

B. Sharise Moore is a middle school English/Language Arts teacher, founding member of DWASF (Diverse Writers and Artists of Speculative Fiction), and lover of nearly all things speculative. Her work has been published in the Mas Tequila Review and The Journal of Black Poetry.

THE BASKET WEAVER

By Soonest Nathaniel

A woman weaves baskets in Cameroon,

for grass she uses boys’ pubic hairs

and for rush, the thicket of their eyelashes.

She twines into wicker baskets,

men’s beards and moustaches,

and stores in her womb

beer,

grains

and the skulls of decapitated dreams.

She sings as she does her weaving,

her song says hope is reed

which forms the spokes and staves

of ambitions without base.

It says lust and greed are weavers

to fill the insides of nothingness.

It says sweet lies are peddled best

on the lips of ‘honest men’.

She chants a savory song,

the fool’s ear refuses to eat.

it says love is cocoyam,

patience is oil;

and all you require

to enjoy this meal,

is to sprout again your milk teeth.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT SOONEST NATHANIEL

Soonest Nathaniel is a poet whose works have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, The Pedestal Magazine, Northridge Review, Raven Chronicles, Scintilla, Erbacce UK, Praxis Mag, Wiki Column, Saraba, Loudthotz, Reverbnation, Elsewhere, Kalahari Review, Sentinel Nigeria, and many more.

CREATOR SPOTLIGHT

FIYAH aims to highlight works of speculative fiction by Black writers across all mediums. Our first such comic feature is with Ahmara Smith and their project “Brontide.”

“Brontide” is featured in anthology 23.5° edited and curated by Julia Hagerty. It is available March 2019 hosted by our friends at Gumroad.

“23.5°—named after the Earth’s axial tilt—is a comic anthology containing eighteen separate stories by individual comic artists, each based around one of the Earth’s four seasons. With stories spanning across multiple genres such as horror, fantasy, romance, and slice-of-life, 23.5° has a story for everyone. “

In Brontide, Fall is a season of romance! But, just like the green trees reveal their many colors underneath, all is not as it seems on this adorable first date. We asked Ahmara to tell us a bit about it an an interview:

“Brontide” means something like “the distant rumble of thunder.” I’m scared of lighting so I thought the word seemed kind of tense like something bad might happen and that related to the main character who is trying to hide their magic in the story. I had this story concept from 2014 or so, and I put it on Tapastic (an online comic hosting site) first, but then came back to it for this anthology and redid everything. I really like writing romance, even if the story has other elements in it, when I draw or write a story it keeps me interested if it has romance so this short comic was just about some college students in love, but the twist is that it’s all fantasy! Fantasy is my second favorite genre, haha!

You can check out the rest of our interview with Ahmara, along with some Brontide art in the following pages.

Title: Brontide | Release Date: March 2019

Buy links: Brontide | 23.5° | INTERVIEW

SPECIAL THANKS TO THIS QUARTER'S DONORS

Tasha Lennhoff and Secret Santa #1

You, too, can make a donation like one of these cool kids and appear in the next issue of FIYAH.

FOLLOW US: