CONTENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

PROSE

ALL THAT THE STORM TOOK

Yah Yah Scholfield // 5572 words

Two sisters quarrel over remaining in their home as Hurricane Katrina bears down on the lower Ninth Ward. Leaving means abandoning a proud family legacy, staying will cost more than they ever imagined.

ROOTS ON YA

LH Moore // 2465 words

A rootworker is dragged into a young lovers’ triangle when a curse invites evil into a turn of the century Virginia community.

LUSCA*

Soleil Knowles // 2562 words*

Voracious hunger draws a young woman to the sea, despite her mother’s best efforts to hide her true nature.

THE TRANSITION OF OSOOSI*

Ozzie M. Gartrell // 7900 words*

An ambitious young hacker seeks out the Anansi—a legendary hacktivist collective—for help in overthrowing the techno-authoritarian American government. But will he pay their asking price?

POETRY

ALIENS VISIT THE CARIBBEAN

Terese Mason Pierre

EXTRAS

THANKS

* - author debuts

January 2020

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Welcome to issue thirteen of the Hugo Award Nominated, World Fantasy Award Winning FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.

As we enter into our fourth year, we want to express our deep gratitude to all of our contributors, readers, subscribers, and supporters. Without your dedication to supporting the work of Black speculative artists, we would literally not have a reason to exist. You are helping us write a new future, and we are excited to have you with us.

We’re presenting another unthemed issue for you. In this issue we’ve collected a wonderful assortment of prose and poetry brimming with black excellence. Our prose features for this issue are “All That the Storm Took” by Yah Yah Scholfield, “Roots on Ya,” by returning FIYAH author LH Moore, “The Transition of Osoosi” by Ozzie M. Gartrell, and “Lusca” by Soleil Knowles. Our poetry selection is “Aliens Visit the Caribbean” by returning FIYAH poet Terese Mason Pierre.

This issue absolutely promises to kick your new decade off to an awesome start.

Our fourth year also heralds some other changes, in the form of my stepping down as Executive Editor of FIYAH. It has been my genuine pleasure to serve as editor these past three years. FIYAH has changed the landscape of SFF short fiction. Before we entered the field, the publication rates for Black authors in SFF magazines was dismal and had been for years. When FIYAH came on the scene, we brought with us the work and the dreams of so many Black authors who simply wanted their work to be recognized and to get a fair shot. Well, I believe that we’ve helped them do that, to the tune of fifty short stories and novelettes, nearly two dozen poems, and a host of stunning covers from Black artists, not to mention all of the Black SFF work featured from independent authors and comics creators.

My time with FIYAH has been life-changing I didn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that I’d ever be an editor, or that I’d ever be responsible for helping authors like myself introduce their stories to the world. I am honored that authors have trusted me with their work. I am grateful for the grace that they have granted me. I am in awe of all the talent that gets sent to our submissions on the daily. To our authors, your work has blessed me.

For those of you who think that this is the end of my time with FIYAH, don’t fear. I will still be involved, mostly in helping to raise and manage funds for the magazine, making sure that we can sustain ourselves for the future we wish to have. I’m deeply grateful to the amazing team that will be continuing the editorial work. DaVaun Sanders has been a part of FIYAH since its inception. Our authors are in capable hands. L.D. Lewis and Brent Lambert will make sure that our impeccable design and irresistible cultural presence remains the same. Our associate editors will continue to help choose the best stories for the magazine. And I will be supporting them and making sure they have everything they need to keep going.

It’s been an honor, and my pleasure, to work on behalf of Black genius. I end my farewell with a plea. If you want to see us continue our necessary work, share FIYAH with a friend. Buy someone a gift subscription or send an issue. Expose them to the necessary work that we are doing so that they will be moved to buy an issue or share our work with someone else. We need you, and we are deeply grateful for your support.

We have a fantastic issue lined up for you. We hope that you enjoy it.

Best,

Troy L. Wiggins

Executive Editor: DaVaun Sanders

Poetry Editor: Brandon O’Brien

Acquiring Editors: Danny Lore + Kaleb Russell + Eboni J. Dunbar

Art Direction + Layout: LeKesha Lewis

Cover Artwork by Steffi Walthall

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

ALL THAT THE STORM TOOK

By Yah Yah Scholfield // 5572 words

Hear this, see this—the sky was a’flash with lightning, thunder clapping and rain coming down in buckets, cats and dogs and opossums. The gutters in East Point were already clogged with leaves and sticks. Water gushed out onto the street, dark and dirty, full of debris, frustrating cars and their drivers. People caught out in the storm hurried into nearby stories, into their cars or huddled beneath awnings, and people inside looked out at the tempest, commented to themselves, to whoever was nearby. This was some rain alright, some mighty rain. All the while, the water rushed and flowed, beat at the trees, beat at the concrete, the asphalt, filled and filled and flooded.

At least the house in Atlanta was much more secure than the house back in New Orleans. Winifred still feared the loud rushes of water, but could put herself at ease, momentarily at least, by reminding herself that her new home was made of brick and stone. The most damage she saw out here was a downed power line or a knocked over tree, the branches taking up the road or leaning onto a telephone wire. Sometimes a roof was crushed by one of those towering Georgia pines, but never destroyed entirely, never washed away.

There were things much worse than the patter of rain on the windows, than the flickering of lights. A storm like this, it was nothing. Winifred could enjoy her dinner as she listened to the wind blowing outside, not howling or screeching. Just blowing, like breath, like a breeze.

An hour into the storm, Winifred rose from her chair and prepared a tray. It was easy work with practice, the preparing of the fish and the bowls. Before she learned Alicia’s preferences, she gave her whole fish, head and tail and all. She stopped soon after, upon seeing how quickly it turned her sister’s stomach. Winifred also tried the frozen fillets from out the grocery store but that was no good, either. Maybe it was the smell? Perhaps the smell of the plastic and ice, the spoiled fruit odor of the supermarket seeped in. Now Winifred knew better—knew to buy the fish fresh from the farmer’s market all the way out in Dekalb, to clean it herself and to lay the fattiest, sweetest parts of the fish (tuna, usually, sometimes grouper or red snapper when she could afford it) out on the tray alongside some towels, a bowl of cool water for drinking and another warmer bowl for cleaning.

Winifred feared no storm, but she did fear the trips up to the attic. The close quarters, the air all hot and dry; how no wind flowed and all the noises were amplified. The smell of rot drowned the senses, a rank amalgam of blood and feces, fish and musk and closed off space. The window was sealed—nothing in, nothing out—but it still permitted slivers of light, the room washed gray and solemn.

Quietly she stepped through the space, cautious of the unseen threat hidden in the shadows. Crouched down, she crept to the center of the room where a mattress yellow with sweat awaited. The flattened pillow still held traces of body heat, the balls of twine and rope scattered, and the breakfast tray lay where she left it that morning, empty save for a handful of silvery scales swimming in green bile.

Winifred clicked her tongue, as if attempting to summon a cat. No movement in the shadows. There was a little noise—heavy breathing, some shuffling. She whistled into the darkness, soothingly, a little tune she remembered from their childhood.

“Alicia,” she called, setting down the tray. “Dinnertime.”

A scuttling came from the shadows. The shape slipped down the ceiling, crawling from the wall onto the floor. The creature edged closer, cautious, into the gray light, closer, until she was entirely illuminated by it.

Only the faintest traces of Alicia’s beauty remained. Silver-blue scales covered her skin, strange and slimy. The gills on her bare neck and torso fluttered, breathing somehow out of water. Her right arm was without skin, raw red flesh open to the air. Winifred cringed at this and made a mental note to try to bandage it again. Mostly likely the attempt would be in vain, the gauze yanked off the moment she turned her back and made into another plaything.

Alicia circled the mattress, baring her sharp and mossy teeth, and flashing her dark, unseeing eyes. She sniffed at the air curiously, tasting it. Satisfied that Winifred came alone, she lunged forward, snatching the fish off the tray. Winifred took a seat and watched, fascinated by the violence of her sister’s jaws, how she crushed the small bones and how her throat worked to take the meat down.

“Is it good, then?” Winifred asked. She knew Alicia wouldn’t respond with words, but took her hungry grunting as a yes. “I know you like it when I clean it for you. Maybe tomorrow, we’ll have whole fish. Salmon alright?”

Alicia grunted again, focused more on lapping mashed fish and drops of blood from her forearm. Humming, Winifred took the end of a towel, dipped it into the bowl of cleaning water and began wiping her sister’s face. As always, Alicia protested at being cleaned, twisting her head and hissing. Eventually, though, she calmed; allowing Winifred to wipe her down and then give her small sips of lightly salted drinking water.

When all was done—dinner, cleaning, Winifred picking up the scraps of the day, the bodily waste, gently rebandaging Alicia’s arm, the idle talk she wasn’t sure that Alicia entirely understood—the attic grew still. Winifred sat quietly on the mattress as Alicia rolled around on the floor, fighting her ball of rope, jumping occasionally to the window to scratch at the glass and look out at the storm.

Nights like this reminded Winifred of before, when Alicia was Alicia and the world seemed simple, clear enough if not difficult to navigate at times. She laid down on the soiled mattress. Laid down in her memories.

•••

What she remembered was this—Alicia wasn’t afraid of no storm. She was brave, almost foolishly so, self-sure and determined to ride out Katrina.

For weeks all the weather people could talk about was destruction and catastrophe, a near Biblical level of rain. Alicia laughed. Amused, she tossed back her braided head and cackled, beside herself with humor. What harm was a little water? It was nothing to her, and since she was no Wicked Witch, melted by rain drops, she wouldn’t go hiding at the threat of a shower. She bragged to anyone who stopped to listen how their parents and grandparents survived Betsy, how Big Mama and Papa stayed at home until the storm passed, and how they built the city back up, piece by piece.

“Ain’t we some hardy people!” she would say. “We Daudelins ain’t getting shook off our land on account of a little rain.” She laughed again, a bright chittering sound like an orchestra of crickets. Their daddy was a fisherman, their mama shucked oysters down by the docks. Big Mama and Papa knew mermaids, once, and just about every Daudelin child was dipped in the bayou at some point. Salt practically coursed through their veins, so Alicia claimed, curing their insides and making the muscle tough and lean, easier to bounce back. “Ain’t nothing gon’ move us! Especially not some ol’ storm.”

Winifred never had her sister’s gumption. Whereas Alicia ran headlong into danger, Winifred preferred to stay back and watch for the signs. It’d saved her life on more than one occasion—saved Alicia’s too, though the woman would never admit it to be true. She was cautious by nature, a slight and nervous creature with a healthy fear of the world around her. The noise of the woods unsettled her, the chatter of the bayou disturbed her. Cities, loud and burdened by bodies and train and smog, were terrifying. Even silence, cool and clean, without interruption, sent strange shivers down her spine. Her imagination was lush, her mind without limits; she feared and cowered but nevertheless she lived on.

At the peak of the coverage on the storm, Winifred flew into a frenzy of worry. Alicia, naturally, thought nothing of it. She told Winifred they would sit through the worst of the storm, and if worse came to worst, they’d go up into the attic. Winifred wasn’t so sure. She sat in front of the television and listened to the news reports with a fervency bordering on the fanatical. She asked questions down at the college where she worked as a secretary about the wind, about the classification of hurricanes, about systems and tropical depressions. She found newspaper cataloguing Hurricane Betsy, and fretted nervously over reports of floodwaters so high that they covered one story homes in the Lower Ninth Ward.

She worried endlessly—Betsy was Category Four. The people on the news were certain that this one would be even stronger.

Alicia went on insisting that they had nothing to fear, but spite and impulse drove her more than any sort of sense.

Alicia moved, Winifred thought. They lived in the Lower Ninth Ward, downriver, close to the levees. According to family lore, Daudelins have lived in the Lower Ninth for about as long as it existed and even further back. Their great-great-great-granddaddy bought their freedom, and built a long and narrow shack on the first plot of land he could afford. The house never grew much, not even when he married their great-great-great-grandmother, a pretty but odd lady from the bayou. An attic rose from the first story, accessible by a ladder, and not much else. The house was lopsided, made up of old wood, flimsy shingles and tin in some of the weaker places. Winifred knew deep in her heart that it would not withstand the gale force winds, the lashing rains.

But then, where else would they go? All of their aunts and uncles lived in the Lower Ninth Ward with them, and the extended family out in Georgia and Alabama weren’t all that familiar to them. There was, supposedly, a distant cousin in northern Texas that was willing to take them on, but this couldn’t be confirmed, as the cousin was mostly nameless and not documented in anyone’s address book. If they left, which Winifred prayed they’d do, what would happen to the house? Would it be destroyed, ransacked? And how would they fix it when they got back, what with Winifred’s patchy paychecks and Alicia’s unemployment? And then if they had to stay, had to ride out the storm, what would happen to them? God forbid they were holed away in the house with no power, no connection to the outside world. Would they survive? How long? What would they eat? What would they drink?

Winifred brought each and every one of her concerns to Alicia. She hoped her desperation counted for something, but her sister fixed her with that kind but patronizing smile that read, “you poor, poor fool.”

“Winnie,” she started. She took her sister’s hands and squeezed them. “Winnie, it’s just a little storm. We’ve gone through storms before.”

“Those were different. Those weren’t no hurricanes.”

“Hurricane, thunderstorm, lightning storm—it’s only water, cherie. Arrête de t’inquiéter autant! You’ll make yourself sick.”

Winifred slipped her hands from her sister’s. Her palms were clammy, damp with sweat. She could only take in short, shallow breaths. Winifred’s vision blurred, a panic attack building behind her eyes. She felt Alicia’s hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, hey, calm down. It’s okay, it’s…” Alicia’s words trailed off. Winifred could feel her sister wondering over her. She took a deep, put-upon sigh, then agreed to go shopping with Winifred for necessities.

It wasn’t a pleasant trip. Winifred dragged Alicia out to the Piggly Wiggly and stuffed two shopping carts with anything she could get her hands on. Batteries, flashlights, some tinned meat that Alicia mock gagged at; she tossed all this and more into the cart. Alicia provided crude color commentary to her sister’s wild-eyed dash through the supermarket. She walked alongside Winifred, bumping her with her shoulder, snickering at the people—at Winifred—who ran in circles, overburdening their carts with toilet paper and pain pills.

“What’s gonna be funny is when this lil’ rainstorm is over, and everybody is gon’ be sopping up the puddles with their three-ply tissue.”

Too tense to appreciate the joke, Winifred jerked to her sister and asked, a little panicked, if they needed more toilet tissue.

There was just no budging Alicia. The day after the store trip, she boarded up the windows and plopped herself down in her easy chair. She wouldn’t listen to Winifred’s protests, and refused to entertain the idea of evacuation. She was certain that when the time came people would pull together to help one another. There was no way on earth she was going to abandon their house, their family’s house, no matter what sort of hell her choice raised. Alicia told her that if they didn’t look out for it, then somebody was gonna come snatch it away. Manifest Destiny, she said—white people’s divine right to take everything that ain’t nailed down.

“But you can go,” said Alicia nonchalantly. “If you really want to.”

Alicia knew she wouldn’t. Winifred knew she wouldn’t. Without Alicia acting as her bravery, Winifred was all flab and fear. And besides, Alicia was the stronger swimmer. They needed each other; Winifred needed her sister.

So they stayed. Curled up in the living room, uneasy in the first trickling of rain, flinching at the flashes of lightning. The lights went out, a terrible crash of sound, throwing the sisters into darkness. Winifred felt her sister’s hand on her arm, comforting her. Still here, the hand said, still here.

The storm raged, unlike anything Winifred had ever seen. The Earth was permanent in her eyes, everlasting even after other life passed on. In those hours, Winifred felt like a speck, just a pitiful little mite on its great green surface. They were shocked into silence, made to sit in the living room as the world upended itself. The wind, that terrible wind, howling, slashing the house, shaking it, slamming it from all sides.

Winifred gripped the arms of her chair, praying desperately for the house to be still, to make itself strong. The wind cared none. Rain cared even less. Slanted drops attacked the siding and roof. Outside, trees were felled and houses were torn to scrap. Winifred heard the shingles being ripped from their roof, tin roofs flying, wood stripped from the sides of other homes. She felt cold and scared, and, only faintly, her sister’s hand on hers.

Around two-thirty a blast shocked Winifred out of her restless sleep. Even Alicia startled to her feet. The sound was deafening—a thousand electric transformers crashing down, powerful enough to shake the very ground. The sisters stared at each other, and then down at their feet. Water crept up under the door, which meant water covered the porch, the ground.

Alicia disappeared to check the windows, leaving Winifred to gaze down at her feet, invisible in the darkness. Her shoes were soaked. The water lapped at the door now, rising to her ankles, nipping at her shins. She stood there paralyzed, in wonder, until Alicia returned. She grabbed the radio and grabbed Winifred up to the attic. All their food was downstairs and most of their supplies. Mentally Winifred kicked herself. All that shopping, all that running around and for what!

“We have to go back,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the quickly rising water. “The first aid, the water, the batteries—!”

“It don’t matter!” Alicia yanked her up the ladder then drew the attic’s trapdoor shut, sealing them in. “We have the flashlights and we have the radio and we got each other, don’t we? Storm can only last for so long.”

But it lasted and lasted. All night it went, raining and wailing. Alicia kept glancing out the attic’s window at the rising water. They listened to the crackling radio tell them how high the water rose at the Industrial Canal. And they listened to their own hearts, thumping madly. Their skin prickled with heat. A little bit past eight in the morning, the radio squawked to life and told them to move to higher ground. Waters up to eight feet, said the radio. Alicia clicked it off. They were as high up as they could go.

The morning was gray. Dull light filtered through the attic window, laying strange white glows on the old furniture. It was stiflingly hot in the attic. Alicia stripped down to her tank top and shorts, and Winifred peeled out of her robe, leaving her thin nightgown. In the dimness, the sisters reached out to each other. Still here, still here.

Winifred wished they weren’t. Her mouth and throat were dry. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She groaned with hunger, the pains in her stomach competing with her lightheadedness from the heat. Beside her Alicia whimpered, quietly, twisting to get closer to the window and then jerking away to open the attic’s latch and dip her feet in the high water.

Hours and hours, sweating, steaming, wishing she could find just a bit of coolness, or drink from the dark pool that surrounded them. She remembered a poem from school—water, water everywhere, not any drop to drink. Winifred curled up on the floor, clutching her stomach. She ached, spasmed. She didn’t know which was worse, the hunger or the heat, the thirst or the slow, steady rise of the floodwaters. Beyond exhaustion, Winifred didn’t dare close her eyes to sleep. She felt certain, certain as Alicia was about the storm, that if she did, even for a second, she would surely die.

While Winifred fell into a painful calm, Alicia found no peace at all. Composed Alicia, brave Alicia, banged at the walls of the attic, shrieking, pleading with outside forces to find them. She tested the depth of the water–with her foot at first then, frantically, with bits of wood and the batteries from the flashlights. It was much too deep to swim. She panicked, rambled to herself about nothing, spat up bile and paced the room.

“We have to get out! We have to get out!’

Winifred agreed, but cotton filled her head. She watched, dry mouth and dizzy, as her usually unflappable sister descended into madness. Alicia was unhinged. She dipped herself into the flood and yanked herself back out, laughing one second and wailing like a child the next. Winifred didn’t know what to do. She never had to be the strong one before, to think about what to do next or how to protect because Alicia was always there. She wished she knew how to calm her sister as she went in and out of the water, hissing, keening, nervously crying out to Winifred that there must’ve been glass down there and shards of wood and all sorts of things that could hurt her. But she was convinced too, that no one would come for them, that if they swam for it, they might stand a chance.

Winifred shook her head. There were many reasons to stay put but the only thing that came to her head was, “I can’t swim, Alicia.”

Alicia tugged on Winifred’s wrist, trying to pull her into the water. “Please? Winnie, please, try. For me? Try!”

“I can’t,” repeated Winifred, voice small. “I can’t, ‘Licia. I’ll die, I’ll drown.”

Her sister threw her hand back with a frustrated, closemouthed scream. There were tears on her face, nearly indistinguishable from the sweat and water. “We’ll die if we stay in here! We gon’ drown if we stay, Winifred, please! We gotta try!”

Alicia shoved her shoes onto her feet and slipped on her own pair. She pulled Winifred over to the attic’s opening, and began to ease her way down the ladder.

Looking up to her sister, she said, “The second rung is broken. Be careful on that second step, alright?”

Down she went, two steps, four steps, until the water swallowed her. A sharp pang of worry cut through Winifred’s numbness, but her sister soon surfaced. She cleared her face with a swipe of her arm. “Come on, now. Come on. Hold onto me.”

Winifred let herself be led down the ladder’s steps. She panicked at the sudden rush of water in her ears, in her nose. She fought against it, kicking, but Alicia grabbed her arms and squeezed. Shook her head before bringing her up to the top.

“Hold your breath! Don’t let go of me!”

Knowing that there was destruction was different than swimming through it, gripping Alicia’s hand, kicking weakly at the waves. Broken furniture and little curios floated through the murk. The entire house leaned to the side, the windows busted out and the front door caved in. All gone, their dining room, their bedrooms. All the signs that people lived there, loved there, and were raised there. Winifred focused only on the open maw of the front door, and her sister ahead of her, desperately dragging them out.

A few feet away, a few more strong kicks. They would be out together, crawling onto the roof and waving down helicopters. Winifred imagined the relief of being outside, even in her pajamas, with her sister, alive and well and with the possibility of being saved.

They made it out. Winifred could hardly believe it, the change from darkness to light, from hot air to cool. Alicia pushed Winifred onto the roof where she collapsed, panting and coughing and rubbing her sore chest. She laid on her back and looked up at the sky, clear blue and cloudless. Winifred would’ve cried if she had the energy to do it. She laughed instead, giggled at the ridiculousness of a blue sky when only hours before the city had been flattened with rain.

When Winifred gained her strength, she stuck out her hand. “Come on, Alicia. Come on.” Her sister reached for her. They grabbed for each other’s fingers, then palms.

Alicia’s arms wavered. Her eyes welled up with tears. She fought. Fought hard through the debris scratching at her legs and arms and face, through the blood that poured into her eyes from an ugly cut on her forehead, through the exhaustion and heat and hunger. Alicia dunked under the water once, twice. Each time she went under Winifred’s heart stopped, but she always brought herself back up, gasping for air, more determined and desperate than the time before. But Alicia was not like the permanent earth. She weakened, swallowed too much tainted water, took on too much glass and wood and metal. She was fighting; fading.

Winifred stretched out her hand. “Hold on! Please, hold on!”

Alicia nodded, panting. She put weight down on the gutter to pull herself up to the roof. She reached for Winifred’s hand. Grazed her fingers.

The gutter fell away. Alicia had a hand on Winifred, and then she didn’t. She dropped into the water. Fear took over. Wild-eyed, Alicia kicked and thrashed as she fought for footing. Winifred, terrified, searched the roof for something for Alicia to grab onto. She found a broken board and extended it out to her sister, pleading with her to grab on, but Alicia was too far gone. She clawed at the board, kicked at the water, beating and beating until she slipped beneath the surface.

•••

A rescue team found Winifred a few days later. Only shock had kept her alive. How very said she must’ve looked to them, hollow-eyed and cold to the touch, blinking dazedly into the eyes of the helicopter rescue man. How did she sound to them, voice poor with disuse, stinking, panting, as she told them that her sister was dead?

“My sister,” rasped Winifred. “My sister, my sister.”

The man secured her close to him. He rubbed her back. “It’s alright now, it’ll be alright. Hold on, okay? We’re going up.”

Into the sky she went, over the flattened houses, the caved-in roofs. Black specks floated in the water, drowned bodies, bloated, finally rising to the top. Her sister would be one of them, a dead floating thing, bumping into columns, scraping the soaked flesh away from itself on the edges of cars and glass, plastic tangled in her braids.

In the helicopter, the crew wrapped Winifred in a shock blanket and gave her a bottle of water. A woman cradling two toddlers close to her chest wept on the shoulder of an older man. A young boy sat alone, stripped down to an overly large t-shirt and a diaper. A silent elderly woman stared blankly down at the destruction, speaking only to point out the house of her mother, the tilted steeple of the parish. Winifred sipped her water and ate the little bit of food she was given. She looked until she couldn’t, until it hurt to do so. She secured the memories in her heart, memorized the feel of her sister’s hand in hers, the strength in her eyes as she fought to live, the sound of her boisterous laugh, and then she turned away, closed her eyes to storm.

•••

Alicia drowned that Monday, but she came back a month later. How she knew where to find her, Winifred wasn’t sure. FEMA corralled her out of New Orleans very suddenly, dumping her off in Atlanta with not so much as a dime to her name. She was given a garbage bag full of clothes and toiletries before they stuffed her onto the plane. Surrounded by other survivors, she peered out the window and watched the plane’s wing cut through the clouds, unsure of where her body ended and the world began. When they landed in Georgia a few hours later, she was still disoriented and confused, clueless of where to go or what to do next.

What was a person without ties? Loose? Floating? The one person that tied her to the earth was far gone, back home, floating in that lifeless and fetid water. If they found her, tangled and run through with splintered wood, how would they contact Winifred to let her know? She had no phone, no home. For the first few nights, she used the phones in the shelters to call twice daily with her sister’s description. Long black braids, a scar across her left arm, a cherry tattoo on her stomach. Nothing came back. Not yet found, presumed dead. Waters were still too high.

At night, Winifred dreamt of her sister’s corpse. It floated towards her, brushing the back of her legs like the tail of a cat, opening its eyes to stare right through her. It never spoke, Alicia’s corpse. Winifred believed that this was a sign that her sister was truly and finally dead, in a better place. Heaven, maybe, where she could be clean and bright and dry in her white robes.

At peace, convinced she had put her sister to rest mentally if not physically, Winifred settled. She found a rundown little duplex out in East Point with a sympathetic landlady. Applied for and got a janitorial job at the nearby high school, even met a group of Katrina survivors who gathered to talk about the wind and rain and the missing people they knew over coffee.

Winifred closed her eyes and saw destruction, but when she opened them again there were laundromats and small but upright houses. She let go of Alicia, let her float back into the water, back to the bottom, back to New Orleans where she would forever remain.

But Alicia came back.

It was late in the afternoon, the sun still high and hot in the sky. Winifred thought, at first, that there was an argument or a fight further down the block; everyday commotion she could stay out of. She sat on her porch and folded laundry. Waited for somebody to tell her what happened.

Lots of strange things stumbled up and down the block on any given day but nothing quite so strange or horrifying as Alicia. Winifred knew it was her from the moment she laid eyes on her, a gut-level sister-knowing. Her smell reached her first. She reeked of death and brine, months of gas trapped in her distended belly. A cloud of flies and gnats buzzing around her head. Alicia gurgled water as she dragged her waterlogged body up the street.

Winifred barely suppressed a scream as her sister sniffed and flicked her black tongue at the air, tasting and testing it. Blinded by a thick layer of scum over her eyes, she searched for Winifred with hands and nose, sniffing and grabbing until she reached the sidewalk before the duplex.

Choking vines wrapped Alicia’s neck tight, fishing line and plastic bags bound her wrists. One of her arms was without skin, peeled off like a glove. She used it to suss out the way up the steps where Winifred stood, stock still and terrified. This was real, wasn’t it? She felt the wind on her face, heard the noise of the street. Winifred recoiled when Alicia’s clammy hands made contact with her skin. She rubbed her hands along Winifred’s cheeks, nose and mouth. Winifred held still, managed not to faint or vomit. Let her sister “see” her before reaching out her own, trembling hand.

“Lee?”

Her sister gurgled. Brackish water poured from her mouth.

“Alicia!”

Winifred wrapped her arms around her sister, hugging her tight. She held her sister in a vice, rocking her back and forth, sobbing like a child. Alicia didn’t hold her back. That’s alright, Winifred thought. She was still weak, just as disoriented and lost as Winifred when she came to Atlanta. She whooped and shouted, sang out praises and glories, screeching shrill hallelujahs. Hymns and child-like laughter bubbled up and out of her throat loud enough to attract the attention of neighbors.

All they could see was the blackened corpse in Winifred’s arms, the bloated body wobbling unsteadily as it was spun and squeezed and kissed. A woman from across the street poked her head out the door, saw this, and tentatively asked if anything was the matter, voice laced with nervousness.

Winifred broke from her sister. There was black sludge and mud smeared across her skin, and her face was red with blood. She wiped the tears from her eyes, streaking the mess further but caring little. Looking to her sister then to the woman, Winifred said calmly, serenely, “Nothing’s the matter, ma’am. Nothing at all.” She smiled. “My sister’s back.”

•••

Alicia, tired out from her play, inched back to her sister. She knew how to find her, always; hands out, sniffing at the air, until she was at Winifred’s side, head on her shoulder. Winifred grabbed hold of her sister, tears rolling down her cheeks. The creature in her arms grunted some, but relaxed soon after. She stroked the strange flesh of her sister’s face, gently scratched the matted hair.

How long had it been since the storm? Twelve years, thirteen? Even when Alicia was there–really there, not like this—she was the one to keep track of dates and times. Now the change of woman to creature was another thing she held, another thing she brought with her from New Orleans.

“Do you remember what I told you, Lee? About the life we’d have after the storm?”

Alicia rolled in her arms. Blinked her scummed-over eyes. Winifred could scarcely remember the girl from before, strong and unbreakable Alicia. She wished her sister did die that day, disgusted by her own morbidity. Anything better than this, than having to be the big and little sister, protecting Alicia and herself from all the horrible things they’d seen.

But then...no, not really. It could be worse. Worse than this was the loneliness, the not knowing.

“Everythin’ will be the way it was before but even better. We just need enough money, you know? Then you can get out of this heat. Fresh fish right out the water, miles and miles of swamp for you to swim in. We’ll rebuild the house brick by brick.”

Only the faintest light of recognition shone on Alicia’s face. That’s all I am. Comforting noise, just a little humming and murmuring in the dark telling her about things she couldn’t remember.

Tears falling in earnest, Winifred smoothed her hand over Alicia’s cheek one final time. Nighttime and the storm darkened the attic with blue-black light. Small tendrils of moonlight pushed through, illuminating the resting sisters. Winifred groped around in the dark for Alicia’s hand. She squeezed it once, twice. I’m here, said the hand. Always here, right there, never too far away.

Winifred did this every time she thought her sister was falling asleep. Sometimes Alicia yanked her hand away, other times Alicia sniffed the hand and dashed away to do something else; chase after some bug she heard. Eventually Winifred tired as her sister scuttled around the room. At the precipice between dreaming and wakefulness, she felt it. The hand entwining with her own, clammy and cold and fleshless, ragged claw-like nails scratching against her palms.

The hand squeezed. Still here.

ABOUT YAH YAH SCHOLFIELD

Yah Yah is a twenty year old Black girl from Atlanta, Georgia. Despite her ADHD and severe social anxiety, she got her GED in 2018 and started writing a short story collection with one of her best friends. She lives in Atlanta with her mom, dad and little brother, as well as her two cats, Chihiro and Sophie.

ROOTS ON YA

By LH Moore // 2465 words

190 6, Louisa County, Virginia

I was there when the things came up out of her.

The girl—Maddie and ‘em’s youngest named Heddy—choked and gagged them right out of herself, retching long and loud. Beetles and bugs and even a small black garter snake wriggled its way on through. All them things fell on the ground writhing and scuttling away. She had on this nice yellow dress since, after all, we was at a get-together. It didn’t stay nice for long with that black mess spewing out all over. Everyone else just stood there in their Sunday best looking on with their mouths open, their eyes wide. Some of the ladies hollered. One fainted dead away. Even the menfolk gasped and let loose an Oh Lord here and there.

Me? I just sighed.

A big, long, deep, deep sigh.

I done seen some things.

I know I wasn’t even flinching. Maybe not even blinking twice. My eyes went heavenward for a moment right when that poor gal’s tear-streaked face fixed on mine, all scared and pleading. Just as she tried to say something to me, her stomach started heaving again. Heddy’s dark brown hand went to cover her mouth, only for her to snatch it away, recoiling as more of the same poured out. All I could think was, What has one of y’all gone and done now?

“Lawd, Reely, you just gonna stand there and let this happen to my baby?!” Maddie, the girl’s mother hollered, her round face hysterical as her daughter alternately screamed and gagged.

“Aw hell… Fine then,” I said, breaking the moment of whatever was going on. “It’s not like I’d just let her be like that.” Wouldn’t take me too long to run home, and I got to go now after what else I’m seeing lurking.

It’s one of them. Aw no.

Not one of them.

Something was really, really off. “Make her as comfortable as you can. I’ll go and get my things.”

We are so glad you hear. Our voices are not stilled.

We are so glad you listen. You know to trust our words.

We are so glad you learned. This knowledge is now yours, too.

Use it well, use it right, use it well.

Just happened to be that I had a notion of how this one started: Li’l Miss Gal in Yellow—Heddy—liked that Gillis boy way too much for Millie’s—Harris and Mabel’s gal’s—liking. So, that Millie probably got ahold of some of her hair and baked it in a cake. Wonder she ain’t go mute. Probably got some of that gal’s water, too, dabbling around in things she shouldn’t have without no protection. If she knew better, she could’ve just gone on and tried to get that boy direct—a little blood of hers go a long way. Least I hope she didn’t. Lawd only knows what kind of crossing Millie done put on that poor Heddy, but she was now hacking up her insides and then some. I got to get it off her. I ain’t got much time.

Things ain’t right here at all. I studied the faces of everyone there as I tried to figure out what had me so unsettled, like something creeping all along the edges of my senses. The Gillis boy stood there like all the others, disgust and fascination on his face. Standing next to him as close to him as she could be—and with the nerve to be smiling—was that Millie.

I caught her eye.

She caught mine and looked away.

Wouldn’t have bothered me or nobody else as we weren’t the one she was aiming for, but I ain’t eat none of that cake she made. It was all lemony and moist-looking (I hate some dry cake), but nah…I don’t eat nothing at these get-togethers anyway. All of ‘em know me and they all know why and the reason why I got to be extra careful with mine. I make my own food. Hunt and raise my own critters. Grow my own plants. If I got to be out, I pack my meal or I ain’t eating ‘til I get back. Rest of them just laugh about it, but I know that kind of laughter. They laugh a li’l higher. They smile a li’l broader. You can see it in the nervous way their eyes move when they do. That laughing that’s got a bit of fear about it.

Like it’s funny only ‘cause they feel they better laugh.

Sometimes you hear us walking ‘round…

Sometimes talking upon the breeze.

You often hear us singing,

A chorus you join with ease.

I hurried over to my horse, Rufus, who whinnied as I approached. I patted his russet-colored head and hopped up onto the saddle. You’ll usually never find me without some basics like my oils and water in my satchel today, but this? This is something else. I needed to go home.

I sang to myself as we galloped along the dirt roads back to my place in Apple Grove. I go to church and my family always has and does, but I ain’t much for it. Love singing the spirituals, though. “You got a good strong voice there, Reely,” Lettie said to me the other Sunday, looking at me with those beautiful brown eyes of hers. She could tell me that the Sun goes ‘round the Earth and I’d believe her. I’d walk on air and breathe water like a fish if she thought I could.

I clucked my tongue at Rufus, urging him to go faster. I’ve helped everyone around these parts at some point, from babies to the elders. Sometimes it’s just small ailments. Sometimes it’s bad things like this. Every time’s different. I just listen to what they tell me and remember what I know.

Passed some of my neighbors walking along the roads who waved at me as we rushed by. Rufus and I turned sharply and cut through the woods. I could ride this route in the pitch-black at this point if need be. We popped out through the treeline and rode right up to my place. I tied Rufus up, gave him some water, and made my way towards the door.

My frizzy hen out front started clucking and scratching furiously when she saw me, ruffling up dark feathers speckled with white spots like so many stars. My daddy told me these birds came on over from in Africa like us. Got those special gifts like us, too. I petted her and softly said “I know, girly, I know…scratch them bad roots right on up. That conjure got to go and it can’t go up in here. Gotta be careful.”

A wooden bucket sat beside the door. I lifted the lid, looking at the green and brown herbs swirling on the water’s surface inside. Took the gourd and splashed some of it over my doorstep, before grabbing the broom that sat next to it and sweeping the front. I reached into a little tin in my satchel and sprinkled some salt and cayenne pepper around my footsteps and at the doorway. “This mess just gonna stay on out here with you, hen. You and Them know what to do.”

I opened my door and stepped inside. My place is real simple. Built it myself. Just a small log home. One big large comfortable room. Got a table, a bed and two chairs. One for me and one for guests, ‘cause ain’t nobody just gonna be sitting up on my bed all like that. There’s a cellar and even a secret way out besides the front door. Ain’t telling how. Wouldn’t be a secret then. But see? Real simple.

I always look around first. Make sure no one’s been up in here. I can feel it beforehand anyway, but I ain’t trying to come home into no surprises. I got two rifles and the spirits by my side.

I’d be ready.

Went over to my shelf and got a bowl. Checked out and picked up different jars with herbs and powders up in them. The drying herbs hanging up around me filled the place with their fragrance. It’s all as familiar as breathing to me. I quickly got a fire going and set a small pot out to boil. I kinda mutter to myself when I’m doing this. Talking through it all. Helps me focus. Helps me hear. Making sure I got the right stuff. One thing might heal, but mixed with something else’ll kill quicker than anything.

I put the ingredients into my mortar and pestle and crushed it all up. Got a clean white cloth to strain it through into a flask. Also bundled some more herbs together and put them into a small pouch. Said the prayer over it that my daddy taught me and his momma before him. I gotta get back to Heddy and whatever it was I saw going on there. Secured my place again and ran over to Rufus, hopping onto him with a leap.

Now you know this is for good

Now you know the things you should

When you use the gift for bad

The Others hear… don’t make them mad.

Once again, Rufus and I galloped through the Virginia countryside. I could see the crowd still gathered there as the white, clapboard church came into view. Everyone’s heads turned in unison as I rode down right at them, slowing Rufus down and handing his reins over to whoever was near.

“Lawd, Lawd, LAWD, have mercy on this girl! In the name of…” Pastor Lee was standing there praying over Heddy, now curled up on the ground surrounded by the black mess. Her hair was mussed and she was still screaming and crying and holding her stomach. Pastor Lee’s lips pursed together tightly as I approached, but even he stepped back. He raised his hands in the air, the full sleeves of his black robe catching the breeze as he loudly declared, “God Bless Brother Aurelius as he helps this poor child. Let the Lord work wond’rous things through him!”

I shook my head, somewhat amused, but figured this girl could use all the extra blessings that she could get. They all gave me a whole lot of space as I knelt down beside her.

I placed a hand across her forehead, closing my eyes and concentrating before pulling out the flask I had filled. My hand warmed, with heat radiating in pulses to my now tingling fingertips. She felt like she was swirling inside. I dropped back in my mind to that place where I could try to gather it, contain it. I could feel it fighting me, fighting back, its dark tendrils trying to creep out and touch me. Nah, I thought…I got ya. I got ya. I pushed forth, wrapping it like a bundle with golden twine, crunching it down, and forcing it to be quiet.

I got ya.

I said an invocation in a low voice and asked Heddy’s ancestors to come forth. I felt a wave sweep past and through me. “I know y’all are here. She can’t call you herself right now. Help her out like I know only you can, please.” An older man and a younger woman appeared beside her, in shades of shimmering gray. They both nodded and smiled at me as they each placed a hand on her. “C’mon now gal…drink some of this. It probably ain’t gonna taste too good, but it’s going to get it out. C’mon now, it’ll be alright. Let me help you.” I held the flask to her blackened, ooze-stained lips as she took her first sip. As I expected, she gagged a little, making a face of disgust. “Go on. Ain’t no worse than what you done already coughed out.” Her momma shot me a withering look.

Heddy drained the flask. Her retching started to subside and then finally stopped. She leaned against her momma, who had also knelt down beside her. I told her to watch Heddy until the next day and handed her the cloth pouch filled with my selection of herbs. “Brew this up and make sure she bathes in it. Pour it over her head too, and let her air dry. Gotta clean her out. Get rid of this mess. All of it.”

“Oh, thank you Brother Reely! Thank you! What can we do for you?”

“Well, there’s nothing you can give me food-wise…”

Maddie stopped and stared at me. “You ain’t right sometimes, you know?” I shrugged and started to say something right on back to her, but noticed the ancestors hadn’t left yet. One of them was motioning towards something. I nodded.

Hovering nearby was that gal Millie who put the trick on Heddy in the first place. I saw her and shot her a look letting her know I did. She wasn’t smiling as much anymore. As Heddy got better and the spectacle had stopped, the crowd broke off, leaving to go home after all of the excitement. I stood up, people pausing as I pointed directly at the one who did the crossing.

“Hey there gal,” I said loudly. The heads of everyone present turned to look at her in unison as her eyes went wide. “You. Yes, you. Ya might wanna stop for a minute so I can tell you that everything comes with a price, and you’re messing with something that messes back.”

Murmurs and “nuh-uhs” swept through the crowd, their voices becoming louder as my words sank in. I saw Lettie in the crowd and was relieved that she had on the necklace that I gave her for protection. The Gillis boy looked at Millie with disgust and backed away as she shrank from the crowd’s accusations and admonishments. See, thing is, whole time I could see something they couldn’t…this tall dark shadow with her, just behind her. Everywhere she moved, it was moving, too. I recognized it for what it was and knew that anywhere that she would go, it would go, too. It wasn’t just her being obvious (at least to me) about what she did to that other gal that made me notice her. It was that Other that was now with her. I had already seen it earlier just standing there smiling.

Smiling at me.

“Yeah, I see ya,” I said to it. “Gal, you gone and done it. If you gonna do a crossing, do it right and sure as hell don’t let it stay with you like this.”

The Other shifted behind her, laughing.

“Oh, you laughing, huh?” I shook my head and sighed. A long, deep sigh knowing that I am never finished.

I done seen some things.

ABOUT LH MOORE

LH Moore’s speculative fiction has been in numerous anthologies and magazines such as Apex and Fireside and this is her second appearance in FIYAH. A DC native in exile, she is a historian who likes playing classical guitar, video games and a mean game of Uno filled with trash talk and petty. You can find her on Twitter at @ElleHM, IG at lh_moore, and her website is lhmoorecreative.com.

LUSCA

By Soleil Knowles // 2562 words*

You wring your hands, cold and clammy and rough. Skin of teeth, salty with sea brine cuts into the humanlike fat of your palms, and you stare down the edge of oblivion. The wind whips you, sings to you. A full, fat, yellow moon casts a sultry pall over the water, the light disappearing into its mirror image on the sea. You take one step, then another. The blue hole sings its deep, droning song, and what can you do? Resist?

You are five on an island of scrubs and long roads. Of feuds between north and south, screeches disguised as ‘good morning’ and ‘good afternoon’ and ‘good evening’. You live as inland as possible in a place where the distance between two coasts is the jump from thumb to forefinger.

You cannot go to the ocean. Never the ocean.

Mother grabs you and shakes your shoulders and preaches harder than the priest in Sunday Mass: The water is dangerous. The water will kill you. Stay away. She bathes you with quick scrubs of a rough cloth, in a metal tub barely covered on the bottom with the freshest water straight off the boat. You’ve never seen a boat, save for the broken ones abandoned in the scrubs. The ones that serve no further purpose than to shelter old dogs from thunder. Boats mean ocean. Ocean means death. You let her scrub you raw and put you to bed. You never tell her you hear the waves in your dreams or see a circle of void stretching wide below your feet.

You are thirteen and gangly. You are thirteen and violent. Eighth grade is not for gangly, violent girls, you think, as you chew on a piece of salami between hard bread. It doesn’t fill you, nothing ever does. You scratch at your head, your dark, thick, nappy head, and stare at all the pretty, popular, bright girls.

They titter and eat rice, crabs, pork chops, and everything else mother says will make you sick. They stare at you and whisper from behind perfectly manicured hands. You are rough. You are gangly. They are soft and they think you don’t belong. You spit out your salami and walk up to them, fists clenched and skin prickling. They sneer at your clothes, at your hair, and ask what you want. You grab one—the brightest, blondest one—and swing her around by her ponytail. Around and around until she’s a screaming top, a flurry of white socks and plaid skirt. She hits a tree when you’ve finished, and before those stunned, stupid girls can call someone, you’ve spat at their feet and stomped off. The blonde is crying, her face red and splotchy. She is not beautiful. Not anymore.

Mother makes you break a switch when you get home. The principal called her, and she stands there waiting for you with arms crossed and a thousand admonitions on her lips. She spews those admonitions in stops and bursts as she leaves red welts across your arms, your thighs and back. Never do that again, she screams. Never use your strength. You will kill someone. She sends you to bed with no food, but it’s okay. You are no more hungry than you always are. You are ravenous, starving, and deep in your soul, you know it is a hunger that will never be satiated.

You don’t mean to do it. You are so hungry.

The ram comes snuffling into your yard at half past midnight. You hear it clopping around, tearing at your grass and your bushes and your corn. You need to run it, so you tiptoe out of the house. It stares at you, blank and foolish in the moonlight. You open your mouth to shout, to tell it to go away. Instead, your tongue lolls. Your mouth waters and your stomach opens because there’s a bur in the fur on the edge of its tail and the bur has made a nick, and blood—a tiny pinprick of blood—spills from that nick. You are hungry. You are so hungry. You can never be filled, but this ram will help.

When you charge, it stands no chance. You grab it. Your very skin is rough enough to tear away clumps of fur. The ram bays into the night, and then stops. Silences. Hot blood soaks the dirt in a strange sort of sacrifice. You are not filled, but for once, you come close.

One ram. Then two. Then a flock.

People blame the dogs. People start poisoning the dogs, and you watch their bodies burn in piles and droves and explosions of kerosene. The fire offends you, offends your very being, and mother cannot pry you out of your room for days on end.

When she finally sends you to school again, with dark red caked and flaking beneath your nails, you meet no one’s eyes.

The girls bemoan their poor pets, their poor sheep, their fathers who lived off of those sheep. Their faces grow red, and you can smell it. The life flowing just below their skin.

They are better than rams. They scream like rams.

You sit through lessons, writing down numbers and letters and answers to questions until your slate is full and your chalk is nubby, and all you can hear in your ears is the rush of blood in the water. You close your eyes and see that big blue void. Thunder rumbles in the distance. You taste salt and iron and decide you’ve had enough for one day. Your bike is parked outside and it takes only a second to grab your bag and slip from the classroom. The teacher only knows you’ve gone when you’re already down the road and the rain is starting to pour in sheets, creeping closer.

Your legs work, you pedal harder. You race the rain until you’re standing on your bike, until your skirt is flying behind you and the downpour grows ever closer. Rogue droplets fly out of their ordered lines and catch the back of your neck, of your legs. Your skin itches. The rain reaches out, grabs the back of your skirt and makes sure that even once you’ve reached home, it has won the race. You toss your bike and limp inside, wet skirt obnoxious against your legs. You peel it away. Your legs itch, and when you scratch, your skin feels like it’s made up of a million tiny teeth. Mother watches you with desolation, with sadness and failure and anger. She throws away the skirt. You cannot stay here. You are being sent to the capital; where the buildings are bigger and the people, more strange. Nobody cares in a city like that, and you will disappear like a drop in the ocean. There is less room for mistakes there. There are no rams in the capital.

Mother sends you off with one carry-on and a kiss to the forehead.

She sends you off with the promise that your new school is nice, that you’ll live in a dormitory and make new friends.

She sends you off with the promise that you are safe.

You see the blue hole from the plane window. It looks so small. So plain. You laugh. What a magnificent lie.

You pull at your collar. The uniforms here are no different from home. The school is different, though. Bigger, with a concrete courtyard instead of dust and grass. The classrooms and office are arranged in a perfect square. You stand in perfect lines at a perfect assembly.

You sing the national anthem and the administrator stands under the sole tree while you bake in the morning sun. They give false life lessons. They quote the Bible and pray and announce things and tell students who must report to the office. You look around at faces you’ve been forced to learn. At faces from Andros with long noses and downy feathers disguised as hair ornaments. At faces from Kingston filled with mischief, with too big mouths and hands that go translucent when the sun hits them just right. They do not see you swaying in the unforgiving sunlight. They do not hear the way your veins narrow and cry out. The perfect lines and bored faces sway, and your head cracks against the concrete. The administrator keeps talking. Someone screams.

They pray over your body long before they call for help.

They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about the way you sweat and shiver and bay for blood as your skin dries. They don’t talk about your gasp, your cry, the gnash of your teeth as they pour water down your throat.

They look at you the way mother did, with derision and scorn and ‘this child needs one good cutass’ baked into their stares. They can’t hide you, and so they lie it away.

There is nothing to see.

Heatstroke.

Move along.

The cafeteria serves fish on Thursdays and you race to be the first in line. You order three big plates and snarl at anyone who comes too close. It’s saturated in oil and bread but still it claws at your stomach, at your tongue and your soul in ways the salami never did, in ways the ram just couldn’t. You want more. You need more. The line is too long. The bell rings and like iron to magnets, everyone finds their way back into the square. You go back to class, gnawing on a fork and thinking of bulging eyes, of scales and gills and the deep blue sea.

You are dreaming of a beach, of the water. It licks at your heels, sings to you and pulls you in. Far away and distant, in the memory of a tin tub and flying plaid, your Mother tells you the water is dangerous. She is not here, the deep sings in her tidal voice. I failed with her. She hates me. But I am here for you. I love you. Let me embrace you.

You walk into the waves, and split open.

You wake with a headache, soaked to the bone. Iron sits at the back of your mouth, and you know only that it tastes better than oily, fried fish. You drag yourself onto the jitney, where the usual morning chatter is replaced with staunch whispers. You drag yourself off of the jitney and into the schoolyard, and everyone is talking. A girl from Andros shakes and ruffles. Her words sound like parrot chatter as she tries to whisper, but you hear it.

Lusca, they whisper. Monster.

“Ain’t nobody see them in years,” one says.

“I thought they gone extinct,” hisses another.

“My daddy gone fishin’ last night and say he saw it,” one pipes above the rest. The students crowd around that one to hear a secondhand tale and you slip away into the girls room.

In the last stall on the right, you stare at your hands. At the webbing flaking away from between your fingers. At the sheen on your skin anyone with lesser sight would mistake for sweat. You leave the bathroom, nudge past the students. They speak of the Thing, of its gnashing teeth and dark eyes. They say it stole a fisherman’s catch, ate it right by the boat. Someone brought their phone. Someone shares the hazy picture.

You go to class, and try to ignore the whispers like roiling waves in your ears.

It’s a Tuesday morning when they call you into the office, the air so thick with rain that it sinks down into your lungs. The old lady behind the desk emphasizes ‘good morning’ when you don’t say it first, mutters about rude children after she sends you off to the headmaster.

He’s waiting for you with one leg crossed over the other. In his hand is the phone, confiscated. On the phone, the picture.

“Sit,” he says. Die, he means.

You fold your hands, cross your legs at the ankle.

He puts the phone on his desk, slides it over.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A picture, sir.”

“Of?”

“I ain’t know.”

His nostrils flare. A vein sticks out on his wide forehead.

“You don’t know. Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.” You never wanted to cuss an adult so bad in life. The rain beats down hard on his one little window, and you count patterns in the droplets instead of focusing on his face.

He lets you go with a wave of the hand and a stiff admonition on manners. The rain is still pouring, and it itches your skin as you run off to class.

•••

On the weekend, you call Mother. She lies and lies and cries and asks why you are asking questions. She screams about the water. The water is evil. The water will kill you, gut you, turn you inside out until you are no longer human. You dash the phone against the wall. Everything is a lie and you are a shred of truth wrapped up in layers of misdirection.

They know now, after that picture. You see it in the way they look at you. They way they watch you dodge the rain and inhale bottles of water when the sun is high in the sky. Mother said you would be safe. Another of her thousand lies. Here, there is no room for magic. Here, they kill monsters.

You close your eyes and see it again.

The blue hole. The dark mystery. The void that sings and cries and pulls you in like it is the only true mother you will ever have.

You need to go back.

The men on the boat look at you, and look away just as fast. They do not want to see your eyes, your skin, your teeth. They do not want to see the blood under your nails or the webbing between your fingers. They mercifully leave you alone and shove off.

You left that school and those people with not so much as a look back. You have no mind for them, their ordered world and dull lives. You hold onto the boat rails, watch the sea roil and smile in bursts of foam and schools of fish. You are going home, to scrubs and rams and the void from which all answers flow.

The cliff is rough, the sea is dark. The moon is yellow, and below you, the ocean reaches out her hands to catch you as you jump. You hit the water, and sink. You sink, and sink, until you see the fish. Until you warp, and scream, and finally, finally embrace the ocean. Mother lied, you think as a fin tears out of your back, as your legs stretch and split, split, and split again into eight. As rows of suckers line your new limbs and rows of teeth fill your mouth.

Oh, how she lied.

You catch fish after fish. You catch them and tear at them until blood soaks the water and turns the moonlight scarlet. You tear, gorge, and eat until, finally, the hunger is sated.

The water will not kill me, you think as a group of night swimmers run, splashing, into the waves. As they laugh and swim, paying no mind to the shadows lurking just beneath the surface.

It has brought me, finally, to life.

ABOUT SOLEIL KNOWLES

Soleil is a Bahamian writer, currently working on achieving her BA in English and Creative Writing. She endeavors to put some of her culture into whatever she writes, and breathes life into stories otherwise under represented. She is currently working on a Snow White retelling involving a red ‘fro, a Witch, and eldritch monsters. In her free time, she can be found eating plantain chips and shamelessly belting “Show Yourself”.

THE TRANSITION OF OSOOSI

By Ozzie M. Gartrell // 7900 words*

When the cop car makes a U-turn and starts tailing me, I know I’m in deep shit. I shake back my hoodie and slow my pace. No use running. Nav tells me six blocks stretch between me and the safe house. Too far. Can’t risk it. I blink twice to activate my livestream, and send the encrypted feed straight to my personal server. Just in case, I tag Vee, Machine, even Mar—though my twin won’t see it for days, and when she does, she’ll be pissed. If shit goes down—and I have hella contraband on me, so it might—I want a recording. I want evidence they can’t spin.

Won’t do much, but it’s something.

The late evening unfolds around me thick and close. The sun had long abandoned the city. Streetlamp beams slither in yellow pools across the pocked sidewalk. Shops, their plexiglass doors open to usher in cooler air, while away the last half hour of the workday.

Ahead, Chang’s neon sign flicks from yellow to green, catching my gaze. My interface notices my lingering attention and augments my sight with data. Chang’s: Chinese restaurant. Take Out or Delivery. Owner: Jem Chang. Moderately priced. Favorable reviews on social media. Only .03 miles from current location. Last item ordered: Pork fried rice with fried prawns.

I blink and the transparent information recedes. Tires crunch against the pavement to my left. Blue and red lights flash once before the cop stops his vehicle. I wait for the pop of an opening door before I turn.

Despite the dark, the officer wears mirror shades. I narrow my eyes a fraction and specs flood my interface. Recording sunglasses. Standard law enforcement issue. Filters sunlight, but enhances night vision. Adds to the loom factor and faux badassery. My reflection, distorted by his mirror lenses, sneers at me. Coily hair, streaked with purple and emerald, sweeps back from an unremarkable face with narrow black eyes and a broad nose. My dark skin looks mottled in the lengthening evening shadows.

The officer is careful to keep his patrol car between us. Smart. He’ll later claim it was because he’d “feared” for his life.

I struggle to fold my smirk down into something more neutral.

“Almost curfew,” he says by way of greeting. Since it isn’t a question I don’t bother responding. “Papers on the hood.”

You need me to send someone? This pops up from Machine in my lower left field of vision. I don’t dare mutter aloud to prompt the speak-to-text function. Instead I deliberately tilt my head sideways as if popping a crink in my neck. I raise one palm, face up, into the air; the other slowly reaches into my back pocket. All the while, I narrate what I am doing before I do it. Social media is rife with vids of CAs shot by zealous police who assumed they were packing.

Vee’s loopy font materializes next, urging me to be careful, to avoid giving him an excuse. I blink three times to minimize all windows. The last thing I need is for this cop to realize I’m wearing augmented tech without the registered biochip cradled neatly beneath my flesh.

Stray flakes of barely dry blood stain my nailbeds, garish in the watery light. Shit. Here’s hoping he won’t notice. I dump a leather-bound booklet, impressed with the seal of the United States of True Americans, on the hood and barely staunch the urge to snatch back my hand and shove it into my pocket.

The cop doesn’t bother to leaf through the tattered papers that prove my status as a Citizen American, a native-born U.S. citizen with all the second-class rights thereof.

“Where you headed, boy?”

I try not to bristle at the insult. Fail. “Chang’s.”

The officer grunts. I can’t tell if he has mods to suss out the lie. It doesn’t matter. We know this act is for show. Still, we both have our parts to play before the end.

•••

They kneel in the night. Their fingers link together, their heads bow beneath the weight of the glaring stars. Harsh floodlights stamp out all color. Bodies shudder against great gouts of freezing water.

Despite the temperature bottoming out below zero, they sprayed us. They claimed they were putting out fires, but there were no fires. There was only us, the Earth, the sky, and the water we sought to protect. Water they mocked by turning it against us.

The solemn voices float off on a cutting wind and I shiver, still reluctant to throw off the sodden North Dakota cold. I scrutinize the computer simulation that sprawls across the nightclub’s rooftop. Tents and people splay in loose arcs, facing off against impossibly large tanks and machines. Mobs of water protectors kneel or stand around me, rendered with such precision that I can feel their breath, can hear their shoes squelch on the muddy ground as they shift their weight. Hundreds of pairs of eyes gaze either at me or at the line of police in riot gear with guns and water hoses and closed-off expressions.

I urge my interface to detect only the real world. In response, the virtual simulation fades just enough for me to identify stocky HVAC units that leak viscous fluid onto dingy concrete. Nearby slender metal vents belch sour smoke into the evening. Smog snuffs out the stars and crowds around an anemic half-moon.

I turn in a slow circle, cycling between reality and altered reality when my attention snags on a heavy locked door that leads down into Club Genesis. Somewhere beyond that door, the people I’ve come to meet debate my fate. If they deem my cause worthy, that door will open. If not… I’m fucked, plain and simple.

Shaking my head, I coax the virtual simulation back to the forefront. In less than a breath, the Great Plains superimposes reality, transforming concrete into digitized grasslands. Once again water protectors flank me, beating drums.

Machine sidles toward me, passing right through a kneeling woman, her head turned away as a hose vomits water into her face.

“What d’you think?”

I peer into the defiant eyes of the water protector beside me and feel a strange kinship. It’s almost as if we truly stand shoulder to shoulder, the chill of the North Dakota night sinking into our bones and hundreds of voices raised in visceral chants.

Instead, I live more than half a century too late, breaking curfew and trespassing on a nightclub’s roof while I wait to learn if my life would change.

I blink out of the simulation and the virtual tableau dissolves. The balmy evening rolls around me, but still I shiver from the shock of freezing water and a burning fire in my heart that demands I guard the land my people had fought and died for since America’s inception.

“This is like no altered reality I’ve ever seen,” I confess. “It blows ordinary AR out of the water. It can’t be VR—”

“Because we’re not in a VR-capable room.”

“And I didn’t download an app or software to run it—the basic necessity for any alt-reality whether it’s augmented or virtual so…” I trail off, baffled. “How’d you pull this off?”

Machine bends to scoop up a flat disc the shade of milk and flicks it to me for study. “What you saw was a new type of alt-reality tech I’m calling ‘augmented immersion.’ It takes the portability of AR and combines it with the immersive sensory experience of VR. Once I’d perfected my simulation, it was easy to reproduce it in miniature receivers like that disc.”

I gaze down at Machine’s simdisc. It’s light, plastic, and about the size of a quarter. Easy to miss.

“The trouble,” Machine continues, “was getting the simdisc to communicate with someone’s biochip without the person needing to download an app or special software.”

“I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Neither did I until I started having fun with algorithms.”

Only Machine would use the words “fun” and “algorithms” in the same sentence.

“But there are a half dozen biochip manufacturers out there,” I point out. “Each with their own OS.”

“Exactly. Finding the algorithm that would allow me to access each manufacturer’s firmware was a bitch, no lie. The simdisc emits a signal with my algorithm buried inside. The algorithm transmits my code directly into any standard biochip and voila! You see whatever I’ve programmed.”

“I did more than just see, though,” I insist. “In high-end VR you can sometimes feel sensations like heat or cold, but this was deeper. I felt their emotions, and even my own feelings seemed tied up in their own. None of that’s normal, even for alt-reality.”

Machine beams, clearly pleased with my reaction. “That’s the genius of it! Within range, that bad boy can actually override any chip’s emotional processors. The simulation then self-adjusts to create the emotions and sensations that best suit the piece.”

“You don’t think hacking a biochip’s ability to regulate emotions isn’t too much like emotional assault?”

“C’mon, fam—it’s not like I’d use this against anyone’s will.” Machine activates a voice mod to change his tone and pitch to that of a True American salesman. “Augmented immersion draws on sensory manipulation to cultivate an authentic simulated experience in an organic way.”

I snicker and raise Machine’s simdisc up to catch the moonlight. It looks so unassuming. Hard to imagine that it will revolutionize altered reality. “I take it you want to plant these all around the city? Like street AR?”

“To start. You know, patent the tech, build buzz about augmented immersion, and then use it to bankroll my art.” Machine flexes his fingers, gunmetal grey, and digs a cigarette out of his pocket. His robotic knuckles make a metallic whirring click as he lights it with his thumb. “Eventually, I want to open an exhibit somewhere featuring VR about us. VR the True Americans can’t sanitize.”

Machine eyes the simdisc as if I cradle pure magic between my fingers. “I needed to mark that moment, y’know? As I coded it, I wanted to fuse virtual reality with art and history—our history. I want it so they know, so they feel what our people felt. To be unable to turn away.”

Unable to turn away. I like the sound of that. I roll Machine’s peaceful protest between my index finger and thumb. It’s a quaint ideal, but peaceful protests didn’t stop the water hoses, it doesn’t stop the beatings and homicides.

Lasting change can’t shy away from violence.

“Great idea,” I admit, and mean it. I cradle the simdisc in my palm while a solution to my dilemma percolates. “Mind if I hold onto it for a bit?”

“Keep it. I got another.” Machine exhales a ring of darkness. “And thanks, but we both know it’s a shit idea. No one wants an art exhibit like that—not about us.”

“Not by us,” I correct, slipping my prize into my pocket. “About us ain’t the problem. It’s when we speak our own—”

Behind us, the door we’ve been waiting for opens. My heart lurches. What if I can’t pull this off? The people I’m about to meet don’t entertain fools lightly. One mistake and it’s game over. My organs, my subdermal chip, hell probably my family, would end up as merch on the dark web before I’d even noticed I’d fucked up. That realization alone should make me throw them deuces, sneak back down the fire escape, and dip out.

I take a deep breath and release it. No. I’ve come too far and burned too many bridges to get here. I won’t tolerate failure. Not when I’m finally on the verge of breaking the world.

“This way,” announces a short woman with a lilting Ghanaian accent.

Machine puts out his cig and follows me into the club to rendezvous with the hacktivists Anansi.

•••

The thump of the music’s bass headbutts my kicks as we descend into the building. I recognize the latest hit—don’t they all sound the same after a while? Money, cars, drugs and thots. Violence and respeck. Vee and I’d danced to countless like this one, and would dance to others.

The Ghanaian woman ushers us into an exclusive VIP lounge. The wooden floor is polished to a glassy sheen. Gauzy curtains the shade of smog cordon off little nooks where guests lounge on luxurious creme and white couches. Dim amethyst mood lighting keeps things artistic.

Machine shrugs at the question in my gaze. Are we about to get tossed, our augs sliced and carted off to the highest bidder? The room is empty save for a lean African staring out the one-way floor to ceiling windows at the dance floor below. At our arrival, he touches the sapphire glass. It ripples obsidian, muffling the vibrating reggae beats. The dancing bodies below vanish. When he turns to face us, I notice his eyes. Like Machine, he’s elected to enhance parts of his body with robotics. His ocular implants gleam the yellow of a panther as he studies us.

Our escort tilts her chin to us. “Eshu.”

Eshu reaches into his tailored suit—black on black—and pulls out two white business cards. Passes one to Machine. The other to me.

The cardstock, so expensive it slides like silk against my thumb, is blank. I turn it over. Blank. A flicker of a smile darts across the Ghanaian woman’s lips before she reclines on one of the couches. Eshu leans against the wall, his gaze impassive.

“Gentlemen, if you please.” She raises her own card. In the bruise-purple light, I detect the faint shimmer of ink. Not words—no, nothing so basic, so uncouth as that. I blink and my augments lock on a stylized QR code, beautifully rendered in the silhouette of a spider. I expect a link or prerecorded video to dominate my feed.

Instead, malicious software hacks my interface.

Shit, shit, shit. Any breach in my security systems should have triggered an automatic failsafe that would contain the threat, but it doesn’t seem to be operating. I attempt a manual override but that, too, fails. Panicking, I try to force a reboot but a DDoS attack locks me out. My interface pulsates red in alarm and abruptly crashes.

I stumble backwards, prepared to cut my losses and make a break for it but Machine plants a hand on my arm. Trapped, I follow his gaze.

The VIP lounge was empty.

Now it isn’t.

Six holographic avatars, each a creature out of African mythology, perch in the nooks and crannies of the VIP room. The leader lounges next to our escort on the plush couch.

“Machine. Mal.” The holograph nods to us. His grin stretches wider than his face. “Welcome.”

Damn it. The DDoS attack blackboxes all my tech behind a firewall and effectively hobbles me. No access to augs or my personal server. I can’t even slip a DM to Machine. The only way they could have pulled that off was to use a rootkit. Right now, they’ve simply spliced us into a private alt-reality, but at any moment they could do much, much worse and we’d be helpless to stop them. They could permanently fry our tech, pilfer our servers and raid our financial accounts, or force the biochip to malfunction and cook our insides… The last was a favored method for Yemoja, an Anansi member infamous for her short temper, dangerous whims, and deadly sense of humor.

“Precautions,” assures one avatar, this one looking like a man hewn from iron mesh. Curved blades extend from his shoulders and spine. His steel grey eyes linger on Machine, who dips his chin. He is far calmer than I.

“Good to see you again, Ogun.”

I gape. Ogun is a legend that I’ve been following for years. A hacker who, like all of the Anansi, adapts a moniker of an African deity: Ogun, god of iron, sacrifice and technology. If there is a technical innovation anywhere in the world, Ogun has had a hand in developing it.

Machine nudges me and I close my mouth. Right. We’re here for business, not to fangirl.

Still shaky from the turbulent introduction, I concentrate on the leader, the one who’d first spoken, and offer my thanks. He waves it off with one of his eight hands. His avatar wears the form of a dark skinned, handsome man with long dreads tipped in gold. Bulbous shades hide his eyes. Steel plates feather along his ribs in shades of iridescent blue-black.

“We have gone over your proposal for assistance.” A hand guides a vintage ecig to his lips. He takes a bubbly pull. “The Anansi have questions.”

“The Anansi as in you, personally, or…?”

“You’ll find the interests of Anansi and the Anansi aren’t different.” White steam and the scent of mint fills the air as he exhales. “It’s a tall order, targeting a government as powerful as the one that runs your country.”

I nod, easing into negotiations. “That’s why I need your expertise and experience.”

“That you do.” Anansi’s tone is mild, conversational. “But we exact a high price for our involvement. I’m sure your friend Kaiyote has warned you.”

Machine keeps his expression carefully neutral. It isn’t often that someone refers to him by his secret alias. Kaiyote’s reputation had gained the Anansi’s cooperation. It was up to me avoid getting myself killed, and somehow to convince them to aid my cause.

“I will pay it.”

Anansi chuckles darkly. “We shall see. Yemoja?”

A woman-shaped bubble of water with tendrils of hair that drip like seaweed sashays towards me. Fish swim inside her. Starfish and lichen weave themselves into a vague semblance of a gown.

“Young,” Yemoja announces, ignoring Machine and circling me with slow deliberation. “Idealistic.”

I cut my eyes at her, this sea-woman who moves like the tide. I hate how she scrutinizes me, sizing me up like livestock. My skin crawls from the damp heat of her avatar but I don’t dare back away. Too much rides on this.

“Overthrowing an apartheid necessitates long term strategy,” she gurgles, trailing a wet finger down my cheek, “You must show dedication and cunning. You must be fearless and ruthless. You hardly seem the type. Too much softness, too much indecision about you.”

I would have looked her in the eyes except she doesn’t have any facial features aside from coral forming a mouth. A squid flaps up her collar into her neck and splays its tentacles along her jaw.

“Trust me, I can be as hard and decisive as you need,” I quip.

Machine coughs into his hand. Belatedly, I remember this is the same Yemoja who’d once boiled a man’s semen inside his own testicles because he’d dared to make a pass at her.

I wince and try to backtrack. “I didn’t mean—”

“Boy, please. Don’t make me snatch you,” she interrupts, snorting. To my relief she retreats to Eshu’s side.

“Yemoja’s right to question your decisiveness.” Ogun’s disapproval barrels over me like a naked blade. “You forget, we can see the details of your project—and it’s vague, incomplete, and riddled with illogical script.”

To my chagrin, Ogun yanks the program EMPATHY from my encrypted server and brandishes it before everyone. Holographic columns of raw code hover in the air like strands of DNA. The missing sections look like a rotting, malignant tumor.

My digital soul, bared before the gods.

Machine leans forward, scanning the columns in unabashed interest. I’d never allowed him to glimpse what I’d been feverishly designing and I sure as hell didn’t want him—or anyone else—scrutinizing it before it’s ready.

I curse not being the one in control of my tech. It’s like not having control of my right arm. But instead of lashing out and demanding Ogun end this bullshit, I grit my teeth and bear it.

“I’ve only just recently come across a solution those issues.” I hesitate, cutting my eyes at Machine as he peruses EMPATHY. I don’t feel comfortable going into any more detail around him. Not that I don’t trust him, but he wouldn’t like what I’m thinking of doing and I need him in my corner.

Anansi intuits my dilemma and gives me a conspiratorial wink. He gestures at the holographic image. EMPATHY disappears and some of my tension recedes.

“I know my plan seems dicey, but it’ll work if I can count on access to your—”

“Guerilla tech. Or, as your ‘True Americans’ call it, ‘black market contraband.’” Dry amusement laces Yemoja’s tone.

“Like you said, our government is powerful but you have taken on totalitarian states and won. I know we can be just as successful here. We can help people.”

“Your government considers us terrorists. If we get involved, you will become a hunted man.” Ogun’s expression is as ominous as a thundercloud. “All those who have ever known you will wear a target. Never again will you know peace. It’s not too late to find another—”

I shake my head, thinking of the final time Mar and I set foot in Chang’s. That horrible afternoon, I’d made a vow. “I have to see this through, one way or another.”

Anansi props his chin on two fists while a third idly twists a dread around his six-jointed finger. He scrutinizes me as if he could peel back my skin and examine my thoughts. “And what are you prepared to lose?”

“I’d give my life—”

“Your life?” Anansi barks out a laugh that is anything but mirthful. “Your life is easy, brotha. Being a martyr is easy.” The gods nod in agreement. “The Anansi ask you—how far are you willing to transition from the self you are now? Will you kill for what you believe?” He leans forward, his words slithering out in a spidery hiss. “Should your cause demand it, will you betray those you love? Will you look into their eyes and end their life?”

I suck in a startled breath. Machine is so silent that I can’t hear him breathe, even though he stands less than two feet from me. I don’t dare glance his way for fear of what he’d read in my eyes.

But the Anansi see. They know.

Anansi removes his oversized shades, unveiling four sets of beetle-black eyes. Each bores into me in grim calculation. “Will you damn your soul, Malkom?”

The question drops from his lips like a cement block. Frost crackles down my spine. I stare at the gods assembled before me. Their digitally divine gazes remain implacable. Expectant. I have no doubt that everything, all my months of planning, rides on my answer. I turn over their question.

How serious am I? To implement lasting change, will I betray Mar, my literal other half? Will I sacrifice Vee, the love of my life? Will I murder Machine, my brother who’s had my back since day one?

Never before have I allowed myself to contemplate the messy business of actual social reform.

The Anansi are right. Sacrificing my life is easy; collateral damage is the real problem. Innocent blood marks the true measure of dedication.

What would happen if I turn aside from this dangerous course? Innocents would still die but the future would hold no promise for anything better. Citizen Americans like me would still be forced to lead segregated, second-class lives. Though we’re born in America, we aren’t considered real Americans worthy of respect.

Pets even have more rights than us. Animal abuse like dogfighting carries a mandatory fifteen-year sentence in a federal prison. It isn’t even illegal to kill a Citizen American, especially with justifiable cause—and the murder of CAs is always justifiable. In fact, their killers are often thanked for safeguarding society.

My blood boils at the reminder. Yes, justice for my people is why I must rip this whole system apart. Only then will we be liberated. If I’m unwilling to paint this country red then I might as well forget the word “freedom.”

Freedom. True Americans will do anything to preserve it. I will do anything to acquire it.

Will you damn your soul, Malkom?

I loosen my fingers from the tight fists they’d curled into. Smooth out my grimace. I avoid Machine’s horrified stare. From my pocket, the water protectors in his simdisc wail warnings. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. If I go down this path, there will be no turning back.

Not trusting my voice, I nod. The Ghanaian woman smiles. Ogun shakes his head and Yemoja purses her lips.

Anansi extends an arm with too many joints. Nestled in his palm skitters a spider bot, its mechanical thorax smaller than my fingernail. Yellow sparks of qubits zap along its miniscule body.

“Prove it.”

•••

The advertisement swells over Vee’s brown breast, plunges into her cleavage, and swoons over the other. Problems with your most important Member? Use Viagrix to set the Mood! I’d wondered what it felt like, having advertising scripts crawling over your skin eight hours each day, but Vee only shrugged and said the money was good and she rarely noticed anymore. Her body molds itself to mine; her fingers, tangled in my curls, yank back my head so that her petal soft lips can press against my throat. No lie, it feels good. I like the way we nestle together as if we’d been carved from a single block of ebony.

She tastes like sunlight and freedom and laughter. She tastes like the Viagrix I sure as hell never need with her, but the last thing I want right now is to break into a bank with a hard on.

“You’re stalling,” I prompt.

Square teeth nip the thin flesh beneath my chin before she shoves me against the alley’s stucco wall. Sandwiched between a deli and the advertising agency where Vee works, the narrow alley allows us to meet away from pedestrians’ prying eyes.

“They’re using you,” she retorts.

Script in ghostly white, (Destroy Age with Tymelyss!) creeps down her collarbone and disappears under her nearly transparent pink halter. The Viagrix advertisement slides over her hip and eases toward the waist of her shorts. I force my eyes up the curves of her body until deep brown irises clash with mine. A dagger of afternoon sunlight refracts around her pupils and bathes her ocular augments in a metallic-gold sheen.

“It’s mutual.”

“Mutual? You’re the one taking all the risks, Mal. Your spiders aren’t going to help if the TAs catch you. Those assholes’ll scapegoat you, and then—” Vee floods my vision with gifs, tweets, and vids.

Bodies strewn across concrete, washed grey by blue and white flashing lights. A man, arms in the air, trying to make himself nonthreatening only to be tackled to the floor and then shot six times in the back. Press conferences with solemn law enforcement; force reasonable, the perpetrator evidence why the division between True Americans and Citizen Americans proved necessary, especially when the latter are so prone to violence.

I wave it off. “Look, Vee, Machine’s got my back. Besides, I trust them.”

Okay, that’s a lie. While I trust Machine with my life, I don’t trust the Anansi, not blindly. I’d vetted them in the deep web. I’d sought out mutual contacts. They’re legit. They were legit back before Africa became a united technical powerhouse, and now they are hacktivist canon. The digital boogeymen of cyberspace who can wreck an economy, bring down a government, or change a nation.

Doesn’t mean I trust them, or that they trust me. We each have intentions to prove before we become partners.

“So do you have it or what?” I press.

Vee sucks her teeth and produces a sleek, iridescent card from her bra. “Printed this with the specs your spiders gave me. Pray their schematics are on point.”

I pluck the access card from her hand and lean in for another kiss but she holds me at bay with a finger. I read it in her eyes: I’m a damned fool. This is a bad idea.

She isn’t wrong.

Sure you wanna to do this? Machine’s DM materializes in the lower right of my vision. I peel my gaze from Vee’s retreating sway and make a rude gesture. He sends back an equally rude emoji. Well suit up, asshole.

The vacant building, just across the street from our target, is closed for remodeling. I slip into the last stall of the ladies’ restroom and smirk at the black bag wedged beside the toilet. If TAs are antsy about who uses which bathroom, they’ll go into epileptic shock at the military grade contraband inside my duffel. CAs aren’t supposed to have access to the tech Machine has packed for me. Especially not when it contains the power to transform a black, Choctaw male into a pale-skinned True American.

Digging into the duffel, I pull out an airtight silver canister and unscrew the heavy lid. The nanobots inside look like opalescent glitter that occasionally sparks with forked purple lightning. I shake the nanobots onto my arm and watch as they race up my body. I grit my teeth against the tingling sensation of their movement. It feels like a million cold eyelashes blinking against my skin.

I scrutinize my reflection to make sure the bots, enhancements, and augments are firing on all cylinders. In the mirror, a morose white man studies himself; his steel blue gaze roams over the nanobots that shimmer over the remnants of his street clothes, exchanging them for an impeccable suit pirated from the exclusive site of a respected designer.

“Talk about passing.” The modulator alters my own voice, smoothing its pitch to something cultured and non-threatening. Lightly European—German, maybe.

“Nice, huh?” Machine’s voice rings clearly in my implants. “EMP still fucks ’em up, but the bots recover faster.”

“Let’s hope it’s enough.” I pet Machine’s simdisc like a treasured talisman, reassured that it still rests in my newly formed breast pocket.

Showtime.

Making sure no one sees me leave the vacant building, I cross the street and enter the looming monstrosity that is Dyscre Bank. Its lobby opens up to a massive atrium of designer furniture and modern decor. Clusters of employees in tailored suits and sleek hairstyles march past. They speak in a low, professional hum and clutch paper-thin tablets. Above them bob jellyfish drones, their spindly tentacles chirping every so often as they monitor staff and clients alike.

My mission is simple. Infiltrate the bank, plant Anansi’s spiderbots, get out. Taking a breath to settle my nerves, I pad over to the security console. A pair of assistants at the front desk glance up, but upon seeing yet another chicly dressed man heading for the employee bioscanner, dismiss me. I insert Vee’s key card and step in.

Emerald lasers shoot out of the console, assaulting my pupils as they skim over my body. A nearby jellyfish lowers to scrutinize me. Molded from silicone with a carbon fiber core, the drone looks remarkably like its organic counterpart, except I can see its colorful hardware blinking from inside its umbrella-shaped epidermis. Its processors hum in rhythmic waves. Like AI, bioscans don’t recognize human faces. They map facial features against a database. They measure heart rates, perspiration, breathing. Dyscre’s bioscans go a step further and scan for any unauthorized tech or augments. The access card should help it “overlook” the contraband. If Vee had printed it correctly. If the Anansi’s algorithms are right. If—

Green suddenly bleeds orange. Shit. I’d been holding my breath and hadn’t realized it. Intrigued, the jellyfish drifts close enough to touch. Its tiny cameras iris further open. I force air out of my lungs and unbunch my shoulders. The lasers resume their faint green shimmer. I relax. Ignore the drone in favor of thoughts about Vee’s kisses. About Mar’s goofy laughter. An unbidden question bubbles to the surface.

Will you betray those you love?

My cheek twitches in a guilty spasm. The lasers shift orange.

Easy, man, Machine’s message elbows into my lower vision. This is supposed to be the easy part.

I tamp down on my nerves and wrangle my thoughts into safe blankness. A green halo breaks over me. A second later the console beeps and spits out my card. The drone loses interest and corkscrews up to the third floor.

I’m cleared. The Anansi can be trusted.

I never doubted them.

•••

Under Machine’s expert guidance, I hit each of the Anansi’s targets. Most are corporate private servers ripe with confidential information. Information that—for a nominal finder’s fee—can be brokered to an ambitious rival. I linger near each server and wait for a pair of Anansi’s spiders to skitter inside the white towers. From his bunker across the city, Machine monitors the incoming flood of data.

“In and transmitting. How many spiders are left?”

I check the suit’s inner pocket. “A little less than a dozen.”

“Should be enough. Next vault.”

I return to the hallway. Though a few employees and security personnel roam the hall, none seem the wiser to the intruder in their midst, and I’m not inclined to alert them. Keeping my expression neutral, I nod to people only if they nod to me. Mostly they ignore me.

What would it be like to wear this skin regularly? Could I slip it on like a comfortable sweater and go shopping? Store clerks wouldn’t tail me; I wouldn’t need to pay upfront for a meal at Denny’s. My humanity would be the default. My innocence assumed. I’d finally be free to be ordinary.

But is ordinary what I want to be?

“You missed the turn,” Machine alerts.

“Yeah, about that…”

My interface flickers as I shift the overlay of Dyscre Bank’s blueprints to show a red elevator that leads down to a restricted subbasement. “Is that what I think it is?” When Machine doesn’t immediately respond, I grin.

“Just stick with the plan, Mal,” he hedges.

“That’s the problem.” I alter my course to head for the elevator. “I’ve been sticking to the plan.”

“And things have been going smoothly.”

“C’mon, you know the Anansi aren’t interested in corporate secrets, not really. They want to see what I can do, and what I can do is get them access to some government servers.”

“There’s a reason why even the Anansi haven’t cracked the Feds’ off-grid servers. The layers of security, the levels of encryptions—it’s damn near hack proof.”

“Maybe, but we won’t know if we don’t try. This is what they’re really after. If not, why choose Dyscre Bank in the first place—a bank that just happens to have the only federal servers for hundreds of miles?”

Machine rattles off a list of possibilities, but I shrug them aside. As soon as the Anansi had challenged me to raid Dyscre Bank, I knew what I would do. What Machine doesn’t know is that it isn’t because of the Anansi that I want these servers. They’ll benefit, sure, but in order for me to fight oppression, I need covert access to the methodology of the oppressors. What better way to bring down a corrupt system than by using its own proprietary information against it?

I don’t share this with Machine. Instead I settle for a version of the truth. “I need to do this and you know I can’t do it without you. I’m begging you, as my best friend, my brother. Help me.”

A pause. Then: “Fine, you manipulative bastard.”

Inside me, the guilt twists a little tighter. I’m one of the only people Machine trusts, and I know just how to exploit that trust. I remind myself it’s for the greater good. No one will give us freedom. We have to take it. I will do whatever is necessary to emancipate my people. I just hope it doesn’t require me stepping over the body of my best friend.

I turn my attention to our next obstacle. Instead of a drone or another AI, a True American monitors the restricted elevator. From the man’s stiff posture and hard visage, my bet is military—probably former Marine. Crew cut hair, expensive suit that strains against his muscular bulk, square jaw on which he whets his collection of camp knives. He embodies the cliché corporate thug—except for his eyes. Sharp, they look eager to ferret out bullshit.

Or idealistic revolutionaries masquerading as corporate thieves.

“Fuuuuuck,” Machine drawls. “Just pretend you’re lost and turn around.

The heat of Militarybro’s stare singes me but he doesn’t rise from his security station. I keep my expression bored and meet his unblinking gaze without flinching. Three monitors glow with feral blue light but I can’t make out the cycling images. I tap my right wrist against the security station’s scanner and wait for it to analyze my subdermal chip and grant me clearance.

Only I don’t have a subdermal chip—not a registered one, anyway.

And I sure as hell don’t have clearance.

The scanner is taking too long and I suspect Militarybro, already wary, is two seconds shy of depositing a bullet into my skull. My heart wants to stab me in the throat—repeatedly—but I force my breathing to stay steady. Force contempt into my eyes—this part isn’t hard—and cock a brow.

“You seem on edge,” I say.

“Haven’t seen you before.”

“Never good if you do.”

That catches him off guard. Good. “Why is that, exactly?”

My smirk widens into a conspiratorial grin. “I only show up when there is an issue that requires…discretion.”

The scanner flashes green, finding a match, and the elevator doors hiss apart. In my eardrums, Machine curses and kicks various objects in a mixture of exasperation and celebration. Though miles away, I can practically feel the stress steaming off him. Machine is the best hacker in the country. He was the reason the Anansi would see me and now he’s just gained me access to a veritable treasure trove of information.

Militarybro inspects me once more, this time committing me to memory. That chills me down to my toes. Usually at the mention of discretion, people lower their eyes, mollified and eager to be done with whatever dirty business had landed in their laps.

Not this guy.

Don’t like how he’s looking at you, man. He’s gonna cause trouble, Machine warns, echoing my gut.

No use for it. I’m not going to back down now. “What’s your name?”

Militarybro’s gaze drops back down to his circle of monitors. “Hans Gruber, sir.”

The sir is laced with so much contempt that if I really were working on behalf of a high-level government executive, I’d have him fired. Instead, I stroll inside the elevator as if I haven’t a care in the universe.

Machine shouts a warning. I whirl just in time to see Gruber flick a tiny, handheld dart in my direction. Too fast. I can’t react.

The dart worms into my shoulder. Needle sharp pain stabs up my collarbone. A blue nimbus of electromagnetic energy flares around me, disrupting the bots and rocking me backward. My head slams against the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth.

My vision sizzles white static. Bots rain like glass around me, so tiny they flicker like sparks. My disguise sluices away.

The elevator chimes and its doors seal away Gruber’s triumphant smirk.

My legs give out and I slide down the wall onto my ass. I try desperately to hold onto consciousness. I can’t afford to black out, not now, but already darkness folds over me, bringing with it summer heat, shrieks of laughter, and Five-Spice powder.

•••

I peered over the sea of heads that seethed along the street. Scent and noise melded together into a paste that smelled of grease, sounded of drums, and reminded me of heaven. August sunlight beat down, tangling around brightly colored “MelangeFest” banners. Tourists crowded vendors’ stalls, slurping bowls of fresh gumbo despite the heat and haggling over jewelry “handcrafted” by real Native Americans, but in reality, just generic patterns downloaded and printed from the net.

“Seriously, Malkom.” Mar nudged me with her shoulder and lowered her designer shades. “I’m going to pee right now if we don’t find a place, and I’m not using a portable.”

“Chang’s is right down the block.”

My twin followed my gaze and pursed her lips. “Could use one of those bubble green tea things while we’re there.”

We snaked through the throngs of people enjoying the festival.

“Lot more TAs here than usual,” Mar observed.

“Ironic, celebrating a festival of diversity when they’re passing laws suppressing it.”

“Don’t start.”

“What?”

“The revolutionary shit. You sound like dad.”

“And you sound like mom.”

She shrugged at the old argument. “The world’s the way it is and nothing you or I do will change it. The sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.”

My stomach rumbled at the familiar punch of Chinese that wafted from the open doors of Chang’s. Not much had changed since we were kids. Jem Chang was the first guy in the neighborhood to use recycled materials to print his furniture. Ugly, blocky affairs but sturdy and comfortable. Nothing like the new aged, sleeker patterns downloaded nowadays. Occasionally, the dated tech of Chang’s oversized menu boards still glitched out with 404 errors instead of prices for Kung Pao Chicken. Kung Pao Chicken that Mr. Chang used to slip to Mar and I when we’d pass by after school.

The modest restaurant was packed but not too busy. I waved to Pablo behind the counter.

“The usual, Mal?”

“Yep. Pork fried rice, fried prawns. Mar wants a bubble tea. Green?”

“Green,” she confirmed.

Pablo spared Mar an assessing look. Sharing my imposing height, she was identical to me in nearly every way. Her beaded and braided hair roped around her head in an intricate style both elegant and outlandish. She’d always preferred flowy bohemian dresses with bangles and charms stacked up to her elbows. Mar propped her shades on her head and matched Pablo’s gaze until he was forced to tap a customer’s wrist to finalize the transaction and present his food.

“You look great, Mar. I mean that. Really.”

Mar blessed him with a genuine smile. It’d been such a long time since I’d seen it that I wanted to fist bump Pablo. It’d taken convincing to pry Mar from her textbooks and sociology papers to attend the festival. She weaved her way towards the ladies’ restroom and then paused, eyeing the sign. Women. Paying customers only.

“Bubble tea, ’member? We’re paying customers, same as anyone.”

Her dark eyes flashed at me, bemused. “Same as anyone, huh?” But she bumped the door with a rounded hip and strutted inside.

I shouldered the men’s restroom open. The two stalls, a forgettable blue grey, were taken. I claimed an empty urinal between two TAs. We ignored each other. I did my business and was scrubbing pink soap suds between my fingers when my heart missed a beat, then another.

I paused, tepid water sloshing over my skin. Panic that wasn’t mine gurgled in my stomach and I immediately recognized its source. Mar?

Fear—chased by a flare of anger and a wash of shame—reverberated through our link. I shot her another DM. Mar, what’s—”

You’re wrong, Mal. I’m not like everyone else. They’ll never allow me to be. Mar’s live feed augmented my vision.

A single dark eye glared between the crack in her stall. A door rattled with the pounding of a fist.

“I told you, I’m almost done.” The feed shook for a moment. Mar adjusted the fluttering bohemian layers of her dress, pulling together her dignity like chunks of battered plate armor. The toilet hissed as it flushed. Mar could barely unlatch the stall door before Chang’s supervisor loomed in her face.

Foregoing the dryer, I shoved past annoyed TAs and kicked open the men’s door. It barely missed someone waddling inside. Mar’s livestream continued.

“This restroom is for women.”

“And I’m a woman.” Mar tried to step around the man to reach the sink.

He blocked her, lip curled. I recognized him. Adam. One of Mr. Chang’s sons. He couldn’t have known Mar was even in there unless…Pablo.

“Really?” Adam continued, “Then show me your ID. Papers, too.”

Mar stiffened before asking with exaggerated courtesy, “May I at least wash my hands first?”

Though the other women in the bathroom had long cleared out, they rubbernecked in the hall and barricaded me from my twin. Visiting TAs whispered behind palms and whipped out sleek devices; a couple of irises flickered metallic as augments triggered, recording the unfolding drama. Mar would be all over social media and forums now. At least until I could get Machine to scrub her presence.

“If you need to wash your hands, use the men’s restroom. You know you can’t be in here, Marten. It’s against the law.”

Mar stared at Adam as if he were speaking a foreign language and she hadn’t activated her translator mod. Her stupor fueled my rage. I buried it.

Not yet. Later.

Adam rubbed his jaw, discomfited. “Look, Da’s fond of you so we’ll forget this, but next time I’ll have to call the—”

I killed the feed and elbowed past gawking TAs. Mar didn’t protest when I lowered her shades to hide her tears, tucked her against me and headed for the dining area. The crowd parted like sticky-sweet soy sauce. I tugged on Mar’s right earlobe so that her biochip would filter out their hateful whispers. Their susurrations—freak, pervert, he shoulda called the cops—rolled off Mar and stuck to me.

I ignored the burning stares of everyone in Chang’s. Rage coiled dragon-hot in me but the hotter my anger burned, the colder Mar’s dejection became.

What do you want to do? I ask. I say Molotov cocktail.

Mar inhaled deeply. Held it. I could sense her soul-numbing fatigue coruscating between despair and shame. Part of me’d like nothing more, she confessed, exhaling in a bitter huff. But that won’t make a difference. What’s wrong is empathy, Mal. People have no compassion for one another—and you can’t force them to, either. Even if we burned this place down. We’d have to burn down this entire country.

Pablo, head bowed, busied himself taking orders. As we marched past, he muttered a heartfelt apology but we were out the door. Mar’s bubble tea wept condensation onto the counter.

•••

A wave of nausea crests up my throat. The memory ebbs away, replaced by a persistent and annoying buzzing. It sounds suspiciously like…Machine shouting?

My interface sluggishly flickers back online. Distortion crinkles the error messages that flash in shades of sepia. I barely discern Machine’s frenzied messages as they scroll from lips to brow.

We’re so screwed.

So screwed.

Mal? Mal! Get up!

Get. The fuck. Up.

He’s trying to call for backup. I’m running interference, but you have ten minutes.

At most.

Bots are online. Get out of there.

My augs shudder. My hand twitches as I yank the dart out of my shoulder. No wider than my finger and nearly as long, it glitters with the last of the EMP charge. Disgusted, I start to toss it aside, but remember it has my blood on it. Likely has a tracer embedded in it, too. I pocket it.

My shoulder throbs and my chest heaves. I glare at my reflection in the elevator’s polished steel. The bots are hustling to reassemble my disguise—desperate to erase the sin of blackness and morph it into something more palatable—but the damage is done. He’d gotten a glimpse of me, but with luck, not enough for a firm description.

Machine continues cussing me out. “Should have just stuck to the fucking plan, but no...”

I ignore the escape route my best friend brandishes. Yemoja’s taunt rattles in my head. Too much softness about you. I zero in on the schematic. I have just enough time for one government server, maybe two.

“These are the holy grail. We’ll never get another crack at them unless you want to stroll on down here. Just keep him busy long as you can.”

The doors part, revealing a bank of servers that glow white, blue and green. No Militarybros here, only mechs and they are none the wiser. Resembling sleek panthers, they patrol the catwalks above, their featureless faces snuffling. They perform systematic bioscans, hunting for body temperatures and movement that doesn’t belong. If they find an intruder, tasers launch from their tails and the entire bank goes on alert.

Machine overrides all their programming—at least for the time being—and blocks Hans from communicating to them. As long as I don’t act out of the ordinary, I’ll seem like a typical meatsuit.

“How’d you guess?” I ask to steady my nerves.

“Bout Hans?” comes Machine’s distracted response. “Name rang a bell.”

A brief summary of an archaic film, Die Hard, pops up on my interface. The movie’s main villain, Hans Gruber, is a German terrorist trying to rob an affluent bank.

Well isn’t Militarybro a clever bastard.

I fish Machine’s simdisc from my pocket and explain my plan. Immediately, I sense his reluctance. If we do this, it would ruin his life’s work. I’d be using his simdisc, with its countless hours of frustration, ingenuity, and artistry, to aid in a felony. He’d never be able to patent his revolutionary augmented immersion technology, nor would he be able to use it to fund his amazing artwork. Not without implicating himself.

It’s too much to ask, but there isn’t another way. At least not one where I can still gift myself the government servers. And a selfish part of me can admit the ugly truth of it: I would eagerly destroy much more than his life’s work if it means accomplishing my objective.

My breath hitches. When did I become such an asshole? When did I become that guy who would throw his loved ones under a train if it meant getting to the next station? When this is over, will I even be able to look at myself in the eye?

“Run it.” Resentment threads through Machine’s voice but when he next speaks, I detect nothing but resignation. “But I can’t promise I’ll be able to get you out.”

I box away my remorse and shame and flex my fingers.

“Let’s do this.”

•••

“So you say you’re headed to Chang’s, huh?” the police officer reiterates, his tone thick with skepticism. Somewhere sirens wail. A few pedestrians cross the street to avoid us. Smart. “Where were you before that?”

“Work. Day laborer.”

The officer’s cheeks tighten. I suspect he’s glaring at me through narrowed eyes but it’s hard to tell anything beyond the gleam of his mirror shades.

“Then you wouldn’t happen to know anything about an incident at Dyscre Bank, would you?”

Shit. Machine’s text box elbows into my vision. Vee only speaks in punctuation. My nerves threaten to turn state’s evidence. I swallow. Cling to calm.

“Like I said, I’m just out to get my food and head home.” Impatience bubbles into my voice. “May I take my papers and go?”

The officer’s stare feels like a physical weight. The weight from men such as him scrutinizing men such as me settles across my collar like an iron yoke. The dance we dance is one measured in centuries and steeped in blood. His hand drifts towards the holster at his hip.

“A man was killed. A true patriot.” He doesn’t budge from across his car, but neither does his hand lift from the butt of his gun. “And you happen to match the description of the perp.”

I take a deep breath. Ignore the ping of Machine’s panicked texts. I stare at my reflection in the officer’s mirror shades as sweat rolls down my back. The sirens grow louder, closer.

Despite Machine’s efforts, Gruber had gotten out a description of me, but it was vague. Race, gender, height. Still, a TA had been murdered. Innocent black blood will be spilled tonight—all because of me.

You willing to damn your soul, Malkom?

Guilt gnaws at my conscience and it is a minor miracle that my voice remains neutral so the lie can slither out in a smooth drawl. “Don’t know nothing ’bout that. Am I under arrest, then?”

“You understand the seriousness of this, don’t you, boy?”

My shoulders tense. I force them to loosen.

“Yeah.”

The officer grunts. He studies me a long time and I don’t move. I radiate weary innocence. Finally, his hand slides away from his hip. “I don’t want to see you out here.”

He turns away. His door pops open. Air hisses out of my lungs and my knees shake with relief. I reach for my papers, eager to scoop them up and get the hell outta dodge while Vee and Machine argue over which safe house I should hit up, how long I should lie low—

Until their chatboxes suddenly evaporate.

An icy tendril of dread skates up my ribs. That cop couldn’t have hacked my shit, could he?

A video clip smothers my feed.

In it, Militarybro exits the elevator, his gun drawn. He pauses for a moment, his head turning left and right, shocked at the assembled people who chant and yell in a wintery North Dakota night. Water protectors surround him, each whispering stories of the sheriff’s department. Hans make his way towards the no man’s land separating protesters and tanks. He can’t risk shooting and damaging the expensive rows of equipment so every few seconds he whirls or his arm swipes at a hologram to make sure it isn’t real.

I see myself peel away from the water protector that I’d felt a special kinship with when I first experienced Machine’s sim. The protector watches as I skulk closer to my enemy, hunting him like the Sioux used to hunt buffalo across the plains. The mechs gaze down, indifferent. Gruber creeps forward on cat-silent feet.

He steps over a tiny white disc, his gun trained on a woman wrapped in a heavy coat, her middle finger raised towards the military. He doesn’t sense me behind him. My fingers caress the EMP dart. I raise it. The movement must have alerted him because he whirls. I don’t hesitate. There is no softness, only instinct and black rage. I bury the dart in his eye.

The video zooms in on Gruber falling. Clutching his face, blood spurts from his socket. I wrestle away his gun and loom over him, watching him writhe. Around me, water protectors yell for peace. Precious water saturates the oil-rich ground.

I could let him go. Incapacitate him, get what I need, and leave.

Instead, I aim.

A black spider fills the screen. Words stream from its thorax in a gossamer-fine web.

Dedication. Cunning. Fearless. Ruthless. You have proven your worth.

The web of words evaporate, replaced by another set. You have our assistance. And we offer a gift—

The spider begins to evaporate, but not before dropping a bombshell:

—to our newest member.

My breath catches. Newest member? I lean against the police car’s hood, sure my legs are going to give out. When I’d first petitioned the Anansi for aid, I’d never envisioned joining their ranks. It’s one thing to have the Anansi’s backing, but to actually be a member, to become a digital god? The possibilities are endless.

My feed crackles back to life. Machine and Vee’s minimized chatboxes blink for attention. In the center of my interface beckons a familiar program.

The cop, already half inside his cruiser, peers through the windshield. “You got a problem, boy?”

“Let it go.” Machine’s placating voice, whispering through my implants, startles. “You already accomplished what you set out to do. Get your papers and meet me at the safehouse.”

Abandoning the chat, Vee joins in on Machine’s call. “I’m almost at the spot now. Let’s regroup and celebrate. We actually pulled it off.”

“Hey, boy!” The officer snaps his fingers to get my attention. “You deaf? I said you got a problem?”

At his words, that slow heat that had been building inside me for years sparks into a sudden inferno. I embrace the fire, welcome it. Let it sear away my flesh and transform me.

I straighten and match his glare with one of my own. “No problem, not anymore.”

Alarmed, the officer struggles to free his weapon.

I unleash OSOOSI.exe.

The effect is instantaneous. The pedestrians across the street collapse. The struggling officer freezes. His body twitches once before he falls face first into his steering wheel. His horn trumpets across the night until I shove him back. I remove his shades and peer into his slack face. His eyes are wide with fear and confusion. Slowly his lids lower and I know OSOOSI has sent him into a deep sleep.

“Mal.” Machine’s face pops up on my interface. Vee peers over his shoulder. They both look unnerved. “What’s happening?”

“It’s starting,” I murmur.

For months, Mar’s words have lurked in my mind like a persistent virus. Lasting change could never succeed because we’ve discarded our compassion in favor of apathy. Inspired by our discussion, I devised a way to forcibly rekindle that empathy.

In one window I stream surveillance vids, stats, and data. In another I monitor OSOOSI’s progress. Like a rootkit, it overrides all of a biochip’s functions, including its ability to manipulate emotions. Much like when the Anansi hijacked my own biochip, my program now controls them. Every person with a chip connected to the servers that Anansi’s spiderbots have hacked falls into a deep stupor. It will only last a few minutes, but I make sure to blast all those True Americans with raw, digitized emotions.

I make sure they feel the humiliation and shame that Mar felt when she tried to use a public restroom. I make sure they feel my impotent rage at being forced to present papers on command and adhere to a curfew. I make sure they feel Machine’s sorrow as he paints in code his tribe’s struggle for respect both for the Earth and themselves.

I make sure they feel the fear Citizen Americans feel every day they will themselves out of bed.

“Oh my God,” Vee whispers, her eyes brimming with tears as she watches my feed. Bodies prostrate on the ground. A girl screaming out of a window for help. Baffled authorities following panicked tweets. “What have you done?”

“What’s necessary for them to see and understand.” I take a deep breath and steady myself for the storm that’s about to break around me. I only have another couple of minutes before people begin waking up, and I need to get this last hurdle over with.

“Do you recognize it, Machine?”

He stares at me blankly and then looks away into his own bank of monitors. My stomach twists at the series of emotions that shuttle across my best friend’s face. Confusion, disbelief, hurt and finally betrayal.

“Augmented immersion.” Machine’s voice is hollow. “It wasn’t enough for you to ruin my chances of ever using my simdisc, you had to go and steal my invention, too?”

Vee glances from him to me. “Mal? Is this true?”

I look away from their accusing gazes. I never wanted it to go down this way, but I knew how this would end as soon as Machine flicked me his simdisc. Its potential was just too great to be wasted on art exhibits about peaceful protests. Especially when its innovative tech is suited for so much more.

“I’m sorry.”

“Save it,” Machine snaps. “Just fuck off, Mal.”

He kills the vid. Vee texts me, warning me to stay away from her, and she, too, disconnects.

For a few precious moments I rest my forehead on the cruiser’s roof and listen to the deafening silence of my friends’ absence. The Anansi warned me that my idealistic cause would destroy everything around me and now that I stand amidst the ruins of my old life, I hope it’s worth it.

I check on the police officer. Tears drip down his splotchy cheeks and stain his uniform. Good.

It’s time to set flame to the world.

Using the Anansi’s guerrilla tech, I hijack every live stream I can reach. I blast my message across all social media platforms and whisper it into the helpless minds of those True Americans whose biochips I temporarily control.

My proclamation transitions me from Malkom to Osoosi, Avenger of the Accused and Those Seeking Justice.

The United States of True Americans’ most hunted and hated domestic terrorist.

A deep schism infects this nation, one you will not allow to fade. For too long, you’ve dismissed the experiences of millions in this country. You’ve averted your eyes from Our plight. You expect Us to wither away in silent misery, but no. As long as We draw breath, you will suffer with Us.

You will feel what We feel.

You will bleed when We bleed.

All the experiences you visit upon Us, We will visit upon you. That is Our gift. You will change, you will rekindle your empathy…or We shall dismantle, brick-by-brick, this country We built for you, and reforge it into a nation truly based on freedom and equality for all.

This is only Our beginning.

ABOUT OZZIE M. GARTRELL

Ozzie M. Gartrell is a librarian, writer, gamer, and anime nerd. She can be found actively avoiding people somewhere north of Seattle. Follow her on Twitter @OzzieGartrell.

ALIENS VISIT THE CARIBBEAN

By Terese Mason Pierre

Darling, we are massive:

Creatures made of echoes and

Quickened flames

Glow bright,

Have no fear of your heat

Or their orbit; you will

Bear their eyes like so much

Broken glass. Yes, they will cut you,

Threaten to spill the last of your

Pain, drain you of your vulnerability

And joy, make you debris

To build their worlds from.

You can feel the shards,

Each new scar a new kind of grief but

You will be fine;

You are aflame after all.

Melt them down and set them smooth,

Make marbles to show to your little ones

Tell them how you survived,

How you burned your fear

And shone bright enough to light whole worlds.

When your time is done

And your final bursts ripple across our universe

We will join your echoes to ours

They are a song to carry

To the next

And the next

And the

ABOUT TERESE MASON PIERRE

Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor and organizer. Her work has appeared in The Hart House Review, Occulum Journal, and Longleaf Review, among others. She is the poetry editor of Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative and surrealism literature and art magazine, and a co-host of Shab-e She’r, a poetry reading series that emphasises diversity in all forms. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

SPECIAL THANKS TO THIS QUARTER’S DONORS

Andrew Komza, Jackie Dubill, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Anonymous #1, Robert Tienken, Aaron Radney, Dahlia Fisch, Martha Park, Aria Miles, Andrew Thorpe, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Janelle Alexander, Denise Shawl, Alisa Williams, Lisa Bradley, Kristen Carter, Alicia Aho, Marc Criley, Rashid Darden, Ashli Telli, Maurice Broaddus, Virginia Attaway, Pedro Fragoso, Crystal Huff, Jade Wilburn, Brenda Patterson, Glorimar Medina, Julie Reeser,

and Anonymous #2.

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