Issue #30

Two hours and twenty-seven minutes ago, you killed a mermaid.

Blood drips from your clenched fist and the wooden door in front of you opens before you have a chance to knock. A man glares at you from behind a pristine pair of bone-rimmed lenses. Yellow light behind him casts him in shadow and you can barely see his facial expression.

“What is it?” The man’s voice is nasal, the kind Tochi would have despised. “I’m busy.”

You throw the gyara at his feet and smile a little when he recoils from the splatter of blood that threatens to reach his suede boots.

“Are you mad?” he shouts. Then the man peers closer at what you threw and his eyes widen to fit his glasses. He shuts the door so fast you have no time to beg. Now your bone-to-be is trapped behind his door.

Blind rage turns your vision hazy and you bang relentlessly on the door. Whether or not he likes it, that bone will be in your body today. You did not spend hours seducing and killing just be thwarted by some rich sót.

The hilt of her knife juts out of Offiong’s chest. The Bone Chief — blessed be his name, Lord of Idem and Voice of the Gods Undying! Her father was not a man of excessive motion, not when he could move armies of corpses without lifting a finger. Afem half expects him to sit up and take his place at the head of the house, but she knows he will not. She made sure of that.

The one secret Cecilia’s dad hadn’t shared with her was why he had killed himself. That was the first betrayal she had to endure during her childhood. When whispered between Cecilia and her father, stories and secrets were one and the same. He confided tales from long ago that started in Scotland before being washed up on the shores of the Carolinas. Bizarre things like how some Scotsmen mingled with their slaves and had children who ebbed and flowed with the currents like seals. Stories of fur coats that could transform and allow you to breathe underwater. In human form the selkies worked in the fields or in the big house. Whips scarred their brown skin if they disobeyed their masters. At night they wore their coats and shackles as they became seal-like creatures that watched the ocean from rolling hills. Their wails announced the approaching Guineamen. The oblong slave ships veered away from the selkies’ mournful cries. The chains of their human cargo clanked in unison with the chains that tethered the selkies to the shore.

Though ill-advised and shameful, it wasn’t Deion’s fault that at the same time the lie

crossed his lips, his mother crossed over, effectively tying the vow to her grave. He’d lied like he had so many times before, with innocent eyes and open, forgiving hands. Ready to welcome and reassure Sierra back into the deceitful fold. He’d sworn up and down, and yes, on his mother, that he wasn’t lying. Sierra could ask his homeboys if she wanted, but didn’t she trust him?

And against her better nature, she had. She worried about the ugly paranoia lounging throughout her thoughts. The craziness that had corrupted their relationship looped in her mind and she found herself betraying her beloved. It wouldn’t be until a long time later that she realized that the root of the corruption hadn’t been doubting Deion, but rather doubting herself. It was a sooner time later that she was shrewdly awakened to never trust Deion again when an angry crimson phantom stormed into her bedroom.

I hunt my last chikiriki into a building complex that used to be a mall. My boots make hollow whispers over the brown tiles. Many of the shops have been broken into, glass windows completely smashed through and shelves knocked over by looters. I try to imagine how this place might have looked before the Falling, with people milling about with colourful plastic bags and grocery carts.

Now the hallways are dark, and smell of dust and ash and wet mould.

“Buchi, heads up! I think the chikiriki is coming your way!”

The party leader, Temi’s voice cuts into my helmet’s speakers like a jolt of electricity. I plant my feet on the floor and hold my breath, my eyes searching the darkness with the aid of the halos of light from my suit’s lamps. Perspiration crawls down my neck. In the silence, I am suddenly struck by how wide the corridor is. The dark corners where my suit lamps cannot illuminate. How alone I am in this darkness because Temi wanted us to cover more ground, and drive the chikiriki — if we encounter it — towards the others.

Avery’s right shoulder aches, has been aching for a few minutes, but she commands her arm to continue stroking and her legs to continue kicking. She propels herself and Dora through the bitter-salt ocean. Dora, outfitted in the porpoise life jacket Trent bought her, sits astride her hot dog float, her tiny, pudgy fingers clenching the handles so hard it turns her knuckles white. The silver shine of the novelty coin Trent got Dora — now her “lucky quarter,” though the strange coral image is no true coinage — peeks from under her fingers.

Avery withholds a sigh. It was Trent’s idea for Dora to use the “lucky quarter” to help face her fears. The coin would’ve been safer in a lanyard around Dora’s neck, but she refused. Too itchy. So now Avery prays Dora will keep hold of the thing and avoid another tantrum. One thing Avery and Trent agree on is it’s important for Dora to get used to the water and work toward proper swim lessons. But only Mommy is suitable right now, and so for three days straight, Avery’s taken Dora out on the (Trent-purchased) float. At least he’d blown the damn thing up himself.