Day 29: Where The Skies Are Always Black

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 29 Prompt

An unknown person sends you, from Egypt, a box containing a rock etched with hieroglyphics. - Writing.Com

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 25: Jaws of a Storm

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 25 Prompt:

C. S. Lewis used a wardrobe, J. M. Barrie used the second star to the right, and Lewis Carroll used a rabbit hole - each a gateway to another world. This week, pick an object that is important to you and transform  it into a portal to an alternative world. Write a story about someone discovering the portal and adjusting to life where everything is foreign. Take into consideration where this secret passage is located and what it feels like to pass through it. - PW.Org

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 13: The One Without the Fangs

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 13 Prompt:
Write a story about a breed of vampires who exhibit a strong aversion to (human) blood. Yet feed on something else which is just as fatal to humans as blood-sucking. — Akpan

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 12: Sharp Edge of Reality

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 12 Prompt:
Ah, back home and time to relax. Long weeks are brutal. Is that the television you hear? Well you haven’t been home all day so you decide to check it out, thinking you left it on. As you enter the room you see the television is indeed on. And you’re already sitting there watching it. What’s going on here? — WritersDigest.Com

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 11: Stuck in a Flawed Groove

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 11 Prompts:
You sit at the same coffee shop sipping vanilla lattes watching the world go by, one day a female barista asks you want you think about as you watch the people walk by, you respond with 'Do you wanna know?' — REDDIT

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 10: Only a Fool Believes He's Dreaming Before He Wakes Up

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 10 Prompts:

While you dig the soil for a flower-bed, you find a magical dragon bone. — Writing.Com

You had that dream again. The one where the beast with the drooping hands and wicked fangs stares you down from your window. Except the windows open this time—and you’re awake! What happens next? — WritersDigest.Com

Akpan

Day 6: Chalk-Writing in a Storm

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 6 Prompts:
You are a private investigator who can travel through time and to parallel universes. You are hired by people who want their "what if?" scenarios answered. — REDDIT

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 10: I, Akam

Today’s Prompt: Write about five things you would do to entertain yourself if you did not see a soul for 7 days.

— Courtesy: CreativeWritingPrompts.Com

Word Count: 1,510

            “You go ahead and survive in there for 7 days and you can walk away a free man. All debts cancelled.”

It was a large building past its glory days. It could have been an apartment or a hostel once. But it had long since served its purpose and its ghost defaced the landscape like an unsightly landmark. All the inlets and outlets had been boarded up not with wood but welded with metal. The main entrance provided the only access into the building. My captors pushed me inside, slammed the doors shut and reinforced it with chains. Even if there really was another way out, I knew death alone awaited him on the other side of the steel doors.

            The men who dropped him off had given me this odd challenge as the only alternative besides immediate death. All I had left was a prayer—which is the direct English interpretation of my name, Akam (/arkham/), anyway.

            “Survive 7 days in there and you walk,” they told me and drove off, heading south of my location. I had spotted one or two security cameras mounted within the perimeter. A single path led to the house and the weeds prowled it. I stepped into the wide corridor of the structure.

            “Piece of cake,” I said. “There’s bound to be a master bedroom in this place with a giant-sized double bed somewhere in here. All I gatto do is find it.”

Find it, I would but I, Akam was about to learn a vital lesson about beds; they weren’t always vacant and especially, not always inviting even in an abandoned house. I walked along the corridors, feeling the walls, working at my first tour of the place—my new residence.

            “Since I’m gonna be hanging around for 7 whole days, I better acquaint myself with the settings. Wouldn’t want to get lost in the dark,” I said.

I spent the first day in that place of death doing a tour and trying the doors which to my amazement, were mostly locked. I tried kicking some in but they won’t budge. One however, yielded but it was stuffed with cleaning and maintenance tools. I’d found the broom closet. Great, I thought. Now I’ll set to work and get this place cleaned out in 7 days. I shut the door in disgust and wandered on searching for the master bedroom. By sunset, it had become apparent I, Akam would spend the night in the corridors on the cold floor. I never found the master bedroom that day.

The second day, I resumed my ‘touring’ as I have tagged it. Sheez, I thought. I’m not gonna spend 7 whole days sleeping in the corridors on this cold tiles. This is not some kind of prison, is it?

While trying the locks on one of the top floor rooms, I opened the door to a large bedroom. It was a wicked mistake cause I spent the day entertaining myself in a most unusual way. Of course, it was the master bedroom. I suspected it was flanked by some kind of office/study because there was a view of the lake and yes, there was a giant-size double bed. Big, nice, cozy and almost sparkling clean if you ignored the layer of dust, that is. It was almost like the previous owners left in a hurry. A body lay on the bed. It was guarded by a dog whose skin clung to its bones. The body was a skeleton but it wasn’t my problem, the dog was. The bones probably, belonged to a vagrant who came here to pass time and then passed on in his sleep. A thought occurred to me which rearranged my psyche, What if these bones once shared the same fate which have been tossed into my bosom? But as it was, the guy wasn’t available to take questions. The gnarl of the dog threw me out of my reverie. Suppertime, that gnarl seemed to say and, what took you so long?

            “I’m just gonna turn around and walk away and you can forget you ever saw me cause I’m gonna do the same thing.” I booked for the door.

The skinniest dog I’d ever seen in my life had other plans. It made a dash for me while I hung around. I spent the entire day fighting off the dog and got bit several times but eventually, I put it out of its misery. I was spent. I’d gone two days without a meal and water. I fell on the floor beside the dog and slept off. I awoke by midnight but it was too dark to see anything and to do much else but walk into walls so I slept some more.

On the morning of the third day, I awoke to a drip-drip sound. A storm raged outside. Rainwater poured in through the roof, no surprise there. I took off my clothes and washed where the leaking was heavy and then I found a bowl in the broom closet, rinsed out the muck and fetched a bowlful of rainwater. That would serve me as drinking water for a few days, I thought. But the rain wouldn’t let up. It continued to pour through the ceiling. The water came up and there was a little flood in that place about ankle-deep. I spent the day in bed with the bones which I eventually pushed off into the rising water. Thank God, the power supply to the house had been cut off or I definitely will not be writing this story. By the fourth day, I was way too famished to do anything, I had almost emptied the bowl which contained the rainwater. I went downstairs but couldn’t beyond the last four steps. Everything that wasn’t under water floated. I wrote a quick mental reminder, ‘Don’t come down here in the dark.’ I think if I had to choose, I’d pick death by starvation over drowning any day. I spent much of Day Four sweeping leftover flood out of the master bedroom. It was tough. I had gone four days without a meal. But I did it just to while away time and to keep from thinking too much about food.

There was no rain on Day 5 but there was plenty of sunshine. Way too tired and racked out of my mind to notice, I went around that room tapping the walls. I can’t tell what exactly I was looking for or even if I was looking for anything at all, until I came on a hollow sound. I thrust my weight into it and heaved. A low creaking gave way to a loud crack! and the wall ceded. A gap appeared and as I pushed further I saw what it was; a secret portal. On the other side was voila! The office I anticipated earlier. There was a paraffin lamp on the study table. I found a matchbox in the top drawer. When I lit the lamp I spotted a book lying closed on the edge of the table. I noticed the odd hand writing on the cover and I considered it a record book of some kind but a closer examination threw a jump into me.

WARNING: DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS PAGE IF PRONE TO HEART ATTACKS

I have no record of heart attacks in my family; I didn’t think the warning applied to me. I opened the book. It didn’t take long to see the need for the warning.

            ‘Night after night, it came. At first, it came for the children, scaring and teasing them and we thought it was the monster stories their parents told them at bedtime that gave them a scare. We forbade those stories after the screams which were becoming louder wouldn’t cease. It did little to improve the situation. Then one morning, after a night session of terrible, hair-raising shrieks, we found a child’s bed empty. We checked under his bed and there he was whimpering with pain. “He said he’s coming for me, said he’d take me away next time. He had claws.” We tried our best to put it out of his mind by telling him it was a nightmare. The next day, it came and took Danny away; ripped him to shreds, it did.’

One by one, whatever it was took them away. It came a time they couldn’t stand the sight of the corpse and they boarded up the rooms with the corpse inside. I can’t tell what exactly this place used to be in its time but I, Akam have taken the liberty to bring this book out into the open so the world may know the evil that took place here probably, centuries before. Much of this might have been mixed into local legend, perhaps. I don’t have much time to live much longer; the rabies from the dog bite is taking its fatal toll with no medication and all so I remind of the book writer’s warning: This is not for the faint of heart.

Eneh Akpan

June 10th, 2014

Day 8: King's Law

Today’s Prompt: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude,” said Martin Luther King Jr. imagine a character who needs to forgive someone. Who does he or she need to forgive? What was the nature of the injury? What were its implications? Does forgiveness come easily to your character or is retaliation a more natural impulse? Does your character try and fail to forgive initially? See how your character’s desire to forgive creates obstacles and ultimately, fuels your plot.

— Courtesy: PW.Org

Word Count: 1,152

            “He ought to have known better. It’s supposed to be his job.”

No answer.

            “Damn, I should have killed him on the spot. I should, too.”

            “It would have increased the fatality by one. That’s bad arithmetic.”

            “It’s good equation, though. It is too, considering who’s involved. Leaving him alive creates a chemical imbalance.”

He rolled off the bed and walked around the room in an arc heaving heavy sighs. He turned around abruptly, retraced his steps and sat on the edge of the bed.

            “You can’t resolve this issue with a mathematical formula.”

            “My point,” he said. “Is I didn’t fulfill my obligations to him.” He stabbed the pendant lying in a tangle beside the bedside lamp.

            “Let it rest now.” She reached out and touched his hand. “Come to bed.”

He took her hand in his but kept his back turned to her.

            “You know what, everyday I remember that cussed day, every night the memory of it weighs down on me, and I feel like I played the role of the actor who forgot his lines at the defining moment of the play. The jerk who ended the play before it truly ended.”

She remained quiet. She’d heard those lines rehashed over and over again these past months she might as well live in an echo chamber.

            “And they say, I’m supposed to let it go.” He was off the bed again. “Just turn off the emotion, kill the memory. He was a part of my…” He reconsidered. “Our lives. Do you know how it hurts every time I check in his bedroom and he’s not there? Do you know how that takes it out on my feelings? I miss the non-stop racket that Home Theater of his produced. I miss 2Pac, Twista the whole lot of ‘em noisemakers, I’ll give the world to hear a skit performed by that noisy rapper… what’d he call the fella when I approached him about his taste of music?”

            “Lil’ John?”

            “Gotta be him. Lil’ John that should have been long gone. I miss the rich stew of complicated confusion which flowed from his room and rocked the foundations of this house.”

            “He’s gone,” she said. “Someday, you’re gonna have to face it on life’s terms. Why not today?”

            “The manic son of a bitch who thrust this misery on us is out there on the streets free as air. And all I have… all I have is a memory.” He pounded his fist into the wall.

            “Torturing yourself ain’t bringing him back. Quiet down a bit.” She extended her hand. “Come to bed.”

He loosened up a little bit and climbed into bed beside her. She reached under the sheets and held his hand. They both lay there each on his or her side and stared through the ceiling—they weren’t really looking at it. Their minds drifted off to some other place—a not-so-distant-past—to the time when a teenager, their little boy kicked football all over their yard and made a real mess of the neighbors flowers.

            The young man who had shared his dreams with them, the same with whom they’d both shared their hopes and joys. He’d been the strength of their marriage, a kind of breathing license. And though, he was gone, their union was not weakened by his absence but each half of the couple knew they’d both lost a chunk of their real selves. An essence they might never recover.

            “You know, sometimes, I wake up in the nighttime and I hear him as clear as the noise his home theater made while he was here, laughing and kicking that over-sized ball of his all over the house. The laughter wafts into the room like breeze through the drapes. Sometimes, I wake up and rush to the window but it’s mostly to erase the misconception; to prove to myself it’s all a dream. I’m not going crazy, you think?” He snuffled.

            “I hear him too,” she said in a whisper.

            “You?” He was propped up on his elbow, studying her. He reached out and plucked off the lone tear breaching the edge of her eyelid. She was crying too.

            “I never hear the bus plunge through the fence, tires screeching, coming for him,” he said.

            “Me too. Those are the best memories I have of him. I know I wasn’t home when it happened but this memory I’d love to keep. Forever.” She sat up on the bed and wiped his tears with the sleeve of her pajamas.

            “If we could have him back. For one day. It would settle every issue.”

            “We could, you know?”

He gazed at her but the point was lost on him. “I don’t get it,” he said, his voice gruff as he struggled with emotion overflow.

            “Forgiveness. Then every time we remember him. Every time, we hear him play football in the yard (if we would be hearing from him anymore after forgiveness has done its work) it would be as it really ought to be. No memory of death; of a DUI driver behind the wheels of a bus beating a path through the fence of the house rushing in for our son, knocking him into the ground like a hard tackle, dragging him several meters across the lawn then spitting him out like mangled flesh. Left for dead, because the driver was probably, too blitzed to assess the critical situation in time. No memory of bitterness and no time for it either. Who wants bitterness after you’ve experienced release? Not me. Forgiveness can achieve that level of freedom.”

He fixed his gaze on her, through her. And after staring for roughly, the length of eternity, he lay back and dropped his head on his pillow. She almost gave up hope that this night might be a rehash of every other night’s drama, when his voice drifted to her in undertones.

            “Did you say something?”

            “I said I’ll think about it.”

It was the reassurance she needed. It was enough. Not long after she dozed off.

He doused the bedside lamp. Then he fell asleep not because he wanted to but his eyelids defied motor control and slammed shut and of course, consciousness needed his break.

In the middle of the night, he woke to the sound of a ball bouncing off the wall. He crept out of bed and went to the window. His son was there as clear as day, playing football. He glanced up at him and waved, he waved back and hurried outside. When he got to the spot where his son had stood kicking the round leather stuff against the wall, he was gone. The ball, however, had been left behind.

            “Goodbye, son,” he said. He picked up the ball and walked back inside but not before saying the magic word,

            “I forgive. By all that is just and true, I forgive.”

222222222222222

I am aware that not one of the characters in this story bears a proper name. It’s absolutely intentional.

Eneh Akpan

June 8th, 2014

Day 7: Hard Drive

Today’s Prompt: “Checking Hard Drive… File Corrupt.” With a deadline looming, my heart stopped.

— Courtesy: Writing.Com

Word Count: 1,723

‘CHECKING HARD DRIVE…’

Koko stared at the screen of her inbuilt computer, the sense of urgency charged the air. The street was alive with people but Koko knew better to be wary cause this was 2057 where people had ceased to be just people. Computers ruled the age and people had become Files. Night had covered the world with deceptive ease while she buried herself in work.

‘CHECKING HARD DRIVE…’

            “Shit, this is going to be a long night,” she said aloud to no one in particular. “Can’t you just figure out who is real and which ones are ghosts of their former selves?” she asked the artificial intelligence installed in her Jeep. Just when she decided to spin her wheels, she probably had nothing to fear, her computer shattered her hasty conclusion with a ‘BONG!’

In 2057, that sound had become the next thing to the Final Trumpet Sound. Sitting in her Jeep, alone in the dark of night, the computerized female voice inserted terror in Koko.

‘CHECKING HARD DRIVE’ traded places with ‘virus detected’ and got traded for ‘file corrupt.’

Blue dots filled the computer screen. That signified one thing: she was in danger. She was stuck for alternative routes. Plus, beating the deadline seemed somewhere in the realm of impossible. The blue dots converged cued by an invisible, diabolic director. Then they began to move in on her in slow measured tempo acting out their cemetery choreography.

            Koko’s heart stopped. Only for the breadth of a second. In this tainted oasis, she couldn’t afford the luxury of static. The beasts detected human presence in the atmosphere and streamed toward the scent, gnarling like prototype mad dogs. Mad dogs who traded barks for bites.

‘VIRUS DETECTED.’ The computerized female voice declared, ‘ENTIRE COMMUNITY INFECTED.’

            “Like hell, I don’t already know that.” She killed the engine and waited in the charged up silence.

Once, while discussing this kind of situation at the office, long before the plague blew itself out of proportion, someone had made a bogus announcement.

            “Zombies can’t detect humans if they can keep their heads and stand still,” Zach (she just happened to remember his name) said.

            “Does that interpret as a zombie can’t bite a sleeping person unless they snore or twitch in their sleep?” some guy probably, Afia said. Everyone laughed it off but Koko wanted to hear more, see if the talk amounted to anything.

            “My neighbor tried it.” Zach wasn’t going to get put off so easily. “He told me they just walked around him like he didn’t even exist. He said one of those things pulled up short for a couple of seconds to sniff the air around him but moved on and didn’t bother him at all.”

            “Where’s your neighbor now,” Luke asked.

            “He got bit.”

            “Aw, shucks a zombified mutha can’t teach shit on how to stay clean.” That was Ray.

            “But that was just last week, he told me the story a week before that.”

            “Quit it, buddy. You’re beginning to sound like a wicked stepmother caught in the act,” Afia said.

            “Once is luck, twice the exception and third time makes the rule. I say, those sorry ass zombified fellas were probably, overfed,” Ray said.

            “Nobody ever heard of sated zombies. Somebody help me out here.”

No help had come for Zach that day and for Koko, it became clear the gist would prove nowhere near expedient. But here she was stuck in the midst of several hundred ugly-looking zombies parked in the middle of nowhere with no hope of rescue. She sat there waiting in the darkness while several hundred zombies tried to sniff her out of the night air.

            “If zombies can’t detect static humans,” Tammy recalled someone saying. “Is that why they try to sniff us out, instead? Heard they survive by their sense of smell and that the scent of human blood is what draws them out.”

Zach, it appeared, had not given much thought to this theory before narrating his story. He left the question hanging, kicking and dying probably, like the Philippines and Koreans like their dogs. Tammy watched the scene playing outside through her windshield until she heard the thunder behind her. The zombies had bashed in the glass on her back window and on the heels of that the tinkle of glass sprayed all over the backseat of her Jeep. Now bare hands slammed into her windshield trying to duplicate the rear window damage. She twisted her head and caught a glimpse of several zombies trying to squeeze themselves all at once, into the hole they smashed into her back window. Her mental safety mechanism flushed adrenaline to her brain. Koko broke her paralysis.

            “Like hell zombies can’t detect static humans. Up yours, Zach.” She turned on the ignition, revved the engine. The zombies didn’t seem to notice. She leaned on the horn. It shattered the sinister silence of the sunset. Yet, the beasts kept up their attack.

            “Guess, I’m gon’ have to run you slow foots over,” she said. Koko released the horn and leaned her weight on the pedal, flooring it. The Jeep roared to life and leaped into the air shrugging off a bunch of undeads like a maid shaking dust off an old rug. Smell of burning rubber filled the air and then the Jeep was off painting zombies all over the asphalt.

‘IMMEDIATE VICINITY CONTAMINATED.’ The computerized female voice said in a shrill. ‘CODE: RED. CODE: RED. SECURED PERIMETER BREACHED.’

            “What now?” Koko said and then she saw through her rearview. All the zombies including the ones that clove to the Jeep’s roof fell off when the vehicle picked up speed. Except one. One of the several that clung to the back window had made it halfway through the shattered glass. It inched its way forward clawing at the leather on the backseat soon it would take a seat for a spin. “Oh, Lawd.”

‘VIRUS INFECTION IMMINENT,’ her vehicle’s artificial intelligence squealed. ‘VIRUS INFECTION IMMINENT. CONTAMINATION IMMINENT. ABANDON VEHICLE. WARNING. WARNING. DANGER. DANGER. ABANDON VEHICLE.’

“The heck I’m abandoning this vehicle.” Koko threw a glance over her shoulder and caught sight of the foul being reaching for her. She stole a whiff of its body odor. “Oh, what the… don’t you shitheads have enough courtesy to wash?” she stepped on the brake hard. The flesh-eater flumped into the backseat. No sooner had its back touched the leather than it sprang up grabbing for Koko again. Behind her, not far off in the distance, the rest of the zombie community gave chase. “Abandon vehicle, then what? Sprint from here to the Refuge City? The hell I want to do that for.” ‘Refuge Cities’ were selected ‘quarantined’ areas where non-contaminated folks lived. The gates closed by 1900hrs and for Koko, with a deadline looming, this was a fight to win all fights.

            “If I can’t get rid of one zombie how do I outrun a few hundred?” She stepped on the gas and the zombie was again thrust into the leather of the backseat. She turned and gave it the eye. “We can do this all night long, Mr. Zombie or you can hit the road. Either way, nobody’s taking one bite out of Mama’s girl. Not tonight, not ever. You hear me, you freaking animal?”

She was going to hit the brakes again and throw the zombie off balance when dead fingers brushed the skin of her neck, groping for purchase. She grabbed at it with her left hand and tried to jerk it off. Another set of fingers came round the left flank of the headrest and seized her throat. She yanked her head forward but the fingers were strong and won’t give. Her head was pulled back, slammed into and compressed against the headrest. Gently at first and then as the pain in her head grew she realized her assailant intended to pull her head through the headrest into the backseat. The complicated process hurt her windpipe. She sank into deep darkness and the Jeep rolled off the road until it got trapped on a low brick fence. She was losing the fight, giving in gradually to the tireless zombie power when she felt the monster’s fetid breath on her neck. It was coming in for the world in-famous zombie bite. Koko lashed out with her remaining strength and clawed out one of the vile creature’s eyes it didn’t seem to notice. She lashed out a second time and the thing caught her hand. It released the pressure on her neck a little. It was the only license she needed.

She successfully retrieved her fingers from the zombie and was catching her breath in gasps and gags when the monster lashed out at her and chewed a chunk of her headrest.

            “That may have been my ear you big dumb fool.” The other zombies were gaining on her she saw through the busted back window, to her utter dismay. Koko grabbed at the head restraint on the passenger seat, tugged the steel legs out of its sockets. She shoved as hard as her strength permitted her and the enemy fell back for a second.

            “I’m done playing with you. This ends now.”

‘Always go for the head, that’s their weakest point.’ She recalled someone saying about killing zombies.

When the zombie lurched at her more furious than ever, Koko was waiting and armed. She drove the steel points of the head restraint into the monster’s head. It sank in hard and fast, cracking skull and puncturing the remaining good eye. One steel leg, the one that went through the good eye came out on the other side of its head.

It fell back into the backseat for the final time. A dead undead.

            “Be a good boy now and have your beauty sleep,” she said.

Koko had just enough time to step out of the vehicle and drag out the excess weight. She got back inside the confines of her Jeep just in time to hear the first zombie slam its palms into her trunk lid.

‘VIRUS DELETED. FILE FIXED. NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED.’ The computerized female voice said.

            “As it should be,” she said and gunned the motor pulling away from the ruined brick wall. She stepped on the gas and made the zombies take her dust.

Eneh Akpan

June 7th, 2014

Day 3: The Comic Book Generation

Today’s Prompt: It’s your 18th birthday and, upon it, your parents deliver some pretty shocking news: You’re not really human. They admit that they’ve been covering up the fact that you are actually a (fill in the blank). After hearing the news you still decide to go to school, but this school day is different than all your school days past, especially when it’s revealed to others what you truly are.

— Courtesy: WritersDigest.Com

Word Count: 1,406

            “I can’t make things pop out of thin air if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I could feel their eyes crawling all over me like a million needles and pins.

            “So what exactly do you do, then?” Alicia asked.

            “Maybe, he can spin a web like Spiderman.” Rebecca suggested.

There were a few giggles after that last statement.

            “Well…” I said.

            “Maybe, he can dance standing on his head.” That was Dick.

This announcement was followed by an uproar.

            “I’ve not really attempted that one but yeah, I think, maybe, I could if I gave it a try,” I said.

            “Don’t think. Just do it,” Dick said.

            “You don’t think before breathing, do you?” Rebecca.

            “Or before falling in love,” said a kid with a low punk haircut whom we called Groovy.

That got everybody in the classroom roaring with laughter. Even Amen, my best buddy, was slamming his fist into his desk again and again bellowing a belly laugh.

            “Sshhhh…..”

And the silence held sway for a moment.

Just then some kid in the front seat flung a ball made from crumpled paper at me. I caught if off the air and made a paper aircraft out of it in the space of 5 seconds and tossed it. It glided in an arc round the room and returned to me. I snatched it out of the air.

The silence weighed down on my eardrums like a dead weight. I felt the eyes of the entire class trained on me. As far as I was concerned, I knew I had done something awesome but if you asked me to create a chemical formula to explain the process, you’d be barking up the wrong tree.

            “Dude, how on earth did you do that?” Dick whose eyes bulged with surprise asked.

            “I didn’t think. I just did it,” said I.

            “Do it again,” Shorty said.

            “I can’t.” I lied. “I don’t know how it happened.” Which was true. “Reflexes, I guess.” Which was both the truth and a lie.

            “Reflexes, my butt,” said Ukwak (/who quack/) who we called Steel (which was the English word for his name to begin with). He was the biggest kid in class. He stepped to the front of the class and stepped up to me. He threw a one-two punch to my mid-section but I was the wind and got out of his way before he pulled the first punch. He wasn’t expecting it and lost his balance. He slammed his bulk into the chalk board and crumpled to the floor in a heap. I walked up to him and picked him up with one hand, my left hand. But that isn’t the issue. I’m a leftie, anyway. He weighed a ton and for me to have picked him up in front of all those kids the way I did… I wasn’t some skinny wimpy kid but then I wasn’t your regular muscles. I was a normal guy who fulfilled the basic dietary obligations but Steel was huge in every implication of the word. I felt my classmates’ jaws drop to the floor.

Today’s my 18th birthday. It’s the day every ideal I ever stood for got threatened. My parents just broke the news to me that I ain’t exactly human. And that means I’m not family. That’s how I see it, though. They didn’t exactly spit it out on such terms. They just said I wasn’t really their kid; I was the product of some weird experiment. Something that happened probably, eighteen years from date and which they both participated in. they used to be scientists, they said. But things changed. They don’t regret having me as their kid and they don’t see any critical consequences in my future. “You can’t go to school, today,” they said. “You might be made the butt of their joke; that can damage your personal confidence forever.”

            “But we live in a different age; a time that’s the opposite of what yours used to be even though it is a spin-off of that Dark Age, we have learned and thrived where you and your generation have failed.”

And that’s how I picked up my bag and strolled off to school. As they had predicted, this school day was totally different but my parents would never have believed what happened if they didn’t know lying wasn’t my thing.

            Rumor, being what it is, had gone ahead of me and spilled its guts to the entire school. I was up to my neck in questions before I made the school gate. Confusion is nothing new. I set myself to be at my best when I was confronted officially. Standing in front of my classmates and taking all these tests is just the beginning of the journey. As sure as word spreads like wild fire, the whole school would be made aware of my abilities before school day is out. I’m thinking it might mean goodbye to a formal education. But then again, who can say for sure?

When I turned 18, all my senses plus one got heightened. There I stood in front of my classmates as the object of their attention and I dared not say no to their requests.

            “Hey! Clay, catch this!” and three boys, Ron, Mike, and Akam tossed three items all to the front of the class but at different angles. I darted from corner to corner snatching stuff out of the air by the time I got to the third object, it almost touched the floor. Akam had aimed low. It was his mobile phone.

            “What were you thinking,” I said. “I could have missed.”

            “You didn’t,” Akam said, grinning like the smirk was plastered on his face.

            “So, what are you going to do if you got someone killed running around with all that power?”

I hadn’t really thought about that before then and the question hit me like blow aimed at my crotches.

            “I’m not gonna kill anybody, Sarah, okay?”

            “Can you fly, Clay?” Janis was the class’ reporter and she looked every bit of it with the pen and paper on her desk and she throwing the question with her officious voice.

            “If I put my back to it, maybe, I can.”

            “But what if you accidentally off somebody, Clay, what do you think they’d do to you?” That was Sarah again.

            “For starters, my creators programmed Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics into me.”

            “So, you’re saying we got nothing to be scared of?”

            “Does that make you a robot?”

            “No, what I am is a Golem. Asimov coined the word, my creators used it.” I fetched a marker and scrawled on the board. “By Asimov’s standards,” I said and then scribbled this: robot = machine + computer.

            “A ‘goal ‘em’ what in the world does that mean?” That was Janis.

I scribbled the word on the board G-O-L-E-M. It’s an Hebrew word for ‘unformed substance’. Quoting Asimov, ‘A clay object, no matter how much it might resemble a human being is an unformed substance (the Hebrew word for it is ‘Golem’).” The scientist, Carver Washington invented an organic malleable substance, that possessed the ability to stretch and reshape itself like the human body but since he couldn’t breathe life into it, he called it Golem. I was formed out of that substance.”

            “How did you get the life then?” Janis again.

            “Somebody took up Asimov on his fictional positronic brain and succeeded in creating a computerized brain that could function on its own with little or no human interference and that was the making of me. I guess I’m different from a robot because I’m not all machine but in some weird sense, flesh and computer; a Golem. I hope you guys don’t hate me for what I am?”

            “Hate you, seriously, dude?” It was Steel. “The world can use a real superhero for a change.”

With the entire classroom matched round and gave me the right hand of fellowship or the right hug of fellowship depending on gender of who was involved.

See, times have changed. If Superman was alive today he’d be a real hero, loved by everyone. We are the generation who think queer is cool. We grew up with simulated computer games, and science fiction flicks, we grew up with comics. We are fully aware of our potentials and we welcome and embrace change. Who are we exactly?

            We are The Comic Book Generation.

Eneh Akpan

June 3rd, 2014