Day 28: Make Me An Offer I Can't Refuse

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 28 Prompt:

You die and go to heaven only to find that Mars is indeed heaven and Ray Bradbury is God in Residence. You and the legend strike a deal in which he offers you another shot at life on Earth to make up for all the wrongs you've done but only one score. What's the condition and do you accept or not? - Akpan

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 22: The Hell Between

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 22 Prompt:

In more recent tales, there's been a shift from voodoo/hoodoo to virus-created zombies. Write a scene where scientists obtain blood samples from a voodoo reincarnated man (a zombie) but something goes terribly wrong during research in a lab. - Akpan

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 16: Considering the Alternative

IntShoWriMo 2015: Day 16 Prompt:

Two objects sit before you: a golden hammer and a cup of what seems to be water. A note on the wall says: "Go ahead, make your choice. The outcome will decide whether you're ready or not." Ready for what? What is this place? Why these objects? Which will you choose? - WritersDigest.Com

Word Count: 2k+

Akpan

Day 9: My Friend, Mark

Today’s Prompt: You receive a mysterious email and the subject line reads “Everything you know is a lie.” You open the email and read further: “Act calm as not to alert anyone, but everyone around you is not who they say they are. You need to quietly get out of there and meet me at the spot where you had your first kiss. You know the place. My name is Mark.”

— Courtesy: WritersDigest.Com

Word Count: 1,770

I want to tell you about my friend, Mark. But let’s get something straight from the onset. ‘First Kiss’ isn’t exactly what it sounds like and Mark who is the reason I’m telling this story to begin with, is not the guy’s real name. And I am not in the secret service or anything so lay aside every sentiment you may have for folks in that department. Let’s get back to Mark cause this story is about him. Him not me, forget everything you ever heard those wannabe shrinks say. Those folks couldn’t wriggle free of a wet toilet tissue trammel to begin with.

            …What? You wanna know how I ended up eating roaches for dinner? That’s what I’m getting at. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said these past minutes?

            ‘First Kiss’ was what we called our rite of induction. We belonged to this cult, you see?

            …No it aint the kind of cult where you had to off people just to make an appearance. It was totally legit stuff.

            …How come I’m stuck here if it was totally legit? Are you for real? Who’s telling this story, anyway? Are you an undercover shrink or something? You even stink like one.

            …You’re not? Let’s get something straight, I’ll tell my story my way or it’s no way.

            Like I said, it was totally legit. We committed no crimes. Check your records see if you’ll find a crime by The Mark Gang. The only clause is we were all boys. Four boys, five, if you counted Mark.

            Let’s get to the highpoints of the story. There were school folks who believed Mark was an alien.

            …No. Not an illegal immigrant kind of thing. We never knew who his parents were, though.

            I’m talking about an extraterrestrial, the Stephen Spielberg kind. He probably flew in from one of the Kepler cluster of planets all these young charismatic set of astronauts keep probing. He looked the type, too?

            …Did we find any evidence to buttress the fact? Plenty.

            First, one of the kids in our cult Etok (/hey toke/), I believe it was had this issue with Mark about his gender and he called him out, too.

            “How come I never seen you go on a date?” Etok said. It was the truth Mark rarely ever chatted up a girl and he forbade us to bring girls to meetings even a simple group gathering.

            …What did we discuss in the meetings? Why would I tell you? Those were group secrets and we swore to never tell. Would you tell me if I asked what you guys discussed in your locker rooms or what you and your wife do…

            …Okay. I’ll get on with it. But quit the silly questions cause there are special moments you couldn’t draw out of me with a chainfall.

            And Mark tells this guy, “I got nothing against the female type. I’m just being cautious.”

            “Cautious? About what?” Etok shot back. Now that I’ve got time to think about it I think Etok was trying to get Mark to like the female type because he had this sister he was…

            …Yeah, right. The story. It’s always the story.

            …How come all of a sudden, I changed my mind and wanna come right out into the open?

            Isn’t it obvious? At my age, I got nothing more to look forward to. What do I gatto lose? But it’s the same story I’ve been telling all my life. The question you ought to be asking, officer is why the hell didn’t they believe me?

            …Why’d I pick you? I guess, it’s cause I like you. I like the way you take care in passing my meal to me through that little opening, taking care it don’t tip over and spill all over the tray. I’ll tell you something, if it wasn’t for the bars between us, I’d give you a bear hug.

            …Okay. Okay, guess you’re right no need getting mushy. I’d probably end up messing up your uniform, anyway.

            …Yeah, back to Mark. The architect of my misery.

            So Etok tells Mark, “And it’s not just that. How come you never change while we hang around? How come we always gatto leave before you do?” Etok was right on that count, too. Mark had to be alone in the bathroom to change or take a leak.

            “Quit your sniveling,” Mark said. You could see the rage flare up in his eyes but he kept his voice in check.

            “Why? Am I touching a raw nerve? Is that it?” Etok didn’t know when to quit.

The air around Mark boiled. It happened so fast; one moment it was there and the next, poof! Gone with the wind. I thought I imagined it but when I and the other members of the cult collated data, it appeared they’d spotted it too.

            When I think about it, I think we must have been under a spell to have kept hanging around Mark after that experience. And to top it all, we set up a little challenge. It was actually, Etok’s idea. He died, you know? Not Mark, Etok. A week after Mark took him up on his offer; they dragged him out from under a healthy Dogonyaro tree. There’d been no storm, no rain but the tree had come down while Etok passed by. How do you explain such a load of crap to a rational mind?

            …Was Mark responsible? I’m not saying he was but… things like that don’t just happen.

            …What was the challenge about? Now that’s the kind of question you ought to be asking. Mark had agreed to meet a blind date at one of our boy’s home, inside his bedroom. You know how that kind of thing goes. Well, the girl came. I took one look at her and I can’t say I didn’t wish I had Mark’s luck.

            Mark was in the bedroom waiting and the girl went in to him. It wasn’t quite 60 seconds and a guttural scream cut through the silence in the house. We hurried into the room, of course. Everything looked as it should be in a bedroom; the girl half-naked and Mark in his boxers. The girl sat on the edge of the bed staring at the wall, completely lost like she didn’t know where she was. The incident almost got us expelled from school. I remember when the school shrink brought the girl around and she narrated her journey through hell cause that’s what it was. She recalled coming into the house, the walk to the bedroom; seeing Mark on the bed in his boxers, taking off her clothes. Ask her to explain what happened beyond that and she goes vague.

            …Right, the email. I had to tell you about the sender so you don’t get things all muddled up. I don’t wanna go over this again so you know the kind of guy we’re dealing with.

            The years spun out and all the boys in that cult split. Some left the country and it amazed me to a great degree when I heard those investigators say they caught up with them and questioned them and they all denied ever knowing a boy named Mark. You see, I worked at technological outfit when I got that email from Mark. I had all but forgotten about him. The last time I saw or heard from him was Graduation Day. That was it. After that we cut off communication. It’s amazing how he found me cause I never left a forwarding address.

            …What’d the email say? Mark had stated, ‘Everyone around you is not who they say they are.’ He asked me to meet him where I had my ‘First Kiss’ you know what that means by now where it is that’s what I’ve not mentioned. It’s a valley on the edge of the high school we both attended. We’d found an alternate route in there that doesn’t lead through the school gates.

            …What’d he say when I met him? He told me he’d been on my trail for years, told me he knew everything about me and that he was sent from… guess what?

            …No. not the secret service. Haven’t you been listening? From planet Koldovia.

            …Where’s that? Ask the boys at NASA. I can’t help you in that department.

            He said he’d been tracking me cause his galaxy had an interest in me. The evil political party, of course. He’d been sent to protect me and The Mark Cult was all a front.

            …How does that involve the people at my workplace? Patience, my friend. I’ll get to that, shortly. He showed me a device. It looked strangely familiar at first. Then I remembered. We had invented new technology at the office. It was an automatic controlling device, which could act as a home appliance remote control and automobile remote control. You could get around almost anything electronics at the click of a button. Sounds like fun, han?

            …How did Mark come by it? I asked him the same question and he said, “It’s alien technology, our own technology—from Koldovia. The guys at your office are about to introduce alien technology into your world and start a colony. It’s going to be an underground work and then Earth’s gonna be under their control.”

            …Officer, do I look homicidal? I mean, not in this uniform. So what I objected to the technology from the start? do you suppose I could kill to prove a point?

            Your guys said on the day the explosion at the office occurred that it was reported I left work early but I was out visiting an old friend, Mark. Mark said those guys were all aliens—extraterrestrials. Mark said he could make them all disappear at the click of a button and I thought why bother the Government when you can offer your country a service free of charge? And I told Mark, “Make it happen.”

            He clicked the red button on the device…

            …What happened? Nothing. I went home after that and your guys picked me up the next morning on charges of mass murder. They said I had the office all wired up with explosives that they found the triggering device in my house with my fingerprints on it. Last time I checked aliens don’t leave fingerprints.

            ….So what they found the triggering device in my house. I don’t remember. Mark could have given it to me for safe keeping. But I didn’t kill anybody. Mark did. But you bet your life they were all ETs because Mark never lies.

Eneh Akpan

June 9th, 2014

Day 5: The Enterprise

Today’s Prompt: “My business is to create,” wrote William Blake. This week, write a story whose protagonist is also in a creative enterprise. Your character can be an artist, or he or she can be involved in a field your typical reader may not initially think of as creative. Try to find and describe this creative impulse.

— Courtesy: PW.Org

Word Count: 1,544

It was five in the evening and the feasting was done. Me and Reuben had grabbed a rattan chair each and walked off to the bank of the river a few meters behind his house. We took glass cups, a bottle filled with water and a little table for entertainment. The evening air was fresh and cool; a perfect culture for a serious conversation.

            “What do you guys do down where you said you worked?”

 I took a deep breath and said, “The Enterprise?”

            “Yeah, that. What are you up to?”

I cleared my throat. “I am the Creative Director.”

            “Break that down into chunks I can gobble in one swallow.”

            “I create stuff and I have all authority in decision making.”

            “You’ve lost me for the second or third time in as many minutes.”

I looked at him and spoke one word I knew he’d understand. “Art.”

            “I’d have come to ruin towing that line,” he said. “I tried it often even with you standing close by doing your own thing. Remember the times we came by these same waters as kids to paint the scenery?”

I nodded.

            “You, you were always the gifted hands in the family. Always.” His face congealed in a scowl. “How did you drift so far apart from the promising kid we all believed in, Markus?”

I swallowed and even though my mouth was empty, a lump slid down my throat like XL bitter-leaf-flavored pills.

            “Called and said you got a fine job and we was happy for you. Said you ‘created’ stuff and we believed you were a genius of some sort and beamed with pride everywhere we went…”

Reuben sniffed on his inhaler. He always had one on him whether he caught a cold or not. God knows why.

            “’Kay, I give up. I can’t narrate your own story to you it’s like preaching to the darn choir. So help me out. I want to know what you did. Don’t spit it like some god darn official report. Spin the yarn as simple as simple does without making it sound like a ball of confusion.” He sniffed some more on his inhaler. He sank in his rattan chair. ‘Your turn’ that gesture seemed to say.

            “‘The Enterprise’ wasn’t that big an organization if big represents the area of land covered. But it had men of power twirling round its little finger.

            “What we did… what the world thought we did was produce art. What we were involved with was poles apart, like a seahorse passing for a land horse. Of course, there was an element of truth in all the ‘art’ talk but that was about as far as we were willing to wager. We got orders from folks for exquisite and original artwork and they got what they wanted sealed and delivered. A scientist created some chemical substance which I mixed into my paint. I started using the stuff on pigmy monkeys, you know what those are?”

He dismissed the question with a flick of his hand.

            “I poured my passion into my art, creating grotesque body art on those monkeys. After it dried it solidified its surface so when I painted on the faces of the monkeys, their faces took the shape of whatever I painted. It was a temporary thing but good enough to fool anyone. The Enterprise had caught on to it and hired my services.”

            “So you were on to it before they hired your services?”

I shrugged.

            “Let’s clear the air on something. What was the nature of these services?”

            “Remolded faces to do odd jobs for ‘The Enterprise.’”

            “You helped con acts get away with a little more ease than they afforded without your art?”

I ignored his question. “Then came the day I was given the big job. It involved a lot of risks but I knew I had gone in too deep to turn around and walk out on them. So I played along.

            “I had to become a visiting Evangelist to fit into my role. I used the paint on my face and set the alarm to go off so it didn’t wear off while I was stuck in there. We got a van and painted some crosses and books lying open to signify the Holy Book on the body then we drove down to location. We’ve booked an appointment early on and so they were expecting us. We got the Chief Warden’s approval and I got an escort, one of the penitentiary wardens to take me to the designated cell. He was going to hang around while I preached to the condemned man just in case he tried to attack me but I told him I was gonna be okay and he could check on me every once in a while, which he did not until I called for him. He was reluctant at first but then he agreed and said it was my loss. He disappeared down the hall and I set to work. I told the convict who I was and why I had come. Then I started painting and reshaping.

            “When I finished painting, I waited about five minutes for the effects of the substance to set in then called out to the warden. I made the con go on his knees and do his confessions, repentant and humble. I knew there was no way they were letting him off so easy but I had other plans. The warden stepped to the door of the cell, opened the lock and stepped in, drawing his weapon as he did. He was eyeing the con, suspiciously. I observed his physique just happened to match the convict’s. ‘Ain’t no paradise for that bugger, ever. There’s one son of a bitch that’s gon’ spend eternal life, if he ever gets it, in jail. A big Amen to that, bro,’ the warden said. I smiled and told him not to talk in such manner to a new convert and then I stepped outside and started retracing my steps down the hall without waiting for the warden. He joined me half way down and, after nodding my thanks to the Chief Warden, I had the warden escort me to my van.

            “That night, there was a prison break. I bet nobody knows till this day how exactly the con managed it.”

            “Do you know the gravity of the crime you’ve committed? Helping a mass serial killer escape jail and putting hundreds of lives on the line for the dough?”

            “I never took the money.”

            “Why the hell not? You fulfilled your end of the deal, right?”

            “I did it under compulsion; I could have said no. but if I’d argued the point they would have guessed I wouldn’t go through with the plan. So I conned a conman.

            “The prison break,” Reuben said. “Tell me about it. I believe there’s a story in there.”

            “I’d spent time watching every angle of the warden’s face while he walked me to the cell blocks. He could have passed for the con if the situation was reversed but the face needed a little work. I believe the folks at The Enterprise had mapped out the coincidence before my coming so everything would go smoothly. I don’t know who their insider was but I played my part.

            “What I did was paint the face of the warden on the con and armed him with a Glock fitted with a muffler. When the warden stepped in, I left the cell and the con probably shot him and rid him of his uniform. The warden that met me down the hall was a piece of my artwork; it was the con, not the real warden. He escaped in the nighttime probably, feigning he was going off-duty as a prison warden.

            “Tell me, Markus,” Reuben said, sitting up in his rattan. “How do you live with the guilt of the grievous crime you and your bunch committed? Have you ever thought about the consequences? How many more people are going to die because of your stupidity? Your love of money?”

I let the silence swallow the bitterness I felt in the air.

            “There was a safety catch,” I said, after a while. The sun was setting and it was getting increasingly difficult for me to make out Reuben’s features.

            “Markus, Markus, Markus. Every time I think I have him in my grasp, he goes vague on me.”

            “I mixed venom into the paint. It was going to take a while before it took effect. I tested it on a couple of times on animals.”

            “Pygmy monkeys?”

            “Yes. The cops are following a dead trail. The serial killer; the psycho; the condemned man; the convict is dead by now. They ought to be out searching for a bloated corpse with a sunken skull.”

            “You’re dead serious, ain’t you?”

I nodded.

He stood up and patted me on the back. “I always figured you’d come around someday. Come, let’s go inside and leave the chairs. We’ll fetch ‘em tomorrow. Right now, they’re dead weights.”

I got up and carried the rattans anyway.

            “Always loved having your own way,” Reuben said. I caught the glint in his eyes before he turned around and walked back toward the house.

Eneh Akpan

June 5th, 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

Day 1: Toxic

Today’s Prompt: Fifteen years after a toxic spill in a small town, strange things are happening.

                                                                                                            —Courtesy: Writing.Com

Word Count: 1,534

A man was standing in the middle of the road when her SUV came bumping along busting on the scene from a sharp corner. She was doing approximately, 120 miles an hour and barely had time to coordinate her reflexes and slam down the brakes to avoid running over the man who as it turned out was totally unaware of the situation. All he did was stand by and watch like the whole incident was playing out on one of those big screens you spotted at a movie drive-in. Her final thought, before she rammed the bumper into the railings and went flying off the road into the cliff below, was, Oh God, I’m going to die. Not this way, oh God, please. She was wrong on both counts.

            “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”

She opened her eyes to blinding darkness. She was lying face up on a bed. She said the only thing that felt reasonable in this peculiar situation. “How did I get here?” And immediately, her mind supplied an answer. I must have survived the drop off the cliff. “What’s that rumbling sound? Is there a mill of some sort close by?”

            “No. that’s the sound of the train coming down the track. And don’t worry, nobody’s catching a train today, the rail’s a few miles off this place.”

Something struck her funny about the voice talking to her. It had the timbre of a child’s voice yet, bore the weight of maturity.

            “Where are your parents?” She turned her head as much as the racking pain in her body allowed her but all she made out in the darkness was a silhouette.

            “I am my parent. Who are you? Where are you from? How did you get here?”

            “My name is Ayara.” She didn’t know if she could trust this strange personality but given the circumstance, she didn’t have a choice. “I had an appointment to meet a client. Shortcuts are my fetish.” She shrugged like that ought to explain the details.

            “Shortcuts can be wrong cuts.” The kid-man said, not unkindly.

            “I stayed in the middle of the road. Okay, I admit I leaned a little too hard on the pedal but the road was deserted.”

            “Explains a lot about your predicament.”

            “Don’t give me lip. I know I’m a guest but I’d have been in some meeting if that vagrant wasn’t standing smack down in my path.”

The reply was low when it came. Ayara couldn’t believe she heard right. “You should have knocked him down.” He said.

            “What did you just say to me?”

The kid-man bent over and whispered into her like he was afraid somebody might overhear him. “What I said Miss, is that you should have run him over then gone ahead and met your appointment. Che sera sera.”

Ayara let the words piece themselves together into sensible whole rather force them into a traditional pattern of rational thought.

            “It was a plot to waste him so you and some bastard as sick as you are made him stand there. Then it would look like a roadkill and the driver takes the blame and you and your murderous crew walk.”

            “It was best for everybody. For him.”

            “Why?”

            “They come back.”

            “Who?” And then the truth dawned on her. “It’s some kind of sick ritual isn’t it?”

            “What it’s called doesn’t matter. Names often go with faces and we got no face to save here, in any case. They come back. That’s the important thing to keep up your sleeve. But you, Miss, was supposed to splatter his brains all over the sidewalk and by the time the sun comes the next day, that’s two days ago, he would heave been reborn a new man. A kid. Like me.”

Ayara had stopped listening when the kid said, ‘two days ago’. She was ticking off the days on her mental calendar. “You mean I’ve been out cold for three days?”

The kid-man ignored the question. “He would have started over another lifecycle if you have listened to your instincts. But now, Nicholas is dead indeed. Disintegrated bit by bit like a vampire in the heat of the sun. by sparing him, you killed him.” He slammed his fist into something close to where Ayara’s head lay, hard enough to startle her. She heard an object topple over and crash to the floor.

The silence hung on the air like shed skin. After some moment, the kid-man walked over to where Ayara lay in bed in semi-paralysis. She flinched.

He sat at the edge of the bed but didn’t touch her. Up close, Ayara searched his face to see if she could make out his features in the darkness. All she was more confusing then she would allow herself to believe. It’s the darkness. Yet, she couldn’t stop thinking over what the man-kid had said, ‘We have no face to save.’

            “A few years ago, not quite twenty years, we had a factory in this town running tests and all kinds of illegal researches that would raise the eyebrows of every Rights and Activist association. And it did. I remember there were a few court cases to get them to pack up and leave town. But you know the way it is with high profile cases, envelopes changed hands and the matter…”

            “What kind of tests are you talking about?”

            “Cloning. Human cloning through the use of nuclear energy. Of course, the fallout came as the Rights groups had predicted. Folks in the vicinity of the factory when it happened… let’s just say, they would have been better off if they’d died immediately. The factory owners quit the site and left us to count our losses.”

            “Was the man on the highway one of them? Is that why you sent him out to die?”

            “Close your eyes.”

She obeyed, dutifully. He slid off the bed and she him move across the room. There was a faint, sharp click, the sound of someone throwing a switch and the light came on.

            “Open your eyes,” the man-kid said not unkindly but his voice had taken on a grim tone.

He was standing in the middle of the room. It was where she spotted him when she peeled off her eyelids. He was a kid, alright no doubt about it. And now the full weight of the phrase he’d spoken earlier, the one she’d kept someplace in the backburner of her mind came thrashing every wall of well-constructed ideals to pronounce itself justified. She thrust her fingers into her mouth and bit down hard. It was all she could do to keep from screaming. A scream that would have paid out for forever. “Names often go with faces and we got no face to save here,” the man-kid had said.

The thing standing in the middle of the room called up Ayara’s childhood memory of an episode of Daffy Duck which featured the hand of the cartoonist drawing the series character fitted into weird costumes. At one point, it had Daffy Duck bickering incessantly. The cartoonist took his eraser and wiped out his beak. The man-kid had two holes where there should have been a nose. A face with no visible features.

            “How do I hear when you speak since you have mouth? Is this a form of some sick joke?”

            “You been hearing my voice come through as fine as wine in summertime and you haven’t guessed the difference in the resonance?”

            “Telepathy.” She half-screamed the word like it would ease the terror. “We’ve been communicating through our minds. Neither of us has actually spoken a word all day.”

            “They say ‘nature abhors a vacuum’ it had to find a way to fit into the natural sate of things. Here we are never dying and never actually, living. And if you would have it, the vagrant you thought you saved by throwing you jeep over the cliff was my brother. I died a few months ago. Got killed is the appropriate word but here I am. I came back. We never marry. We have no use for reproduction since we never die. We do not feed. With no mouth, who needs food, right?

            “I guess those bastards achieved what they aimed at if only they hadn’t out and left town in a hurry. Maybe, someday, we the hybrid would be the only ones left in this world.”

            “Miss, are you okay? Miss, wake up.”

Ayara woke up to see a traffic warden bent over her and shaking her looking deathly serious.

            “Are you okay? What happened here? Can you talk?”

She looked around. She was back inside her SUV but the scene was different. Even her clothes had been changed. It couldn’t have been a dream. She has got to find a way to prove it. While the cop was still fretting over her, she tried to move and something fell out of her blouse landing on her lap. She fetched the piece of paper and turned it around. It bore an inscription.

            “We got no face to save.”

It was a confirmation and a warning lumped into one message.

Eneh Akpan

June 1st, 2014

DAY 30: The World by the Tail

Courtesy: flickr.com

Today’s Prompt:

You are walking to your car when you pass a boy selling newspapers on the street. He doesn’t look like he’s getting any customers, so you buy a copy, only to discover that it’s dated a week from today. And one particular story makes you realize you need to take action—now.

Courtesy: writersdigest.com

Word Count: 1,026

                “You in the mood for a peculiar spin?”

                “As long as you keep the beer coming I’m down for any kind of story.”

Sam and Utuk (/who took/) sat by the counter of the Drunkard’s Boulevard, a pub at the end of the street and just around the corner.

                “I just got out the public library you know the one standing by that mini stadium where we used to go watch our high school team battle other teams in soccer competition. I was walking to my car when I spotted this kid selling newspapers. The way he stood there with his papers struck me as funny. That was before I observed nobody was buying. I noticed folks actually, walk up to the kid, grab a paper, glance through, and then… scuttle away. It was like all of a sudden they remembered an important meeting they had to attend and they were running late. It pricked my curiosity.”

                “Uh, uh.” Utuk wasn’t looking or listening to Sam anymore. He’d given his attention to something at the door. “Yo, Sam, check out the sister who just walked in.”

Sam followed Utuk’s gaze and felt disgust fill his mind. “Ain’t that the girl who almost got your ass busted last time we were here?”

                “So what? It’s just a harmless stare. Ain’t nothing to it.”

                “Whatever. Let’s get back to my story that’s the only harmless thing around here.”

                “Ain’t it the same story where you had a flat and had to park your car some place and hike it home?”

                “Nope. This one’s different.”

Sam and Utuk had been friends since their high school days. They stuck together after they left school. They were the low profile kind of guys. They knew most of the people here nevertheless, they were prone to go out through the backdoor than make a show of themselves. Sam wrote fiction focusing on the Sci-Fi genre and Utuk was a journalist.

                “You don’t say,” said Utuk. “Is it important?”

                “Of course, it’s fairly important.”

Sam gave a so-so gesture with his head and puckered his lips for good measure. And they both chuckled. The bartender came up and filled their glasses.

                “You know, Joe, someday you’ll get us bombed,” Utuk said to the bartender. “We’ll end up spending the night up on your counter.”

                “That’ll be a fatal pleasure,” the bartender said and walked away.

                “I’m surprised I never mentioned the story to you before today,” Sam said. “That kid’s papers, like I mentioned earlier, seemed to put off customers than attract them. Folks took one look at his papers and zapped!” Sam punctuated his statement with a snap of his fingers.

                “Maybe, it was full of reports of the apocalypse,” Utuk piped in.

                “Yeah, there were lots of such stories in the paper.”

                “What the…?” Utuk uttered in absolute awe.

                “Naw, just joking.” Sam waved it away.

                “Let’s drink to that. It’s not every day one hears you make a joke.” Utuk sipped on his beer.

Sam ignored him. “I walked up to the kid and took one of the papers out of his hand. ‘What do you have there?’ I asked him. ‘Today’s papers, sir.’ ‘Today’s paper,’ I said. ‘Ain’t it a little late in the day for that or is it the Evening News?’ The kid appeared uncomfortable with that question. I took one look at the headlines and I knew why all those folks had to zippety-zippety zap after they took one glance at the papers.”

                “Why did they do it? Was it old newspaper? Was it dirty? Why?”

                “The paper was dated a week from that day.”

Utuk cracked up. His bellow thunderous and wild heads turned in the pub. He almost got his neck broken when he took a fall off the stool.

                “Oh jumping macros,” Utuk said after he got over his laughter.

                “That’s macaroni,” Sam corrected.

                “Yeah, macros for short,” Utuk said.

                “Since when?”

                “Just now. Since it was all next week’s news, why the hell would anybody wanna read that stuff?”

                “The stock market?” Sam suggested.

                “Well, you ain’t saying none of the guys who put an egg in their shoes and beat it were investors or had interest in the stock market, are you?”

                “Not exactly, but I did make something of the whole mess?”

                “You? You bought the paper?”

          “Bought it and gained a considerable success with it. I get updates from @writersdigest delivered right to my android. And for the past few days leading to my encounter with that kid whom speaking of, I’ve not set eyes on again since that day, I’ve been receiving tweets about this Writers Digest annual short story writing competition which was going to close a few days from the evening I met the kid. I saw a news article in that newspaper where the Curiosity Rover discovered alien life forms on Mars. So I wrote it as fiction and submitted it as my story.”

                “That’s called cheating.”

                “No, it’s called creativity.”

                “Did you win?”

                “I submitted the story to the Sci-Fi category; they thought I was prophetic when the real story came out in the news. Of course, I won”

                “Did you spill your guts about the source of your story?”

                “Why the hell should I? I have the world by the tail cause of that story, it’s the reason I got published in the first place. You don’t expect me to throw a lifetime career out the window.”

                “What about the newspaper. What did you do with it?”

                “For the life of me, I can’t tell where I kept it. It just disappeared.”

                “There might be consequences, have you though about that? Such mysteries don’t just happen.”

                “You know,” Sam said, looking totally serious. “I’ve been thinking about that lately. Maybe, I should call up the editors at WD and let them in the whole way the source of my winning story.”

                “You really believe you should do that?” Utuk’s eyes grew wide.

                “Why not? It’s called coming clean,” said Sam with indifference.

                “No, it’s called stupidity.” Utuk said.

                “Whatever you say, boss,” Sam said and gulped his beer. “Whatever you say,” he repeated.

Eneh Akpan

June 30, 2013