A Rabbit Hole of Terror

Amid their divorce, Jan and his ex-wife-to-be still cohabit for the sake of their twins. Our pod-car drives southeast toward their Extension 12 residence, a brick-faced estate towering in what used to be four independent residences which he bought to his wife’s liking, demolished the luxurious homes, consolidated the four plots to build their one home. On the way, he called his lawyer, confirmed that he’d update his will after he’d signed it.

The iron-wrought gates slide open, and Jan stares quietly at the florid, landscaped yard. Two German shepherds bark, approaching and sniffing the pod-car. A woman sits in the garden, under a mulberry tree, reading a novel, drinking a cocktail. Two children in a blue plastic garden pool, splashing and laughing. A bit late for such. Don’t they have a bedtime?

Jan steps out of the car, turns to me. “I shouldn’t be long.” His eyes are wet. He takes a deep breath, crushes his eyes shut, seals himself completely. When he opens his eyes, his expression is clear and calm. He pushes his ochre-black hair back from his forehead, wipes the sweat with the sleeve of his shirt. The dogs follow him eagerly as he offers them a scratch.

His wife looks up, studies him, looks behind him, eyes riveted on me. If she’s thinking something, I can’t tell what it is. Although, she looks at Jan with less concern and more irritation. He passes her toward his kids, drops to his knees, stares at them. His shoulders quake and I realize he’s crying, face crashing into his hands.

Startled, his daughters crawl toward him, reach to his face with their chubby fingers. They stand together and wrap their arms around his brawny form, and they, too, start crying, unable to fully reach his back with their fingers. A tot’s hug is tiny in its form, but I’ve always marveled at the feeling of being held by small arms, the impact large and freeing. Tears prickle my eyes, and I can’t watch anymore.

His wife gets up, and I expect her to approach Jan, to take control of this situation. Instead, she heads in my direction. Stomps. Stops outside the pod-car. Stares long and hard, blue eyes burning into me. “So, you’re the homewrecker? The pisser around my husband.” Pisser. Jan’s father must have lodged that into her mouth with some kiss.

“I wonder what your mother-in-law has to say about that,” I say, and she narrows her eyes, confusion burrowing wrinkles into her forehead. “Who’s worse?” I ask. “The bitch sleeping with your husband or the bitch sleeping with her husband’s father?” I raise my hand, dismissing the topic. “Your babies are crying, and I’m your concern? Your babies are crying.” My voice breaks, and tears flood my face. “Your babies are crying.”

She steps back. Stunned. Shakes her head, and a ringlet of blond curls falls across her freckled face. She turns her neck, watches them, the back of her neck free of any microchip interference. “He and the father are the same, you know,” she says. “Jan’s far more sinister, although he tries to rein it in, to hide it. I always told him he’s just a dormant volcano that’ll one day wreak havoc. Why else do you think I’m divorcing him?”

No, I won’t backtrack again. I won’t doubt. His only weakness was last night’s strategy. “He’s divorcing you.”

“It’s not my fault I fell in love with his father. It’s his fault.” The loaded statement hits me hard. It’s not what she says, but how she says it, like he designed their affair. “He might as well have sold me to his father,” she adds, incredulously open about the affair.

“Is that your strategy in the divorce proceedings: your husband prostituted you to his father?”

“It helps that the father had a prior sexual harassment lawsuit.” She stares at me, blue irises a burning flame the dark night keels over. “Even though you’re literally wiretapped”—she gestures to the back of her neck—“there are many ways to read our conversation, say if they were to subpoena footage from your microchip storage.”

I’ve never met someone who could compute diabolically in this manner by using an unplanned encounter with me as part of her arsenal. She points at Jan now, and my eyes follow her finger—skirting over the wide-angled glass of the front of the house, the watered lawn glistening under the garden lights, the rose bushes—what could literally be a viewing displayed in a courthouse. “That’s why I don’t want him around the kids. That’s why I’m fighting for full custody.”

The scene shows a disheveled man breaking down in front of his children, his mistress nearby. And I wonder what else she has documented when he was at a low, and what type of lows he’s had. He’s not just about to lose his kids to custody, but he’s losing his life, losing his kids to this type of parent.

She gestures wide with her hands. “For him to bring his lover to the house, in front of his kids. Aren’t they going through enough? And you.” She jabs her finger in my direction. “You came willingly, not even thinking about them? You don’t understand what it means to be a mother.” An octave lower, “No wonder all those babies died inside you. There’s nothing in you to give.”

I clutch the fabric of my coat in my hands. There’s no point to arguments and acerbic statements. “Please,” I whisper. “Your babies . . . your babies are crying.”

She tuts, retreats into the shadowy garden, a hub of birdsong mingling with the girls’ soft cries. Jan kisses his daughters on the tops of their heads, their crying closing to a quiet, and he walks back stiffly.

The gates creak open. A glare of lights. A sleek black car silently pulls in. Several men rush out toward the back seat’s door, night cladding their faces and suits. A tinted window slides down, and the interior lights spill out, revealing the serpentine trail of smoke from a cigar tucked into a man’s wrinkled, plump fingers, spotted with age. The chauffeur opens the door. A shiny patent leather shoe steps out onto the paved ground, connected to the hefty leg of an old man. Aarav Koshal. Surrounded by five bodyguards.

His eyes switch to our car, Jan and Mel and his twins, and me.

“I did warn my son of the consequences of pissing around the likes of you,” he says, voice deep and dark. “Cunts like you always regret saying no. Remember? That ‘no’ has taken you down a rabbit hole of terror.”

Questions explode in my mind, but only two hold unequivocal terror: Does he know what we did? Is he the reason we’re in this position?

I find my hands crushing his collars, shouting, “Did you do this?”

Several men hike their rough hands under my arms and haul me away from him.

“Bitch!” Aarav spits, shaking a rubble of fat clinging to his jaw. “Do you understand the hell of a mess you’ve placed my family in? My entire business? The whole fucking industry? Because of your fucking need to fuck.”

Jan sidles to my side, hustles the men from my personal space. “What the hell’s going on?” He spins around. “Ba?”

“I’ll handle him.” Aarav raises his hands, a direction for his guards to back up. Comes up nose-to-nose with his son. Fury lit in his eyes. “I’ve been cleaning up after you for years. When will you learn to piss right?”

Jan’s jawline ticks. “What’s this about?”

“The girl,” he intones. “Where did you bury the body? I don’t care about what you did. Tell me, where is the body?”

Jan’s fingers twitch, and my breaths jam in my throat. If Aarav went to despicable lengths to provide his son two new bodies and halt his life sentence, could he—no, he can’t have a hand in what happened the night of the accident?

“I am on the fucking Murder Trials board,” Aarav says, upper lip trembling in anger. “Screwing in the fucking bundus with a wiretapped bitch? Burying a fucking body. You thought we wouldn’t see? I gave you the safe option of a roster of women you could screw, yet you decided to let this woman take our name to hell?”

“A roster of women who are your employees,” Jan says.

“Willing women,” Aarav emphasizes. “We wouldn’t have this headache.”

I wish Moremi would tear his limbs apart. I’d watch her eat them.

Jan crosses his arms. “If you were watching, then you should know where we buried the woman.” Jan taps his chin. “Unless you’re not. Another of your lies. For the first time, your power can’t walk through a closed door. Which of the board members snitched to you? Who are the board members? And that threat you keep hanging over my head is invalid now—you can’t force me to do what you want anymore. I’m good as dead.”

“You have brought nothing but shame to this family,” he spits. “After everything I have done for you, you unappreciative—” He glares at me. Considers Jan. “That girl has something that belongs to a lot of powerful people. Our investors are worried, the type of people you don’t want to ruffle. Think about the consequences of your actions—you’re good as dead, you think? You have twins, and they won’t be destroyed. They’ll have to live with what you leave them.

“Where is the body, son?” His eyes flick to me, cold and dreadful. Then back to Jan. “Son, I can protect you’. Not this woman, but you. You still want to see your girls grow up, don’t you? Then tell me where the girl is.” A sprinkle of sweat coats his forehead.

“No,” Jan says. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

Aarav appears desperate. For a second, I expect him to fall to his knees and beg Jan. But just his shoulders slump.

“If you must have it that way.” Aarav removes his cuff links, cocks his head to the side, and his guards are alert. “Restrain them. Melissa, take the girls into the house.” Melissa hurriedly collects her children from the pool and tracks into the house without a look back.

“Search their car.” Two men grab Jan, and two men grab me. The rest open our car doors and hunt inside. Aarav rolls his sleeves to his elbows, revealing hairy forearms. Bends low to Jan, who’s brought down on his knees. “You’re as good as dead, eh? I can still save you. Same deal as before. Procure you a new body, a different identity. Just work with me, son.”

“Save her and her family, too,” Jan says. “That is the deal. Then I’ll give you everything you want.”

Aarav’s eyes burn me. He wants nothing more than to crush my life beneath the soles of his shoes. “Son, you have unleashed a monster. I do not have the power to stop Moremi’s murder spree and the power of Matsieng’s blood. I only have the power to transfer you into a different identity.”

I flinch when he calls out her name. Why is Moremi so important to him?

Jan sighs. “Then, unfortunately, you are useless to us.”

“Damn it, Janith! Forget about me. But think about your twins. If you let this nuclear bomb of a problem escalate, it won’t just kill you, it’ll kill your daughters. That is what we’re dealing with.”

“What does Moremi have on you that has you so afraid?” Jan asks. “What have you done this time?”

Stunned, I stare at Aarav. His lips smack out incomprehensible words, and I’m fearful of the crimes that could be far worse than the sexual harassment cases.

“Sir, we found something.” The guard procures the satchel from the back seat, ruffles through it, and decants the brass humidor, the pills, the quantum computer, the chiffon pouch of microchips. My heart kicks against my chest.

Aarav closes his eyes. Exhales. Relief dissolves the sweat from his forehead. “We have what we need.” Tilts his head to the right. “Incinerate them.”

The guard freezes. “Sir, the board member warned us not to interfere, or we’ll face Matsieng’s wrath.”

“Fuck her wrath. Burn them.”

“No, no, no, you can’t burn those,” I shout, kicking up my legs as the men tighten their hold around my arms. “I need those to convince Moremi not to kill my family.”

“I don’t care about your family,” Aarav spits.

The bodyguards drag us as he follows the guard to the backyard garden where a fire pit stands among a mass of concrete cut into the form of a hemisphere; a hollow space resides in the center where the burning takes place. Old ashes cloud its oval metal husk. The guard removes the spark screen, places tinder and wood inside, ignites the fire with a long-stemmed lighter, and a fire crackles.

“Stop!” Jan shouts, but his father ignores him as he grabs the microchips and humidor and throws them into the fire. Its tongues lick and stretch across the only thing I have to save my family. Jan throws a punch, but his father blocks it, shocked. Spits insults at his son: “You spoilt fucking brat.”

“Let me go!” I scream. The fires twist and bend the surfaces of my saviors. What am I going to tell Moremi? How am I going to stop my unborn baby from dying? Moremi’s going to think I was pulling one over on her.

“You decided to risk your family’s life,” Aarav says, tipping Jan’s chin up. “For that, you are no longer my son. Unfortunately, your daughters will have to grieve your death. Good day, Janith.”

His guards release us.

Pure animosity saturates my muscles, pours through my skin. “You will pay for this,” I shout. “I swear you will pay for this.” I drag my nails into his face. He spits, throws a punch, and Jan blocks it. Three lines scathe his stubbled cheek, which he pats with a white handkerchief.

“My baby,” I whisper. “I have to save my baby.” I run to the fire pit, clamber onto its concrete surface, dig my fingers through its flames. “My baby, oh God! My baby! I have to save my baby.”

Aarav climbs into his car, and it sweeps out the gates as I dissolve into the flames, unable to die.