This Horrid Reality

Jan retrieves two shovels and several floodlights from his garage. Places them into the trunk of the car.

The fire has died down. All that remains is the brass husk of the humidor and broken pieces of microchips, nothing retrievable, in the fire pit. My back against it. Jan on his knees, arms surrounding me. I smell of smoke, me, a woman always burning.

“It’s over,” I cry. “This was our only hope. My baby, oh my baby. How am I going to save her?”

Jan wraps his arms around me, kisses my forehead. “We still have the microchip to collect from Moremi’s body. This time we’ll be careful of how we contain the evidence.”

He gathers me up.

“Your father,” I whisper. “How can people like him exist? How can they share the same air as us and continue to enact evil? How many Matsieng are there in the world, ignoring our plight? Xe could empower these elements to stop him, yet Xe won’t. Why? Matsieng drinks our blood, feels our pain—why won’t Xe do anything?”

“This is the world we live in,” Jan says. “Murders, xenophobia, racism, terrorism—”

“No, that is not how the world will remain after I die.” Something flashes in my gut: anger and hatred, making me come alive. “Your father has to die. I sacrifice myself for that.”

A short gasp from Jan.

“I murdered Moremi with no other choice,” I say. “Now I choose. I will murder your father. I will murder people like him. I will save my daughter first, then kill him—I don’t know how and if there will be time to do both, but that is the legacy I will leave for my daughter. I will die by killing.”

Jan freezes. Swallows. Nods. Holds my hand. Peace and acceptance smile across his face. “I concur. I will be your accomplice.”

The crime scene. Disturbed soil, upturned earth. It’s astounding that last night’s horrid occurrence happened out in the open. The makeshift grave is but two steps from the side of the road, shielded by a barrier of thorn trees. Beside new tracks from off-road vehicles, I can make out a sludge of patterns leading to the grave from where we dragged her, Jan’s footsteps and my bare feet going back and forth. We never thought, never thought, to clear up that trail. I don’t know how we managed to push through the thorn trees unscathed because it’s difficult finding a gap to walk through, until we use the barrier of our clothes to mask our skin from any scratches.

Using the floodlights, the scene almost looks daylit.

“Do people really find this honorable?” Jan asks, eyes wide. “Killing people to save people? They’re actually rewarded for it?”

Unable to answer, I stand in front of the grave. The surrounding area is level except for this convex bit of sand. And a second grave. Papa. She buried him here.

Jan squats, pats the lump of earth. “How’d Moremi manage to get your father’s body here?”

Guilt forms thickly in my throat, making it difficult to speak. “Same way she reached Mama mid-flight, I suppose.”

He watches me watching the grave. The first time he’s looked at me since our argument at the Murder Trials headquarters. I want him to touch me, to tell me that it’ll be okay.

“We don’t have time.” He bends on one knee, begins digging.

I fall to my knees, cradle the gravel covering Papa’s body. I swallow, mumble, “I don’t think I can do it in the light.” To exhume her from the grave, then excavate the microchip from her decomposing body.

Jan’s hand slips around my neck, and his thumb carves circles along my microchip. “It’ll take longer if I do it alone. But I can do it, if you can’t.”

I nod. “You’re right.” I get on my knees and rake my fingers through the soil, hard stone and thorns scribbling my palms.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“I’m sorry, too,” I say.

“Do you still regret it?”

“It would have happened either way, with or without our affair.”

“But do you still regret it?”

“Us? I don’t know. Don’t make me lie to you,” I say.

“Would Moremi be dead if it weren’t for the system? Would you be a killer if it weren’t for the system setting this trap?” He stops digging, leans on his knee. “I grew up here. I used to be so proud of how safe it is, how the crime numbers are almost zero for rape, murder, for theft. I’ve felt safe knowing my girls don’t have to walk around the city watching their backs. Only to realize that what’s bankrolling this illusion of peace is a fucked-up system that sacrifices us based on some AI that cherry-picks who will be a victim and who will be a murderer. To make matters worse, the fucking discrimination. Already you’re branded rotten if you’re microchipped, and your odds are already low that you won’t be a murderer. And without a microchip, you’re basically a victim.”

My fingers scud loose rock, trapping soils in my nail beds. And it hits me as I say it: “How long will it take them to remove those dividing lines, to pick whoever they want? To eliminate what they don’t want? If they’ve been hiding this secret from us, what else have they been hiding?” I stare up at Jan, watch the shock dance with the lights in his irises, watch him shiver. “We’re just two people, Jan. What uprising could we ever accomplish?”

His upper lip trembles. “I can’t go like this, leave my girls to grow up in such a system. Who will protect them?”

Something cracks inside me; its tornado threatens to drag me into its depthless depression. If I lose myself, I won’t have my faculties to take me through, to save my family. I gather my thoughts desperately, something to ground me, to take me away from the pain.

“Would you have over four thousand three hundred people die every year or just ten?” I ask.

Jan’s eyebrows spring up. “Don’t tell me you’re in support of this?”

“I’m not in support of how it’s done, but it’s saved many lives. In our old traditions, there were more respectable ways for animal sacrifices, feeding their souls and essences to a god of some sort for benevolence to fight against drought, famine, war, to obtain fortune and miracles. I guess this is the dirty upgrade: we’re the animals. Since they’ve elevated a level up, they’re able to achieve this utopia through an altered nightmare and . . .”

“They could be obtaining more that they’re not telling us,” he says. “Grading us in some form to attain a higher level of something since certain bodies are valued low for body-hopping schemes—the same process could be established by the Murder Trials committee.”

“Disgusting. We’re like cattle, corralled for slaughter,” I say. “This nightmare is so well-built to force the players into its game. I can’t just sit and do nothing. I mean, I can, but everyone I love dies. I can’t kill myself; I’m revived. Moremi, too, is trapped in this nightmare. It’s not that she wants to kill. She’s driven to avenge her death through violence, whether she likes it or not. I feel terribly sorry for her because it’s our fault she’s in this. We ruined her life, and she deserves to be saved if possible. But the only way to save my daughter is to defeat Moremi, and the only way to defeat Moremi is to kill my daughter. There must be a way to save both, no? In such a way that allows us to finish Aarav.”

Suddenly his eyes grasp me. “We can do something. We have to. For our daughters. For Moremi, so there are no more people going through what she went through. We have to find a way.”

“Earlier at the airport, Moremi mentioned something about her winning and getting closer to death if she gives me more time,” I say. “She must’ve been referring to the Murder Trials. I think she has the power to give us more time but at the sacrifice of herself. Maybe if we convince her enough, we can find a balancing act where she gives us more time without risking her dying.”

Jan laughs. “I’m sorry, love, but I’ve negotiated many difficult deals, and Moremi is a hard sell. She’s addicted to death to get her revenge. The only way to convince her of anything is if you kill your unborn daughter—she won’t budge on that.”

I sigh, musing. “I’ll still think of something. We have time before Moremi goes for my daughter, so for now, we can focus on figuring out Moremi’s life and—I hate to think this—but that may give us a clue on how to defeat her should I have to save my daughter. But Moremi’s life could also give us a clue on how to save both. And whatever gap in time we have, we handle your father.”

“That’s a perfect plan,” he says, then noticing my expression, he asks, “What? What’s wrong?”

“I just realized we’re going to find out more about Moremi while I’ve little information about the history of my body,” I say. “I mean, I had to accept that I’d never get answers, and for a while, I got over it, got used to not knowing. But it hurts terribly that I may die without knowing about my body and what happened to my family. And the only living person who can give me the truth is my brother, whom I know will never, ever give me an inch of the truth, and who may die before he does.”

“Perhaps we can threaten him, given that Moremi will harm him. At this rate, whatever crime we commit is null. But,” he adds, “should you win the Murder Trials, perhaps you may have the privilege of receiving intel on this body.”

Speechless, I nod. Quickly, he resumes digging.

Last night, our feverish panic masked how difficult it is to dig a grave. We burrow through the earth with our hands, like animals, scraping off time, carving rock, splintering our nails. Hot breaths chug from our mouths. Sweat rains down from our foreheads. Our effort hasn’t brought us any closer to Moremi’s body. But I can smell it, through the dirt: a burning, sickly sweet scent saturating in rotting meat. The odor crawls like maggots up the alley of my throat, pools on my tongue. I gag. Nothing. Spit.

I slump onto my rear, panting. “It didn’t take so long last night.”

Jan persists. Sheer concentration. Face glistening. Digs, digs, digs. I fold over onto my knees again, continue. Finally, our fingers scrabble upon her body. I stop, wipe the sweat from my face. Moremi. Discolored. Stiff. Cold. Blisters in her skin. Her half-lidded eyes, exposed sclera, stained with splotches of tache noire. Jan sways, clasps his mouth. She’s unrecognizable from the monster we know her as. The slippage of her skin beneath my fingers makes me sick.

The stench of death rots into my nostrils. I look elsewhere as we turn her stiff body over, search her pockets hoping to find other stuffed-away items, but zilch.

“I’m not cutting out that microchip from her neck,” Jan says. Swallows. “Peeling her . . . skin . . . was . . . I can’t.” His face greys like he’s about to be sick.

“Are you okay?” In all of this, I’ve never wondered how he was holding up.

He’s startled. “I don’t know. I’ve locked parts of myself up, inside myself, but they’re finding their way out, and . . . I don’t know.”

I rub his shoulder. “I understand.” I hug him. “It won’t be okay, but it’s okay now.”

He exhales.

“There’s no need to remove her microchip,” I say. “We just need to dock a quantum computer to her neck. It’ll upload everything, and we can watch it.”

Holding my breath, I inch toward her neck, marked with livid bruises, stained a greenish-blue hue, where her blood has come to rest. There’s a code on her microchip which corresponds with its reader.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

“What?”

“This microchip has to be read by a specific quantum computer. It’s for security purposes.”

“Might she have it?”

“If she has a bunch of microchips illegally, then she must have a quantum computer to read them. Which your father destroyed.”

“A backup, then?” Jan pauses. “Kids are noisy. When it goes quiet, peaceful, you know they’re doing something they’re not supposed to. You look for them, and you find them making a mess in your bedroom.”

“What’s your point?” I ask.

“It’s been suspiciously quiet. Where is Moremi all this while?”

“I don’t want to think about it. My daughter is number one, so Moremi can’t reach her yet without going through everyone. You’re still alive—that’s my barometer for now. If you’re still alive, then my daughter is alive.”

He nods. Muses. “Whatever was on those microchips was enough of a threat to my father’s legacy,” he says.

“What if your father found her home and destroyed it, too?” I ask. “That night we hit her, she must’ve been running or planning to do something with those microchips. She was running away from your father.”

“What if she has a secret home that no one knows about?” Jan says. “If she went to great lengths to obtain these microchips and flee, she must have a safe place to hide other things.”

“Your father didn’t burn everything,” I say, making my way to the open car, retrieving her journal and screenplay. “Her journal.”

“It’s scribblings for her creative work,” he says.

I page through it. “The residence listed here is Kgale Estate. She’s scribbled, ‘home at 8:00 p.m.’ and various times for other days. Wait, isn’t that the gated community where your father’s employees live?”

“It is, but she stopped working for him,” Jan says.

“At the office. Not outside work hours.”

“Jesus. We can’t go there. Even if we did, we’d find nothing. They own it. They have access to it.”

“Well, the character in this screenplay lives at that gated community,” I say. “Moremi noted down times when she left the office, times she got home. Between those gaps, she’s written ‘black hole’ in caps.”

“What’s the time gap?” Jan asks.

“Five hours plus. Her character has no recollection of what happened within those five hours.”

“Something disturbing is going on. What if the screenplay is a ruse in case someone chanced upon it?”

“Then we need to find out where her real home is,” I whisper.

He stares at the body. “Figure she might tell us?”

“No, she’s going to make this difficult for us. Anyway, seems like she has amnesia. The only thing she seems to remember is her accident and her desire to avenge her death. Wait. Her cell phone.”

“What about it?” Jan asks.

“We can retrieve her movements from it. Previous movements that might lead back to her real home.”

“Her cell phone was not on her person. I checked,” he says. “Besides, I doubt she’ll go to a secret location with a technological device that could identify its exact location. A device that people like my father could infiltrate.”

“You’re right.”

Then it occurs to me that we only searched her clothes and backpack. Not a thorough search if we don’t include her body. I kneel and start unbuttoning her torn jacket and clothes.

Jan grips my arm. “What are you doing?”

“Maybe there’s a clue or something on or in her body that might help us.”

Jan steps back. “You want us to undress her?”

“We don’t have time, Jan.” I hold my breath from the fusty enclosing smell of the decaying body as I probe my fingers along her arms, abdomen, and legs, looking for anything perhaps sealed into the skin.

“There’s nothing,” Jan says.

“Help me turn her over,” I say.

He grabs hold of her ankles as I hoist my hands beneath her armpits, and we flip her onto her front.

“Hold her leg,” I say.

“This is . . . an intrusion of her privacy.”

I glare at him. “We’re way past that, don’t you think? Hold on.” I peer up along her thigh. Beneath the band of her panty line is a tattoo, a series of numbers, one set with a negative number and a house number reading 45083.

“Coordinates,” Jan notes, tipping his head back from the smell. He types them into his wrist, where a hovering hologram displays their corresponding location: “Phakalane, roughly twenty-five minutes away. Why’d she tattoo that onto herself?”

“What if that’s her secret residence?” I say. “But why? Most importantly, should we risk going there?”

He checks his watch. “We left the Murder Trials headquarters at 9:15 p.m., which means Moremi’s next killing’s at 10:15 p.m. It’s 10:00 p.m. We only have fifteen minutes.”

I swallow. “I’ll take that risk.”

“Are you sure?”

“My daughter’s not next, right?” I say, desperately. “You’re not next, otherwise Moremi’d be here. That’s what matters now.”

“Okay.”

I tug his hand. “Jan, what if she left this behind on her body because she knew something might happen to her?”

“Maybe she was leaving a message behind for authorities if her body was found.” He nods. “This has to be it.”

Jan quietly wraps her back in her clothes, wipes the grime and blood from her neck, stares at her face, starts to cry. “Forgive me,” he whispers.

“Jan,” I whisper.

“We never really think about our actions when we’re thinking about ourselves,” he says. “You were right last night. One day a man could do this same thing to my daughter, kill her and reason the same way I did to protect his daughter.”

“We have to break this cycle,” I say, brushing aside the hair sweat-matted to his scalp. “And we will. This is how we pay for what we did.”

He kisses my fingers, smiles softly when he remembers the dirt in them. “Who’d have thought I’d still love these fingers even after they buried someone.”

I pull them away and kiss his lips instead. The warmth, the heated hour on our backs, the fatigue in our bones slows down in this kiss, removes us from this horrid reality. Our breaths, connecting our lungs, are the only drugs allowing us sanity from everything.

He leans his forehead against me, hand cupping my neck, eyes peering deep into mine. “I love you,” he whispers.

“I love you, too.”

We stand, and I stare at Moremi’s body. Is there a way to communicate with her using her corpse? I lean forward to her face and whisper into her ear, “Moremi, it’s me, Nelah. I don’t know if you can hear me. But we’re here. We’ve found clues to a secret location you had written down. You want the truth, meet us there.” I stare at him now. “We’re taking her body with us.”

He muses. “What other choice do we have? We may need her biometrics to access her home.”

I jump. Point. “What’s that?”

Jan spins. Further out, a night-clad figure in the withering dark walks toward us.

“Hurry,” Jan says. We raise Moremi into the trunk. The figure closes in. Mama. I dump myself into the passenger seat. Jan keys the ignition. The car revs.

Mama picks up her pace, starts running. A cheetah on the loose. The car soars into the air. She leaps onto the hood, smashes her fist through the windshield. Jan yanks the wheel manically side to side until the car flings her to the ground, headfirst, where she skims to a still.

She rights her loose head. Wipes off dirt. Stands. Stares at us. Bestial rage crucifies her face as we disappear into the dark.