The Prey of Gods

by Nicky Drayden

  Mr. Rathers falls back into his threadbare spot on the sofa and teeters for a long moment before passing out. Muzi smiles broadly. The fucker deserves so much more, but that doesn’t stop Muzi from reveling in this minor triumph.

  “Hey,” Elkin says all of a sudden. His eyes narrow. “You’ve never used that on me, have you?”

  The smile drops off Muzi’s face.

  “What? Are you serious?” Muzi says, his voice squeaking. “Hey, is that your mom?” He turns, looks out the window. “Nope. False alarm.”

  But Elkin sees right through him. “You did do something to me, didn’t you? Shit, Muzi, we’re supposed to be best friends!”

  “It was an accident!”

  It’s then that Mr. Rathers’s memory imprints on him, and Muzi braces for something horrific, violent. But what comes is shocking. Two toddlers in the bathtub, a boy and a girl. The boy Elkin, from the birthmark on his chest. The girl he’s never seen before, not in photos, nowhere. Mr. Rathers bathes them, singing out to them, but his voice is different. Happy. He picks up the bubble bath bottle, shakes it. It’s empty. Little Elkin beats his hands on the water’s surface. “Bubbas! Bubbas!” he demands. Mr. Rathers turns his back for a moment, just long enough to rummage through the linen closet for a new bottle, and returns to see the girl facedown in just a few inches of water.

  “Bubbas! Bubbas!” Elkin shrieks as he sees the pink bottle. It slips from Mr. Rathers’s hands as he goes to pull the girl up. Her head drops back, lifeless. He checks for her breath, but there’s none to be found.

  “Bubbas!” Elkin screams.

  One, two, three breaths, his lips sealed over her nose and mouth. But she’s gone.

  Muzi snaps to, the burn in his heart unbearable. He falls to the ground, pulls his knees to his chest, and weeps.

  “Hey, dumbass, what the hell is wrong with you?” Elkin says, but the words don’t cut through.

  “They’re not my memories!” Muzi yells out. “They’re not mine! They didn’t happen.” But they stick hard, and he can’t shake them. He trembles, then rolls over and vomits on the carpet.

  “Shit, Muzi! Are you okay?” Elkin presses his hand against Muzi’s back. “It’s too soon for you to come back. Sit out another week or two. The team won’t think any less of you.”

  Muzi wipes flecks of sick from his cheek, the tang of OJ stinging his nose and throat. “I’ll be fine. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I . . .” Muzi tries to think up a fast lie, but Elkin would see right through it. That’s the down side of having a friend who knows you in and out. “I sort of see things about the people I connect with. Personal things. Bad things.”

  “What kind of things? What did you see about my dad? Hell, what did you see about me?”

  “It’s too awful.” His heart rides up into his throat. Elkin was so young, he probably doesn’t even remember losing his sister. His father had seemingly gone through the pains of removing every single piece of evidence of her existence. It explains his anger, maybe even why he blames Elkin. It isn’t rational, but losing a child like that isn’t exactly the sort of thing one can rationalize. Mr. Rathers’s pain sits with Muzi, as does his need to forget. “It’s too awful,” Muzi says again.

  “Damn it, Muzi, if you don’t tell me, I’m never speaking to you again. You can’t go around dipping into people’s minds, stealing their secrets!”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t remember—”

  “Fuck you, liar. Get out of my house!” Elkin yanks Muzi to his feet and shoves him toward the door. It slams firmly behind him, and he stands there out on the porch alone. The humid air weighs heavily in his lungs and Muzi has a tough time catching his breath. He rubs his arm where Elkin’s handprint is still pink against his skin. What the bladdy hell is wrong with him? Muzi had known there’d be repercussions for doing what he did, and yet he couldn’t help himself.

  Headlights cut through the early evening murk as Mrs. Rathers’s car hugs up next to the curb. “Oh, hi, Muzi!” she says as she ambles up the pavement.

  “Hi, Mrs. Rathers,” Muzi says, wondering—and worrying—over the secrets that lie beneath her smile.

  Chapter 20

  Riya Natrajan

  Reality hits her like a brick as soon as she comes to. Her body feels like it weighs a thousand kilos, her brain probably twice that much. She has a hard time following a single, cottony thought, and it takes most of her strength to lift her head. A rope of drool dangles from her lip. She’s sitting in a child’s chair, knees bent awkwardly, almost to her chest. She’s strapped in. Can’t move.

  “Oh good, Rhoda, you’re awake,” comes her father’s voice from behind her. She lets her head loll back and to the side, and she sees him sitting on her bed with a comb in one hand, legs straddling around her chair. With a forceful grip, he twists her head forward again. “Keep still or the part won’t be straight.”

  “Rhoda?” The name sounds familiar, but not quite right. She concentrates through the fog. “Riya.”

  Her father snatches a handful of her hair and yanks back. Riya Natrajan’s neck whips, skin pulling tight along her throat. “We don’t speak that name in this house, Rhoda. Now, how many braids do you want? Two or four? It’s just like your mother to leave me to do a woman’s work. Honestly, how long does it take to get a few things at the grocery store?”

  Thoughts and memories reshuffle into the right order. Her mother died eight years ago, Riya Natrajan is sure of that. But looking down at these clothes, she’s dressed like an eleven-year-old—pastel rainbow stirrups and a frilly blouse that pulls tight, gaping between buttons. Something else is not right. Her underwear cuts into the creases of her legs, a few sizes too small, no bra. Her skin smells faintly of lavender soap.

  Riya’s father tugs her head back up. “Keep straight, dear. Oh, your mother is going to be so proud when she sees you. Our perfect little girl.”

  The delusional tenor of her father’s voice gives her gooseflesh. She’s too doped up to fight him, even if she weren’t bound. So she plays along and waits for the opportunity to escape. “Four braids, Father,” she says sweetly. “I’d like four braids.”

  “I think I can arrange that.” His hand rests softly on her shoulder, then sweeps down her arm, and it’s all Riya can do to keep from shivering. She detaches herself from the situation, creating more lyrics for her new “Breezy, Breezy” song, then rehearsing the choreography in her head, confident that she’ll get her singing voice back in time for the concert. Confident that she’ll get out of this alive.

  “Father, I’m getting hungry,” Riya Natrajan says as he finishes up the second braid. At the rate he’s going, they’ll be here for another hour.

  “Well, it is your special day. I’ll make you your favorite, curried chicken and roti?” He gets up, tugs on her restraints to make sure they’re tight, then looks at his house bot. “Time,” he commands.

  “Eleven thirteen a.m.,” says the bot.

  “Hmmm,” her father says. He twirls his beard into a point. “Your mother is going to be late for lunch. This isn’t like her. I’d better see what she’s up to.” He then turns to the bot. “Call Jaya,” he says.

  “Name not found in personal call logs. Please specify last name, or input phone number manually.”

  “Jaya Sanjit, my wife. Please call her.”

  “No phone record on file for Jaya Sanjit. Database records indicated that Jaya Sanjit is deceased. Would you like to be put in contact with her next of kin?”

  The brown of her father’s skin turns a deep purple, then he takes a swing at the bot with his fist. The house bot topples over, and he pounces on it before it can right itself. Then he tugs savagely until its head pops free from its torso, exposed wires flickering bits of electricity before dying out. Riya bites her lip, but doesn’t say anything.

  Her father stands back up, and some sort of sanity seems to wash over him. Relative sanity. He turns back to h
is daughter and smiles. “I’ll be back with lunch in a bit, dear. We’ll just have to hope your mother gets here in time, or she’ll have to reheat hers! But don’t worry. She won’t miss your special surprise tonight for anything.”

  Her father leaves, deadbolts locking from the other side of the door. Riya Natrajan waits a few minutes before trying to struggle out of her restraints. After spending the past five years slaving under the eagle eye of her choreographer, Riya’s got the flexibility and muscle control to wriggle, writhe, and worm herself until she gets a hand loose. Then the other. And then with a final shimmy, the rope drops and she’s free. She rushes to the window, draws back the curtains, and cusses the gods as plywood stares back at her with more nails than she can count.

  Riya Natrajan scrambles down next to the bot carcass and tries to bring up the phone function. The screen flickers alive, and she types in the first three digits of Adam’s number before it goes dead again. She sighs and lets the bot unit fall back to the floor. This house bot had probably cost her father half a million rand, not your usual alpha unit, but a delta capable of carrying out complex tasks, though self-defense apparently was not one of them. Guilt creeps up into her throat, an old friend. She can’t help but think she’d caused her father’s meltdown. He’d lost everything and could barely deal after all these years. And then she comes back into his life, as casually as if none of it had ever happened, looking to be forgiven for the unforgivable. Her father couldn’t forgive, but he could forget the last twenty years had ever happened, going back to that time in his mind when his daughter was still sweet, not chasing after boys and singing silly songs. When she was still his, and he was a god in her eyes.

  Riya Natrajan creeps up to the mirror over her dresser, afraid of what she’ll see. A face stares back at her, no makeup, brown skin not quite as tight as it had once been, black tresses a mess, clothes like some abomination of nature on her body. For the first time in a long time, she feels ugly and awkward and trapped. There’s no escape for her body, but there is one for her mind. She finds her sweatpants balled up in a corner and fetches the vial of godsend from the pocket. She sniffs, more than enough to cut through the haze of whatever her father had drugged her with. Her skin prickles, feathers sprout, and her tail drags behind her like a beautiful gown. She’s still too hoarse to sing, but she can hum, and she does, loudly, her body light and ready to dance. She steps out the moves to her new song, imagining she’s onstage, the only place where she truly feels comfortable with herself. Despair lifts. Her fans cheer. She’s free!

  “What is the meaning of this nonsense?” her father snarls as he storms into the room. His face is stern as if chiseled from stone, but it doesn’t scare Riya Natrajan. Not anymore. She’s not that child, pining for her mother’s affection, her father’s approval. She’s grown wings and has ambitions—ambitions her father hadn’t been able to quell by taking away that wind chime, and he won’t do it now, not through intimidation, not through starvation, not even in death will he be able to take away her song.

  “I’m dancing, Father! Dancing to the wind chimes. Isn’t their sound beautiful? Just from outside that window.”

  Her father draws back the curtain. “You can’t hear anything. The window’s boarded up!”

  “Silly father, the window’s wide open! Feel the breeze. Listen to the notes.” Riya Natrajan hums, so light on her feet she’s not even sure she’s touching the floor. “Breezy, breezy! Listen to my heart at play!”

  “Stop it! Stop singing!” Her father slaps her, but the pain doesn’t stick. Instead she feels her vocal cords relax.

  She tries singing the lyrics, again. The scratch in her voice smooths itself out enough to push into a flirty vibrato. “Feel me, ooh boy! Simple as seduction!”

  Her father’s open hand becomes a fist. His eyes flicker with something raw and primal. The weight of his punch shifts her jaw, and the pop echoes through her skull. She sucks in a sharp breath.

  But again the pain doesn’t last.

  “Reaching, reaching! Living for another day!”

  He punches. Rabid. Savage. Nothing like the man she’d once known. Her ribs, she’s sure at least two of them are broken. The agony is intense, but sweet. She feels her bones knitting back together even as her father straddles over her, ready to take another swing. Her vocal cords tighten like a drawn bow, and her lyrics rip forth like arrows. She laps up the pain until she’s brimming with a note so sharp, she can no longer contain it.

  She lets it loose, belting out the words with a force that nearly causes her to recoil. “Feel me, ooh boy! Live forever, sweet seduction!” Song is her weapon, and her father lurches back, notes resonating so intensely he clasps his hands over his ears. Riya stands as he cowers, a smile on her face as she cuts into the second verse. By the refrain, her father is a shivering lump.

  She stops, bends down next to him, peels back his eyelids to see burst blood vessels and dilated pupils.

  “I’m Riya Natrajan,” she whispers into his ear. “And if you ever call me anything else, if you ever touch me again, if you so much as look in my general direction, I’ll be sure to give you an encore performance that you won’t forget. Do you understand me?”

  Her father manages a nod, then closes his eyes.

  “I’m sorry for hurting you, Father. I’m sorry for not being there,” Riya Natrajan says, then she leaves her father alone to deal with his demons.

  She’s already got enough of her own.

  Chapter 21

  Nomvula

  Sydney smiles a lot, and it makes Nomvula nervous. Maybe it’s supposed to be a friendly smile, but it seems more like a hungry one, like the way a hyena smiles when it has cornered its prey. Sydney’s nice enough, though. She doesn’t yell much, not since Nomvula learned to stay quiet and not make too much fuss.

  Nomvula hates being locked up in this cage. It’s only when Sydney’s not home to watch her. For her own good, Sydney says. But Sydney’s gone a lot, during the day to work, and another job at night, and some nights she’s out even later, and she’ll come home stinking of fear, humming to herself as she picks dried blood from beneath her fingernails.

  Now, alone, Nomvula slips her hands between the bars of her cage and holds the lock in her hands. It’s not a normal lock, not like the one Mama Zafu keeps on the chest next to her bed.

  Kept on the chest next to her bed.

  Nomvula bites her lip, blinks away the tears. This lock pulses with a funny energy that makes Nomvula’s ears tingle like when Sydney’s in the room. Nomvula closes her eyes and concentrates. Eventually an image like a puzzle forms in her head, nine square pieces almost identical. She imagines bringing two of them together, and as soon as they click into place, a bit of the energy fades. She tries another piece, but this time as they connect, a sharp zap runs through her. Nomvula seethes, but she’s determined, and she places a different piece. This time, the shock makes her cry out in pain and throws her to the back of the cage. She sucks at the tips of her blackened fingers and sighs, thinking how nice it would be to stretch her legs.

  She can’t get comfortable. Her cage isn’t long enough to lie down in, and it’s not quite tall enough to sit fully upright. Being trapped like this, like an animal, it’s eating away the last bits of her humanity. The god-creature inside her grows stronger, and what frightens Nomvula most is her own craving for another taste of death.

  But she has got one friend who helps her pass the time. Nomvula whistles, and Sydney’s alphie trots over to her, its screen flashing red, blue, and green.

  “Would you like to play a game?” it asks her.

  “Yes,” Nomvula says, making sure to put the “s” on the end like her English teachers taught her. The alphie isn’t that great at understanding her, but it always plays with her—guessing games and matching games and drawing games. It keeps her good company, keeps her mind off the sound of children playing outside in the streets, keeps her from falling asleep where her nightmares patiently await. It’s all for the b
est, Nomvula thinks. Cooped up in here, she doesn’t have to deal with humans anymore, to grow close to people who will only betray her, who smile as she suffers, laugh as her body is abused. The alphie is simple. It doesn’t love her and never will, even if they play together every day for a thousand years. That makes her feel safe, or at least as close to it as she’s going to get.

  She holds her hand out and it nuzzles her, like a pet. She strokes it, once, twice, then holds her hand flat against its surface, speaking to it. It doesn’t have much to say, but Nomvula decides she can teach it how to play a new game. She feeds it images of the nine squares, checking so she gets the exact shapes and colors. Once it has them, she practices putting the puzzle together, until the solution becomes clear. It doesn’t take her long.

  The real lock rests in her hands again, and Nomvula steadies herself in case she makes another mistake. Slowly, she visualizes aligning the sides of the squares. They click into place, and she exhales as the final block goes in and the lock releases.

  Nomvula feels like a giant! She stretches her arms up, up, up, stretches her wings too while she’s at it, then goes to the window and looks out. There are big, scary buildings as far as she can see, sides bright with flickering animations and colorful lights, commercials and news blips. The city is crammed tight, all concrete and pavement, with the odd tree popping up from little squares of dirt. She recognizes none of it, but she knows she can still look up at the same old sky, and that keeps Nomvula from feeling completely lost. She misses the sky, the wind, the sun. Here it’s all shadows, not that Sydney ever lets her outside, or even near this window for that matter.

  She knows she shouldn’t, but Nomvula lifts the window open and the smells drift in. Leaning her head out, she sees kids her age tossing a ball in the street. They stop their game every time a car passes. At first, she’s jealous of their freedom, but the god-creature inside her rears its head and her heart goes cold, slick, and gray in her chest like a sliver of flint—each beat a spark sawing at her ribs. Her mouth waters at the memory of Sofora, eyes so bright and so wide, lips stretched open in a perfect circle as she uttered her last scream on her last breath. Her fear had been sick, foul, and bitter, but now Nomvula’s got a hunger for it like no other.