Containment: The Death of Earth

by Charlee Jacob

  He gave her water from his canteen. Then he jumped up and began to shout, using seven languages for a single word. “Help! Msaada! An-najda! Au-Secours! Tiamako! Siza! Ndibatsirewo! Help!”

  People came after what seemed a long time, afraid to venture into the bushes until a policeman showed up. The officer took one look at the woman on the ground and shot the boy-rebel dead.

  Louise finally let herself go to a deep place where she neither saw nor felt anything more. Several times she found herself floating in the air at the white ceiling of a white room. People dressed in white worked on a woman lying upon a steel table. They stitched, cut, stitched some more. All her hair was shaved off before a hole was drilled in her skull, because the brain had swollen.

  She felt herself float out of the room, down a white corridor, then down a tunnel, blazing light at the end. An armless woman stood there waiting for her. It was Shimani.

  Her mother smiled radiantly but shook her head. “You must go back, Asali.”

  Except she did have arms, made of light.

  “Kwa nini, mama mzazi?” Louise asked her.

  “Because of the world to come,” Shimani replied. “Ahera. Mungu akuweke.”

  Louise was pulled backwards down the tunnel, abruptly filled with were-lions, leopard societies, crocodile-men.

  “She gave you to ussssssss,” they hissed, opening then snapping shut their jaws. “Come, daughter, into the defilement of the deep. Your initiation issssssss not yet over. And we are ssssssstill hungry and lussssssssting.”

  “God be with you” reflected sonically through the boundaries set by the bandages around her head. She no longer floated outside of herself.

  Death had refused her.

  ««—»»

  Time

  memory

  flesh

  layered as is the onion.

  The pattern first came altered in dreams, but this only represented the pattern’s ‘resonance’, affecting damage and the reverberation of damage as it was either healed or could not be healed. Then the pattern slowly began to recognize its origins. The symbols for violence became the violence itself, each act too horrible to be recalled—too horrible not to be recalled.

  The onion peeled away. At its center was a terrible singularity, one that Louise’s childhood history and present will-to-survive wouldn’t permit her to ignore.

  The beasts would always be there, at first as echoes for short-term memories, then as a habit for blood. She would powerfully identify with what her mother, Shimani, endured as well, not as an indistinguishable blur of the atrocities, but as two separate-yet-equal reconstructions of barbaric transgression upon the innocent and powerless.

  History, personal or otherwise, shall never be forsaken.

  Louise would never regain the lost time or flesh, but she clung to the memory as the path out of darkness.

  Those who have done this to her she could never have forgiven if it hadn’t been for her son. Uwezo no doubt committed twin sins, identical enough for hell. He’d maimed, murdered, outraged. He was called Snake by comrades little older than he. For his sake and all like him, Louise forgave the echoes and the blood habit.

  She also pitied her neighbors. If the situation reversed, would not Louise hide herself and her children as rabid dogs dragged off someone else…?

  How much of her own humanity could she discard? How fast could empathy be pushed aside?

  She didn’t know what she would do. Perhaps she’d cry for help, as Uwezo had, aware that he would likely be killed for her. Or maybe she’d become a mad dog herself.

  Or stay, silent, in hiding, like an outnumbered jackal.

  ««—»»

  Something the doctors said:

  Two types of memory loss due to brain damage.

  Retrograde amnesia—the patient can’t remember events that happened before the damage occurred.

  Ante-rogade amnesia—the patient can’t recall events that happened after the injury was sustained.

  In Louise’s case a mixture seemed right. Events before and during her ordeal hazed. Humans morphed into wicked changelings or into evil African myths—scourges of depravity. Events that occurred after blundered past illusion and on, into frightful delusion.

  But as she was never conscious to explain her nightmares and revelations of hell and heaven, the doctor didn’t know her condition. Did Louise currently suffer amnesia? Would she ever, provided she emerged from her coma? He did predict this: Louise Joto would be paralyzed and likely in a persistent vegetative state, and amnesia would be the least of her troubles.

  And she’d be yet another victim whose exaltation of suffering only became exquisite in its poignancy when those, to whom distance and non-involvement created an elevated vantage, could safely afford both charity and…

  …crocodile tears.

  Allegorically poised was the Pietà of the self-mourning. The crucified self. True misery was a convulsion without compassion.

  ««—»»

  Snake sat by her bedside, his back to her. Not her son but the rebel-rechristened. Across his youthfully broadening shoulders and down both sides of his slinky serpentine spine was a tattoo in stark relief on the black background of his skin. Women in various stages of decomposition squirmed as he whipped like a desert sidewinder, born to the midnight air. They smiled in waterfalls of rictus and self-loathing delight. They crooked moldy fingers, chewed-off fingers, fingers the knuckles had been cut from.

  They beckoned. “Join us. Join. Pig asana yule potosha. Pig asana yule mboo. Pig asana Yule akava wa maiti punda.

  “I never recognized you,” he told Louise, still not facing her. “You were wreckage and I delighted to stare, at a smashed insect of a hag. Old and nasty. I killed my comrades, for they had debased themselves, such a loathsome paka. Then I cried for help as your gravity sucked me toward that gruesome cave of corruption. You succubus. You Lilith, screwing demons and eating your young!”

  He laughed. A strange clacking sound filled the room, as of small flat stones being brought together.

  “I was one of the men who avenged our dead at that birthday party. I purposely sought out Bibi Aziza. You. I didn’t find either of you. I did kill Babu Majid and both of his brothers. As for Asali… If only she had been there! I would have taken her to our camp to be one of my wives.”

  Now he swung toward her, a trail of each movement traced onto the air like a photograph in smoke and napalm. His head was oddly triangular, yellow and lidless eyes, his fangs dripped a venom that smelled of and resembled Betadine.

  ««—»»

  At some point, it came time for the hospital to turn off Louise’s respirator and other life supporting maintenance. A priest was summoned to administer last rites.

  She did not die.

  Then the staff was informed that Louise Joto would no longer be given antibiotics or any other medications necessary to sustain a patient in critical condition. The pharmaceuticals were withdrawn.

  She did not die.

  The feeding tube was removed, also the artificial means of taking away the body’s wastes.

  The staff—most of them anyway—didn’t like leaving a patient to suffocate or starve to death.

  Someone crept in nightly to spoon-feed her, give her water, and wipe her delicately rounded chin. This person emptied bed pans and dutifully hand-sponged her from a basin of rose water.

  So even as they waited tensely for Louise to die—they did, unfortunately and regrettably, need the bed—still she did not die.

  One night the hospital was having a worse time than even their usual emergencies. Another clash ensued between insurgents and government military. Explosions not too distant shook all the windows. Torsos with heads and no limbs were carried in to be saved. People crammed the hallway until it was so packed not even the trauma team could shove through. There was wailing as from a prophetic/pathetic banshee, called kizimwi in Swahili. Many babbled prayers, envisioning their entreaties from the tallest parts of the forest where t
he sun rarely penetrated the wild trees to reach a ground pleading for light. Some howled or whimpered like dogs.

  Only a couple hours before, Sam Joto had entered the hospital and given money to a night shift orderly. The orderly entered Louise’s room with a pillow, intent on smothering her.

  Damn it, some people were just too stubborn to live.

  An apparition of segmented amber stepped between the paid assassin and the comatose woman in the bed. The spectral grotesque beauty blew a vapor hard as a fist at the would-be murderer’s face. Shrieking, he grabbed his head and fled the room. He collapsed in the hallway and was nearly trampled to death. Two nurses witnessed his crazed exit from the room and managed to drag him into a supply closet. His face was so disfigured, neither readily identified him as the creep who was always trying to cop a feel.

  Turned out his features were severely frostbitten, requiring the removal of his nose, one ear, one eye, and several square inches of other flesh from his face. He was given a plastic triangle for the nose, a curl of rind excised from his thick foreskin to replace the ear, and a glass eye. Inquiries and the nurses’ accounts shed light on his true purpose in Louise’s room, and the hospital fired him.

  None tried to take Louise’s bed after that.

  ««—»»

  How long had she been there?

  Zamani za kale.

  How long had she been there?

  Zamani hizi.

  How long would she be there?

  Si jambo la mara moja.

  Past.

  Present.

  It takes time.

  Saa ngapi?

  jano.

  leo.

  Kesho.

  What time is it?

  Yesterday.

  Today.

  Tomorrow.

  WAKE UP!

  Her eyes opened. The bandages were gone. Although day shone hotly bright outside, the curtains in her room were drawn. This was fortunate for Louise for she’d not seen light, beyond the visionary’s dream state, in too long.

  What had caused her to suddenly regain consciousness?

  Still out but climbing from her haze, she’d heard the doctor announce: “It must be a tumor. The other is simply impossible. We’ll prep her for surgery, scheduled this afternoon. For those of you troubled with morality, understand me, this is not an abortion. Women do not conceive without ovaries, without a uterus.”

  Louise found herself alone in the room. Her injuries were healed. The scars tugged.

  Her abdomen bulged, considerably. She ran trembling, weak hands over it. It wasn’t a tumor…

  It was a baby. She guessed she was about six months along. She didn’t care that they believed her too internally damaged to get pregnant. Nor did she care what monstrous attacker may have made her with child.

  Would it, could it, have been fathered by one of them anyway? A hysterectomy had been performed months ago. Any budding life—likely impossible considering what the ngwena manomumes did to her—would have come out with her grossly tattered insides.

  It didn’t matter who the father was. This was her baby and she wouldn’t let them kill it.

  Louise stood up, dizzy, but she managed to remain on her feet. She wore only a thin hospital gown. The rebels had ripped her own clothes to shreds. How could she have worn them even if they had been as torn up as she’d been? She was too big now, even with the doctor being under orders to starve her.

  Yet what was that, neatly folded on a chair near the window? A dress, large enough for a pregnant belly. A shali, and beneath was a pair of shoes. There on the table sat a little purse with some money and big sunglasses within.

  Louise dressed as quickly as she could, then left the room. She hung her head, swathed in the brightly patterned shali. The sunglasses covered almost half her face, grateful for the disguise and the protection to her sensitive eyes. She prayed none would recognize her.

  Why should they? Louise Joto was in a coma and could not live much longer.

  And why bother with a surgical procedure to remove a ‘tumor’? For a woman ordered off of life support and medication and even nourishment? Had the doctor decided to allow natural compassion to overrule Sam Joto’s wishes that she be allowed—even encouraged—to die? Or did to doctor plan to use the excuse of surgery to…?

  Sam Joto, a man who had clawed his way out of the desperate poverty of Nuru’s direst ghetto to own a moderately successful construction business, had already paid one would-be assassin.

  The corridor bustled to bursting with the wounded and sick.

  A young woman lightly touched her arm. So young, Louise thought, maybe a bit over Louise’s age (how old am I now?). The woman’s clothes were sodden rags and bruises made her face a swollen farce.

  “What was it like for you down in the mud? Did they turn you over and over? Did they take you to their waterhole at the river’s end? You got away. But they drowned me. See?”

  Her jaw dropped down to her chest, water gushing from her throat mixed with blue frothy blood. Her swollen belly—bigger than Louise’s—burst as dozens of baby crocodiles scurried out.

  No one else in the hall seemed to see this. Louise staggered and turned away.

  She thought of her son, Uwezo. He’d died to save her, no matter what the nightmare tried to make Louise believe. Some rebels were so brainwashed they raped their own mothers on command.

  Not Uwezo. He must have known that once the policeman saw his tats that he’d be given no quarter. There would be no pause to consider who had cried for help.

  His name, his birth name, meant ‘strength’. If Louise managed to save this baby and it came out a thriving boy, she would name him after his brother.

  Out the doors and into the street. She swayed back and forth with every hot breeze. She counted the money in the little purse. It might be enough to take a taxi home.

  Louise knew that this time of day Sam would be out working. She could collect her things from the house and get away.

  Chapter 9

  ————

  “This ghastly skeleton, bone-bare, on ghostly nag,

  Gallops through space. No spurs, no whips…

  And yet his steed pants toward Apocalypse,

  Nostrils a-snort in epileptic fit.

  Headlong they rush, athwart the infinite,

  With rash and trampling hoof. The cavalier,

  His flashing sword aflame, slashes—now here,

  Now there—amongst the nameless slaughtered horde;

  Then goes inspecting, like some manor-lord,

  The charnel-ground, chill and unbounded, where,

  Under a black sun’s pallid, leaden glare,

  History’s great sepulchered masses lie,

  From ages near and ages long gone by.”

  A Fantastic Engraving

  – Charles Baudelaire

  ————

  Adam sat on the plane to Paris when his vision suddenly changed, broadening, lengthening, deepening as if he were the seer of all mystics. Hadn’t he done this before?

  (Never at will.)

  After the blasts all over Italy and on its islands, there was no way to penetrate the vicious clouds that enveloped the area. It almost felt like being on drugs to see this much carnage. For such a scene could be nothing less than a hallucination the mind would go to great lengths to reject—including going insane. It came in a panorama so wide and high that there was no chance to turn away. An observer couldn’t even close his eyes for such a tableaux was forever burned onto his retinas. Millions died in the lava flows or were cooked inside out in pyroclastic clouds.

  A part of him turned it off as not being real enough to be worth the attention. That’s what it did, simply hit the power switch and wandered off in a fruitless search to find something—anything—in which to place sensible faith.

  There was an oxymoron if Adam had ever heard one: sensible faith.

  Not real not real not real not real

  Not real

  Adam had seen h
orror before, epic spectacles of gruesomeness.

  Did it seem a little like coming home? Was this his (unchosen) milieu? Familiar yet forbidden territory. Upside-down, inside out, memories that began by merely teasing him—now full frontal attack. He seemed to close his eyes. Twitch in dream rabid fall. He shook off the strange flash. What had he been thinking? Yeah, full frontal attack.

  Not all of it, not enough that Adam could piece together who he’d been before.

  Over and over he watched the satellite’s replay on the plane’s TV screen. The view first of a placid Mediterranean. Next, an inexplicable blur lasting for a trio of seconds, the length of time it took a sleepy eye to blink. Third, a shining, blinding red-white light—for this had come at dawn—as each cone rent itself into one or more fissures, rendering temporary sightlessness to those who couldn’t help but see the first retinal-damaging mirror, having no warning. Surely they would see sparks and experience terrible headaches for weeks, Adam had thought, this early prognosis on his part not considering worst-case scenarios based upon improbabilities. Fourth, a monumental single interconnection of explosions across Italy, Sicily, and the Aeolian Islands with a few other sundry—sundered—islands.

  Nowhere else. As if AWOL had closed it off on every side, and an invisible ceiling kept the disaster within itself.

  The earth shook…afterward but there were no preceding earthquakes that should have presaged this for hours, days, even months prior to a calamity of this magnitude.

  Nothing had preceded Pacifica either. Not according to survivors or seismologists.

  Yes, it had! The house…the ground beneath it…rumbling all that day, as if some animal, driven insane by wounds, was shaking the bars of its hated cage.

  What house? Where?

  Another dark spasm: screaming on hooks.