The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

  My mother asked us to leave.

  8.

  Master Jehu and Yinepu and I walked together through the night, dazzled by what we’d been privileged to behold.

  When we saw the compound just ahead, Master Jehu smiled, faraway. “I knew your father when he was just a child.”

  He shocked me yet again. I was angry—yet another secret? But as he taught us many times, The truth is like the sun: with the same rays a bringer of life and yet a champion of death . . . . The time to know will come when it is right.

  “I was there when he met your mother,” he said. “And I was there the day of his return, and the night of his final banquet.”

  I steadied myself, drained the anger of my swamp. “Master, when he was little, what was my father like?”

  Yin, too, was excited to know more about the man he’d spent so many years to reconstruct and resurrect.

  Master Jehu’s eye erupted with an arrowhead and shaft. A spear gashed through his chest.

  I whirled, dodged the hammer aiming for my skull, saw the mace which broke my Master’s spine and sent him plunging to the muck.

  “Murder!” I shouted, and then let Fang announce himself. I cleaved necks from shoulders, thighs from calves, turned skulls into halves.

  “Go!” I told Yinepu. “Protect the children!”

  He ran inside.

  More murderers erupted from the shadows, surrounding me and casting mesh upon me, gagging me so I that couldn’t speak my words-of-power.

  They clubbed me till I heard my own bones snap, and when I buckled, I sank to sand and roots and rocks and saw the severed heads of seven jackals on the soil, and everything went dark—

  And then men dragged me like a netful of fishes, hefted me and dumped me to the grass. My elbows and wrists were bound, my gag tightened, my face pressing into the ground. My nostrils drank the stench of shit and piss, and burning-smoke of wood and meat.

  The heavy footsteps thudded through the mud and matted reeds, stopped behind me.

  “So you’re him, huh?”

  I’d never heard his voice before, but I knew at once just who he was. Just as I’d never been stabbed, but still I’d know a knifeblade if a knife slipped between my ribs to steal my life.

  I wrenched my head to glimpse his face, but he was silhouetted by the bright inferno of our compound crackling to its death.

  All I could make out was the outline of his war-helmet, the square-cropped upright ears of an ant-eater. Or the blunted horns of an arch-devil.

  He growled, “So who do you think I am?”

  He walked closer. Kicked my thighs open.

  He knelt behind me—I felt his kneecaps between mine.

  I tried to get up, tried to fight, tried to scream, but the gag shackled my words and his men clutched my ankles.

  “Who am I? Huh? Who am I?”

  He yelled, howled, laughed, screamed, raged while bucking, while cutting me, while gouging me, while bleeding me, while defiling me, while ruining me.

  “Say my name!” he screamed. “Say my name! SAY MY NAME!”

  The Book of Now

  1.

  A caged bird.

  Raptor, in A & D, at the Remand Centre.

  Jail.

  Statisticalised.

  He’d told himself long ago he’d never let anybody enslave him again.

  But here he was.

  Cold darkness, steel clanging echoes, and the stench of the holding cell: stovepot stewing Lysol, cheese slices, and diarrhea.

  Wouldn’t be having visitors at the Remand Centre. The Ream. That’s what they called it, and he knew why. Everybody knew why.

  No visitors except a lawyer, cuz now it was all space-age. Video visits from offsite. So you couldn’t even smell your loved ones.

  Knew the stories. Heard em all. Guys who ended up dead in their cells. Human excrement attacks—psychos filling up potato chip bags or milk cartons or pop bottles with piss and shit, placing them just under the cell doors of inmates and stomping them or bombing prisoners with em.

  “And these fuckers have AIDS, man,” whoever’d told him about it had said. “Their fuckin shit’s full of it!”

  Not even guards were safe. They got bombed, too. And shanked. And stomped. And choked.

  Scanning the cell. Remembering . . . .

  Some scarred-up Hispanic guys. Bandidos? MS-13s, the Salvadorans from LA? Over there, Asian Syndicate? Some Punjabis—Millwoods Mafia? Cree dudes . . . Alberta Warriors, Redd Alert? A couple of patois-dripping yahd-bwoys: North End Jamaicans?

  No way of knowing who was connected, or if all those gangs even really existed or were just the typical bullshit that all wannabe gangstas—wiggers, Brown wiggers, even Black wiggers—ate up like Cream of Wheat.

  Mangled truth or outright lies with better flow and more hype than anything by Lil Jon or Young Jeezy. Or even NWA.

  But those swastikas were no joke.

  Two skinheads, both taller than he was, one thick-necked, the other with grey eyes so pale they were almost all white except for the pupils.

  Somebody behind him whispered: “White Boy Posse.”

  Somebody answered it: “Aint they like the farm team an shit for the Hell’s Angels?”

  And on their arms . . . .

  With his Shining Eye, he saw it there before him, the crest he’d designed with ’Noot, burnished gold beaming sunrise, a falcon grasping two shen-rings in its talons.

  But on the skinheads across the holding cell, a tattoo on each like an armband: an eagles grasping a hooked cross inside a circle.

  Straight outta the Righteousness & Mastery Scroll, the Cosmological Alchemy: he was an electron. They were antielectrons.

  All they had to do was touch, and they would annihilate each other.

  Standing on the LRT platform, Central Station, cuz his bike had a flat. Been borrowing Jackal’s bus pass for a couple of days, but he’d left it in his locker at Centre High.

  Thought about never-minding it and boarding anyway, but decided to hoof it back the three blocks.

  Vaulting up the stairs, when the guard yelled at him to stop. He did. Guard questioned him, demanded, Show me your pass. He tried to tell him. Guard said, You’re coming with me. No, I’m not coming with you. Already told you.

  You’re coming with me—

  The thick-necked Nazi. Muttering to his partner, loudly: “Lookit all these fuckin mud people in here.”

  The one with the white eyes: “Like fuckin Lord of the Rings.”

  Heads cranked, but nobody moved. The balls on these assholes. Like grenades.

  Two sentences into the cell, and the Nazis already punking everybody.

  Flew up the stairs, LRT plasticop chasing him. Ran right into a real one. And not just any one.

  Heard about him from a whole buncha kids. Even saw him once before: looked just like that crybaby nutcase doughboy racist on FOX.

  Jackal’s joy-riding friends’d taken beat-downs from him. One ended up in the hospital.

  Constable Babyface.

  Thick Neck and White Eyes closed on a guy. Maybe Lebanese. Called him “Osama”—big biceps and angry eyes. But somebody with nobody.

  Blood fists flashed, head hitting cell floor. Thick Neck put one foot on the kid’s chest, leaned in, and the kid went whoof when all the air came out.

  Kid knew better than to scream or beg for help—not that he could do either one.

  Finished, the Nazis turned 270 degrees. Eyefucking everybody in sight.

  If they tried to touching him, or if they tried—

  They would both die.

  Off where the security cameras didn’t point, Babyface’d punched him in the jaw. Raptor went down and training sent the knife-edge of his foot into the cop’s balls.

  Babyface’s baton slashed—

  And again.

  And again, and again.

  Finally hauled him to the cruiser.

  While Raptor was in the back seat, the cop took out his Taser.

  “B
etter start rapping for me now, homey, or I’ll hafta use this on your ass. Or up it.”

  Exploded: “Think I’m afraid of some fucking retard Lead-Head like you?”

  —agony spiking under his fingernails, nailing through his bones and gouging into his eye sockets—body arching like a branch before snapping—

  Collapsing, cuffed, into the back seat . . . .

  “That’s for mouthing off to the police,” said Babyface. “And this one’s for canning me.”

  —lightning—

  Thick Neck and White Eyes took down another Arab. Nobody stepped in.

  Knew they’d come for him. Only a matter of time. Surprised they hadn’t done it yet.

  Knew from training he’d have maybe one second to fix the outcome. Can’t grapple two at once, so he had to strike.

  Stomp feet or thigh-front, which nobody ever expected. Gouge eyes, then crush throat. Second one, no choice but to improvise. If anybody helped him, he might survive. But nobody would.

  White Boy Posse freaks. The year before, some of them’d gotten busted with three hundred grand in cash, half a mill in coke, and a shitload of guns and swords. Kot-tam. Swords? Those White boys were psycho. Jeffery Dahmer psycho.

  Knew that killing even a Nazi psychopath about to kill him would win him a life sentence. And unlike Marley and Lexus, he’d be killing when he was already eighteen, past protection of the Young Offenders Act.

  So, he sobbed to himself, the end of his scroll was already written. Best he could do now was paint in some details.

  At the station, cops checked his record. Nothing.

  Cuz he’d never gotten caught.

  Wiil Waal Abdi, the smiling twenty-year-old who’d seemed so grown up when Raphael was just a kid moving into Al Hambra with his mum.

  Name meant “Crazy Boy” (or add in Abdi for Crazy Boy Slave, since racist Arabs had imposed the common surname/slurname). But he wasn’t crazy. He was nice. Saw Raptor sitting on the lawn outside Al Hambra after school one time.

  “Whatcha reading, little man?” he said, Somali accent channeling a vibe he’d probably looped from some 50 Cent CDs.

  Raphael showed him the Static comic Mr. Jack’d given him.

  “Static, huh? Betchu causin all kinda static your own lil self!” And every time after that, the man called him Static. Didn’t know why Wiil Waal liked him, but he did. And Raphael liked the nickname and the man who gave it to him.

  Coupla weeks and five whassup-Static!s later, Wiil Waal even gave him a few bucks to go buy some more issues, which he finally found in a Wee Book Inn somewhere among stacks of Juggs and Biker and the store’s overfluffy mascot cat.

  Once during winter he forgot his apartment keys. Couldn’t even get through the front door into the stairwell. Shivering out on the front step like a bird that forgot to fly south. Wiil Waal let him come up to his apartment, and they played Xbox on a plasma screen and ate delivery pizza from Rosebowl. Rap felt like Richie Rich.

  Raphael’s mother was furious at Wiil Waal, yelling at him in Somali and calling him a “typical Somali low-life.”

  But Wiil Waal didn’t care, and neither did he. His mother was never there when he got home from school anyway, and Wiil Waal was usually only getting outta bed by then. So Wiil Waal’s crib became Raptor’s after-school care centre.

  It was the only after-school care in the city where the music was mostly NWA. Wiil Waal had all their CDs, and a pristine vinyl of Efil4Zaggin, even though he didn’t own a record player.

  One time Wiil Waal saw some of Raphael’s drawings. They were crude back then, but the twenty-year-old gave him mad props and paid him twenty bucks to draw him a picture of NWA, including Ice Cube, the first one to leave the band and build a solo career.

  Raphael would’ve used his commission to buy a battered copy of Lee’s & Buscema’s How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way from Wee Book Inn, but Wiil Waal bought if for him when they went for a drive, and within weeks his skills leapt years.

  One day Wiil Waal asked Raphael to store some stuff for him. Just a few small sandwich bags for a week. Easy. And pinned twenty bucks on him for his work.

  Within a couple of months of Raphael providing weekly mini-storage, Wiil Waal asked him to keep more than a baggy or two. He helped him build a stealth stash in his box-spring. Big enough for what Wiil Waal called bricks, darkgreen and Saran-Wrapped.

  They went out for milkshakes and burgers at Burger Baron down 118th Ave to celebrate his promotion. Amazing. Outta nowhere, he had an older brother, a friend, and a job.

  He only sipped at the cash, but even back then, it ran out quickly. So four years later—like during his end-of-inventory night when Jackal’d driven up in Nuke’s stolen car—he sometimes sentineled an unclaimed corner in Kush, diming out what was left after Wiil Waal was long gone and the police had seized the man’s Xbox, his plasma and everything else.

  A week after Burger Baron burgers, Wiil Waal musta gone outta town, cuz when Raphael tried returning some NWA CDs after school on a Monday, Wiil Waal didn’t answer the door even after five minutes of knocking. And it was the same the next day.

  The day after that he saw Wiil Waal’s face on the cover of the Sun.

  Statisticalised.

  Police’d searched him, cheering like hillbillies when they unrolled his socks.

  “Whoah, lookit these!” said one, figuring he’d found two dozen joints.

  But they were scrolls, Resurrection Scrolls, rolled and taped just like the ones Brother Moon’d put into his and Jackal’s hands back when they were still mentally dead.

  But what if he’d been packing his butterfly knife when Babyface grabbed him? Would he be dead now?

  After the Kush Party, after almost gutting an innocent man, he knew the only knives he’d ever use again were his hands.

  The Nazis were working their way through the crowd. And still nobody’d stood up to them.

  Maybe none of these guys was gangsta.

  Babyface’d Tasered him. Filled him with electricity. Maybe he really was Static now. Thought made him smile: projecting blue fire from his hands and exploding those skinheads’ heads like eggs in a microwave.

  Muscles twitched. Jaw clenched.

  If nobody else was gonna do it, he would.

  Jackal, long ago: Why would Moon would risk his life for two strangers, especially against two strapped stone-cold killers?

  Finally he could transform it: Because sometimes you’re just so pissed at seeing people get shit on, cuz it reminds you of how much you got shit on, that you will totally fuck up anybody who steps to you or even near you and maybe even get yourself killed, just so you never have to say, I stood on the shore, in the mud, surrounded by reeds, doing nothing, while watching crocodiles in the Swamps snapping through kids’ skulls and swallowing their brains.

  Tapped guys who’d be on the Nazis’ hitlist but also looked like maybe they could fight. Found seven, of seven different colours.

  In the corner, whispering—conspiring, like he’d learned from Brother Moon’s etymology: breathing together.

  Explained they were all next unless they stood together.

  One guy, desperately sucking down his near-tears, finally just said, “Shit, man, I’ont know how to fight!”

  Some people woulda been disgusted, but he knew what this guy was feeling.

  Put a hand on Near-Tear’s shoulder. Guy didn’t shrug it off, either.

  “You don’t hafta know how,” the Supreme Raptor told him and his new coalition. “Just kick em or stomp em as hard as you can, anywhere you can, especially if they’re on the floor.”

  Raptor’s eight turned to the centre of the cell.

  Time: ice. Dripping. Dripping.

  Even against eight, these skinheads would be hard-core, and probably half his own insta-crew would bolt and the other half would crack.

  So he was probably going to die that night.

  Alone.

  Who loved him?

  When his dad sent him and his mother a
head to escape along the Nile, he must’ve known he was gonna die.

  And that was a man he’d never said more to than goo-goo gaa-gaa to.

  His right foot took the first step.

  Who would miss him when he was dead? Who loved him?

  Jackal, no question. And ’Noot—she didn’t love him, but she cared. His mother—maybe before he would’ve bullshitted and said she didn’t, but he knew she did.

  Moon.

  Two steps in, and the Nazis were turning towards them.

  Hit him like sleet: until Moon, no man who’d ever known him had loved him.

  Of course father sacrificed himself, but for a baby. His dad hadn’t really known him, not the him he he’d become.

  Yeah, Wiil Waal found him useful, even liked him—he truly believed that. But Wiil Waal also used him, put him in danger.

  Three steps and the Nazis were already advancing on them. Felt, like he had Daredevil’s radar, two of his own crew peeling away.

  Seventeen years old before he met Moon. Seventeen years before any man had loved him.

  Falcon and pigeons flying straight into eagles, and the ice was melting faster.

  Sounded crazy, those words, like a kot-tam R&B Lead-headed bullshit love ballad, songs so shallow they couldn’t hold a raindrop, cuz they never said anything bizarre or made anyone uncomfortable or asked twisted questions.

  But what was love if it wasn’t bizarre or didn’t make you uncomfortable or force you to ask twisted questions?

  Eight steps and thick Neck and White Eyes and swastikas like whirling buzzsaws mounted on their foreheads, and it was time to kill and die.

  2.

  The C.O. led him down the hall. Felt like a tunnel, a flesh tunnel, throbbing him forward.

  Mud blocked his senses. In his ears: foot-echoes like sloshing through mud. Nose turned the air to smoke over piss. The guard’s hand on his arm: ooze. Gravel.

  No wounds, no blood, not even the first punch thrown, because the guards—

  —trying to ram down a breath to stabilise his gyroscoping mind—