Temper

by Nicky Drayden

  He shouldn’t have done that.

  The temptations I had buried in my gut have now worked their way back to the points of my teeth. My cravings whip me so hard, I can’t contain my saliva. I drool like a half-starved street dog, leering at Chimwe as he squeezes his finger until it goes pale. A dollop of blood the size of a large coin rests in his palm. I dip my fingers in and suck them dry.

  “Wait!” Chimwe says. “We didn’t say . . .” His eyes shift to Grace Mountain.

  “Say what?” I coax him. The tether to the moon hums luridly in my ear. I swear, if he gives thanks to Him for the food I provided . . .

  “Never mind. It’s not important.” He takes a bite of his fish, swallows. I wait for him to leave, but he doesn’t. He comes closer, settles beside me, and offers blood from his other hand. “What you said, do you think it’s really true? That we are not less than? That we can do anything, be anything?”

  “You’re supping with a god. I’m not sure there ever were any rules, but if there were, they’re pretty much void at this point.” I bite my bottom lip. My entire body throbs to the beat of his heart.

  “Good. Because all of this, I think it’s a good thing. We have a chance to start over, to do things right this time.” I feel what he is saying, not because I want more than anything to agree with him, but because his keen aspirations prickle like seltzer upon my tongue. I also taste the cool bitterness of his fears and uncertainties upon my palate. I’d tasted such things before, when I’d killed, but they’d only filled me with haunted remorse. Now they bind me to my cousin-sibling, our connection thicker than blood.

  Suddenly, my senses shift and smells from my past overwhelm me: the sweet scents of stale sanjo smoke and cheap inks. I look up and see Uncle Pabio standing there. My heart bucks, and for a split second, all is right, and none of this is happening, and I’m just a kid in the basement of his doting uncle, waiting for him to amaze me. Without a thought, I go to him, embrace him. Weakness overwhelms me, and I go slack in his arms as my bones threaten to slip to dust.

  “Hello, Auben,” he says. Uncle Pabio hands me his flask, the same one I’d snuck my first sips of spirits from.

  My first instinct is to refuse it, but something charges me as I hold the flask. I unscrew the top, and am warmed back to the point of merely freezing. I take a sip, letting the thick liquid curl upon my tongue before swallowing. The buzz is immediate. Intense. Gratifying. I take another. Longer. Deeper, until only vapors remain. It’s not as delectable as those last sweet bits of life force sucked dry from the depths of a desiccated heart, but it satisfies me nicely.

  “More,” I demand of him, handing back the empty flask. When he takes it, I notice the red bandage around his wrist. It is his blood settling into my stomach. My taste buds swell with the savory-sweet mix of his eccentricity, his creativity, and his perseverance . . . like a good Rashtra chutney.

  “I know your mother taught you better manners than that,” his voice cracks, clearly irritated. “A thank-you would suffice.”

  I stiffen at the mention of Mother and my buzz washes clean away. My brow tightens. “And you should mind how you talk to your lord, Pabio,” I growl.

  “That’s Uncle Pabio,” Uncle Pabio says. “I know who you are and what you are. But none of that stops you from being my nephew.” Uncle Pabio sniffs the flask, screws the lid on tight, then pockets it. He lays his arm around me and pulls me in close—no hesitation in his eyes, no uncertainty in his smile. “My favorite nephew,” he adds.

  Chimwe sighs and turns his jealous gaze to the pieces of fish flesh stuck beneath his fingernails.

  Me, I prickle all over with Uncle Pabio’s eyes upon me. He’s never been one to hide his contempt for religion, and now here I stand before him, a god in the flesh. “You still claim me? Even though you know what I am? A figment of the imagination? An invention to coerce morality?”

  “Maybe an invention. Definitely not a figment.” His warm hand touches my cheek. “But what does it matter if humanity created the gods, or the gods created humanity? We’re both here now, right?” Uncle Pabio says. “What you did today was a miracle. It’s seeded hope where there was none. Yes, this is a dark day for us all, but with your help, we can recover. We can thrive.”

  “Yes, but at what price?” I say. “For how many lives?”

  “If blood is your currency, you only need to tell us how much,” Chimwe says flatly, as if this is a business transaction.

  “More than can fit in Uncle Pabio’s flask.” I eye the bulging pulse in Chimwe’s neck. “More than runs through your veins.”

  Chimwe nods. He is not perturbed. “I’ll need a solid number. Ten pints a day? Twenty?”

  I think of what Sesay had said. Three lives per year on average, but that number makes me cringe. I realize what restraint I’ve shown for all these centuries, nearly starving myself. If I’m going to be any use to anyone, I’m going to need more. Much more.

  “A hundred fifty pints. And it needs to be fresh,” I say greedily. “Still warm.” I become warm myself as embarrassment washes over me. My mind races to the time Uncle Pabio caught me red-handed with his stash of vice mags. He was the one who’d taught me to walk the thin line between pleasure and indulgence, between virtue and vice. He was the one who’d taught me to appreciate all the shades of gray. I turn my mind around this, finding strengths within our weaknesses. Uncle Pabio would give his lifeblood so willingly. And from his confidence, I am sure he is not alone. “This is our communion,” I say.

  “What’s that?” asks Uncle Pabio.

  “Your blood. I feel closer to you both now. I thought it was a craving for more . . . but it’s not that. Not only that, at least. It connects us.” I resist the urge to smack my lips as I savor the robust flavor of their essences lingering upon my tongue. Smoky. Nutty. Firm. With a hint of spice . . . anise, maybe? I’m eager to stretch my palate with the samplings of many more.

  Within the span of half an hour, a line forms more than a hundred deep. An ounce at a time, my mind peels open to the infinite resources that my vice-filled people possess. Greed runs hot and harsh within the veins of a comfy mogul who had grown a financial empire despite the odds, and had given hundreds of people jobs to provide for their families. Then there’s the tart and grippy vainglory of a talented architect who despite her years of experience, had never risen above a junior title. Her ideas were stolen by her superiors to build three of the most gorgeous buildings upon the Cape’s skyline. Then there’s the supple creaminess of a streetwalker’s lecherous blood, stirring me deep. He’s damned good at his job, and proud of it, too. I do nothing to sway him or shame him. There is no judgment. After all, who am I to judge anyone? He works hard, puts in the hours, survives. Thrives, even. When I look out before me, I see my people are all survivors. I see warriors and fathers and mothers and lovers and people who’ve worked their fingers to the bone to put an extra scrap of meat on the table. Just like my mother had. Whatever she’d done, she’d done it for us.

  When my energy is fully restored, I’ll take to the skies and spin my gossamer webs, bringing back wood, stone, fresh water, and metal ore. Together we will create a city of vices—an infrastructure built by temper and lechery, an economy fueled by greed and envy, a culture adorned with vainglory and guided by doubt, and as all governments worth their sand, ruled by a leader with a well-intentioned, yet duplicitous tongue.

  I look at Chimwe, dutifully at my side, gnawing on the remnants of his fish. A couple months ago, he would have been the last person I thought I could count on for anything. But I’ve tasted the depths of his work ethic, his aspirations, his guile and creativity and problem solving. Despite his vices, I trust him with my life, and I trust him with the heart of our city. “So, back in our dorm room,” I say to him, “were you serious about being capable of running a multimillion-djang corporation?”

  Chimwe stops chewing. His eyes brighten, and then we both stare off into the stretches of muddy, underdeveloped land, imagining the possib
ilities.

  I may be a god, but I am not the god they are used to. I do not require sacred monuments or churches or texts or hymnals. I do not listen to prayers. Communions are informal, mostly filled with laughter and raunchy jokes, but the occasional intellectual discourse is not unwelcome. No one is turned away. At the center of Akinyemi, our charmed city, I rest in the plaza, watching the skyline spring to life before my eyes. Science is no longer repressed, and as a result, subsecular groups have come out of hiding and their machinations have allowed the buildings to soar higher than anything before. Money has no meaning. Hunger doesn’t exist. Without struggle, without the stigma of lesser twindom hanging over our heads, we are free to create, to innovate, to thrive. Our city is one of unabashed mental masturbations, the architecture luminous and rotund—the sun glinting off violet and indigo glass and polished metal, like our skyline is a collection of gaudy baubles and gems. It steals your gaze, fills you with envy, then sends you on your way. Here, in our charmed city, we live as one—a people born of vices, using them to lift us higher than any virtue ever could.

  Thousands visit me each and every day. They stand proudly in line, sometimes for hours at a time, not rushed, not harried, but eager for the opportunity to spill the blood that has built this city. While they wait, they also commune with each other, sharing boisterous laughter and fledgling innovations, savory samosas and fresh-baked mealie bread. Inventors and investors, philosophers and philanderers, gallery artists and con artists—they all come, but it is who doesn’t show up that concerns me the most.

  Mother.

  “She is not ready yet,” my uncle Pabio consoles me. Not for the first time. Not for the hundredth. “She needs a little more time to process.”

  Time is much too slippery for me when it’s measured in seconds and minutes and days, but enough of it has passed, I am sure of that.

  “I want you to take me to see her,” I demand.

  “I promised her I wouldn’t.”

  His words sink into my bones, and it’s difficult for me not to question where his loyalties lie. I keep Uncle Pabio close, like a moral compass—a moral compass that happens to always point south-southwest, but his eccentricities are easy enough to adjust for. He’s right, though. I should respect my mother’s wishes. I should keep stepping around the pit she’s left in my heart. “Does she hate me?” I ask. “Is she embarrassed of me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why? Why will she not come to visit her own son?” My fist pounds the ground. The earth rumbles, and a narrow crack winds its way across the plaza’s manicured lawn. Pigeons take to the air. Childish laughter from a nearby game of freeze tag comes to an abrupt halt.

  Uncle Pabio swallows. “I do not wish to put words in her mouth, Auben.”

  I flinch at the name, like it’s the remnant of a past I’d nearly forgotten. If I could will my heart to stone and not care, I would, but beneath the armor of godhood, I pine for Mother’s approval. I have always been a disappointment to her, but now look what I have built. How high must these buildings be before she lets me back into her arms? “I need to know, Uncle Pabio. What can I do to make her love me again?”

  Uncle Pabio crumbles at my words. He comes to me, rests a comforting hand on my shoulder. “She is fighting her own demons.” Uncle Pabio catches himself and flushes at his misspoken word. “You know what I mean. It’s tough on her . . . all this time she was so dead set against religion, only to discover she’d carried the very seed of it in her womb. Religion still makes her uncomfortable.”

  “But this whole city is built upon mental masturbations! There is no religion.” I look around us, and under the rolling curves of the plaza’s honeycomb pavilion, dozens of children tinker with machinations, brains greedy for knowledge. I watch, completely rapt as they build small automatons that skitter around on their own volition, like they are gods springing life from metal. Never in my eleven years of schooling had I seen so many young minds so motivated, so inspired. So lecherous. Here, there is no one to tie them down to desk chairs and pour globs of misinformation in their heads until they forget how to think.

  “I’m sorry, Auben,” he says, offering me his flask.

  I shove it away. “I’m not in the mood.” I already can smell the pity upon his breath. No need for me to taste it as well.

  Uncle Pabio nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

  “Mmm . . .” I grumble. I stand, stretch my legs, strum a few tethers, and get ready to uphold my end of the social contract between me and the citizens of Akinyemi.

  “Oh! Are you leaving?” says the next girl in line. “I’ve been waiting forever.” My heart swells at the sound of her voice. Nkosazana. I’d nearly forgotten about her after all this time. My eyes run over her, top to bottom. She’s still prim and tight, outfitted in a turquoise shweshwe-print dress with stunning black-and-cream accents and a matching beaded necklace, but gone are the false embellishments . . . the luxurious store-bought mane, the layers of makeup, the blue glass contacts. Her hair is pressed and falls lightly upon her shoulders. Her skin is flawless, save for a small, off-colored patch upon her cheek. Her eyes are a warm, reddish-brown. Ruda’s imprint on her must have run extremely shallow in her blood, because other than embracing her natural beauty, almost nothing about her has changed.

  “I’ve got time for one more,” I say.

  She’s ripe with nervousness, something I’ve never seen in her. She’d always been so self-confident and sure. Nkosazana rummages through her purse and pulls out a silver letting thimble. Her hands tremble as she fumbles with it. I take her hands in mine, guide her index finger into the small cup, press it into the spike hidden inside. Gently, I milk her finger until an ounce is drawn, then sip it down with delight. From this taste of her, I learn more than I’d bothered to in all the time we were together. I savor the expanse of her intellect, and am piqued by the decadent creaminess of natural nobility, with a subtle twist of lime that catches me off guard.

  “I’ve missed you,” she says, batting unremarkable lashes. They make me flush nonetheless.

  “I bet you say that to all the gods.”

  She smiles at me and my heart flips. “I was hoping we could talk somewhere private?”

  I flex my fingers, play a tune on invisible strings, and from the earth erupts a tangle of green vines all around us. They extend up, dome over our heads, sprouting large heart-shaped leaves and floppy-headed yellow flowers.

  Nkosazana stares up in awe, nicks of light dappling her face. “You remembered my favorite color.”

  “Just a lucky guess,” I say with a grin. In a society that thrives on duplicity, blatant honesty has become a particularly useful tool to connect with people on a deeper level.

  Nkosazana arches a brow. “Really? The Auben I knew would have claimed to have never forgotten a single detail about me, even if a thousand years had passed.”

  I’d spoken to her like that? Probably. Certainly. I was adept at the game of talking my way into her panties. Memories of us in bed press up against my mind. I’m overcome with warmth, not from the sudden whip of lust coursing through me (though I won’t lie, it’s quite nice, too), but from the memories of her companionship, the touch of her skin against mine, and the giggles we shared beneath cool sheets. She anchors me to my humanity, like a lifeline to my former self. Both of which I’ve been losing my grip on with each day that passes. “I’m sorry about that,” I mumble.

  Nkosazana shrugs me off. “That was the past,” she says. “The reason I’m here has more to do with the present.”

  Ah, so that’s why she’s here. To rekindle our romance, after all this time. I remember how proud she’d been of dating a comfy rat. I can only imagine how much dating a god would stroke her vainglory. My excitement ebbs, though, as I feel her eyes fork at my body, like it’s a cooked sausage about to break through its casing.

  “We can be honest, can’t we?” she says. “Completely honest. Completely open.”

  Completely op
en. I hear what she’s saying. She wants to see me, the body I keep hidden underneath this fleshy cloak. I stare back at the blemish on her cheek, wondering how many times she’d covered it, keeping that bit of her hidden from me. How often had she worried about her makeup smudging off?

  “Nkosazana, I can’t . . .” It takes so much effort to keep myself fitting within Auben’s skin. I’m constantly folding and refolding myself, trying to squeeze back into a container far too inadequate to accommodate the boundless span of a god. But I do it to protect my followers from the nightmare I’ve become. And to protect myself from their fickle loyalty.

  She leans in close, her breath hot and humid upon the lobe of my ear. “Auben, it’s me. You can show me. It’s just us in here.”

  “The last person who I let see the real me betrayed me,” I say bitterly.

  “I’m not that person.” She draws back, crosses her arms over her chest. “I thought we had something, you and I.”

  “We did!” I blurt out, the seams of Auben’s skin burning white-hot as the beast within threatens to jump out. I can’t show her. Not yet. She’s not ready. I’m not ready. But if I don’t give her something, I might lose her again, and with her, the last vestiges of my humanity.

  I shift. Not into what I am, but into the monster she has built up in her mind. I force my body into its mold. My skin grows tawny fur, shorn close like velvet so that she can still see the ripples in my muscles across my long, lean body. Claws erupt from my nail beds, a fraction of their actual size. They’re sharp, black, and polished, like slivers of onyx—glossy enough to catch my reflection. In them, I see the wide, caring eyes of a baby oryx, and upon my head a noble crown of horns. I wrap my large wings around my body like a satin sheet, playing the part of the shy little thing Nkosazana wants to save.

  “Oh, come on now, it’s not that awful,” she says with a soft smile. “Actually, you’re kind of cute. In a beastly sort of way.” With a gentle hand, she slides my wing back, and strokes me from shoulder to elbow. I tense at her touch. Arousal grips me, wrenches the logic from my mind. I swell within this flimsy container, the thought of her tongue playfully ringing circles around my navel, of her kissing my chest, my shoulder, my cheek . . . Certainly a vice-ridden girl like Nkosazana knew not to let me kiss her, but the promise of death upon my lips would only add to the thrill. I’m so taut, so ready, another touch may send the heavens crashing down upon us.