Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana

by Edited by Anil Menon

  In the chamber, I try to fight it, but I fall asleep, the REM reducers wearing off . In the dream, I’m walking with my dad. He’s dressed like King Dasaratha, in the best costume I’ve ever seen. He has a heavy gold crown and ornaments and is robed in real silks made from silkworms. He’s even wearing a fake beard made of real human hair.

  “I thought you hated the Epics,” I say to him. “Remember?”

  He points and I look ahead of us and Tania is standing on a dance platform, naked, her small breasts curving up towards the ceiling. She presses a button and molten gold drips down from the sky, covering her body. Then my father walks over to her and presents her with a set of bronzed antlers fitted with gemstones. I look to my right and see Val disappearing down a corridor. I go to chase him but then remember my father is here. When I look back, it is just Tania, glowing so brightly I can’t see anything else.

  “Where is he?” I yell, but the air is sucked out of my throat. “Where did he go?”

  The lightening chamber timer wakes me with a start.

  After my prosthetics are firmly situated and the blood packets are full, I pull on a blond wig over a skullcap covering my thick curls. I pick a silvery sari with a strapless blouse and line my arms with glass bangles. I lean close to the mirror to apply the lip thickener and eyelash lengthener. I’m going to be focused tonight. I’ll show Val how good I am. I’ll make people tip out over their allowances.

  While I’m turning in front of my mirror to make sure everything’s in place, I see Tania looking at me.

  “What do you think?” I say.

  “Not sure yet,” Tania says. “So, we’re like, the same thing, right? We’re the bad guys?”

  “Not in this place,” I say.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Who?”

  “Surpanakha.”

  “You just saw her.”

  “You didn’t really seem demonness-like.”

  “Huh, well, you should come into the DFR with me sometime,” I say, heading towards the door.

  “I’d like that,” Tania calls after me. I shake my head, try to remember that it’s her job to seduce me, wonder what she wants.

  I usually have a strategic pattern for the night that I switched up recently. I used to go to the bar first, get an elixir—something super strong to jumpstart me, and drink it with a straw. I’d use that time to scope out the floor, make sure I was using my lips and tongue a lot. I shake my hips and sing to the remixes. That way I can scope the whole room, clock what kind of clients we have going on. Then maybe someone would pull me onto the dance floor. But tonight, I just push to the middle of the heaving crowd, DJ Adhara mixing tracks from the latest Ramayana movie—The Taking of Ceylon, III—with reverberating sounds from his electronic tablas. MC Indus wanders through the crowd rhyming the Ramayana verses in his signature Spanish-afflected flow. Adhara loops a haunting flute melody that brings everything together. I dance with my eyes closed, feeling the music. I don’t even think about pulling anyone for the first twenty minutes, I just lose myself. I find it attracts more people in the end, even though I already start to sweat off the skin lightener. By the time I get to the bar, I already have a few people clamoring to buy me drinks.

  There are a couple of Rams, their costumes identical, the kind you buy at the big, cheap hundred dollar stores on the main drag—overly-bright blue skin pigment that’s already evaporating around the eyes. You can tell they’re new to the scene. They’re young, just finishing their vocational year that will place them in either a call center or a service center job. They’re the kind of clients that all want to chip in for one session in the DFR. I refuse their drink politely, say I have to powder my nose and catch the eye of a Ravana on the other side of the bar. I nod at him slightly, make my way over.

  His costume is nicer than the ones I usually see. He’s wearing a thick crown that projects holograms of Ravana’s ten heads on either side of his own face. He’s wrapped smartly in what looks like real high quality red synthetic, in fact, it almost looks like silk.

  “How you doing?” I yell over the crowd.

  “What’re you drinking?” He yells back.

  “Whatever you’re having, your highness.”

  While he’s dealing with the bartender, I look out at the crowd. The club is full. I check out the VIP sections and see the regulars. The Russians with their Filipino wives—they never come in costume, just sit behind their laser ropes and wavy smokescreen and get bottle service all night. Then there’s the older Mexican men, who look ridiculous in their designer costumes, like they don’t know exactly what they are supposed to be doing but they know it’s hip, sipping on their elixirs in rough hewn wooden cups. One time, Val brought one over to me and when we went into the DFR he got so freaked out by the scene, he ran out without paying and Val blamed me for not taking the client along on the ride with me. I think he meant I should have just rubbed one out for him.

  The Ravana, whose skin is dark, so I think maybe he’s Nicoya, hands me the Brahma Elixir. It’s the most expensive one we serve. I wonder what illegal way he makes his money, and wish I could ask him. The way he’s dressed, he probably runs some kind of border trade, most likely people. I reach inside my blouse and set the transform timer.

  “So, what do you do?” I ask, fishing for whether he wants to play this traditional or modern.

  “What do you mean? You don’t know who I am?” he says, his holograms flashing their demon teeth at me.

  “Oh, of course I do, King Ravana,” I bow before him. The Ravana clients are usually perverts, because the story gets twisted into some dirty incest thing. I keep telling Val that we should employ all the char acters. The Ravanas would have a field day with a Sita abduction room where we could have a flying chariot. “I am just a maiden wandering along the Godavari River, picking flowers for my hair. Would you like to accompany me on my path?”

  He nods and I take his thick hand and weave into the dance floor. I dance in front of him for awhile before he begins to move. He does the un-rhythmic dance of someone too thick with muscle. I smile at him and he grabs me by the wrist and painfully turns me around, holding my arm against my chest and groping at my breasts. I elbow him off of me but he grabs a hold of my waist and grinds into my ass instead. I elbow him again but it makes him grab me even tighter and I surrender to his breath in my ear. Luckily, the timer goes off and I turn around violently.

  “Ravana, don’t you recognize me?” I scream, ripping off my blonde wig and skullcap and letting my thick black hair tumble out. “It is I, Surpanakha, your demonness sister!”

  The people dancing around us cheer and point, I smear off my face makeup and release my body-altering suit and Ravana’s face twists in disgust.

  “Vamanos,” he says roughly.

  I lead him through the crowd, hissing and spitting at any Sita I see, to their delight.

  In the DFR, I type in “Ravana”, and make sure the security monitor is on. Even though I have full reign to do whatever I want and the client can only use the hologram swords, it doesn’t mean that they don’t try it. Once everything is activated, I get up on the pedestal and scream and pound my chest.

  “Ravana, brother, I was disguised because I no longer want to be a demon like you, you disgust me!” I hiss and kick at his head.

  He stares at me blankly. I point to the dialogue generator monitor next to him. He looks down.

  “How d… are you,” he barely reads, pausing over the last word.

  “Sister,” I fill in for him.

  “Sister,” he repeats like a wayward student.

  “You are the filth of the earth! Demon king? Ha! Rama is a God, a god that will destroy you. You are nothing! You think with your fine clothes and your many heads that you can rule the universe, you don’t even have power over me,” I screech, spitting on the floor to the left of him. “You are nothing,” I improvise. “A dark-skinned peon on this univer
se. The true rulers will inherit the earth, and nothing you do will stop them.”

  I’m laying it on thick, my screeching sending showers of spittle down on the dude and I can tell he’s getting irritated. But I’m on a roll. I know his next line reads: “Sister, you have betrayed our kind and I cannot let this pass.” He looks down and opens his mouth, but I cut him off .

  “You are the betrayer, the betrayer of your people to lead us astray like this. Rama will turn you into a little girl, he will use his Monkey God to cut off your balls and then I’ll be more of a man than you! In fact, I always was more of a man than you, brother.”

  It feels good to stand above him, my clothes ripped and my blood on fire. The Ravana is angry now and he reaches for one of my legs to pull me off the pedestal, but the shield is up and it shocks his hand, making him jump back.

  I laugh at him loudly, but I know the next screen advises him that it is his time to disfigure me. He struggles to read the screen, but then suddenly he figures it out and turns to me excitedly, revenge in his eyes. I continue to laugh at him, belittle him. The hologram sword emerges from the floor and the pedestal sinks me to the ground.

  The Ravana line reads: “Sister, I worshipped you more than any woman, but you have brought this shame on yourself. I cannot look on you, and no man shall look on you.”

  I humble myself, begging Ravana’s forgiveness but raise myself enough that he can swing the hologram sword at me, pretending to chop off my breasts, nose and ears, blood gushing up from special pipes in my costume. When he looks down, all he sees is my hair whipping about in rivulets of red.

  While I am screaming and thrashing, the monitors start flashing: “Thank You for Playing at Exile! Please exit to Account Kiosk!”

  I continue to thrash on the floor until I hear him exit, then I get up, gather my parts and take the back way to the dressing rooms again. I have fifteen minutes to rest, get a new costume on and make it out again. On a good night, I’ll play with eight clients—on a slow night four or five.

  I’m drinking an energy elixir and flipping through my costumes, when Val comes in.

  “You need to stick to the script,” he says.

  “Why are you watching me work?”

  “I watch everybody work. This is my club and I want you to stick to the script.”

  “So, I improvise a little. They love it.”

  “I’m not messing around Sapna, you stick to the script or I’m switching you to a job that you can handle,” he huffs. “I don’t need you getting hurt and calling attention to this place.”

  “I know this is just cause that Backlasher Anita is sucking your dick and wants my job.” He ducks his head at the mention of her.

  “Don’t call her that,” Val says.

  “Of course, you would defend her on that point. What’s your real name Val? Raj? Oh no, wait, maybe it’s Vivek? That was always a popular name for an Indian boy.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Val shakes his head. “I’m just trying to look out for you.”

  “What? Are you joking? I have enough shit going on without this. If I was losing percentages, if people were asking for something else, that’s one thing, but I do a good job, so leave me alone.”

  “Sapna, look…I…don’t know what’s going on with you, but don’t do it,” Val says seriously, looking down. His cheeks are red, even through his dark skin, and he looks suddenly like a little boy.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The recruiters. I have to let them come in because of…because of some of our investors, but, please, don’t talk to them.”

  “I have to,” I say, embarrassed.

  “Look, it’s against your contract. You break your contract and we’re gonna have big problems,” Val is all business again and I can’t believe for a second I thought he actually cared about me. I stare back at him evenly, though my heart is hammering with fear. I don’t know if he’s bluffing or if he really could trap me with some stupid contract shit.

  Suddenly Monroe comes in, the fur on his left leg hanging in a strip. “Val, man, I need an upgrade. I sweat like a mofo out there and it just burns through this body glue.”

  After my run-in with Val, I jump into the ion shower that removes all the sweat and makeup, but never leaves me feeling very clean. I think about the Ravana, how he could barely read and his rage-filled eyes, like how he would have murdered me if he could have gotten close enough. I know the space station jobs would mean I would play Surpanakha without a barrier.

  I check my browser and see a message from my mom saying she got home okay. She knows that I don’t work at a call center, but we keep that charade going to keep things simple. She doesn’t get the cosplay scene. My mother is fourth gen, so she doesn’t actually speak any Indian language or know much about the gods. I know more about Hindu mythology than she does because I grew up with it on TV. The Reverse was just ramping up when my parents graduated from high school. They met in their mandatory agriculture year, farming inside the domes in Iowa. Now everything is grown or synthesized in India. Anyway, agri year sounded crazy—a year of hard labor, drugs and poly sex. Ma was wild, living up to the expectations of it all. My father was quiet, she said, the type who did his work and whose only contraband was a pile of paperback books, which were banned just that year when everything went mandatory digital. She heard about his stash and went to see him one night and found him with a light source under the covers of his bunk, reading. She says she fell in love with him right then.

  After agri year, they decided to take another year off and travel around the Americas. Ma says they rode around in an old electric pick-up. Dad was part of a whole underground scene of analog-heads, and they would get together and trade in paper books and vinyl records—smoke drugs rolled in paper. After settling down in North Vegas, they became a part of the “slow life” movement. Americans who were against the reverse and thought they should embrace the times by becoming self-sufficient—growing their own food, creating their own media, even making their own paper—my dad’s specialty.

  Their parents and brothers and sisters kept putting them on lists to reverse. My mom’s brother had a good job lined up for both my parents as managers in digitizing a jute mill outside of Kolkata, but they were against it, too caught up in their stupid movement to understand that it had no future. My dad started a blog called Slo-merica about his analog interests and Ma helped out by getting a call center job. When they got pregnant with me, Ma realized she wanted to be with her family and friends, but by that time India had shut down the border and you needed to have millions to make it back. We were stuck.

  I’m back on the floor extra fast. I don’t care what kind of mind games Val is playing, there are obviously recruiters around and I need to find one. It’s getting more crowded now, and I’m in a silver wig and white sari that glow like a beacon in the black lights. I do a pretty standard Lakshman. He sticks to the script, and giggles through the whole thing—not getting too riled up, even though I stick it to him about his emasculation next to his God Brother and dirty talk him about how he masturbates at the thought of Sita.

  Then I’m back out with a long braided wig and an ancient sari wrap with no blouse. I set up by the bar this time. Tania appears in the balcony next to the DJ booth. The crowd murmurs, looking up at her as she undulates and even I can’t look away. She disappears again and a bunch of people run to the kiosk to bid on being the one to capture her, which pretty much means a private dance where you get to aim arrows at her until she dissolves. It’s a lot more sensual and pretty, less harsh and violent than my job. The Lust Dust people love it, the arrows have these light bursts at the end and the whole thing is mad erotic.

  After the buzz around Tania’s appearance settles down, I see a Lakshman clocking me from across the bar. I can tell from where I am that his costume is upscale, his simple arm bands have the heft of real gold or at least painted metal—not like the
usual soft plastic. Instead of waiting for him to come to me, I move towards him and he watches me dispassionately.

  “Hey there,” I greet him. “Wanna dance?”

  “Let’s cut the shit and go straight to the room,” he says.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” I protest, turning to move away.

  He reaches out and grabs my wrist, his hand like a vise.

  “I heard about you,” he says lecherously, motioning to the VIP section and I see that the Ravana is watching us. Next to the Ravana, is a short Russian man. They point at me and talk. Then, suddenly, Val is there, whispering into the Lakshman’s ear. He looks at Val menacingly, but drops my wrist and walks away.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I yell at Val.

  “I wanted to do a session.”

  “What? Did you see that guy’s costume?”

  “I’ll pay you double,” Val grabs me by the upper arm and I know he’s not playing. I see Anita clocking us from behind him.

  He pulls me into the DFR and once we get inside, I look at him and he motions towards the pedestal. “Go on,” he says.

  “Those were recruiters, weren’t they?”

  “This has nothing to do with that. Think of this as a performance review.”

  “There’s no script for you,” I say.

  “Freestyle it. That’s your thing anyway, isn’t it?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because there are people in line for your job.”

  I roll my eyes and then realize there’s nothing to do but play.

  “So, what, the timer has already gone off ?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I can’t just start from there.” I go to the control booth and punch in an especially sultry number, low bass and deep beats. I order Val a double elixir, push him back on the sofa.

  “There is a whole art to this thing,” I say, winking, trying to get the rage out of my head. I want to show Val that I’m an expert.

  I dance for him in my costume, letting my sari slip and my waist beads jingle in time with the music. Val eyes me warily, his eyes darting to the door and to his watch.