“It’s not what you call me, but what I answer to that matters the most.” – African Proverb
The nightclub vomited its occupants onto the cobbled streets. Laughing figures tumbled through the cold, some falling to the pavement while others sought to sate themselves on warmth and food, drawn to kebab vans like chimpanzees to weak, wounded prey. Their shrieks filled the night; wild, simian noises that would not sound out of place in the hot darkness of the jungle. She knew those sounds well, and the mindless acts that followed; cannibal-banquets partaken by those same primates, orange eyes staring from beneath low brows as they licked clean the pink bones of their own.
From the narrow alleyway across the street, Oyotunji watched as one girl, dressed in shiny leopard print, fell to her knees in the road. Bent low she began to heave, a cocktail of stomach lining, sangria and hot digestive juices spewing from her lips. The rank aroma carried through the night.
“What?” shouted the girl, when she finally stopped heaving and could speak again. Her glazed, unseeing eyes challenged the world. “Come on, then!” she screamed, struggling to her feet, “have at it! Come on!”
Stepping back from the street, Oyotunji huddled deeper into her fur shawl. It was an intimate, elderly gesture; the last frail twitch of a small sparrow, but then she was an elderly woman. Her lips pinched as tight as the mouth of the alleyway in which she stood.
“I cold,” she said suddenly.
“You not cold. You don’ feel cold now. Not for many year have you felt it touch.”
Wambua stood a little way behind her. In the darkness her twin brother was almost invisible, except for the fur draped over his shoulders; a matching leopard skin that gave him some substance in the shadows. She did not need to see the aged contours of his face to know how he was feeling. His discontent sang in her heart, her blood, in the jelly of her bones.
“I don’ feel cold like dat. I feel cold for dem. I feel cold for bein’ here, in dis grey place.”
A flicker of lightning, vague and indistinct, flashed overhead, illuminating the slumped, misshapen street. Opening her hand, Oyotunji felt for the rain that would inevitably follow. She knew it was the same rain that fell back home, she knew the air around her was the same air, the clouds the same clouds. And yet they were not. These things were different here. Pollution clogged the sky, saturated the earth and the wind. The city was a watering hole, where once her brother and she would have come to slake their thirst, now tainted; corrupted by twenty-first century carrion.
The first fat drops found her palm, and she realised she was not comforted.
“We have slept too long, sister, and missed many things. De British Empire has grown rotten.”
“Dis is de Empire we once feared?” She gesticulated wildly, arms, little more than bones, thrown to the sky. Lightning flickered again, followed by thunderous discontent. “Dat cannot be. What has happened here?”
“De world is spoiled meat, crawling with flies.”
Even as her brother spoke, Oyotunji smelled again the woman’s sick, heard the mad laughter of the inebriated, felt anger rolling like waves through the night-time city. More screams carried on the wind, and she remembered the troupe of chimpanzees feasting on their own. Inspired by those screams she remembered other things too; man as he forced himself into her on the river bank, the raging faces of the white folk as their weapons spat death into the village, Wambua’s body, limp where she clutched him to her wounded chest. As they had lived as twins, so they had died a twinned death, and were reborn together when the rains next fell; brought back by Africa to slake their desert thirst on the lifeblood of those who had despoiled the land, dealt death beneath the burning sun.
“Do not despair, sister. Dis place look grey, you speak truth. But look deeper, look past stone an’ noise an’ misery an’ you got some’ting more. Some’ting you an’ me both know.”
“An’ what be dat, brother of mine?”
“A jungle,” he said, his eyes shining like discs in the darkness. “A man-made jungle, Oyotunji.”
“A jungle?”
“Hear de roar of de people as dey struggle to make themself heard, each man an’ woman de hog, de antelope, de buffalo –”
“An’ we de cat.”
He nodded, and in the darkness of the alley a mouth of yellowing teeth appeared. She smelled them as much as she saw them, rotten and real; a sharp, pungent smile in this city where everything else was synthetic and stale. Together their mouths knew more life and death than the rest of the city combined.
“Exactly, sister. We de leopard. We will stalk de street like shadow, invisible, an’ in dis grey, decayin’ place we will have our retribution. Dey dug us from our sleep in de earth and brought us here, to dis place where dere is no earth, where de wild is silenced. So we will speak for de wild again. We will roar –”
“An’ it will be bloody,” whispered Oyotunji. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked, and she cocked her head, eyes closed, savouring the sound as it reverberated in the hollows of her head.
When she opened her eyes again, her brother was standing beside her. He screamed first, and in the flash of answering lightning she saw his face, tortured by the angst of a continent, a land with no outlet for its pain except the voices of the dead things in its soil. Then she joined him, her own voice rising leonine into the night, before brother and sister eschewed their human shapes, wrapping their flesh with real fur, and fled together through the streets in the guise of great cats; Mother Africa awakened, and alive.
~ Thomas Brown
© Copyright 2013 Thomas Brown. All Rights Reserved.
Pen of the Damned 
I like this! I can see similar wraiths on every continent, in every cityscape. Land and air scarred.
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This is the world we have made for ourselves. But the old ways will not be so easily beaten! Thank you for reading and commenting, Renee.
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Wow! This is super, Thomas. The imagery of your words conjures up visuals of intense variety. Nothing within the context of your tale is anything but Damned and disturbing. And yet, you still dangle the carrot before us which says, “But wait. Maybe . . . just maybe, there is more to the story; more to the Darkness.
Blaze
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Thanks, Blaze. I usually write self-contained stories but there is definitely more to these two. I’m sure I will revisit their escapades in the urban jungle soon enough.
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By all means, Thomas! More escapades are needed!
Blaze
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Ah, kicking-out time now has even more menace.
The chimpanzee analogy worked really well.
I got the impression they were from Jamaica. Which may have been my ignorance of accents.
At the end, I thought, ‘You can’t stop there!.’ But it was a very effective place to stop.
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Thank you for reading! I thought an accent was important, to stress the pair’s ‘otherness’. Glad you liked the chimpanzee analogy.
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Thank you for transporting me to a different world, Tom. DISTANT SHORES is an outstanding read. I loved your atmospheric narration; as Blaze mentioned earlier, your imagery seizes my mind and as a reader, you are simply powerless to the effect of your words. Like many posts from the Damned, you’ve created a quality tale that leaves so many things yet to be explored. Whether within our imaginations or your own, DISTANT SHORES beats with mystic life & will not fade anytime soon.
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My pleasure, Joe. I’m glad the twins’ mysticism beat against their mundane surroundings.
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Tom, I always love the way you choose obscure methods of making what might be common topics nearly tangible. Your use of dialogue, descriptive prose, and the exceptional way you wove a tale of such impact in so few words is both astounding, and so very you. This is a marvelous peek into your mind and the different way the writer within you personifies reality. If this is you stretching your wings, I can’t wait to see you take flight! 🙂
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Thanks, Nina! Something a little different this week, but we should all experiment from time to time.
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Agreed! And you did a gorgeous job of it with this Urban culture-infused piece!
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Who is the monster here? Methinks not the twins. It sounds like the end, but it could also be a new beginning, a new predator feeding on us. Always poetic, another good read.
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Methinks you’re on the right tracks, Damned Dillard. Thank you for stopping by and leaving your thoughts!
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your title so aptly describes the scenario
so much lost on distant shore can it be reclaimed in the stench and filth? but then you have rebirth of ancient ways
you master the words and the characters to do your bidding
cheers
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The twins endure because they must, and because the earth beneath our feet will outlast the cities built on top of it. Thanks for reading, Leslie.
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I really enjoyed Distant Shores. I’d like more of these twins, but loved the way you ended this– Mother Africa will have her revenge. Also, this gave me goose bumps, “Dey dug us from our sleep in de earth and brought us here, to dis place where dere is no earth, where de wild is silenced. So we will speak for de wild again. We will roar –”
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What a wonderful comment, thank you Gabi. I’m really glad you appreciated the story, especially the line you quoted. The twins are misplaced souls, transported against their will to distant shores, but as you see they are fierce and unafraid, and speak up with the voice of a continent against the people who have so carelessly abused the land. Thank you for reading.
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Sorry for the late comment, Thomas! I really loved your combination of poetic prose and the gritty voodoo atmosphere! It was a beautiful and fun read, as always.Your world-building talent is awe-inspiring. Great story!
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Cheers, Tyr. The relationship between poetic prose and horror (in this case the city surroundings) is one that I constantly seek to explore.
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Sorry, T.B., for being late to the ball… But…what a honestly transportive tale. Your prose is akin to stepping aboard the Concorde to be whisked away to a completely New World in a matter of a few seconds. Not to mention it reminded me so of many nights spent leaving a club or two…especially running into the evil in the alleys. I do so like my evil to be taking place in the shadows just beyond human perception. *sinister smile* Again, yet another great piece from a very talented smither of words. *that-be-you grin*
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No worries, Daemonwulf, there is no rush. I’m glad that the story transported you. The city is full of alleys, each containing their own horrors…
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This paragraph is very visual! Love the attack on my senses:
“The nightclub vomited its occupants onto the cobbled streets. Laughing figures tumbled through the cold, some falling to the pavement while others sought to sate themselves on warmth and food, drawn to kebab vans like chimpanzees to weak, wounded prey. Their shrieks filled the night; wild, simian noises that would not sound out of place in the hot darkness of the jungle. She knew those sounds well, and the mindless acts that followed; cannibal-banquets partaken by those same primates, orange eyes staring from beneath low brows as they licked clean the pink bones of their own.”
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Hello Lori, thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment. It is nice to know when we are being read. Glad that the intro grabbed you!
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