The Funeral of Grief i want to disown my body. reshuffle my teeth & name myself not a man that neighbours the hellfire(s). or that lives under the canopy of the silent grief. stranger, i don't want to hear anything home, again. this is not an irony. now, a home is a hyperbole used for pain. i went on searching for. for a place where plants are green. for a place where the anatomy of pain’s never seen. for a place where none ever holds a gun. for a place, of fear, none ever, runs. for a place i could call my home. but, now, i am tired. of listening to my men singing in pain. sisters fetching dirty water &....raped. here, i want to burn, rebirth this home, again. these walls, that always break. these walls, that always fall. on our boys. on our girls. on any head they see. you see, we built them. with our fingers. with our eyes. and, it's time. we can scrape their paints. burry their sands. off memories. it's time. the line between our accents. between the colours of our bodies. between our hearts. is buried. grief does not know who is black. who is blue. or which is brown. it's a disaster. it eats all. it's time we thought. we buried their cruelty. off memories. it's time. Salim Yakubu Akko is a World Voices Magazine’s Nigerian correspondent, Guest Contributor at Applied Worldwide, a poet and short story writer from the great city of Gombe state. He has been published/forthcoming in reputable newspapers, national and international journals and literary magazines, including the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, ILA Magazine, Ice Lolly Review, Brittle Paper, Amulet Poetry Magazine, Arts Lounge, Imspired Magazine, Fevers of the Mind Magazine, African Fingers, Nnoko Stories, World Voices Magazine, Spill Words Press, Upwrite Magazine, Applied Worldwide, Lumiere Review, The Pine Cone Review, The Piker Press, Afreecan Read, Teen Lit Journal, My Woven Poetry, OneBlackBoyLikeThat Review, Giallo Literary Magazine, Scratch Poetry Magazine, Literary Yard, Parrot Box, Calabar Poetry Magazine, Daily Trust Newspaper, The Nation News Nigeria, Blueprint Newspaper, The Guardian Newspaper, Independent Nigeria, Nigerian Tribune Newspaper, Opinion Nigeria, My Nigeria, African Fingers, The Campus Watch, Today Post Nigeria, People’s Daily Newspaper and elsewhere. He has been published in national and international literary anthologies like Love Nniwanti, Flow of Love published by Dr. Durga Patva, and the 2020 Lekki Massacre and so forth. He has also been shortlisted for the 2021 Bill Ward Prize for Emerging Writers; 2021 GSSS Gombe delegate for the annual Hadiza Ibrahim Aliyu Secondary Schools Festival (2021 HIASFEST); participated in the 2020 Jewel Writing Workshop and the 2021 Jewel Peace Project. Akko is a member of Gombe Jewel Writers’ Association, Creative Club Gombe state University and Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation.
Category Archives: CHAOS
Story from Pascal Lockwood-Villa
The Sheriff of Faraday The ninth day of the bicentennial eclipse had been unlike any other days on that distant sector of Faraday. For starters, Faraday’s eclipses only ever lasted the course of a workday, with the exception of the eclipse of August 3rd, 5933, in which the solar alignment lasted for exactly 24 hours. Interestingly enough, the only arrest that was successfully carried out that day was when George Harlon was detained for his late grandfather’s charge of public urination. The “Harlon Case” aside, the eclipses, which had become famous for the way that they refracted the atmosphere at certain times of day like a kaleidoscope, had not ever fluctuated in their schedule before. They would always begin on the third day of the eighth month of the year, once every fifty years. At exactly 3:52 AM, to be exact. The alignment of all fifty-seven baby suns over the sky at this time, through some strange thermodynamic phenomenon that no one in all of Faraday had ever bothered to figure out, would bring the temperature down to “a bit cooler than usual” degrees Fahrenheit (as opposed to “thermometers don’t work because they explode out here” degrees Celsius). This system of using descriptive adjectives as opposed to numbers was first pioneered by Dr. Carmichael Faraday himself, who, among other worthless accomplishments, such as being the first man to earn more than one PhD from another planet, founded the town of Faraday and constructed its unique defense system before he himself was caught in the act of sexual congress with a bag of cocaine and was promptly decapitated by forty-six rapid fire high caliber gunshots. Although early in the morning, the first stray rays from the infant stars would slither out from between the nebulas of the night and threaten to scorch the little village into nothingness (which would have been the case, had the houses — like all the foreign matter on the planet, including the townsfolk — not been altered and mutated by these same rays to thrive on the infernal world [These mutations had no ill effects on the inanimate building materials, but cursed the humans with a chicken pox-like skin disease which burned like hell after a hard workout.]). In the age when Dr. Faraday and his plucky crew arrived on the scalded rock, The good doctor had the first town built to emulate the romanticized locales of Earth’s wild west, complete with a saloon, barbershop, schoolhouse, hotel, windmill, and stable, all of which were loving recreations of the buildings of the time of showdowns and desperadoes. Yes, as anyone could see, Faraday had a theme — a theme broken only by the jailhouse, which had been constructed from scraps of the original starcruiser which the ancestors who built Faraday arrived in. The haphazard dome had no paint or decorations, save for a tall pole just right of the jailhouse, bearing an aged megaphone, which, since the dawn broke, had been blaring nonstop. On a usual day, most of the folks would be wide awake, sweating, panicking, and preparing futile attempts to hide or fight what was to come. Sometimes Johnny Bosch would be prancing about, yodeling from his window in his room above the saloon, attempting to convince his newest lover to allow him to procreate with her before he was hauled off. Downstairs, Abner Fitch, the bartender, would be shoving his barrels of moonshine deep beneath the floorboards of the bar, all while Howard and Franklin Jennard, the twin boys, ran about hooting and hollering in the main street, rousing their neighbors from their homes. Then, as the thirtieth, fourth, and sixteenth baby suns would turn the dawn sky into a mirror of frolicking silver, the wake-up call would come. There had not been the need for a wake-up call in eight days. Back when things were normal, the call would come as a roaring, foghorn voice, signifying one thing for the poor people of Faraday. The Sheriff’s Boys were out and about. “MOUNT UP!” They would hurdle out of the jailhouse at the call from their leader Hoss. These six humanoid robots, each with a single treaded wheel in the place of legs, looked and acted identically, but it had long become tradition for the people of Faraday to dress up and decorate the robots the day before the eclipse. As a result, each robot was given an outfit and nickname to denote each other. Hoss was adorned in a ten-gallon hat perched atop his smooth, visored cranium, which would be fastened in place with a dollop of cambull glue. Hoss was famous for the twin megaphones molded to the sides of his head, which would project his computerized voice to the people of Faraday. Not that he had much to say. As Hoss was not a living thing, he had not learned any words or phrases other than “mount up,” “freeze, you crook,” and a recital of the Miranda warning, and therefore found it pointless to attempt to commune through these statements. As Hoss and company thundered out of the jailhouse doors and onto the main street, he mimed clearing his throat, before roaring his words for all to hear. “FREEZE, YOU CROOK!” “Cheese it!” young Howard Jennard would yell. “The Sheriff's Boys’re here! Everyone scatter!” The people of Faraday sprinted as they could, out of their homes and heading for the hills, while a few chanced peeks out of their curtains, saw the chaos, and ducked back down. Hoss and the others wasted no time in rapidly approaching them and scanning them. There was no need to be picky. The Sheriff’s Boys could easily outspeed the people if they wanted to, but as it stood, it was far easier for them to separate the criminals from the innocents by herding them down the streets. Hoss’s sensors locked onto a young woman in the crowd, and he sped up to approach her. Maria Fetters, he registered. Great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Felicia Fetters. Crimes: Petty theft, cambull tipping, and public nuisance. Sentence: eight months. Hoss’s engine roared as he ripped through the wave of fearful humans. He raised one hand to hold his ten-gallon hat on his head. Hoss’s magnetized joints in his other arm began to shift and reconnect his arm into a spool of steel wire, fashioned like a lasso. The arm shot ahead, snaking around Ms. Fetters’ ankles and yanking her to the ground. Hoss began to broadcast the Miranda warning, drowning out the crowd’s panicked screams and yells as he pulled Ms. Fetters toward himself, his expressionless face unperturbed by her tears and frantic cries for help. She kicked and struggled until Hoss’ Surround Sound audio sensors detected a wet, quiet snap, and she quieted her screeching to a light moaning. Hoss’ grip had shattered her shin. The Fetters had lived on Faraday for sixteen generations, and they had developed a bit of an initiation sequence for the eldest daughter on the day of her first eclipse. This had become a strictly female ceremony ever since Terrence Fetters divorced his wife Lucriecia, before leaving her to care of their three sons and her daughter Felicia (no relation to the criminal). These boys would grow up to lead dull, uninteresting lives, with the pleasant exception being the middle brother, who would gain a significant amount of notoriety as the ringmaster of a flea circus. Nonetheless, the tradition remained. The advice was quite simple. Don’t let them see your guilt. Maria’s mother was a firm believer in the intelligence of the robots, which was complete unfounded and, as far as Maria was concerned, absurd. Just because the robots looked kind of like people didn’t mean they were people. If they felt emotions, she argued, why did they capture people with so much as a ‘hello?’ Maria had always thought a response to the eclipse was stupid, anyway, and so absolutely nothing about the advice she learned when she was seventeen was keeping her safe at sixty-seven. It had been a few hours since Maria was taken back to the jailhouse. She had given up on pleading and had fallen silent in thirty-six minutes of being taken away. Had her mutations not relocated her tear and sweat glands to the base of her spine, she mostly likely would have been bawling. The best she could manage was a dry heave which sounded oddly similar to the gurgled cries of an alley cat she had drowned in a ditch when she was nine. This had never been listed as a crime because, quite frankly, when she had told her parents, they refused to believe that a cat was capable of surviving in a place like Faraday. They brushed it off as a spoiled little girl wasting time for attention and forgot all about the incident. The jailhouse wasn’t intended to make its residents or prisoners feel uncomfortable, but ages of little to no attention had left the interior without much in the way of “fancy decor.” Not that there was any need for ornamentation. The single room was about the size of a ballroom and was completely dark. Or maybe it was really bright. Maria’s head was swimming down her gut and it seemed to be trying to get home, but it got stuck near her lungs and couldn’t get out. It was like this light. Not there when you needed it, but only when you didn’t. During eclipses, Maria recalled from her school textbook, the conventional rules of light and space do not always apply. “Hoss?” Maria couldn’t understand why she thought of her jailer at that moment, but she was struggling against what she thought were chains in what reminded her of medieval torture chambers and the color pink and suddenly she really just wanted to tell Hoss something. “Hoss?” In the dark that smelled like machine oil and glue, Maria baked in silence like it was a warm, fuzzy feeling. After nine minutes exactly, she was aware of the cold, inanimate surface that hovered in front of Maria’s face. She wasn’t sure which one of The Sheriff’s Boy’s it had been, but Had she been a little girl again, she might have been star-struck at the chance to be so close to this legend, let alone being able to talk to him. She spoke slowly, with the grin intonations of someone on their deathbed choosing their last words. Unfortunately, as emotional intent is lost on someone like Hoss, that only made Maria said next all the more ridiculous and confusing. She spoke between parched sobs, heaving for oxygen with each pause. “‘In…5276, Doc..Doctor Carmichael Faraday…found a solution to the livestock issue of the..then-code named Planet Goldilocks-5, via…splicing the genes of dromedary camels and cows. These experiments are known today as ‘cambulls,’ and serve a variety of purposes in our daily lives. Yet, when these multipur……purpose beasts of burden were first unveiled,…Dr. Faraday was vilified and ridiculed. They accused of playing gif and had threatened to kill him, and they succeeded in killing many of the first cambulls until it was revealed that the camels and bulls that had been brought to the planet had procreated of their own will, and that Faraday merely helped these burgeoning animals become an entirely new species. And yet, those first cambulls are neither mourned nor remembered for their sacrifice.’” Maria coughed. “That’s…that’s a quote from my old school textbook…before the paper had been heat-treated, they soaked those books in liquid nitrogen to keep them cool. Buy you get it, right? You see, Hoss? I think you do. Everyone in this town fears what they can’t understand. You must think we hate you. We don’t. We shouldn’t. Our ancestors made you because they knew we couldn’t make it this far on our own.” “You’re doing the right thing, Hoss. Never forget that.” She coughed once more, and then she could no longer feel that cold slate in front of her. In fact, she could no longer feel anything. She had smelled of clover, Hoss would have thought if he could think days later. Not that he was sure it was that long after. Days later, there was nothing. Something had happened. That odd eclipse didn’t go away. It was still cool enough for The Sheriff’s Boys to continue their work. Faraday’s criminals were gone. Faraday’s innocents were gone. The other Sheriff’s Boys, due to the destruction of the windmill, were unable to charge their batteries, so they, too, were gone. There was only Hoss. Well, Hoss and the cambulls. But mostly just Hoss. Hoss’ final moments, if he was alive, could have had him pointlessly wander about the ruined wastes of the town, shattered from gunfight after gunfight after gunfight. Hoss’ final moments could have had him ponder on certain things he still didn’t know, like what is justice? What is peace? Are they different? Does it matter? Did it ever matter? Hoss’ final moments could have had him go through a range of emotional realizations, like the irony of his creation at the hands of those he was built to punish, or how with no one left to arrest, the most logical thing to do was to throw himself off a cliff with some poetic epitaph for a grave that would never be. Hoss did none of this. He merely sat among the wistful cambulls. The cambulls had, by some miracle, found a patch of shrubbery around the back of the saloon’s remains, and were more than content to guzzle a clear liquid from the barrels that certainly wasn’t water, but didn’t spike anything on Hoss’ built-in breathalyzer. So, Hoss sat down among these innocent, grazing animals, thinking on what he would think if he could think, and counted down his battery’s percentage until he remembered he couldn’t count.
Poetry from Bruce Roberts
N.R.A. The happiness, the joy, of a good day out Shatters with the arrival of bullets, A hurricane of bullets, An apocalypse of bullets, Blood, pain, unimaginable screaming, And loved ones Deathly silent, deathly still. Yet it’s ok, OK! Take a deep breath! Life goes on! Know that all will be better When the airwaves Are flooded with words Of meaningless profundity. Flags will drop to half mast, And public officials— From THE PRESIDENT To the Congressman To the Mayor Will wrap themselves in pious language And babble on: “Our prayers are with you!” “Cowardice can’t defeat us!” “Hearts go out to the victims!” “God’s love and unity will prevail!” “This will make our community stronger!” So soothing—until the next time, And the next time. And the . . . . Bruce Roberts, 2019
HAUNTED Yes, we’ve patched the bullet holes, Cleaned the blood off the walls, The floor, the ceiling, Painted the whole room So it’s fresh and clean, Even renumbered the entire hallway, So that number No longer exists, Like the 13th floor in a high rise, But still, no one— I mean NO ONE— Volunteers to teach there, And parents sell the house. Leave town, So there’s no chance That their son, Their daughter— Center of their family, Their hearts— Will ever have to learn With GHOSTS ever present Silently screaming Over their shoulders! Bruce Roberts
Essay from Ike Boat
Asempa Hotel
Hello Special One,
I welcome you to Asempa Hotel.
Well, as an Advertiser, Blogger and Promoter. I often connect local and global travelers to best hospitality brands. Besides, with years of expertise as Tour-Guide in the hospitality industry I always give appropriate hotel recommendation to guests both in Ghana and abroad.
Asempa literally Good Story or Good Stuff, beside with such a beautiful magnificent hotel located at the heart of Takoradi, Western Region in Ghana.
Asempa Hotel provides guests with both air-conditioned and fan-ventilation King-size, Queen-size as well as Standard-size rooms at affordable rates. There’s a spacious Car Park, Conference Hall and Visitor’s Hall to ensure convenience with respect to your comfortable nostalgic story to share. Remarkably, the Restaurant also serves guest with different rollicking dishes and assorted beverages to bring about satisfaction.
There’s Free Wi-Fi Internet, Breakfast and DSTV Channels to spice-up your stay. Its closeness to the Air-Port, Aqua-Port and Bus Stations your journey to the West with regard to relaxation of vacation is made quite easy and memorable indeed. Comely and convivial customer service at the Reception will make you feel so welcome.
Asempa Hotel has highly credible staff and competent management with hospitable as well comfortable guest relations. Lo, not forgetting 24/7 security systems to make you safe and sound.
In the Akan’s Fante parlance, Asempa Yetsia literally Good Story is very brief or short. Thus, for your room Reservation Booking or Further Enquiry , Kindly Call: +233 312032766 or WhatsApp: +233 264072526
E-mail: asempahotelsgh@gmail.com , Digital Address Locale: WS - 290 - 6455 , Opposite Shell Fuel Station, Off Liberation Road, Takoradi - Western Region, Ghana.(West Africa). A warm welcome awaits you !
Asempa Hotel - Wake-Up In Elegance!
Written By: Ike Boat
Email Address: ikeboatofficial@gmail.com
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Story from Harlan Yarbrough
Previously published in 2020 in Cleaning Up Glitter.
High on the Hogback
Ben had lived in Bhutan for almost two years, when a Kuiper Belt object changed the course of history. Astronomers monitored the solar system’s asteroid belt and understood pretty well what objects could pose a threat to earth, but none expected a massive object from the edge of the solar system. NASA and its counterparts around the world noticed the object and began plotting the trajectory less than five weeks before it reached earth. Those agencies warned their governments of what they called an “impact scenario” three weeks before the calculated impact. The world’s governments warned their citizens three days later.
For the first few days, most people greeted the news with a shrug and talk of “ho hum, another close approach by an asteroid”. Ben was not one of those. His two-decade-old practice of checking the news on-line every morning meant he maintained a good grasp of world events. To him, the announcements sounded like a massive catastrophe, and he responded accordingly. He immediately began stocking up on—some might say “hoarding”—necessities, such as non-perishable foods, matches and lighters, wet- and cold-weather clothing, and other survival-oriented goods and urged Sonam, his not-exactly-girlfriend, and other friends to do the same.
Sonam argued a little at first. “Why, though?” she asked. “The water can’t get this high. You said so yourself.”
“I didn’t say ‘can’t’, but I don’t think it’s likely to. Ask yourself this, though: where does our food come from?”
Sonam managed a mini-supermarket jointly owned by her mother and her aunt so possessed more than average familiarity with the supply chain. She pondered but a moment before replying, “India and Thailand mostly.”
“Exactly! Bangkok and Kolkata are at sea level, and even Delhi couldn’t be higher than 250 metres. Jaigaon is less than two hundred, for goodness’ sake. There isn’t going to be anything coming in through Phuntsholing.”
Sonam recognized the sense in that and immediately set to work. Without seeking authorization from her mother or her aunt, she ordered massive amounts of canned goods for immediate delivery. Within the hour, she had nine truckloads of non-perishable food items and other crucial supplies on their way from Siliguri, Kolkata, and Bangkok. She filled her own apartment and took several pickup-loads up to Ben’s larger apartment. “If this disaster does not happen,” she told Ben, “I will be in big trouble.”
“At least it’s non-perishable, so you can sell it eventually,” Ben replied, “and I can help pay the distributors, if necessary.”
Living above 7,700 feet elevation, Ben assumed anything other than a direct or nearby hit would not immediately or directly affect him or Sonam or their neighbors. Knowing Bhutan imported the majority of its food, he saw widespread starvation as a possibility. Instead of his usual weekly shopping trip to town, Ben went twice a day and came home in taxis laden with rice, beans of many kinds, lentils, boxes of canned vegetables and fruit, and all the other items on his list of supplies for surviving a prolonged disruption of both food supply and normal weather.
That, in addition to the loads Sonam brought, filled Ben’s roomy apartment. The first day, Ben seemed to be the only person in the valley stocking up on necessities. Once Sonam began, however, she equalled or exceeded her friend’s zeal. That, coupled with her job and the opportunities it afforded, left Sonam with what she calculated could support her for two years. When she visited Ben’s hilltop home, she found boxes stacked to the ceiling and filled with useful supplies.
The hoard she and her not-exactly-boyfriend had accumulated there occupied so much space, not one spot remained where she could stand with her arms outstretched and rotate a quarter-turn in either direction. Sonam felt amazed by the stockpile—which she estimated might support him for almost ten years. “I wonder if the Druk Gyalpo even has as much stored as you do.”
“I expect the royal family has a warehouse full of supplies, maybe several of ’em.”
“Do you think you’ll need all that?” she asked him.
“It isn’t just for me,” he replied. “It’s for you, too.”
“But I have my own cache. My flat is almost as full as yours.”
“That’s good. But this is for both of us.”
Sonam liked Ben a great deal and consistently enjoyed his company. Even though he was more than three times her age, she found him attractive and often thought about entering into a more intense and intimate relationship with him. Ben had revealed his desire for a more intimate relationship eight months ago. He also said he cherished their friendship and could accept being just her friend if she preferred that. Through those months, Sonam didn’t feel confident she knew what she preferred.
She had avoided intimate relationships with other men, since she and Ben had become friends. Why? she sometimes asked herself, but she knew the answer. She felt extremely fond of Ben and, like him, cherished the relationship they already enjoyed. Now, here they were, making plans to support each other. Thinking about that made Sonam feel good, made her feel all warm and cuddly.
Why aren’t we living together? she asked herself. With no real pause, her thoughts continued, Because he’s being a gentleman and I’m being silly. Sonam had made a point of sounding non-committal in all their considerable talk about relationships, but she never lacked sensitivity—enough to recognize Ben said nothing because he didn’t want to offend her. Maybe I should suggest it myself, she thought.
When less than a week remained before the predicted impact, people seemed to get the message and everyone who could stockpile began hoarding whatever they could get. Ben and Sonam continued securing supplies but many products became unavailable. They found adding to their stockpiles increasingly difficult but felt comforted by the enormous amount of provender almost filling Ben’s hilltop apartment.
Sonam didn’t like her apartment in town. She found the town noises and noise level annoying and a source of stress. “Cities and big towns are stressful,” Ben said, and Sonam had begun to agree. Living in town had its advantages, though, especially because she worked in town. Everything lay near at hand. Town living provided convenience, but at a price. Ben raised another question. “Now, it’s just annoying,” he said, “but how safe will it be to live surrounded by a few thousand starving people?”
“So, you’re thinking what?”
“That you can move in with me. We’ll be safer up on that hogback ridge. Even though it’s only a couple miles from town, most people wouldn’t ever bother to climb up there.”
Sonam had half-expected or maybe even hoped for that suggestion or invitation or whatever it was, and recognized she wanted exactly that. “What…ummmm…,” she began, and trailed off.
“You wouldn’t have to sleep with me,” Ben said. “I mean, of course I’d like that but it isn’t the point. It isn’t a requirement.”
“What is the point?”
“The point is that I want to make sure you’re OK. I want to take care of you.”
Sonam recognized she liked the idea of being in a relationship in which Ben took care of her—and she took care of him sometimes. The thought of Ben sleeping beside her excited Sonam. She was about to say so, when Ben continued, “Of course, I want to sleep with you—all the time. I told you, though, that I feel very happy and privileged to be your friend. If you don’t want to sleep with me, I still care about you and I’m still your friend.”
“I do want to sleep with you, dammit,” she blurted out. “I don’t know why I’ve waited so long.”
That caught Ben by surprise, and he stood and looked at her for several moments. Finally, he said, “Wow! Oh, Sonam, that’s great. When shall we begin that new phase of our lives, of our life together?” He looked at his wrist as if checking a watch, which he didn’t wear, and said, “I’d be inclined to say, ‘How ’bout in five minutes?’ but maybe you’d rather wait until things settle down some?”
“We might not be alive, when things settle down—if they ever do. I’ve waited too long already, and I’ve made you wait too long. I’d usually be at the shop until seven-thirty or eight, but I could get my amin to close up and go with you in an hour. Almost everything on those nine trucks has sold out, so we don’t have much stock left anyway. Amin won’t have an awful lot to do. Is that OK?”
Ben hugged his friend—not the first time he’d hugged her in the store, but almost—and said, “Oh, Sonam! It’s much more that OK. It’s wonderful. Because you’re wonderful.”
“I hope you’ll still say that tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” Ben exclaimed.
“I guess I haven’t said it out loud, not to you at least,” Sonam continued, “but I think you’re wonderful.”
“Tomorrow!?” Ben repeated. “I hope you’ll still be saying that in twenty or thirty years.”
That took Sonam by surprise, and she tilted her head to look up at Ben’s face. He surprised her again—with a kiss, their first. His lips felt soft and gentle and strong at the same time. They seemed to caress hers without actually moving, seemed to emit an affectionate energy that spread out and enveloped her like a cloud, like a protective cloak.
They had just surfaced from their kiss, when Sonam’s mother walked into the shop. She looked at them and quickly turned her head away, but not fast enough to hide her smile, as she made her way to the back room.
Sonam pulled Ben’s head down and whispered, “Ama smiled,” in his ear.
“I saw that,” he replied. “That’s so neat. I was afraid she’d be mad at me.”
“I thought she’d be mad at me.”
They relinquished their hug, shared one quick peck on the lips, and Sonam went to talk with her mother while Ben ran errands in town. An hour later, he paid a taxi driver two hundred Ngultrum to take them and several boxes up to his home. “Our home,” Ben said to Sonam, as the taxi departed and headed back down the hill.
That phrase or the way Ben said it filled Sonam’s heart with joy. The evening and night proceeded as one would expect. Sonam’s previous experience meant Ben gave her only pleasure and caused her no pain. That experience also supplied perspective, and in the morning, she rewarded her lover with, “You are both bigger and better than any other man I’ve ever known.”
Ben felt tempted to say, “In the Biblical sense?” but figured that expression would mean nothing to someone who had never seen a Bible in her life. Instead, he thanked her, praised her, and initiated another round of conjugal sharing. Sonam’s mother had given her daughter the day off, saying she could run the shop herself but wouldn’t have much to do anyway, because they had so little inventory. As a result, the two new lovers enjoyed intimate sharing right through that day and into the next night.
Sonam shared a couple of ’phone calls with her mother and learned her mother didn’t plan to open the shop the next day, so the idyll continued. The lovebirds wouldn’t have known the asteroid-like comet-strike had occurred, if Sonam hadn’t rung her mother on the third day. That call informed them the object struck in the mid-Atlantic and tsunamis had destroyed virtually all of the U.S. east of Colorado and New Mexico and most of Europe. After hearing that news, the two returned to their previous activity for the rest of the day.
When the two did venture out of bed, they noticed two things: extremely dark clouds covered the sky and discharged a heavy rain, and they still enjoyed the modern convenience of electric power, something they hadn’t expected. In addition to an enormous amount of sensual pleasure, both discovered they derived tremendous enjoyment from sharing long conversations without either of them having to depart to go home or to work. For several days, their enormous stockpile of food went almost untouched, because the two took almost no time to do anything other than enjoy their propinquity.
In moments between coition, Sonam rang her ama once each day. Those calls reassured the lovebirds that Sonam’s mom was OK and also brought the news that little had changed in town. The older woman—older than Sonam, of course, although younger than Ben—told her daughter most people were still going to work. As expected, though, no shipments of any kind arrived from outside the country.
The honeymoon, in the sense of paying almost no attention at all to anything except each other, lasted through a few days short of two cycles of the moon, continuously invisible above the heavy overcast that made the days almost as dark as a clear, moonless night. In that seventh week, Sonam began feeling ill. She said nothing at first, not wanting to worry Ben and thinking maybe her irregular diet had caused some gastro-intestinal problem. When she did mention her nausea four days later, he said, “Omigosh! Just in the mornings?”
“Yes, and it always goes away immediately, as soon as you start caressing me.” She saw the worried look on her darling’s face but at the same time recognized the implications of what she had just said. She felt ecstatic but worried that Ben might be upset.
“I’m glad that helps,” he said, as he caressed her and proceeded to dispel her nausea in the nicest possible way. As they clung to each other in the afterglow, Ben said, “Probably not the best possible time to have kids, but how do you feel about it.”
“Happy—no, “happy” doesn’t do it. Happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Thrilled. But you look so worried. Do you not w—”
“I just worry that it might be too soon for you. As long as you’re OK with it, I’m delighted. I can’t imagine anything nicer than adding that new kind of sharing to our relationship.”
With that, Sonam relaxed and cuddled as close as she could to Ben, hugging him as if she wanted to eliminate the boundaries of skin between them and merge into a single organism. While their lovemaking didn’t taper off dramatically, they did both begin to spend more time working to ensure they would have everything they needed for the well being of their child. Ben amassed a huge collection of baby- and child-size clothing, including a good deal of foul weather gear.
Because no new supplies of anything were coming into the town—or the country—prices for the dwindling stock of goods of all kinds rose dramatically. Ben insisted high prices presented no difficulty for them, both “because I made sure we have a substantial quantity of cash on hand, and because the banks are still open and functioning and I have money in both BoB and PNB.” He said he couldn’t imagine the dark and precipitation and cold lasting even five years, but he bought foul weather gear and other clothes to fit all ages from infancy up to eight or nine, saying “Better safe than sorry.”
The week before Ben began his baby-and-child-clothing buying spree, Sonam went to step outside, and he stopped her. “Please don’t go out without a slicker, dear, and rubber gloves.”
“Why?”
“Because the rain is likely to be very acidic.”
“Acidic!?”
“Yeah, wait, I’ll show you.”
He spent half an hour searching and came up with a small plastic object that looked a great deal like a tape dispenser. He set it on the kitchen counter, donned a slicker and rubber gloves, and took a glass tumbler out onto the balcony. There, he thrust the glass out into the falling rain until it was half full. After bringing the glass back to the kitchen area, he doffed his rain gear and took a small strip of salmon colored paper from the dispenser. When he dipped that into the glass, it turned bright red. He showed Sonam the color chart.
Sonam had achieved well in all the sciences at school but still said, “OK, less than four. That’s pretty acid, isn’t it? I forget.”
“About like lemon juice maybe.”
“So, not like a car battery.”
“No, but not something you want to have in contact with your skin for more than a few seconds.”
After that, they both exercised caution when going outside. They went outside rarely, mainly to walk down to visit Sonam’s mother and to buy or scavenge items on their various lists. Ben dispensed Vitamin C tablets morning and evening, once fresh fruit became impossible to procure. The family’s indoor existence coupled with the continuing darkness prompted him to begin dispensing from his hoard of Vitamin D tablets as well.
Several members of the country’s legislature succumbed in the initial disaster or the first few weeks of dark and rain. Many others left the capital to return to their home villages, some intending to help in recovery efforts, others intending to die with their families. As a result, governance returned to the not-so-distant old days, with the Druk Gyalpo, the king, making all decisions with the help of a few trusted advisors. Most of the country’s surviving population cheered that as a good thing.
The king and what remained of the government made a valiant joint effort to enforce the long-standing national ban on slaughtering animals, but history opposed them. With people starving and thousands of cattle wandering freely throughout the country, slaughtering livestock became routine. That state of affairs lasted only about six months, after which no cattle, goats, sheep, or pigs remained. A few zealously guarded chickens survived and continued producing eggs, but hungry humans had wiped out other livestock except perhaps a few individual animals that might have escaped into the forests. Even the huge population of stray dogs throughout Bhutan soon vanished to feed starving humans. A very few carefully sequestered pets survived.
The population didn’t descend into cannibalism but adopted a grudging vegetarianism with what meager supplies they could find. The darkness and rain continued as intense as ever, although Ben and Sonam confirmed the rain’s pH had risen to above four, a reassuring sign. The continuing Cimmerian murk caused Ben and therefore Sonam to worry about the survival of plants—not individual plants but whole germ lines. “So, we need to do something about that,” she said, “but what can we do?”
“With electric power still available, surely it’d be possible to hang huge arrays of lights in big buildings, warehouses and the like, and create an artificial growing environment. Even just keeping a few examples of each useful plant alive would enable people to propagate them, once more favorable conditions return.”
“That would be a huge job.”
“Yes, someone would have to convince the Druk Gyalpo to do it as a matter of national security—world security, really.”
“Someone?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t matter who does it, as long as the king gets the system set up. He’d be a hero all around the world in years to come.”
“Then you’d better talk to him.”
“Me!? I’ve never met the Druk Gyalpo, probably couldn’t get an audience with him. It needs to b—”
“The person who speaks to His Royal Highness has to be someone intelligent who understands the science—both the science of the asteroid and weather and the biology of the plants. And the technology of the building and lighting and stuff.”
“Yeah, maybe, but—”
“I don’t know anyone else who could cover all that. Do you? And the person needs to be…what’s that word…” Sonam paused and thought a moment, then said, “I think it’s ‘chair-is-matic’ or something like that.”
“’Charismatic’?” Ben corrected her pronunciation.
“Yes! Charismatic, the person has to be charismatic—and that’s you for sure.”
“I don’t know about that. I—”
“Ben, dear, now is not the time to be modest. You are a charmer. You must know that. You have more chair—I mean, charisma than anyone else I’ve ever met. You’re the man for the job.”
“But I would never get an audience with the Druk Gyalpo. I don’t know anybody in the royal family or anything.”
“But you know people who know them or at least who have contact with them. That’s probably enough.”
“Who?”
“Your friend, that lawyer, Rajiv Prakash. He’s had dealings with the royal family.”
“But he isn’t even Bhutanese, he’s In—”
“Doesn’t matter. He has contacts with them. Also, your old boss—well, sort of boss—Dorji Dawa. His wife is related to the queen. He’s close to the royal family.”
“Oh, yeah, I’d heard that—but maybe not so much on good terms with me, since I left his employ. I s’pose we always got along well, though.”
“Exactly. And my ama and my amin know Ugyen Danzin, and he’s on very good terms with His Royal Highness. I think you can get an audience. You have something to give him. You have knowledge that, like you said—”
“As you said.”
“Thank you. As you said, you will make him a world-wide hero and savior. He will grant you an audience, and he will listen.”
The discussion continued longer than most without an interruption for carnal activities, an indication that both considered the topic important. Another indication could be gleaned from their returning to the topic repeatedly in the following days, and yet another from Sonam’s contacts with her mother and aunt. Both women put social wheels in motion.
Benson Johns, Junior, remained blissfully unaware of his parents’ concern at his birth into a crepuscular world. He and his mother—and, indeed, all three—bonded well and enjoyed each other’s company.
Sonam felt severely deprived in the last couple of weeks of her pregnancy and advocated early resumption of conjugal activities despite Ben Senior’s concerns about possible adverse impacts on her health or possibly causing her pain or both. She insisted, he worried; she continued to insist and began actively working at seducing her partner; he continued to worry. Ben’s resistance crumbled after three days, and Sonam declared then and for long afterward that the pleasure was well worth the little bit of discomfort.
Young Ben had long since mastered crawling and sitting up by the day the rain paused. The rain-free interlude lasted less than half an hour, but it gave everyone some reassurance that at least the rain could stop. By then, Sonam’s large belly proclaimed the imminent arrival of the little guy’s brother, an event that occurred without the benefit of any sunshine in Bhutan.
Ben Junior was walking and his brother two months old, by the time the second pause occurred, and that pause lasted more than half an hour but less than an hour. At eighteen and eight-and-a-half months respectively, the boys enjoyed an afternoon with a break of two hours. In the meantime, their parents took them for frequent walks in a couple of the big grow-houses, as the indoor orchards and gardens became known. The boys couldn’t yet have understood that was a privilege accorded only a few very special visitors.
At the ages of twenty-six months and seventeen months, the toddlers experienced sunshine for the first time. Ben Senior told his sons, “Don’t look at it—it can hurt your eyes very badly. It can seriously damage them.”
Both the boys said,. “It’s very bright.”
“It is,” their father agreed. “Look at the hills and the people and the buildings.”
The sun cast hard shadows for about twenty minutes that day but returned three months later for twice as long. Meanwhile, the not-quite-but-still-almost-incessant rain’s pH had risen to almost five. As if to honor young Ben’s third birthday, the sun appeared that day for a full hour for the first time post-impact, before the cloud and rain returned.
In accord with Ben Senior’s now famous suggestions, many of the grow houses preserved valuable fruit and nut trees against the day when they could again grow in a natural environment. Other grow houses preserved germ lines of garden vegetables while producing substantial crops in a successful effort to improve the diet of the surviving population.
That population amounted to about fifty per cent of the country’s pre-impact numbers. India, with far more surviving individuals, contained much less than one per cent of its former population. The intermontane West of the United States preserved almost one per cent of that country’s former population. In the new conditions, the U.S. and India supported about the same population, about three times that of Bhutan. In both of those large countries, as also elsewhere, people had begun re-occupying the drowned lands and attempting to reëstablish agriculture. The total human population of the planet amounted to fewer than fifty million, and global warming no longer posed a threat.
Sonam felt glad to be one of the survivors but even more glad to be Ben’s partner and the mother of their sons. After four years, when rain-free daytime hours made regular appearances, she enjoyed Ben Senior’s company and love-making more than ever. Another year, and the birth of their daughter Tenzin occurred on a day with no rain at all from an invisible sunrise to a visible sunset.
In countries around the world, people began using whatever resources they could find in attempts to re-introduce agriculture and horticulture to land that had lain fallow and sodden for half a decade. Some succeeded; many did not, and starvation remained a constant threat everywhere. As the rain lessened, however, and the sunny hours increased, more and more areas began producing food crops.
Coastal peoples fared somewhat better, because the absence of fishing pressure for more than four years allowed fish stocks to rebound. The lack of sunlight to provide energy for the growth of algae and other base-of-the-food-chain organisms hampered the recovery by limiting the food available to crustaceans and fish. Even so, those who managed to fish in the dark supplied protein to their families and communities.
Educated as a scientist and graduated by M.I.T. as a mathematician, Cora Tate has earned her living as a full-time professional entertainer most of her life, including a stint as a regular performer on the prestigious Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Cora’s repeated attempts to escape the entertainment industry have brought work as a librarian, physics teacher, syndicated newspaper columnist, and city planner, among other occupations. Cora lives and writes in Bhutan. In previous decades she has lived, performed, and taught in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark. She has written five novels, three novellas (two of which have been published), and three novelettes (two published, one forthcoming). Although she considers herself primarily a novelist, she has written eighty-some short stories, some of which have appeared in the Galway Review, Quail Bell, Overland, Indiana Voice Journal, Red Fez, Page & Spine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and other literary journals. Cora’s short story “While The Iron Is Hot” won the Fair Australia Prize.
Poetry from Chukwuma Eke Pacella
That Boys Are Flowers Too Say, earth has become too busy tending to sister's scars that my cries are only gifted to the cicatrix and night skies. You see, father's father had encrypted on our tongues— the constitutions on how a boy could camouflage his agony with the mask of a lion's heart that he had forgotten how petals had already been sewn into flesh and ichor for our hearts instead. He says a boy must recycle his grief into boxes of peaches and fondle them as though he were a deity— without sin. But i tell you, if you choose to unwrap this flesh you'd see the anatomy of pain from a boy's body. And when you swallow my grief you could find its definition in a thousand and one languages. You see, the scars on mother's body teaches girls how to love but father's burnt limbs whispers to us, Man shall always be man. And the night I sang to dad how i dreamed of becoming a fire lily, the old man asked that I exorcise my tongue. Boy— you are vine. You are a ghost orchid too. Your petals have blended into the satin of crooked minors, 'home' might weed off your bloom. In this poem, my body lives without a tongue when i fall into the darkness of reality i see, a girl's portrait on the altar of helplessness. This portrait is pleading, this portrait is me. But an old man pulls my tongue from my mouth. he says that girls my age must lock their voices inside their father/lover/husband's lips. then i try to pull my pale body out of this vulnerable realm and write to mother how i lost my voice to a strange man. she stares at me with so much to say but mother's tongue has been taken too. listen, in this polity where every woman is believed to possess a disabled gene, i do not know the difference between a nightmare and reality for as long as i carry this body i remain that girl child without red.
Poetry from Leticia Garcia Bradford
On Days Like These On Days Like These On days like these Be the change Change What Our tears Our children NPR There aren’t enough words On radio On social media On television Are newspapers read anymore Words to comfort the grieving Words to comfort our hearts Words to comfort the masses Why? We ask again And again Only to write another poem Again