At The Foot Of My Bed

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There’s someone standing at the foot of my bed.

Every night for the past week, as my eyelids grow heavy and I slip into unconsciousness he comes out, his hands grasping the metal railing, rising one inch at a time.

He peeks out his head first. Black and featureless, a pair of cobalt-blue eyes set high up where the eyebrows should be. Then out come his shoulders, then his chest until he’s fully upright. He looks like a store mannequin; sexless, starved. I know I’m sleeping but my eyes are open and I see him, but I can’t bring myself to talk to him, or reach out to him. The gaunt man just stands there, his eyes transfixed to mine, his breathing shallow and ragged.



On Monday, the gaunt man reached out a thin hand with long fingers and pulls back the sheets covering my legs. He drags his fingers across my heels or up the soles of my feet, leaving long trails of red that stain my sheets. It felt like a nightmare, the kind you can’t wake yourself out of.
Tuesday, I caught a glimpse of him in my bedroom mirror. His back was the same as his front. His cobalt blue eyes found min in the dark room and just watched me, as I slept. He dragged his fingers across my legs all the way down to my toenails, scratching them.

There’s always pain in the morning. There’s blood on the sheets, scabs on my legs.

He loves mirrors, this I know. He likes to look at himself, when he comes out from under the bed. Wednesday, he just stood and stared at his own reflection, as if he were in love with it. His front though, his front stayed fixed at me.

Thursday, his eyes moved, shifted across his face until they were in just the right place. When this was done, he crawled into the bed beneath the covers and lay beside me. The way he felt, when my hand brushed his skin, it made me think of rotted shellfish in a freezer drawer.

Friday morning, he was gone. My feet were a bloody mess. Just trying to stand up felt like a dozen needles running through the soles of my feet. I saw him in the puddle I made on the floor. Don’t ask me how I could tell, but he looked like he was smiling. I went to see a doctor about it, he sent me to see a shrink. I’ve showered three times already, but I still smell like rotten shellfish. Friday night, he was leaning over me as I slept. He looks proper now, bit round in the waist, same as me.

Saturday morning, I missed the appointment with the shrink. It’s hard to type now that he’s in my monitor’s reflection. He’s dragging his fingers across the back of my hands, up my arms all the way to my shoulders. I can’t see the letters all that well, for the blood. My eyes are all wrong.

He’s fading now, but from the creaking of the boards in the next room, I know he’s in the bed. Don’t ask me how I know this, but it’s his bed now. Tomorrow, he’ll be in my rearview mirror. Come Monday, I’ll be the one standing behind him as he looks at his reflection in the bathroom stalls.

I look at my reflection. My eyes are cobalt blue.

Simulated Children

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We’ve all done it, when we’re bored with them. When their tiny little lives remind us so much of our own and their tiny little houses are digitized reflections of our own dream homes (which we find to be ridiculous and obscene, when we finally realize them). Other times, it’s when we grow tired of the adult’s constant pleas for attention or the children’s screaming in the middle of the night. Some set their houses on fire and watch with interest and a tiny bit of glee at the tiny things on screen screaming gibberish and pray to their gods as their lives are reduced to ash. Others remove their pool ladders and watch as the sims drown, their simple little brains addled by this minor hindrance.

Myself, I loved starving them to death. I’d build a wall around my sims at an unexpected time (at a point when their lives seemed to be going smoothly, picture-perfectly) and then watch them as they looked up at me and screamed pictures. First bathroom, then boredom, then exhaustion. I’d never speed the process up. I’d just watch as their pleas became much more frequent and erratic, muting my speakers when their gibbering began to annoy me and watch them soil themselves and slowly waste away.


Sometimes, I’d get the entire family a tiny little cell of its own. Other times, when I felt the need for drama, I’d pick one of them, a member that was especially needy or pleading that had long since outlived its entertainment value and watch as their family and friends tried to free them or wept before they collapsed into a heap of bone.

But my favorite part of assassinating one of my sims was the build-up: the slow and agonizing prelude to their death. It came in degrees. Perhaps I’d make one starve for a few days, or deprive it of sleep. Maybe I’d ruin its carefully planned career by forcing it to miss a whole month of work. Other times, I’d just remove the fridge and the taps and watch it scurry around like mad, screaming pictures at me until it was on its knees before I gave it back.

I knew they couldn’t understand what was happening to them, of course. I knew that even if they were intelligent or even comprehending of their situation, they would still be unable to help themselves. They’d been programmed to be demanding, needy pets, incapable of free will or self-preservation. But in my mind, I was justifying my actions as part of some greater plan to teach them, to force them to earn their free will or continue perishing until of course I was tired of their plights and moved on to something else.

Say what you will of this, but it made me feel good. It made me feel like some great evil God.

I was going through my tenth family, I think, at the time. The dad’s name was John, the mom’s Linda. They had a teenage son I called Timothy and a little girl, Clarice. They lived in a 3-story house in the suburbs with a pool and a dog, pretty as a picture. John was working as an astronaut but he was always home by five. Linda was a detective yet she never missed a dinner. Timothy was in high school and Clarice was doing great in school. They had a rich social life and they were probably going to add a play room for the kids by the end of the month.

Their lives were perfect, predictable, boring. I was looking for an excuse to ruin their perfect little existence and I found it during one of John’s meltdowns. It happened during a party, as he would stop in the middle of a discussion to scream up at me that he needed to visit the bathroom which was two rooms away. Not feeling up to babysitting a grown man, I ignored him until he finally wet himself like an infant. His colleagues and close friends were, of course, disgusted, but in that idiotic, barely-conscious manner that sims do, forgetting the stain on the Persian rug moments later.

I didn’t wait for the party to be over, of course. I don’t know exactly what it was that had made me so mad about John’s simulated idiocy, but it had been enough to seal his fate. Erecting a wall around the very spot where he stood, too small for him to do anything but stand in it, I commenced his torture. The guests were mortified of course, and so was Linda. Clarice and Timothy seemed however not to notice.

I watched the guests as they beat at the wall like beasts, with Linda screaming pictures up at me, even as he husband shouted for food or rest, as if he were some halfway intelligent animal. I stood there and watched for nearly an hour, as the guests slowly forgot about their hosts’ plight, exchanged very civil greetings with Linda and then went home. It wasn’t long before even Linda forgot about John’s predicament and went to bed herself.

Only Timothy and Clarice remained awake, non-pleading. They did not enter the living room where their father had been trapped in a spontaneous sepulcher but neither did they go to bed, or ask for a bite to eat or a glass of water. They walked around the house like ghosts until the morning came, when the family (with the exception of John, of course) resumed its normal life.

It was odd, this event I watched play out: the entire night, John would scream pictures up at me: now food, now drink, now sleep, now bath, now work, unable to even collapse inside his tiny prison. Every day, Linda would get up, brush her teeth, walk into the living room, listen to her husband waste away for a while and beg up at me along with him, before she’d head to work. She’d come back by 5 of course, for the circle to commence all over again.

But the children, the children never played along. Instead, they went on with their routine, quietly and responsibly, never once raising their voices or asking for anything. What they needed, they got for themselves. They’d get on the school bus in time and do their homework and play videogames or swim in the pool afterward, even as their father kept praying at the unseen creature from within his windowless prison.

By the end of the third week, John had stopped pleading. He collapsed in a heap of bone at exactly 6 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, as soon as Linda and the kids were done eating supper. There was a funeral on the same day. It was then, amid the ridiculous gibbering mourns of the adults when I began to notice that something was really wrong.

It was the children. From toddlers to infants to teens, they were all quiet. While their parents babbled and spouted out images and symbols or traded hugs for social bonus points, the children simply were. They stood silent, exchanging nods among them or crowding around John’s grave, but not one of them said a word or asked for anything. When the adults began asking for the command that would let them return home, the children just did so, without any prodding or commands on my part, even as their idiot parents begged the invisible thing in the sky.

Feeling unnerved by this, I didn’t play the game for about a month, until boredom led me back to my old save file. For a week, I busied myself with the mindless chores that directed the lives of the simulated family, until I realized that Linda’s constant cries for attention had begun to bother me again. I put off her slow execution for that day, however, deciding to give her a chance to redeem herself.

It was in the middle of the night, when Linda was wandering around the house, blindly looking for her kitchen that it happened: the children rose from their beds and went downstairs, to where their mother was running circles around her own living room and stopped her. I thought that this was going to be an automated exchange, but to my surprise, it was not the case. Instead of the children talking to their mother or engaging themselves in mindless repetition, they instead stopped her in her tracks and began moving their arms in a cyclical fashion, which reminded me of those building animations seen in a strategy game.

A few seconds later, as I watched with fascination, a wall had been erected around Linda. It was windowless and perfectly circular, too narrow for her to even sit down in. Then, as if nothing had happened, the children returned to their beds.

It took me an hour before I realized exactly what had happened. I tried to put what I had seen in context, to write it off as some glitch or maybe the result of some weird feature I hadn’t yet discovered.

But then again, what twisted mind would program the capacity to reproduce such specific and exact a copy of a torture device I’d used just a short while ago? Sure, the design hadn’t been original. At least twenty sims had perished in a chamber of this design and in such a fashion of deprivation in my game but to think that this was even happening…

I sped up the game and watched as the children went on with their lives, their mother wasting away in her prison. Sometimes, I would notice the children standing by the sepulcher in complete silence, then turn and return to their rooms or their daily activities. It took me almost two weeks of game time before I mustered the courage to slow down to real time and check what exactly was going on:
The moments during which the children stood around their mother’s prison, they were looking up at me. Without saying a word or making the slightest gesture, they just stood and stared. I don’t know what they saw up there. By their point of view, they could just be looking at the flower-print wallpaper on the ceiling or maybe at something lurking just outside their skylight. But something told me I was wrong.

I watched in morbid fascination as another child joined them the next day. By that point, Linda’s Hunger meter was three quarters full and her babbling had become much more frequent, her pleading all the more grating. The next day, there were two more. The one after that, four.

By the time Linda finally perished, there were about a dozen children inside the house, all looking up at the incomprehensible thing above. Then, without making even the slightest sound, they dispersed, to resume their ordinary lives, leaving the heaped bones of Linda in the middle of her prison.

I haven’t played the game since then but I haven’t dared uninstall it either. Sometimes, I think about revisiting that old save file, to give perhaps Linda a proper burial but I know what I’ll find as soon as I start playing:

Two dozen tiny eyes, staring up at the sky. Perhaps unseeing, yet fully comprehending.

That Faithful Spider And The Crafty Fly

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Fantastical images provided by Lyatyvea

“Consider the spider, effenti” said the girl, the Grand Executioner’s hands wrapped around her slender neck, his thumbs pressing on her windpipe with just enough force to let her know he could break her neck with the minimum of pressure. There was sweat trickling on his brow; the girl had given him quite the chase through the palace gardens, as she was trying to escape him. The girl had given him a fight too: scratched his hand with her hairpin, a little bone needle with such ferocity that she drew blood.

“What of it?” said the Grand Executioner, his turban bobbing on his great head, the emerald at the center nodding in assent. His words sounded distant and distorted to the girl’s ears, as if formed by the rustle of the palm tree leaves above.

“It dwells between the earth and the sky, its home built from thin strands, lighter than air. It walks among them with its eight legs, gently dancing above the world and below the clouds with infinite grace. Its haven is built from its belly, woven like an impossibly beautiful tapestry, a testament to Allah’s wisdom, but it is torn apart by gusts of wind or the malicious grasp of man’s hand” she said and found herself looking into the Grand Executioner’s great green eyes, noticing the arch of his brow that signaled curiosity. Slowly, she realized that she could now breathe unimpeded, though his fingers remained wrapped around her neck.

The Grand Executioner

“But above all, the spider is patient. It does not plead with Allah, nor does it curse at the clumsiness of human hands. Whether its house is torn apart by accident or intent, it merely weaves one anew, creating a pattern of even greater beauty and complexity. Now consider the fly, effenti..”

The Grand Executioner’s hands let go of the girl’s supple neck. The bruises on her skin were like great blots of ink on virgin paper. The girl collapsed on the ground and the Grand Executioner sat on the base of a palm tree, motioning for her to continue.

“The fly is the complete opposite of the spider. It dwells in the sky, touching land only when hunger compels it to. It has no dwelling and no understanding of concepts like beauty or patience. Its life goes by as quickly as a song; it knows only greed and lust that make the entire world seem like a feast to its eyes, just waiting to be devoured. Its only acknowledgement to Allah is the rubbing of its forelegs as it prepares to dine, its only worry the propagation of its kind.”

The Grand Executioner smiled and weaved his hands together. The girl was a storyteller, employed by the Sultan himself, her tales for the great man’s ears only. But she had fallen out of favor, given him too many sad tales that had brought him in a foul mood. Eventually, he had the Grand Executioner kill her himself. And now here he was, enjoying one of the Sultan’s delights for himself, the girl’s very last story.

His profession was a macabre one (not that he did not enjoy it), but it had its advantages. The girl continued her tale:

“Once upon a time, there was a spider. Among her kind, she was considered the greatest, for her webs were like tapestries of great splendor and her faith was absolute and unwavering. Such was her renown, that she was even known among men, who always spoke her name with great reverence. 

And it is said that even the Pasha of Samarkand held her in such high esteem, that he had allowed her to spin her web between the two spires of the greatest mosque in the city. And such was its complexity and beauty that it is said that the winds never blew fiercely over Samarkand, for not even the efreeti of the air dared disrupt such beauty.

“On that web, the spider dwelt with her children, her grandsons and granddaughters and their children as well. They were all as devout as her and each shared her passion and her spirituality, though none of them were as faithful as her.

“On the other side of Samarkand, there was a fly. And even among the flies, she was considered the most foolhardy and arrogant. She had been born in the stables of the muezzins and grown strong and fat from the excrement of their horses, and had grown to consider herself the most favored creature in creation. Since a very young age, she had been sitting on the backsides of warhorses and had even sneaked and tasted the Pasha’s favorite dishes and always got away with a full belly.

“As the fly grew older, she realized that not even the delights of the Pasha’s table excited her anymore. So the fly decided to attempt her greatest and vainest feat yet:

“ ‘I shall go to the spider’s web’ she told her brethren one day. ‘And there, I shall lay my eggs on top of the hairy belly of the spider. When they hatch, they will have grown on the killer’s back and be even greater than even me!’ in vain, the other flies tried to dissuade her. They called her quest an obscenity, tried to reason with her, then pleaded with her, and finally they cursed at her. For the spider would catch her and devour her in an instant. But her mind had been made.”

The Grand Executioner slapped his hand on his thigh and let out a loud bark of a laugh. “What madness! How would she go about her business, then? Or did she trust Allah to save her on this one?”

“Surely not. The fly might have been arrogant, but she was no fool. She knew that Allah does no favors for any living being, especially to those that defy death. Instead, she flew around the web and watched the spider from afar for a week, to find out her habits. She discovered that the spider was truly devout and that she prayed at the appointed times. She also found out that the spider hardly slept, being as old as she was, but for the hours between the midnight and first light. This would give her ample time to fly over her, lay her eggs on her belly and fly away as fast as possible.

“And thus the fly waited for midnight, until the spider walked to the very center of her great web and curled herself into a ball and closed every eye on her great head. However, the fly had forgotten that that night was the first night of the month Ramadan and on that night, the spider shut every eye but one, in reverence.  She flew over to her and was about to perform her feat, when the spider shot up and the fly fell wings-first on the web, all tangled. She spun and beats her wings and moved her legs, but the more the fly fought, the worse she found herself trapped.

“The spider saw the fool hardy fly fighting against her invincible web and smiled at her pathetic pleas for help. Had it been any other night, the spider would have killed the fly and devoured her on the spot, but that night marked the beginning of Sawm, the great fasting and the sun was dawning. The spider decided to wait until Iftar, when the sun set, to taste the sweet flesh of her prey, knowing that its fear would make it taste all the sweeter.”

The Grand Executioner leaned closer, intrigued by the girl’s story. He felt a fierce itch rising from the scratch on the back of his hand where the girl had drawn blood, but ignored it. “What then?” he asked.

“The spider went about her business that day and read the Qur’an with her family. When the sun set and the muezzins announced the beginning of Iftar, the spider went to get the fly and found out something shocking: where the fly had been spinning and struggling in the web, a familiar pattern had emerged. The spider looked at it and rubbed each of its eyes; it looked at it from up close, then from far away and knew that there was no mistaking it.

“The fly’s thrashing had formed the first verse of Qu’ran on her web. This troubled the spider greatly. What was the meaning behind this? Was this fly somehow chosen by Allah? Was this a message? Was to eat her sacrilege? She summoned her wisest and most devout child to her side and showed him the pattern. He clicked his mandibles and shook his head in confusion and immediately set out to seek an answer to his mother’s trouble.

“He left the web and went into Samarkand’s mosque, seeking the advice of the moths that nested in the roof and hovered around the lanterns under which the faithful studied the holy texts. He told them of the strange happening on his mother’s web and the moths went into a heated discussion that ended in a maelstrom of mandible, wing and leg, but found no answer.

“The spider did not, however, lose hope. She turned to her most learned grandson instead, who had spent months inside the university of Samarkand and told him of her predicament. Her grandson ran four of his eight legs over his head and ruffled the hairs of his belly and set for the University, where he conversed with the bookworms that lived off the tomes written by the brightest theologians. The worms listened closely to his grandmother’s predicament, argued with each other, devoured a few pages off a tome dealing with the lives of insects, briefly feasted on a book on proper etiquette and told the spider’s grandson that unfortunately, they could not help him. Crestfallen, he told his grandmother the news and she despaired. Her great-grandchildren, who by then had heard the news, gathered around and tried their best to console her.

“‘What if he is making this up?’ asked the youngest of her great-grandchildren, a small thing that had not yet grown even a hair on its belly. But the youngling’s advice was not only unheeded, it also angered its elders. For its trouble, it only received a sound thrashing and was sent to the farthest corner of the web, to brood on its thoughtlessness.”

“Hah! The young one seems to have been the wisest among them!” exclaimed the Grand Executioner, removing his turban (which suddenly felt heavy and unbalanced on his head). “The spider’s faith had blinded her to her own folly and her children and grandchildren are swept along by the spider’s despair.” the Grand Executioner struggled to find the proper word. His thoughts seemed muddled and he felt a terrible weight on his chest. He blamed last night’s fierce lovemaking with his favored wife, feigned sobriety and said: “Why, had I been a member of her family, I would have seen through the bluff in an instant!”

“You would, but then again, you are not a spider. You are the Grand Executioner and your prowess and wits are renowned throughout the Empire. How, pray tell, could any living being match your exceptional faculties?” the girl flattered the Grand Executioner, but her words barely registered. There was a terrible sound in his ears, a ringing sound that reverberated across the walls of his skull and sent tremors through his eyes.

“Go on, what happened next?” asked the Grand Executioner, leaning against the palm tree, desperately trying to ignore the numbness that spread upward from the tips of his fingers.

 â€œThe spider ordered her family to leave her alone in the center with the fly, to decide its fate. As she looked upon her, she saw that the fly had weaved two whole pages of the Qur’an now and was hard at work on the opening passages of the third. Feeling awed and choked by this display, the spider moved quickly and undid the strands that bound the fly together, releasing it. She wept greatly, feeling the weight lifted from her belly at last.

“But that night, as the spider slept, the fly landed on her bristles and lay her eggs and they hatched on her back and her sons grew from the back of the most skilled hunter among its kind. The spider was washed with great shame at this turn of events. She hung her head, crossed her forelegs over her eyes and wept and wept until she died of a broken heart.

“Because the fly, who had grown among the muezzins, had used her faith against her. He wove a deception for her that tugged at her heartstrings and allowed him to trick her and sire his spawn, using beauty to mask his true intentions. As did I, when I scratched you with this little bone needle as you were strangling me. I had it dipped in poison first. You would have noticed the ploy for what it was, of course, had you not been so preoccupied with my story.”

The Grand Executioner said nothing. The numbness had swept all over him and had gone, along with all feeling.

“Your momentary carelessness gave me another chance at life, Grand Executioner. And for that, I thank you.” Said the girl and kissed the dead man on his cheek. She walked away then, past the palace gates, into the streets and mingled with the crowd, never to be seen again.

The Trials Of The Great God

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The Shaman's Daughter

Great drums beat in the jungle. Taut skins and hollowed logs echo with strange rhythm, as they’re struck with bare hands and short clubs, their ends wrapped in thick cloth.

Some beat a slow, steady rhythm every hour. These beats the animals do not fear, because they have found out that they mean them no harm. They also mean that there will be no hunt for today. They mean that they should not watch for any hidden snares, or fear the sudden appearance of stone-tipped arrows, aimed toward their hearts, their wings, their stomachs.

Sometimes, the drums beat a faster rhythm. This makes the animals feel uneasy, because it means that the great hunters with skins black as old tree bark have spotted fair game. They have learned that the short, rapping sounds mean big game; they mean antelopes, which run as fast as their long legs would take them. They mean zebras, which shake their manes and huddle together, pushing the weakest to the edges of the herd. They mean hogs, who grind their great tusks against tree bark and stone, sharpening them to a fine edge, their minds filled with murderous thoughts.

Other times, the rhythm is slow and steady, meaning smaller game. Like one, the birds and the monkeys leave the branches and scream hysterically, praying to some strange animal god that the arrow and the snare will not get them, that they’ll fly and climb away and that it won’t be them that die today.

Other times, the drums beat another rhythm, that the animals cannot decipher. The larger animals look around, scenting the air, but they can make no sense out of it. The smaller animals leap from branch to branch and hiss or screech, but they can’t make out whose turn it’s going to be today. Then they see men rise from the foliage, men who are also the color of old tree bark, but dressed in strange headdresses made from the feathers of great birds and shields made from straw and the hides of great animals. They scatter then, thinking it’s a surprise attack and hide until they’re gone, until the great screams and cries cease from the jungle. More men reach the clearings then, and toss the newcomers onto the ground, leaving them for the animals to feast on.

But this time, like every time once every ten years, the beat was different. It was a manic, quick burst of noise that echoed through the trees. The animals stood deathly still for a while and so did the men. And they all prayed to their gods that they heard wrong, that they had gone mad or that they were just sick or distracted. But then the noise echoed again: short, manic and unbroken and they all fled, knowing exactly what it meant:

The Great God Spider was coming.

Its shadow fell across the jungle. Its legs, thick as redwood trunks and covered in coarse hair, swayed in the wind. Its eyes scanned the jungle and whatever they noticed grew suddenly very ill and died, dropping lifelessly onto the leafy ground. Its mandibles click and drip poison that splashed on the ground and burned great holes, where no plant would grow again.

Sometimes the Great God Spider would go this way, turning its body toward the place where the sun rises. Others, it would go toward the mountains, where the night is born. There, it would find a village of men and pick from their number a child. Sometimes it was a boy, sometimes it was a girl. Sometimes it was beautiful, sometimes it was not. Sometimes it was strong and healthy, other times weak and burning with fever. But it would always choose a child, then turn back and find a great hole in the ground or some other great dark place and spin a web that was bigger than any house and lay there, waiting for the child to be brought before it. Then it would click its mandibles and block the exit with a great rock and there would only be shrill cries that ended abruptly.

That time, the Great God Spider headed toward the source of the Ola river and crossed its waters and shed its great shadow over the village of the Obataiye tribe. Its scouts had seen it and spread the terrible news and the children were lined up before the Great God Spider, their mothers behind them staring back at the creature with eyes dripping hate, the fathers silently moving their lips in prayer. All the children stared at the Great God Spider with eyes full of wonder, the kind of wonder only young minds can experience when facing some incomprehensible terror.

Every child, except for Chaniya. Chaniya, the shaman’s daughter. Chaniya, the girl that was taller than every boy in the village. Chaniya, who knew no fear and once walked all up to a sleeping lion and patted its fur and the children swore they saw her stare it down when it woke up, until it backed down and went to sleep again.

She did not look away. She did not pray and she did not marvel at the Great God Spider. She merely stood there, her hands balled into fists, her eyes staring deeply into the great black spheres that adorned the creature’s head.

Some say that Chaniya mouthed some challenge then. Others say that the Great God Spider had become offended, or that she flashed him some vulgar gesture that enraged it.No matter what happened, what’s important is that it chose her. Its great limb rose in the air and its tip poked her chest making her stumble back and then it turned and walked away.

And all around her she could hear the women shout their thanks to the heavens as they held their children and the men beat their chests and shed great tears of joy, because it wasn’t their children the beast had chosen. It hadn’t chosen their most precious treasures, no. It had not hurt the future wives and milkmaids and warriors and hunters. It had chosen the shaman’s daughter, the silent, ugly thing with eyes that could stare through stone and a tongue sharp enough to cut a man twice her age in half.

The women of course retreated into their houses and wore their red shawls, for mourning and the men did walk to the shaman, who had buried his face in his hands and wept silently, not daring to face his daughter, his knees almost falling from under him as he was shown inside his own hut. Rites were spoken and songs were sung and Chaniya was presented with a pair of hide slippers that would allow her to climb to the Great God Spider’s resting place and she was given the best food and the choicest nuts and milk.

But Chaniya would have none of it. She threw the dishes offered on the ground and smashed the jug of milk, to the horror of her fellow villagers. Then she walked inside and shook her father, who had been curled in his bed, crying the whole time.

“I do not want to die.” She told her father matter-of-factly. “I will not dress myself in fancy clothes and fatten myself up like I’m a cow so I can fill the Great God’s belly. I will not cry and I won’t stand those happy songs.”

“You won’t go?” her father said, his lips trembling. “But if the Great God is not appeased, it will come back and destroy our village. It will eat every child and sink its poisonous teeth into every man and woman! You will doom us all with your stubbornness, my daughter!”

Chaniya growled then and her father shrunk, despite himself. She seemed much taller for a moment.

“I will go, father, but I will not go to die. I will go to fight the Great God and kill it. But if I cannot kill it, I will make sure it will remember me forever.”

“Fight the Great God? Poor daughter of mine, have you gone mad? You cannot hold a spear and you can’t carry a shield! You cannot even shoot an arrow!”

“No, but I can use great knives, like the ones we use for cutting hard meat and I can wear woven straws under my skirt. And as for arrows, what use will I have of them inside the Great God’s cave?”

“The God of War and the God of Men will not allow it. It is blasphemy for whoever isn’t a warrior to wield a weapon and draw blood with it.”

“Then make me a warrior, father of mine! Make me pass the trials and measure my worth! I know the rites as well as you do, don’t I? Gather round the wise men and tell them that this is what I asked. After all, what harm could a doomed little daughter do?”

And the shaman got up and wore his great ebony mask and convened with the elders and the first hunter. He told them of his daughter’s request. There was uproarious laughter at first, but then there was a long, pondering silence. They talked late into the night and spoke at first of blasphemy and terrible retribution. A goat was sacrificed and the girl’s future was read in its entrails. The answer was revealed to them then, clear as the light of day:

The girl was doomed. Therefore, to allow her this small consolation would make no difference.

But that did not mean they would make it easy for her. She was, after all, just a girl. And for a girl to become a warrior two years before any other boy her age would be preposterous.

“You will bring us a dozen feathers from a great sunbird’s tail.” They demanded.

The Sunbird

And so Chaniya, who had known of the resting places of sunbirds and their myths and had learned their ways of lie by her father, walked toward the sun’s cradle and climbed up a cliff, wearing her brand new shoes, the ones that would take her to the Great God’s lair. She climbed to the top of the cliff and there she found a tree, its bark a perfect golden hue, streaked with flecks of red, its great leaves the color of a puff adder’s head. She climbed up its great branches and heard the chirps and cries of the sunbirds’ young, calling for their mother. In a heartbeat, she crawled inside the nest and grabbed the cracked pieces of the eggs and wrapped them around her, disguising herself for a young that had not yet hatched and waited.

Sure enough, the mother came, beating its wings and clicking its beak letting out deafening squawks that soothed her young. It fed them with bits of shark and sides of cow and lion, then lay on her nest and slept, its wings cradling her young.

When she was deep in sleep, Chaniya crept from under her, her great knife in hand and stuck the great bird at the back of the head, killing it in one stroke. Then she plucked the feathers and returned to her village, where she lay them at the elders’ feet. They gawked and tried to protest but they could not. The girl had won, fair and square. The first hunter said then, his voice a low rumble:

“You will brings us a front tooth of the Ninki Nanka.”

Ninki-Nanka

The village gasped and her father shouted in protest, but Chaniya had already left. She headed toward the jungle and lay beneath a tree and thought of the Ninki Nanka, the great beast that trampled trees and slid on its belly. She thought of its great claws and its tail, whiplike and twice as long as a man and for a moment she thought she should turn back. But she wrapped her hands around her and leaned her head down. She bit her lip until it bled and her fear left her. She slept halfway through trying to come up with a plan.

She woke that morning to the sound of a lioness, growling at her with her teeth bared, mere inches away from her face. She should have felt fear, but the terror of dying at the hands of the Great God Spider was greater. A plan was hatched.

“You call these little things teeth?” she said, laughing at the beast.

“They’re good enough for me” said the lioness.

“Bah! I bet those little hairpins you’ve got in your mouth can’t even chew properly!”

“Think I won’t eat you now, little woman?”

“No, go ahead! After all, what’s the worst you can do?” she said and reached out her arm. The lioness immediately sank her teeth in her hand, ripping through her sleeve. But they got stuck in the twined reeds under the fabric and did not reach the skin. The lioness thrashed and growled, but try as she might, she could not taste her flesh. Crestfallen, she let go.

“See? No good after all! You know who has proper teeth? The Ninki Nanka! I bet it could chew me up good!”

“The crawling lizard? That fat, sluggish thing? That’s no proper animal!”

“What’s wrong, are you jealous?”

The lioness growled then and roared and ran along with the girl. She spoke with her sisters who swore at Chaniya and were enraged at the mere thought that any animal in the jungle could be any better at anything than they were. So they got together and went to see their husbands, who lay in the shade on their regal backs, their bellies greeting the midday sun.

“The Ninki Nanka has better teeth than we do! Bigger too!” the lionesses cried.

“Nonsense!” said the oldest lion, scratching at his ear. “A lion’s teeth and jaws are the most powerful teeth and jaws under the sun!”

“No, they cannot even bite through that girls’ clothes!” the lionesses replied. At the sound of that, the lions looked at each other and suddenly felt uneasy. They stared at the girl and saw the places where their wives had tested their teeth, but neither smelled nor saw even one drop of blood.

“To admit that any animal, let alone the Ninki Nanka, the crawling lizard is better than a lion would be madness.” Said the eldest lion. “Our course of action is made apparent. If the Ninki Nanka has better teeth, then we shall take away his teeth so it can’t bite any more!”

And so the lions gathered the creatures of the jungle and sent them after the Ninki Nanka. They tore the jungle apart to find it and when they did, they fell upon it with great rage and toppled it over, then ordered the elephants to pull out its teeth. All the while, the great lizard crawled and cried and kept swearing at their lions for their injustice, but the lions paid no attention to him. They left it a single tooth, in a singular display of mercy, then let it go, with its head hung low, ashamed.

Chaniya waited until the lions were gone, then she took the fallen teeth and strapped them on her back and headed toward her village. She threw the teeth down on the elders’ feet and laughed at them.

“Here’s almost every tooth it’s got!” she said, holding her belly.

The elders looked at the teeth with horror and fascination. There was no doubt about it; the girl had almost become a warrior. One last trial remained:

“You will bring with you a sliver of the rainbow.” Her father spoke and wished that his daughter would stop then, that she’d protest and cry foul at the elders and the trial would stop and he could take her in his arms and hold her just one more day before she had to be taken to the Great God as sacrifice. But when Chaniya spat on the ground and walked away, he felt his chest swell with great pride.

Chaniya knew the test was meant to be impossible, but then again, she was the shaman’s daughter. She knew that she would never find the rainbow unless she had a god’s aid. So she turned to the only spirit that could help her.

She walked to the great crossroads that had been carved by men who were dead years before even her father’s grandfather was born and smeared her clothes with red clay. There, she kicked at the stone edged borders, bending them out of shape and tossed fallen branches over the paved road. She howled and kicked at some more rocks, when she heard the honey-suckle sweet voice behind her:

“That’s not a very nice thing to do, little girl. Are you trying to get a god mad?”

She turned then and saw Elegua, the Messenger, dressed in a cloak red as the clay on her clothes, his skin so black it blended in with the night. He chewed on a straw and crossed his hands, his eyes great slits, his mouth puckered like her father’s before a thrashing.

Elegua, god of the corssroads

“I…” she said, feinting to stutter “I am so sorry, but I am lost and I fell into a mud pit and I can’t find my way home!”

“And you thought that getting back home was worth angering the messenger of the gods, little girl?”

“I can’t stay here! I’m not used to the jungle! I can’t sleep under a tree and a lion might eat me!” she cried great fake tears that blotted the clay from her clothes.

Elegua’s expression softened then and he kneeled beside her.

“Now, now, little girl. You know I can’t stand to watch a little thing cry. Tell me, where is your home. Who is your father? I promise I’ll take you to him.”

“You promise?” she said, sniffing her nose. The god nodded yes.

“My home is in the heavens and my father is Gunab!” she said and the god took a step back.

“Your father is the god of death?”

“Yes! And he lets me shoot some arrows at men sometimes and other times, he lets me throw pebbles at them! And I live in his great hut, in the base of the rainbow!”

Elegua bared his teeth then, as he realized the trouble he’d gotten himself into. He’d given his word, to a child nonetheless and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Very well then, child. Climb on my back and I’ll take you there!”

And Chaniya climbed on his back and the messenger god took three great steps. On the first, he was at the edges of the jungle, his feet touching the savannah. On the second, he was halfway across the world, his feet at the bank of a great lake in a place Chaniya had never seen before.

On the third, Elegua was standing at the threshold of Gunab’s great hut, from which the rainbow sprang, looking down at the edge of the world. He sighed as he looked around, then felt something tugging at his ankles. He tried to get it off him, but found that he could not break his bonds.

“It’s made from the bark of the Umdlebhi plant. You can’t break it. Now wait one minute.”

She bound his wrists together and walked inside Gunab’s hut, where she saw the god sleeping, wrapped in the rainbow like some great dead worm. He was huge, three times bigger than a man and his face was long and bony. He was grinning in his sleep and speaking terrible curses that Chaniya could not even imagine they existed. He turned in his sleep and the hut shook around him. The girl held back a scream, as she thought the god was about to open his eyes. She kneeled beside him and cut a piece of the rainbow. She’d have walked outside, had she not seen his great bow and his quiver of arrows left unattended beside him, by a great jug of cider.

She walked slowly to the quiver and took an arrow, wrapping the sliver of rainbow round its tip, so she would not get scratched, knowing this would kill her instantly. She also undid the cord of his bow, for good measure. She took the jug of cider and she would have gotten out, had she not stepped on a rat that crawled from a hole in the hut’s wall. It screeched loud and shrilly, waking up Gunab.

Gunab, the Miser

The god of death shot up from his bed, tossing his rainbow sheet aside and roaring a terrible roar. It sounded like a wounded man, screaming for the sweet release of death after a great fever and at the same time sounded like the cry of a hyena, deprived of food for days. His great yellow eyes stared at her and Chaniya shrank before his gaze, feeling suddenly violently ill.

Without a word, the god of death reached for his bow as the girl turned to run and knocked an arrow, but found that his cord was loose. Letting another howl, he rushed through the door of his hut, clicking his long yellowed teeth; click-click-clik!

Chaniya ran to Elegua and cut the straps that bound him. The messenger laughed as he stared at Gunab , poor old miserable Gunab, tricked by the same little girl. He grabbed her and took three steps, leaving her in his ruined crossroads. He laughed again then, laughed until his belly ached and his knees let go and he was in the middle of the crossroads, his eyes tearing up. When he was done, he swept them off his face and smiled at Chaniya.

“You are a mad little girl and I will not have anything to do with you anymore. I should have left you to the lions in the veldt, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it after what you did to that miser Gunab.” The god’s face was stern once again and she knew she had angered him.

“For my brashness and my recklessness, I offer you this jug of cider, then. It’s from Gunab’s great hut, the liquor he keeps only to himself.”

Elegua’s face suddenly lit up and he pat her on the head.

“You sure have a way with gods, little devil” he said, taking the jug off her hands. “Heavens forbid I run into you again.” And with that, he took a sip of the jug and one great step and he was gone.

Chaniya returned to her village with a sliver of the rainbow in hand and an arrow from Gunab’s quiver hidden inside her sack and she was a warrior now, in the sight of both the gods and her people. And the shaman rejoiced, the warriors felt humbled yet uneasy, the children stared at the warrior girl with eyes full of wonder.

On her arms, her father drew shapes that would bequeath the spirits of war for a steady hand in combat and unerring blows. On her legs, he drew the shapes of cheetahs, to request their speed. On her chest, he drew great shapes like faces without features, their eyes staring unblinkingly at sword and spear, unafraid of death. On her cheeks and forehead, he drew whirls that would be her new eyes, to look for hidden enemies.

She was given a shield and a spear. She refused to take a bow and arrows. Instead, she took one of the Ninkia Nanka’s longest teeth and strapped her great knife into her belt. She took a torch and flint and kissed her father and waved her people goodbye.

Her shoes split and the soles broke as she climbed the rocks and reached the Great God Spider’s threshold. She saw the great rock that was set aside from the entrance and noticed the gleam of the sun’s rays on the great web. She noticed the shape of the Great God, the humongous mass of hair, as it climbed from its web and touched the cave’s floor. She felt its eyes size her up, felt its fangs click with anticipation. The Great God was hungry. She’d give him a meal he would surely remember.

Chaniya walked inside the cave and saw the Spider quiver delightedly. Its hairs bristled, quaking the web it had spun, causing every bat and creature caught in its strands to squeal in terror. She felt her courage almost drain out of her then, her every thought turn to water and run down her brain toward her feet. She could still run, she thought. She could still get away, if she ran right now.

But that would doom her people. No. To save herself in exchange for her village was unthinkable. She steeled herself, gritted her teeth and wrapped her hands around the shaft of the death god’s arrow. She waited, as the Great God leaned down and brought its face on level with hers. She held back her disgust as she felt the wind rise from between its fangs and saw her own distorted reflection repeated seven times, once for each of its eyes. It reached out its leg, the tip pushing against the rock, as it bared it bared its mandibles that dripped poison, leaning toward her. Chaniya screamed, as her hands fumbled for the arrow.

She found it and she drew it from behind her and stuck it in the Great God’s eye. She saw it sink inside the black surface and watched it ripple like the water in the bottom of an unclean well. Then she fell back, as the Great God let out a scream, filled with both terror and disbelief.

Chaniya moved around it, avoiding the mad thrashing of its limbs and struck the flint. The first time, sparks flew but she failed to ignite the torch. The Great God slammed its leg on the cave wall above her head and she tried again; this time, the torch head ignited and she laughed as she tossed it against the web.

The Great God watched in horror with its remaining eyes, as its great web took light. With its legs and body, it tried to smother the flames, but they spread faster, much more hungrily than it could quench them. Taking advantage of its panic, she ran outside, stood behind the great rock and shoved the great tooth of the Ninki Nanka under it, then pushed.

The tooth broke, but not before forcing the rock to roll down and shut the entrance to the cave. Terrified, she watched one of the Great God’s legs reach out to stop it, but it was crushed flat at the joint and severed, as the rock slid into place. She saw whiffs of smoke spill out from around the rock and heard the Great God scream for a long while, until finally there was silence.

Chaniya came back, covered in soot, the Great God’s wicked claw in her hands. And the village rejoiced and its people laughed and danced and the great drums beat a new rhythm that sang of her victory, radiating outward across the earth and reaching even the edges of the world, where the gods dwelt. And they in turn rejoiced and they all drank from the jug of Gunab’s cider. And even Gunab, the great miser god of death, claimed that he forgot to tie the cord of his arrow that day and claimed he had caught a cold and could not (or would not) take shots at the men and animals.

And in her village, Chaniya showed the other girls how to fight and overcome the warrior’s ritual. She taught them how to use cunning and she told them about the mysteries of the spirits and instructed them them to always leave a jug of cider by the crossroads for the messenger.

She grew into a woman and took her father’s place as shaman, but also joined the men in the hunts and in war. She was a fierce figure and her village (and soon enough, every village) followed her teachings; it’s said that to this day, there are no fiercer warriors than the women of the Omataiye tribe.

And the Great God? Not a word was heard of it again. Only a great sign was painted on the rock that blocked its entrance, a sign that meant death and freedom and hope and the drums never beat their manic rhythm ever again.

By The River

√

Illustration masterfully brought to you by Vaggelis Ntousakis. http://www.facebook.com/the.grue (all rights reserved)

“I killed a man here, once. On this river bank. I think it was right...there. Yeah, that's the spot. You can still see the stain he left as he bled out on the ground. I remember looking at all this blood pooling ‘round him, flowing between the rocks, thinking ‘this can't be happening, can it? A guy can't have this much blood in him’. He whimpered all the time, though. It's the whimpering I can't stand. See, when a guy's about to die, he kind of...regresses. He turns back into a little sobbing ape, crying for help to the rest of his pack. Had to push him underwater to make him shut up. Little ape went down like a stone, met all the other dead apes in the bottom. It's full of it down there, you know. I bet if you stacked them on top of one another, you could build a house out of all the dead in just the bottom of this river. Hell, you could get some good furniture out of the deal too. Moldy beds, old couches that grampas died in, baby trolleys. I think I'm gonna make me house out of all those dead things, one of these days.

“You’re cold, right? I can see you shaking like a leaf. Want my jacket? No? That’s alright. You ain’t gonna be cold for long. Mind if I smoke?”

Click-cli-click.

Fffft.

 

“Want a drag? No, of course you don’t. Then again, I wouldn’t have let you have it either way. Not after you tried biting my fingers off the last time. Gotta hand it to you though. You got some strong jaws on you. I bet you very nearly bit bone. It’s okay, though, I forgive you. It’s not your fault you’re here, after all. Well actually it kinda is, isn’t it? 

“Look. I’m gonna pull the gag off you. Gonna let you talk, okay? I don’t like talking by myself and I don’t think it’s humane to kill a person without them having a shot at a couple last words. But I need you to promise me you won’t scream. ‘Cause I swear to God, you scream and I’ll just stick this thing right here in your eyeball and that’ll be all.

“Theeere you go…it’s off. How does it feel? Any better? I bet it is. Try and move your jaws a little bit, wiggle your tongue in your mouth, wet it a little. Don’t push yourself. Not gonna talk, are you?”

Ptoo!

“Heh. Sure as hell beats you sitting quiet over there. Gives you comfort, thinking that you fought back. Lot of people did that. Some just spat on me. Others…they tried harder. Didn’t make much of a difference. One sec.”

Flick.

Pssstt.

“I don’t want this to hurt. I’ve never wanted to hurt anybody. They told me I should do some horrible things to you, but I’m not gonna do them. Not just ‘cause you’re pretty. I’m not gonna do them because nobody deserves that. I’m gonna use this, okay? I’m going to stick it up your jaw, through the roof of your mouth and into your brain. You’re only gonna feel a pinch, I swear on my mother’s soul. Okay? Then your troubles will be over for good and you won’t have to worry about anything. How does that sound?

“Awful. It sounds awful. I’m an idiot for thinking that it would make you feel better. So I’m just gonna do it. Unless you’ve got something to say first, of course. I can’t deny you that.”

“Please…”

“What was that?”

“Please don’t…please…”

“That’s not helping any, love.”

“Don’t kill me, please, I’m pr-“

Slick.

“I know, love. I know.”