6°37'08"N 6°02'49"W

  Kouétinfla, C?te d’Ivoire

  18.05.2024 – 23.45 UTC+00:00

  I had lost track of time. But I had a purpose. And I was tireless. Undefeatable. I mumbled a single word, the one that gave me drive in her absence.

  “Kill.”

  I had left everything useless behind, at the scene of the crime, but I had kept what I needed: Akissi’s machete, my semi-automatic rifle, and six enchanted pouches in the backpack.

  I carried her body, my body, Demi’s body, not Kouadio’s, but also his, just for the first hour as well, until I found a place to hide it in the wilderness. I hated it with all my being, but I could not have left it exposed.

  I was not pursued, but I acted as if I was. Everyone in my team was dead. I did not understand why. But someone must have ordered it.

  Again, again and again.

  The memory of Rox’s head bashed in again, again and again played like a broken record in my mind. It satiated my purpose, for all the long distance I had to cross until I got to the rendezvous point.

  “Kill.”

  I knew they would come back looking for me if I carried all that mattered in my backpack. The six pouches. Only one was the mission, but it was my mission no more. It was her mission, but she was absent.

  I walked and walked. Near the town, I decided I should not enter through the main street. I was Sparked, not stupid. I was obsessed, but still I could hear my training firing up the neurons.

  Only my neurons were webs now.

  “Kill.”

  I could feel the ant-like spiders working overtime inside my skull. One of the many spiders keeping me Sparked, it walked on the nape of my neck, its little bites stitching my rotting flesh together.

  I lifted my vest, hiding the small spider from sight. I was about to enter the town’s coordinates, Kouétinfla. From a side street, a pathway through the vegetation. Nobody was there. Not a soul. Maybe they were all searching for dead bodies in the rainforest. Maybe they did not know one could still walk.

  I had considered running away, hoping the Curse that Demi, I, she cast on this body would run forever, keeping Kouadio, him, myself alive. Maybe I could live forever in the between. Use eternity to cancel out the useless death I had to die. A gruesome, screaming death, all for a moment of greed.

  Alas, the memory of Marin, Akissi, her and me, Guarin lying dead, and Rox’s beautifully thrashed head haunted my thoughts. I could not abandon the mission. Even if I could, the spiders in my tendons moved me only in one direction sought by their queen.

  “Kill.”

  And then there I was, walking through the empty and unsuspecting streets of Kouétinfla, where we were supposed to meet allies for a mission that now I knew was never supposed to succeed. I was sure of that. This was a set-up. Demi, I might have been smarter. Kouadio, he, not Demi, could not figure out why Rox betrayed us.

  Another Cursed girl.

  That was not my memory. The symbols on Rox’s stones, they matched something I had seen before. No – the spiders had seen it before.

  I was not supposed to figure this out. I did not need to. Kouadio’s, also Demi’s, both one, my instinct was unmistakable. We were all set up to fail and get as far as we could, carrying a powerful artifact through a Cursed land. Rox’s mission was to kill all of us. Kouadio, I was always supposed to die screaming. Demi, I was meant to be shot by a pebble.

  I wondered why nobody was stopping me from walking through the town. Windows were shut. Doors as well. No light in the houses – was this a ghost town? No, that could not be. Was it evacuated?

  There I was, a mix of both of us and a mutation of a Curse and mortal, walking to an Inn. The coordinates had been exact.

  So, did your Kanem friends pick up?

  That was not my memory. But I was sure. The spiders knew. She knew.

  Enough of her. It was me now, and a semi-automatic rifle. Mine.

  “Kill.”

  A man stood outside the door smoking a roughly made cigarette, abnormally large, made by someone who only enjoyed tobacco if it was plentiful.

  I am not sure who he was, and as he stood up to speak, I shot my rifle. The ingredients that made up his innocent head splashed over the outside wall of the inn. No silencer, no reason to discuss. I had a mission.

  I walked up to his remains. I grabbed his cigarette and gave my mouth something to chew on.

  I opened the door of the inn with a kick. Two men were on the ground floor of what looked like a restaurant: one was already ducking behind the bar, and the second was half-asleep, drunk at a table in the corner.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I shot first the man behind the bar, letting multiple rounds spray at him, splashing crimson red innards across the wall. The drunk man yelled something towards me as he fell, unbalanced, high and irrelevant, off his chair. I walked up to him and shot him point-blank.

  I waited exactly two seconds to count the steps on the upper floors of the inn. Maybe I did care a bit about my safety, but that was not how this mission would end, me safe and sound, drinking beer.

  I munched on the tobacco. I could not process or taste the nutrients. But somehow the spiders stitching my tongue enjoyed the rush of nicotine.

  No. This midnight would end in answers, and if senseless murder was what it took, my, Kouadio’s not Demi’s Sparked body had its Cursed orders.

  “Kouadio, kill.”

  I liked the sound of the command. I could say my, his not hers name now. I could speak. I could see the irrelevant drunkard’s blood pooling around him and dying his dark skin another shade of red wine. I lavished following my command. And then I looked at the stairs going up to the rest of the inn.

  “Kouadio, kill.”

  The words echoed in my head as I repeated them, and I started walking up the stairs. I could hear people running. I stepped on the first floor, and a bullet flew next to me and missed me. I fired back and hit my mark. A young boy dropped dead in the middle of the corridor; a crude pistol appropriate for his untimely death dropped from his hands. A woman screamed, and another man started begging.

  “Kouadio, kill.”

  I said or I heard her say. Did it matter at this point?

  I shot every single one of them, floor by floor. Everyone who fought back, who begged, who ran. Some of them were armed. Some spoke that dialect, Kanuri? They must have been Kanem.

  Some of them were simply renting a room for the night.

  By the middle of the second floor, I reached my last round of ammo. I continued with Akissi’s machete to save the rifle for when I absolutely need it. These floors were emptier and quieter. That made it easier to focus. I felt my dead tendons rip with every slash, and the ant-spiders crawling into my skin, fixing my body, my hardening muscles, and stiffening skin.

  I doubted they would last forever after all. The spiders, my only allies, needed more and more effort to stitch the muscles together. They did not even repair the skin at this stage.

  Step by step, I went through all the rooms. In one, a man holding a pistol waited for me. He shot right at my chest, and tens of spiders sprawled forward, stitching me back together. I lifted my machete, and I saw a primal fear in his eyes, as he sprang and jumped from the window, breaking the glass and landing three floors down. I stared at his body and how it had emptied on the street outside. My machete would have probably been less painful. As I turned to leave the room, I caught a glimpse of Kouadio, me not her, but also her in a mirror.

  Rotting beauty. Webbed and skinned. Amalgamation of biology and hex. A gaping hole in my chest revealed empty arteries merged with a silky web. I understood why the man chose the fall.

  I continued upwards.

  I knew a secret. Oblivious men begged. Useless men were scared. None of these people I killed knew why we were betrayed and killed, so they were of no use. I had to find the one that would not beg, the one that would not be scared. The one who would bargain or try to reason with me.

  When I reached the fifth floor of the inn, cars full of armed men were already surrounding the building. I could hear their scared voices from a megaphone they used to let me know I was surrounded. Useless.

  ROX WAS RIGHT I GUESS

  I turned around. There was no one on the floor, besides two men who had been cut by my machete and left bleeding on the floor.

  YOU ARE UNPREDICTABLE

  The terrain changed, and my vision suddenly was limited by a blurry border, almost like a glass crystal surrounding me five meters in all directions.

  I looked at the ceiling, now gone and replaced by a glass, almost visibly held by what looked like a hand. All sounds outside the inn were muffled by this barrier. No, not a barrier.

  A supernatural force had stopped my rampage, putting and holding a literal glass around me. Like how you trap a bug you do not want to hurt.

  I was still at the inn, but also not. I was a little spider trapped in a glass. I hit the glass walls with all my force. I could see a hand holding the glass at the top as if a giant had decided to toy with me.

  “Great sense of humor,” I said in Baoulé. I had found my words back. My tongue.

  Was this real? Or in my head? Probably both.

  ANGER IS BAD FOR THE HEART, DEMI said the voice. Was it a woman’s voice? I was not sure. It sounded androgynous. I WILL LET YOU OUT IF YOU PROMISE TO BE A GOOD LITTLE GIRL

  “How about you let me out, and I make sure you bleed fast enough not to hurt.”

  The voice exited my head and then rematerialized somewhere outside the glass.

  “Listen here, you little cockroach,” the voice became raspy as it screamed through the glass. I saw a huge, distorted face on one side of the glass, wide eyes with bright blue and red mascara. They were the eyes of the giant holding the glass. Watching me, threatening me. “Your little tantrum has alerted the stupid men of this country, who are now surrounding you. If you do not cooperate with me, I will squish you like a little goat turd under my boot, before they even get to you.”

  I laughed.

  “I was so wrong. I thought the one behind this would not be scared. But you are.” I waved my machete towards the giant eyes. “You can’t do shit, because I have what you need in my backpack. And if your hexes could have killed me, you would have done it already.” I kept on laughing. “Keep me stuck here for all I care!”

  “Oh my god,” the eyes rolled back hard, “the insolence of this fucking thing. I can’t believe I woke up at midnight for this.” The voice sighed. “I will break it down to your level: you are a psychopathic rotting zombie. I am The Haunt. Fucking OBEY!”

  The hand started shaking the glass, hitting me everywhere. Spiders sprawled from my bruises to heal them.

  I sighed and grabbed my machete, lifting it and reaching for my neck. I stuck my tongue out and winked at the face outside the glass trap. I figured, if this thing was playing with my brain, my brain was a liability. Luckily, I did not need it.

  NO, NO, NO The Haunt’s voice screamed as I pierced through the bottom of my chin and through my skull.

  ? ? ?

  I hadn’t thought of my parents in years. Unfortunately, I did not remember how they looked. But I swear, my mother was there. That was my mother.

  “--- don’t worry. We will weave it back. I promise.” I was little, and she smiled at me. She stood next to me, and I felt her hands holding me tight, hugging me.

  “I miss you,” I said.

  “I know, baby, hold still. We need to be sure the wound heals. And then we will go outside and watch the clouds. How about that?”

  I felt pain as I felt her weaving. Weaving, and weaving, and weaving.