6°47'56.7"N 5°16'33.8"W – Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast

  21.05.2024- 09.45 UTC +00.00

  It’s her. She is me. Protect me-

  The car’s engine revved louder as I pushed on the pedal, waiting to start the car. The voice turned quieter by the second, and in response, the spiders inside my wounds turned restless. I had to protect her, even though she was a god. My god. And she was me.

  I could see me-her from the rearview mirror.

  My-her body was lying on the back of the car. Small dark spiders were crawling on top of her head. A tall man was sitting next to her, pulling her lifeless body inside, the door next to him ajar as he struggled to close it.

  “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” the man said, as blood was pouring from my-her head. Black precious blood, painting the dull leather seating of the car.

  The radio of the car turned on, its static being replaced by men’s voices. I turned my attention to it, listening to my ex-allies communicating. Shouting commands and warning of our escape. And of reinforcements.

  “More are coming,” I said, and I heard cars’ tires twisting on the asphalt, not too far from here. “Close the damn door.”

  The man managed to pull the door, and I hit the gas, releasing the engine’s tension and accelerating us wildly. We needed to go away as fast as possible, wait for me-her to recover, and be woven again. Succeed in protecting me-her.

  I would be nothing without her-me.

  “Who are you?” The man cried in Baoulé. Who was this man who knew my god and questioned me? I looked at his scared eyes, changing colors from blue to black. He was from the Cursed lot, but he was no god.

  “I am her, for now, and she is me. We need to stay alive,” I answered him using the same tongue.

  “Who? She, Demi?” The man struggled to follow. Steering the wheel with my left hand, I opened the glove compartment with the right and pulled out a gun. I tossed it back to him, and he caught it clumsily.

  “If they appear, aim for their tires!”

  “I don’t know how… what?” The man complained, still in shock.

  “Improvise!” I growled at him as I made a sharp turn into one of the main streets of the neighborhood. The more turns I made, the fewer chances they had of finding us in a line of sight. If we could avoid a gunfight, we would.

  “Where are we going? Who are you?” The man asked, trying to calm himself.

  I was speeding through the street, as people jumped and looked startled at us. I looked at their horrified faces, their hate, and their screaming, protesting at my driving. But there was something familiar to their reaction. As if they knew what the driver of this car was. They did not.

  “I don’t know who I am,” I said, “But I know who I will be. A god.” This is what the voice had promised me, before making me immortal, one with the spiders and one with her-me.

  “Okay, nice to meet you, god,” the man said, and I could sense the ridicule in his voice, but he did not understand.

  “I am trying to get us west. Outside the city,” I explained.

  “What about Drissa?”

  “Who the fuck is…” My words lingered.

  I felt the breath of a young boy. A young man, growing stronger, and his breath, a sign that I was getting weaker. Drissa? I did not know who he was, but there was something at the tip of my tongue, at the edge of my breath. It was like a promise, a boundary I could not cross.

  I turned the steering wheel and flung us into a U-turn. Cars behind us honked, and people swore obscenely. I grabbed my handgun from the seat next to me.

  “God? What’s the plan?” The man in the backseat asked. She-I still lay next to him, spiders building her face tissue by tissue.

  “Duck.”

  I lowered my window, aiming to shoot.

  Right on cue, two more cars exactly like ours swerved sharply in front of us. I aimed for their tires, hitting at least one wheel. I caught them off guard – not expecting us in their sights so soon, but I knew what would follow.

  “Find him!” I shouted at the man behind us, as our enemies shot their first fire. Bullets ricocheted as they hit the car’s protective layers, and I drove toward the center of Dioulakro.

  Chaos was the strategy. If we couldn’t run away until that boy Drissa was found, we would stall until she-I was stitched up again.

  “Drissa…” I muttered the name. I could not recognize it, the same way I did not remember my own name. But I knew I had to do everything in my power to find him.

  I looked at the rear-view mirror. The man in the back seat was busy: he was no longer holding the gun I had given him, changing strategy. He held a darkened dirk in his hand, dripping blood. An open wound on his left biceps indicated he had stabbed himself.

  “I do not want to question your methods,” I said.

  “Then don’t! Let me focus!” He shouted back at me and continued shouting in the same tone, but not to me. To himself. “I can see myself in the car, and I can count all of us. Every single one of us, the spiders too. Each blood droplet I lose and she gains, the spiders in him as well. Every living and dead. I can see the seams of the leather seats around me; I am them. I am the car, its engine, aching to burst faster and faster…”

  He continued reciting what he could see, what he could feel, and what he could fathom. As he did, he used his small dirk to mark dots and symbols on the car, using his blood as paint.

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  Focusing on driving, I tried not to listen. It felt sacred, or unholy, embarrassing even to listen to what he was saying. But I could not help but wonder how a total madman like him thought to ridicule me for wishing to become a god. I turned swiftly through another turn. More people around us were now screaming and cowering in corners, as we were now cruising at criminal velocity through a highly populated area.

  Another round of bullets echoed, and I drifted left and right to reduce their chances of hitting any critical part of the car.

  “I see the streets around. I see the map from above and beyond! I am back in the car, but I am also flying above, seeing the city, I am the city!”

  The man was beyond delirious, reciting in our common mother tongue, and I realized the car had received more damage from him inside than the bullets outside. He was covered in blood and pierced whatever point he thought he had to. And then – was he crying? His eyes were blue again.

  “I see him. He is safe. Turn right!”

  I did as he commanded and ran along a pedestrian’s road. Women jumped out of our way as they screamed for help.

  “Where the fuck is he?” I asked, not knowing what to even look for. I knew that I had to, and I hated that I had to. She-I commanded it: I looked at the rear-view mirror to look for her. The back of the car was unrecognizable, covered in occult symbols carved by the madman and his blood. His eyes were glowing with a light blue hue, as tears ran down his cheeks. He was holding onto the seats around him as I drove. And then I noticed next to him: her-my eyes twitched. I-she was not awake yet, but the spiders tirelessly wove. The madman screamed again.

  “Left! Go left and hit the gas!”

  I obeyed and pulled the steering wheel to the left, crashing partially through a bus stop. I did not care to check if anyone was waiting there as I rammed through. At this point, they did not matter anyway.

  “Whe…” Everything slowed down. And then I wondered where exactly that big white van had appeared from, and why it was in front of us. I wondered, would it even make a difference if I pulled the brakes, or if I would even get a chance to become a god as promised?

  I first heard laminates twisting and breaking, and then I saw us ramming right into the van. We rammed it right into the wall of the building next to it. For a millisecond, we were without gravity inside the car – and then I got launched to the front window.

  ? ? ?

  Everything hurt and tasted like iron. A tiny speck appeared at the bottom part of my vision: a tiny spider. I could not move; I only groaned while the spider crawled inside my eye, trying to mend what it was meant to mend. More and more spiders crawled through my eye.

  “Drissa!” I heard Julien’s voice yelling somewhere to my right. A bright red and yellow light made everything hard to see. I coughed up blood.

  “Where am I…” I tried to ask, but my voice was coarse. I was in a car crash; this much was clear. I groaned again as I tried to move in the limited space I had. Blood dripped on me, but I could not tell its origin.

  “Oh my god, Julien, are you hurt?” said Drissa’s voice. He was terrified.

  “I am okay. We must get away, Drissa,” I heard him say.

  Someone else was in the car with me. I heard – and felt – something moving.

  “Help… me…” I begged with a weak voice. My arms were heavy, and I put all the strength in them to pull myself through the crunched laminates and crawl through the car’s remnants. The more I crawled, the more blood ran from wounds caused by hot metal, scalping my skin. And more spiders gathered around me.

  Were they there just to stitch me up, or would they finally deign to consume me?

  ? ? ?

  “You… Drissa boy…” I spoke. My voice was cracking – I spat black liquid mixed with tangled webs.

  A young black boy was standing and panting right next to the man, still holding his bloodied dirk. They had both turned towards me, their eyes swelling in horror.

  “Th-thank you, eh, god. You saved him,” the man said. He thought he had to thank me, but as he stood between me and the boy called Drissa, he must have felt my intentions.

  I had just crawled out of the driver’s seat, torn and stitched apart, but my left arm was still holding my handgun.

  “You are the Drissa?” I asked. A thought was forming. If this was the boy that tethered me-her with a promise, with a pull so strong, I had to drive recklessly through a city, could I ever really be a god? The way it was promised?

  “Yes… Demi, is that you?” The boy made a hesitant step towards me, calling me by her-my name. The madman stepped in, pulling him back.

  A bright light turned on and died again, from the ground next to me. The lamp of the car gave a bright flash, still somehow attached to the metal bumper of the car. I leaned and grabbed the bumper, its sharp metal scathing my hand painlessly, my godly strength allowing me to lift it.

  People had started to gather around the scene in the street, standing in a circle around us. Some used their phones to take pictures, some were shouting at me. But none of them posed a threat. Ants, every single one of them.

  Like the madman and the boy, the Drissa. Ants as well, Cursed perhaps. But I was a god made of spiders. They had to go.

  “Oh… big man. We are friends, okay?” The madman said.

  “I will be happier unbound,” I said angrily, “no god can be bound!”

  My words were supposed to be a declaration of freedom, but they sounded like an excuse. Pathetic.

  I lunged towards the boy. Three steps were needed to end his fate and release her-me. Do what she cannot do on her own.

  I made one step and saw the madman with the blue eyes crying out. Halfway through the second, someone pulled it. The seam that held me apart.

  ? ? ?

  “That’s enough. Now, release,” I commanded. My hand was extended outside the wreckage, and as per my command, I pulled the webs of the Sparked man apart. His body violently collapsed as all its webs were instantly snapped, all that was holding it together turned against it, and the small spiders consumed it. I sighed. That was close.

  I heard Drissa shouting:

  “Demi? Are you in there?”

  “Yes,” I said, wheezing in pain.

  I was trying to crawl outside the car, right behind the Sparked that had just attempted to pulverize Drissa. The bumper fell on the ground right on the spot, as the disassembled body turned to dust. Drissa and Julien looked right at me, hesitating to even make a step.

  “They lose it if I am not here to rail it in,” I said, panting, “please help me out of here.”

  Drissa ran to me as Julien shouted at him.

  “Are you crazy? Let’s run!”

  He wasn’t wrong; it would have been better for them to run and leave me behind, but I was still grateful that Drissa came to my rescue. Pulling debris out of the way, he quickly managed to free me. I could barely stand and needed to hold on to him, but I was finally on my own two legs.

  “If you want to run on your own, feel free,” Drissa retorted. Julien scoffed and ran towards us, taking place next to me and making sure he and Drissa held me from each side.

  I looked around. People were showing up with mobile phones from the far corners of the small plaza that we had ended up in, somewhere in northern Dioulakro.

  “We are making a spectacle,” Julien said, to which I had to agree. We needed to vanish before anyone else investigated.

  I pulled my hoodie over my head and picked up the pace as we quickly started walking.

  “I happen to know a place nearby,” I said before Julien could speak, “let’s hope there is no one else following.”