6°35’N 6°04’W – Kouétinfla, Ivory Coast

20.05.2024- 19.00 UTC +00.00

“Please, mother. No more silk.” I pleaded. We had been going through this for what seemed like hours, days even.

She took a momentary pause, her hands hovering above my head, before leaving the needle next to my head.

“With enough time, I can stitch you right up again. But we can have a break. It must be so tiring for you.”

I shook my head. “No, you are perfect.”

“Come on stand up,” she said, “let’s make you some tea.”

I stood up. I could only see from one of my eyes, but I was well familiar with the small cabin I was in. The orange light of a setting sun was pouring from the window.

I clumsily found my way toward the door that led to my favorite balcony. A rocking chair was prepared with some sheep fur. I sat on it and drew the fur around me to keep me warm. Although the sun shined right on me, there was a numbing coldness unnatural to these parts.

“Hey mum,” I said and as my voice cracked, “don’t forget the honey.”

“Of course baby,” she said from inside the cabin.

We were alone, but it was just the way I preferred. I loved my siblings, but the chaos the whole family gathered was too much for me today. My mother was enough.

“Wait,” I said, doubting myself, “Where are…”

“Your sister is out to the shops. Here is with extra honey,” my mother said, handing me a hot cup of tea. The herbs in it mixed with flower honey generated the familiar aroma of home. “And your brothers. Well, they probably are somewhere causing trouble.”

I chuckled. My brothers were always like that. Or were they? I strained to remember how they looked.

“Sh now. Don’t tire yourself, baby, the stitches won’t hold that much pain. You know what,” she said and went inside, before coming back with her needle and her silver silk, “Let’s keep it up while you are resting. Enjoy the sunset.”

I tried to divert my attention from her weaving to the sun setting behind the all-familiar hills on the edge of the horizon.

“I have not seen such a beautiful sunset before,” I admitted to myself, in Baoulé. I saw the purple, the orange, the scarlet color of the sun piercing through the humidity of the jungle on the horizon. “I really haven’t.” The view was like a distant memory, but it was not mine.

“I know baby,” my mother said. I sensed something in her voice. It was how her voice cracked every time she fought with my father. A sense of sadness overwhelmed me.

She had not stopped weaving and operating on my head. I gently stopped her and turned around.

Her eyes were brown, with a hint of green. Her dimples and kind cheeks did not betray her age, one could say she was the same age as me, her hair shorter than mine. She was holding back some tears, but she was smiling.

“You are not my mother, aren’t you?” I said in disappointment. As much as I knew what I was experiencing was impossible, I wished I could have felt my mother’s hand one more time.

“No, Kouadio.” The woman that was not my mother caressed my cheek. “But this is all I can do, to protect her. This is what I know. To comfort, and to weave.”

“And to add the honey in the tea,” I said, “Is this what her Curse looks like from the inside?” I wondered out loud, but inside what, I would not know. This was no mortal realm. And I was not a mortal.

“Perhaps. This is all I have known,” the mother said. Not my mother, but a lonely mother.

I drank some tea. She continued stitching my head.

“Here it is. All done.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I love you,” she whispered, or I did, as my eyes sprang open. I was in a back alley, somewhere between a house and a tall building, covered in a leather blanket and a wet jacket. Had I picked those from the trash when I ended up here, I could not remember. I had no idea what day or time it was, but the sky looked like the start of a spring evening.

“Did you see her?” I was not alone in the alley. A hooded woman stood right across the street. I sprang up surprised. My hands tried to reach for a gun or a machete, but there was nothing.

“Who are you?” I asked. Was she the voice that trapped me last time? The Haunt?

The woman came closer and pulled back her hoodie.

“No more killing, Kouadio,” the woman said. She was I, Demi.

Or rather I was Kouadio, and she was Demi. Alive, standing right in front of my own self, I…

“Close your eyes. It makes it easier,” Demi said, and I obeyed. It indeed made it better. My brain could not accept her image as separate from, well, us.

“I saw you dead,” I said.

“I saw you dead as well. But part of my Spark was protected in you. I keep coming back, Kouadio, but that is my Curse to bear, not yours,” Demi’s voice said. I heard her taking some steps closer, as I felt my body relaxing.

“I did see her. The mother, at the cabin near the hills,” I said. “She seemed to be waiting for you.”

“I know, I am waiting for her as well,” Demi responded. I kept my eyes closed as she was coming nearby. I felt an itch around my body. “But I have responsibilities to the living. And a responsibility to you as well. I am so sorry for all this pain and the killing. This was not meant to happen.”

I nodded. I somehow knew she was honest and meant well. I opened my eyes.

I took another step toward Kouadio’s standing body, as he eerily looked right at me. I raised my hands’ palms up right in front of him.

“Release,” I commanded, and small white and silver spiders jumped off his body, running towards holes in the ground. One, the largest, landed on my palms, as Kouadio collapsed, hastily decomposing.

It was a large white spider, with silver linings across its body. It calmly waited, as I lifted my arms, and let it crawl in my mouth. I felt it find its way into my insides, trying all different directions. In a moment, I was complete. All the things I had done trapped in Kouadio’s body, echoed in my head like a dream. The blood, the murder. And the Haunt.

“So, it was indeed all a set-up,” I said, glad that it was Kouadio’s body that had to discover and go through that, and not me.

I searched Kouadio’s corpse for the enchanted pouches, the initial mission’s purpose. He had them all still on him.

I grabbed them and put them all in my backpack.

I looked at his de-sparked rotting body, and I felt guilt for what he had to go through before I managed to find him, a loose broken Sparked on the run stuck in a murderous command. There was no time for a funeral, but I grabbed some mud from the street and poured it on him. I found solace in the idea he had seen my mother before I released him, but I sensed my anger at my Curse.

I could remember every horrible thing I did while within his body, but nothing from the After. It was only Kouadio that got to see her.

“You were a brave warrior,” I said, and I left the alley.

I picked up the phone from my pocket and hit the speed dial.

“I need your help. Meet me in the usual place. I will be there in a few hours,” I said as I headed back to the car I had been using the past couple of days.

I downed a glass of koutoukou, sitting in the bar I frequented back when I used to live in this town. Getting all the way to Yamoussoukro took only a couple of hours. They were as uneventful as my trip before finding Kouadio.

Whatever psychic curses The Haunt possessed; they seemingly could not find me. Or perhaps they were still searching for me in Kouadio’s body. His rampage in Kouétinfla, although unfortunate, had proven very useful. I was now sure that our employer had somehow set us up, and someone named “The Haunt” was waiting for us at our initial meeting point. I could no longer fulfill the mission, but that had left me with the enchanted pouches. Only the receiver could open them. I did not dare even try to untie them, as I am sure the protective enchantments on them would, at best, incapacitate me.

A slender teenager entered the bar. He was slightly taller than me, with traditionally feminine piercings on his left ear. His hair had grown since the last time I had seen him. His eyes searched around. When he saw me, he came nearby.

“Drissa,” I said.

“Teacher,” Drissa said and nodded.

“You are in danger,” I said as he sat next to me, “anyone who knows me is. But you are the only one I can trust.”

“What happened?” He asked.

“Let’s just say my last assignment angered the wrong curses,” I sighed as I slid a paper toward him, “This is a bank account. There is not much inside. Empty it and take your parents and leave the Coast for a few months. Take a flight to Tombouctou. Or you have family in Sunyani, right? I don’t know, anywhere. Until things calm down.”

“I…”

“Before you do that, you have to tell me. You know many newly Cursed. Is there anyone with attunement to objects? Enchantments?”

The boy sat in silence for a moment.

“I know someone. But if helping you would bring him trouble, you can forget it.”

“Drissa. You owe me. And I have sworn that as long as I live, I will let no harm come to you.” I noticed his worried expression. “Same as your friend, if you introduce him to me. He can be under my protection. Until I resolve this. But I need someone to break a curse. Or else, there is no hope for either me or you. And if I am right, for no one at the Coast.”