Ннеди Окорафор - Lagos Noir

As the temperature rapidly dropped, he pulled his thin coat over himself and thanked God that he’d worn his best and thickest jeans, socks, and gym shoes. The undercarriage retracted. The clouds and distant earth below were shut away as the metal doors closed and Showlogo was pressed in tightly. “Shit!” he screamed. There was so much less space than he’d expected. And the temperature was still dropping.

He shivered. “Sh-Sh-Showlogo no go sh-sh-shake. No sh-sh-shaking for Sh-Sh-Showlogo,” he muttered. Only a few yards above him, people sat in their cushioned seats, warm and safe. The flight attendants were probably about to offer drinks and tell them about the meal that would be served. Showlogo had flown twice in his life. The first time was to Abuja, with his parents when he was five. When his parents were still alive and telling him every day what a great doctor he would be. The second time was a few years ago to Port Harcourt, when his parents were long dead and he had business to take care of in Calabar. On both flights, he remembered, they’d served snacks. When he was five, it had been peanuts or popcorn. As an adult, it had been drinks and crackers. Success T told him that on international flights, there was an actual meal.

“It was shit,” Success T had laughed. “For this small-small plate, the beef wey dem put dey tasteless-o! If I chop am, I go die before we reach Heathrow!”

Success T wasn’t exaggerating. He had been born with intestinal malrotation and lived on a very strict diet of seafood, fruits and vegetables, and very selected starches. He could not eat fufu or foods soaked in preservatives, and he could not eat most European and American cuisine. As Showlogo thought of his cousin, who was practically solid muscle and scared anyone he competed against in boxing tournaments, yet could be felled by merely eating the wrong food, he chuckled. Then he shivered again. He brought out his flashlight and flicked it on. The beam was dim despite the fact that he’d put in fresh batteries less than two hours ago.

He could see his breath as if he were smoking a giant mold. Speaking of which — he reached into his satchel and brought it out. He had to flick his lighter ten times before it produced a weak flame, then he only managed three puffs before it went out. The vibration of the plane’s engine shook his freezing body, causing his legs and arms to flex. He squeezed his palms and curled his feet and toes. He flexed his buttocks and straightened the tendons in his neck. Time was slowing down and he felt calm. He could see the black borders between the frames. Slowly, he ate his jollof rice, wheezing between bites. It was warm, red, and spicy, heating his belly. Then he lay back and thought of nothing more.

As Showlogo lay on the sidewalk, the woman named Dolapo Tunde, the man named Mr. David Goldstein, and the black cat stared. Dolapo shuddered as she grasped her lawnmower. She shuddered again and crossed herself. Then she pulled out her blue earbuds and let them fall to her thighs. Mr. Goldstein dropped his soapy sponge and leaned against his Chevy Challenger. All thoughts of work fled his mind as he tried to piece things together.

The man could not have fallen from any house or building. There wasn’t one close enough. No tree either. He’d fallen from the damn sky! But Mr. Goldstein had seen photos on the Internet of what was left of people who leap from tall buildings. He’d seen one of a man who’d jumped from a skyscraper. The guy had been nothing but mush in the road. So Mr. Goldstein shuddered as well, for he did not want to see or even know what the man looked like underneath.

Only Buster the cat was brave and, of course, curious enough to inspect. He padded across the road. He hesitated for only a moment and then he walked right up to Showlogo’s body and sniffed the side of his head. Buster looked at the man’s nose, which was pressed to the concrete and dribbling blood. The smell of the blood was rich and strong — very, very strong. Buster had never smelled blood with such a powerful scent. He was focusing so hard on the rich bloody aroma that when Showlogo grunted, the cat was so deeply startled that he leaped four feet in the air.

Across the street Mr. Goldstein shouted, “Holy shit! HOLY SHIT! Whoa! He’s alive! How the fuck is that dude alive? What the hell!”

Showlogo lifted his head and glanced around. He coughed and wiped his bloody nose. He sat up, stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and smiled tiredly. He looked at Dolapo, who was staring at him with her mouth hanging open. His brain was addled, so when he spoke, what came out was not the pidgin English he meant to speak, not even the Standard English he should have spoken, for he was most certainly in America. Instead, he spoke the language of his birth, Yoruba.

“You see? I can never die,” he said. “Even death fears me.”

Dolapo tried to reply, but all that came out was a gagging sound.

“I agree with you,” he said to her. “There are better ways to travel. Can you prepare some yam with palm oil for me? I have a taste for that.”

Dolapo stared at him for several more seconds and crossed herself again. Then she quietly responded to him in Yoruba, “God is with me! I have no reason to fear evil. Be gone, fallen angel! Be gone, devil!” She switched to English. “In the name of Jesus!”

Showlogo stared blankly at her and laughed. “My eyes tell me I’m in America, my ears tell me something else.” He stretched his back and began to walk up the sidewalk. He was Showlogo, and he could survive anything and anywhere. Behind him Buster the black cat followed, attracted and intrigued by the strongest-smelling blood he’d ever sniffed.

Egbeda

Every night since the first night he spotted it on his doorstep, the big brown rat had been climbing the stairway to the man’s front door to gnaw his potted dwarf oyster plant. The man only noticed the damaged leaves nineteen days after that first visit, during which time he had tried twice to poison the rat. On both occasions the toxic morsels, which he arranged like Babylonian sacrificial offerings along the ziggurat of his stairway before locking up for the night, remained untouched the following morning, and when he flung open his door each night he saw the rat skittering away. The question arose: if the creature was shrewd enough to shun death in the crayfish-smelling guise of PowerKill™ powder and Commando™ pellets, why then would it persist in coming back?

The first time the man came upon the snooping rodent he had been frying sweet potatoes and egg sauce for a bachelor’s dinner and he’d supposed its appearance at his door was a compliment to his cooking. Subsequent sightings soon soured his disposition toward the thief scheming to sneak into his house. That was the juncture at which he abandoned his psychic negotiations with the reconnoitering rogue by deciding to poison it, but after his two attempts failed to end its life, or even its nighttime visits, the man’s anxiety grew large enough to accommodate the urban myth of the indestructible Lagos rats. Human logic was reinstated on a Sunday morning when the man was watering his potted garden and discovered that his foe had a fondness for snacking on the green and pink leaves of the dwarf oyster plant decorating his landing. So he followed this synaptic trail to its QED, dug up the houseplant, and threw it away. That same night around eleven o’clock the front door banged open, the rat clambered out of the desolate flowerpot, scurried across the landing with its bulky testicles swinging, and bounded down the staircase for the last time.

But on Monday morning the man awoke to the invasion of his territory and the first salvo in open warfare: a round hole in the mosquito netting of his kitchen window and Tic Tac — sized droppings scattered around his overturned garbage bin.