Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

They stood before each other. By this time, my two cousins had run off, as had anyone else who could. But I stayed to bear witness. This was something I could tell my grandchildren about, if I lived. I was witnessing a miracle. My days of fraud… even as I knelt there under the table, I knew they were over.

It all became clear to me in that moment. All that had been happening for the last several hours. The terrorist who’d hijacked all the computers and mobile phones. We’d all watched her speak, but still we were focused on our own things, on getting what we could get. I was so focused on getting the white woman to pay, even when the madness washed into the streets.

But this woke me up. The coming of Ijele. I am not being melodramatic and I am not crazy. And I am not out of danger. But I will never practice fraud again. Never. I swear.

As I cowered under that table and watched Ijele and the man whom I now believed was one of the aliens look at each other, I felt this great swell of pride and love for Nigeria. I felt patriotism. I would die for it. I would live for it. I would create for it. This was real. Tears were streaming down my face.

“Ijele,” the man in black said.

Ijele bounced and as it came down a drum beat deep like the bottom of the ocean sounded, shaking the husk of the building. GBOOM! It was like the sonic booms we’d heard twice within the last twenty-four hours, except much louder, much closer. The remaining café walls shuddered and some crumbled. No one groaned. Those who were able to had fled. Except me.

How do I explain what I saw next?

They went into the computer. Does that make sense? Ijele became like gas and the man in black became like smoke and together, they dissolved into the computer.

After several minutes, I got up and walked over to the computer. It was still on. I don’t know why but I logged into my email account. I was surprised when I could access it. But I wasn’t surprised to find all the emails and my contacts erased. And I was glad.

I was there.

My wife, sons and I were stuck in the go-slow. The hour was past midnight but the place was like an angry party. The Lagos–Benin Expressway is a shit road. People get robbed there constantly. When I started my job, I would drive to work using that road but I was robbed so many damn times that I started taking the bus.

Then I heard about that luxury-bus-robbery-turned-bloody-disaster last year and I went back to driving. The place is full of Area Boys, even military men and police who waylay you like bandits or trolls from European fairy tales. And then there are the horribly maintained roads with potholes that will swallow your vehicle. No, let’s not call them potholes; they are closer to craters .

But this night, they were not the problem with the expressway. It was just packed. We were all fleeing Lagos. My wife has one of those nice mobile phones. We all watched the broadcast on it. I did not believe it was an alien. It had to be Boko Haram or some other idiot terrorist group from the north, finally making a play for Lagos. Those mumu shout that Western technology is blasphemous, yet they use it to enact their plans. Hypocrites.

Before the strange woman giving a speech on my wife’s phone finished, my wife and I agreed on one thing: We were getting the hell out of Lagos, immediately. Something was going to blow. Low and behold, not minutes after the woman finished speaking, BOOM! Something did blow! We didn’t know what, but we heard the sound. We threw the kids in the car with all the naira we had, some clothes, food and our laptops, mobile phones, chargers, and got moving.

We made horrible time because people were already trying to escape the slowly rising water. We managed to head northeast on the expressway and after about an hour, everything stopped. Nothing could move. Many tried to drive through the grass and dirt on the sides of the roads, but they got stuck there as well. People turned off their cars and climbed out to stretch their legs and talk, and soon the road became a market. Hawkers kept our bellies full with spicy suya, groundnut, cashew fruit – those girls were making a killing. But they were providing excellent service. Young men blasted music and eyed women. Babies cried and slept. Mosquitoes sucked blood.

Both sides of the road where we had stopped were flanked by shallow bush. There was nowhere to go until the gridlock broke up. I was sitting in the car and the boys were in the back sleeping. My wife was standing close by, talking to two women she’d just met. One was very tall and dressed like she was about to walk onto a Nollywood set, her tight pink-grey dress matching her pink and grey platform-heeled pumps. The other looked more like my wife, in black pants, heels and a white top.

“We’ll be stuck here for three days,” the black slacks woman said.

“It’ll be fine,” the tall Nollywood woman said.

“I pray, o,” my wife said.

“I heard it was getting crazy on Victoria Island,” the black slacks woman said, nodding. “Riots, idiots burning everything, people are posting it all on the internet. I was watching with my BlackBerry.”

My wife sucked her teeth. “Well, how different is all that from what happens every day? Didn’t that ‘luxury-bus-robbery-turned-tragic-accident’ happen near here?”

She was right – it did … right where we were parked, actually. Well, maybe about an eighth of a mile up the road, but that was close enough. I knew this because I had seen it with my own eyes. I’d never told my wife the truth about it. I’d been coming home from work when I drove past the scene that night.

Mangled, twisted bodies all over the goddamn road. I am not exaggerating. Traffic was routing through the grass and dirt to get past it. Unlike most, I didn’t slow down. I moved quickly. I didn’t want to see. Even in the dark, that swift passing was bad enough for me. My window had been open and the air had reeked of blood and fouler things. I must have been overwhelmed because I felt faint, my vision blurred for a moment and the road before me undulated and I could have sworn that I felt the car jump. But I hadn’t driven over anything. Then I was past the scene.

My wife later heard about the accident and asked me if I’d seen anything. I told her that I must have passed the area right before it happened. I don’t normally lie to her but she didn’t need to know that I’d been there. If I’d told her what I’d seen, she would have demanded details, I’d have told them to her and then she’d have cried for hours over the dead. Then my sons, who are always listening behind doors, would have had that sick look on their faces that they always get when they learn something they are not ready to learn. My white lie was to protect them… at least, until the photos came out in the papers and on the internet showing the brutal scene. There were torn up bodies littering the road, blood, intestines, skid marks of skin, twisted torsos, body parts broken off. The photo would make anyone want to vomit.

These roads are full of ghosts. I’d always known that. That’s why I’d have preferred to be as far from the expressway as possible at midnight on a night like this, when something was attacking Lagos.

But we were stuck.

I was looking down at the road when I saw a large black spider dart by and disappear into the grass. I shuddered. I hate spiders and this one was huge… and very fast.

“You’re a what ?” I heard my wife screech. I’d tuned out of their conversation and now I tuned back in. My wife and the woman in the black slacks were staring at the tall Nollywood-looking woman.

“You’ve been talking to me for the last half hour,” the Nollywood woman said. “Do I look dangerous?”