Sister Souljah - Life After Death

So I understand this little sixteen-years-young-looking one, oddly named UBS, who is tight and at war with her ex. He seemed more my age than hers. But I knew that once a bitch blossoms, gets curves and titties and hungry between the thighs, whether or not she’s twelve, thirteen, or sixteen, whether or not the law says she’s a minor, she is bound to hunt and chase down a man she chooses for herself. A young sexy bitch, I know, can make it impossible for even an older guy to resist her powers no matter who he is. He could be handsome or ugly, paid or broke, married or single, hustler or preacher, politician or teacher, doctor or lawyer or even a goddamn judge. I accept that. As long as it’s not the other way around, some old guy hunting, cornering, and chasing her young ass. Fucking and raping are never ever the same thing. He says she betrayed him. He said she’s the police. She seemed too young to be anybody’s police. And in the, I guess seconds I had seen her, she didn’t seem like a cop. But I ain’t from down here. I don’t know how shit goes ’round here. Everything is unexpected. It’s like I’m stuck in the world of the unseen and unknown and can’t control or predict the action.

But now I am not alone down here. Of course I choose him. He chose me in the first place. He was the greatest sex I ever had. The wildest feeling I ever felt. He was the only man who ever caused me to let go of Midnight, who never fucked me at all. I like a man who gives a bitch what she wants . A man who doesn’t make a bitch feel lonely. Wife number five! Oh hell no. That would never, ever be me.

My new nigga is my forever nigga, from now until the real lights-out. Even though he only fucked me once on the same night we met, I was able to exist inside of that fucking memory. And unlike Bullet, who left me because I was cut and bleeding and would obviously wear a scar, and who set me up to take the fall, or either didn’t set me up but reacted only to secure himself, my forever nigga is different. When I became the red python, my forever nigga kept me, adored me, even allowed me to crawl all over his beautiful body no matter what time or where he was at the moment. Even if he was busy I could wrap myself around his neck. He is a thousand times smarter than Bullet. He knew I was poisonous and quite deadly, but apparently he was 100 percent certain that I would never ever bite him. This nigga kept it real. He still brought home and fucked other bitches. I’m sensible enough to know that if he couldn’t fuck me in my condition, he had to fuck someone. He didn’t try to sneak or hide any of them. He even let me watch. After the sex, he showed me his loyalty. Threw them random bitches right out. I remained because we lived together. He fed me. He shared his monkey bars, which I used to stay fit. He even talked to me even though I could not speak back like a human being. I could only gesture. He told me that I was the sexiest serpent ever, and that I would make a mean-ass belt, handbag, or pair of heels or boots, but that he would never ever allow anyone to swipe me from him or hurt me in any way.

But on the day of the most recent wind war, he wasn’t home. I was hanging there on the bars waiting for his return when the firehouse was attacked. As our firehouse rocked I promised myself that if the bitch UBS came in here, which she had not been able to do any other time while he was alert and home on watch, I would bite her with full venom.

Unexpectedly, without her entering our house, I was sucked and pulled into a vicious vacuum-type current and fast-forwarding through blackness once again. As soon as the fast-forwarding stopped, and while my mind was still whirling, I was immediately mugged by the odor. Oh no, I thought. I’m back in the sewer location. I’m in the sitting position on the curb next to the gutter. Now I had arms and legs and fingers and feet. I touched my face. I could feel it. I even had my silky hair back. I was a human, Oh shit! I would have celebrated, but instead I was coughing from the stench. I reacted, wanted to jump up and walk away from it. However, I could not move my legs. I hated that. Thought it was foul play. Rather see my enemy face-to-face and have the opportunity to fight and change the action. I don’t like the feeling that someone is trying to control my story, my life, and even my life-after-death story.

I was uncertain how many days I sat there alone in the overwhelming blackness. However, I could count the number of unexpected events and the ways in which it affected my body. My body, I repeated to myself. Was it even mine? How could it be when I could turn into something other than me? Some inhuman thing that I never chose to be. But it had to be my body, because even after I got shot dead, my mind never shut off. My thoughts continued. They were my same thoughts. I was thinking the exact same way I have thought about things for as long as I could remember, and I have a great memory. No matter what other thing I became, no matter alive or dead, I was certainly throughout it all, me. And, I still was.

I’m the crippled version. My arms and hands work but my legs don’t. I wasn’t gonna start crawling on my belly like I had to when I had no other choice. I wasn’t gonna make my way across the street from the curb I was sitting on, using my knuckles to carry the weight of my legs like some monkey. I wasn’t about to be on some Special Olympics–type vibe and walk on my hands. Besides, where would I be going? It was black where I was, and black across the street from me. Reminding myself to exist in the moment and not get caught up in bullshit depression. No matter who you are, depression is a fucking waste of time that people with no action and no brain to tell them how to get the action started or flip an inactive situation into something brand-new are enslaved to. Having that thought reminded me not to get hung up on the what-ifs, or what would or could or should have been. I’m a motherfucking survivor no matter what!

So I endured the things I had become immune to: the blackness, the breaking of bones, the waves of heat that scorched my ass and the soles of my feet, the chorus of millions screaming different words and sounds but all at once, the sounds of ninety-nine niggas cracking their knuckles, the scraping and grinding and even the hissing. The hissing had become my only form of music down here. For serpents, hissing is like rhyming.

I wasn’t prepared for the add-ons, though: a swarm of tiny flying-insect-type things. I called them that because they reminded me of the aggravating existence of mosquitoes. But I couldn’t actually see them. I don’t know if they were mosquitoes or not. But they came through suddenly in a violent swarm attacking my face and eating me. When I would touch myself, there would be rashes on me, which was something I never had. I never even had the chicken pox or the measles when I was a kid. I tried not to scratch because the scratching only satisfied me for what felt like a few seconds. Then the rash would feel moist and spread further. I don’t know if it was blood or what oozing from the rash. This was disturbing. On the low, I was waiting on him to find me. I was 100 percent sure he was out there searching for me. I wanted him to show up, but not while the rash was on me.

Then there would be coughing spells. Felt like it lasted for days. All I could do was cough and could never catch my breath. Next were the sneezing spells that always came after the coughing but never both at the same time. When I would sneeze, which was continuously, if felt like my organs were going to fly out of each of the openings in my body. That’s how powerful the sneezes were. There were no tissues. There was no one to help or who would even complain that I was sneezing germs onto them. Instead my fingers felt the mucus accumulating on and around me. It was a good thing that I was back to being a dead human. It meant that I was never hungry. If I had been hungry in that situation, the mucus would have been all that I had to eat.