PIHM Short Story: Kanniedood

Kanniedood previously appeared in the limited-run charity anthology, Breaking Through - A Punk Anthology.

Content Warning: death, body horror

Kanniedood

There’s a story they tell at the edge of the world, here beneath the sky fractured and oozing, here, where foreign winds belch detritus through the Schism.

The story–drowsy murmured across pillows, mumbled over froth-capped pints, slicked from tongue to lip in lover’s kiss, whispered in shadow and dream and half-remembered prayer–speaks of a god, long forgotten, who once held the stars within its compound eyes, who grasped the threads of the universe in raptorial forelegs, who sang the world from spiracles. But when the sky ruptured, the god floundered. The faith of its followers frayed to nothing, devotion curdling into disbelief as the universe wept corrosive tears through the rent.

Abandoned, forgotten, all but dead to the world, the god retreated, nestled among the bones of those who loved it once, who worshiped and believed. Exoskeleton buried beneath the shifting sands, a graveyard, a tomb–now become a prison.

Iqsa no longer loses her breakfast at the sight of twisted remains in the desert, beyond the aloe plantations surrounding the city of Welter. Remains of tourists, mostly, and sometimes unlucky scavengers; the foolhardy who scrape themselves bloody on the protective fencing, all in search of Schism shrapnel and a free high.

Sometimes, all that’s left of them are scattered fragments of their shadows, the charred residue of splintered bone, a greasy smear of congealing red and rusting cybernetics, bodies unmade by the arcane forces dancing in the feral glimmers.

Iqsa knows better than to go chasing mirages. Instead, they wait for the shimmers to trundle by, content to pluck treasures from the slime-trail wakes. Sometimes the glitter fades too fast for them to capture, evaporating in toxic mist. Iqsa has seen what happens to those who inhale the fumes, lungs turned to soup, ribs sticky as spit gum on a downtown sidewalk in summer.

Sometimes, the skid marks are slower to congeal, and Iqsa has to wait hours, days for the excretions to solidify before they can snap fulgurite shards from the sand with gloved fingers.

They’ve been waiting half a day already for this string of puddles to condense. They amble up and down the temporary archipelago, peering into the depths of each, studying the edges for signs of crystallization.

The mirage was a large one and would’ve dazzled a lesser scavenger into a slow and agonizing death. Iqsa sings while they wait, songs from the childhood they endured hundreds of kilometers away in a village crouched beside a tranquil sea. The shanties Iqsa sang while catching crabs no longer taste of kelp and salt. Instead, the tunes leave grit between their teeth and blisters on their lips.

They sing, they wait, they watch the torn sky undulate like ragged labia framing a birth canal contracting in cosmic parturition, ripples of magic disgorged and dissipating, effects yet unknown. They scan the empty sands, searching for movement: a gecko wriggle, a serpent slither, a beetle scurry, a mantis flutter? But all is still and the promise of a different life remains tauntingly out of reach.

No mantis, no pay day, no early retirement.

A creak and groan, the sound so similar to the one of frozen waves made restless by the teasing warmth of early spring. Iqsa remembers winters beside the sea, the cold that settled like unwanted ghosts in their marrow, how they’d creep across the ice–each step a test–until toes dipped into brine: a season measured by intrepid steps.

The liquid has hardened to silver, each surface a mirror holding partial reflections. The corner of Iqsa’s mouth, the shell-spiral of a single ear, the tight curl of Iqsa’s locks like spider-legs trapped in amber, an unblinking eye and slope of cheek. Each puddle holds a piece of the whole, and Iqsa hesitates. They’ve always been so careful to never give too much of themself to the desert, to keep themself whole as they gather fragments of those less fortunate. But as the weeks whisked by and funds dwindled, Iqsa has grown brazen, forgetting they are not immune to the vagaries of Schism magic.

Now, Iqsa runs fresh calculations through their sun-berated brain as they work with hammer and chisel to pry the mirage belched ambergris from the sand. Carefully, they shatter each mirrored puddle, their visage reduced to splinters. Blood seeps from their right eye as tool meets reflection, dribbles from a gash in their cheek, leaks from the ear as they try and fail to excavate the simulacrum intact.

Will the shards of their broken face be enough?

Enough for a month’s rent on the apartment they share with their lovers, who sold their souls to the Corps and Incs warring over Welter and the aloe fields.

Enough to feed that flotsam family, outcasts like Iqsa, who’d made a home together despite the odds.

Enough, too, for the medicine that saves Iqsa from the shaking fits, as if their bones are tectonic plates, determined to alter the topography of their anatomy. Their body, at the mercy of internal seismic judders, with fault-line scars etched in their skin, reaching melanistic tendrils from their heart over their shoulders, around their hips, down each leg, and up their neck in freckle splatter.

At first, their parents looked to the sea for answers–the traces of a jelly embrace perhaps? But how, when the babe was born on land and had not yet even salted their toes? A sign the infant had been chosen by the god of the waves, the skin lines like tide-sweep across the shore.

But the child screamed at the feel of sand between their toes, clapped hands over their ears when the wind roared offshore, wailed when the gulls screamed, and almost drowned a dozen times. The true anathema: the child could not swim.

Marks of shame, then, of sins committed in a previous life.

Stained, their mother said.

Aberration, the voice of their father still rings clarion in their ears. Only the left; the right one is now deaf.

The Schism opened above Welter–the godless city, Iqsa’s parents said–but it reached long fingers toward the coast. Ribbons of color unspooled across the sky, claiming the whole world, claiming Iqsa, born with those same ribbons unfurled across their skin.

Iqsa’s parents prayed, and when prayer didn’t cause the marks to fade, they self-flagellated, and brought sacrifices to their God of the waves–blood from slaughtered lambs, then from their severed hands, finally from Iqsa’s opened wrists.

And when still that failed, they took their frustration out on Iqsa, a litany of fear left in bruises across a child’s body, whip-hateful glances, their disdain and hatred carving wounds so much deeper than Iqsa’s patterned skin.

Iqsa blinks away unwanted tears, copper-tinged, and fills their satchel with the broken pieces of themself. The puddles have been reaped, the sand depleted of treasure. Staggering beneath the weight of their find, Iqsa turns for town, confirming the coordinates using the Lenz enmeshed in their remaining eye.

They are almost at the fence, aloe fields rising like a rash, when a subtle tremor passes through their fingers. They make a fist, clench their jaw, force unsteady legs to trudge faster. The shiver persists, a bolt of lightning ricocheting among their organs. They stumble, clutching at their satchel as they fall, narrowly avoiding being impaled by the few wild succulents that have managed to escape the confines of the cultivated rows.

Once, the aloe grew where they willed across the dunes. Here, where the first people of the region planted their dead beneath the sand, marked each shallow grave with the spiky succulents to keep the departed beyond the veil, who thanked the winged god of the desert for the bitter gel used to heal and protect. That was before others came, outsiders who seized the land, who saw the wealth waiting to be reaped if only the aloes could be grown in neat rows. So came machines and plantations, churning up the remains of the ancestors, the faith of the first people reduced to mulch.

Iqsa quakes and quivers, body seizing, neck rigid with premature rigor mortis. Something chitinous emerges from the sand, a clicking loud in their head, the scrunch of flesh that was once an ear forced close to the dirt.

A mantis, forelegs clasped in prayer and compound eyes staring, scuttles and rasps over Iqsa’s chin and melting lip, to perch on their nose, mandibles widening ready to devour.

But Iqsa is ready, too. It is what they’ve been searching for.

* * *

There’s a song they sing at the edge of the world, here where the sky has become a suppurating wound. A song of succulents raising spears and flame-flowers toward the firmament, a song of sunbird wing–plumage sparkling like gems in desert heat, mirages wafting wraith-like from their thrumming feathers–a song of those buried beneath, ghosts trapped by fibrous roots, netted in soil, in silence.

The song hummed softly under breath, melodies spun like sugar, like cobweb, weaving a tale of a forgotten power left to molder beneath the dunes and the rage that simmers, scorching feet that dare to tread where an angry god bides its time.

* * *

Three weeks ago, after off-loading a decent score, Iqsa indulged, a rare moment of extravagance, ordering a pint of bitter beer and a bowl of ostrich stew at the Silver Caracal. The muthi clan was generous and pleased with Iqsa’s scavenge. The vittles were a luxury, and Iqsa ordered two more pots of stew to-go for their lovers at home.

They were about to leave when a man dripping sweaty wealth settled on the chair opposite.

“You’re Iqsa?” Smooth voice, and an even smoother smile on a face untouched by sun or strife.

“Depends who’s asking.”

“I’m a representative of Manda D’umbra.”

Iqsa stilled, the name sobering. D’umbra, a private collector of greater scavenge. Her taste ran toward the gruesome: Schism-regurgitated limbs as gnarled as driftwood, lethal mirage breath stoppered in coloured phials, puddle shards stained with the reflections of distant stars.

“I’m Iqsa.” They sat back down, gripped their empty pint glass hard.

“You have a reputation,” the representative said with a liquid motion of long fingers. A waiter appeared, depositing two glasses of chareau on the table. Top-shelf, the aloe liquor a pale cucumber green, smelling as sweet as honeydew and a full purse. Iqsa sipped as they listened, savouring every minty mouthful.

“There are rumours the lines in your skin are ink, a map across the desert keeping you alive.”

Iqsa rolled their eyes.

“You have survived longer than most,” the representative continued.

Iqsa couldn’t argue. Most scavengers lost limbs or memories, ended up scattering pieces of themselves while attempting to gather shards from the Schism. Some simply wandered, aimless and sun-sick or Schism-addled, and came adrift, the wind shearing them into cirrus wisps.

Iqsa’s lovers have begged them to give it up, to not push their luck, to join the city’s working class tending the aloe fields. But scavenge paid better and Iqsa enjoyed the freedom–to wade through the ocean of sand and read the tides of shifting magic glossing the dunes.

“What does your patron want?” Iqsa asked, mouth slick with aloe gel.

“A mantis.”

“Alive?”

“Or dead, but whole.”

Iqsa swilled the mucilaginous dregs of the liquor. “How much?”

“Name your price.”

Enough for a year’s rent?

Enough to retire?

Enough to travel to the capital, to consult with specialists who might know a way to scrub the Schism traces from their skin?

Iqsa pulled a figure from the ether, a sum so large it hurt their head.

“Oh, I think we can do better than that.” With the blink of an eye, the transfer was made.

Numbers flickered in Iqsa’s left eye, Lenz confirming the deposit. Iqsa sucked in a breath, disbelief squeezing their lungs.

“Half now, the rest upon delivery of the item.”

“What if I can’t deliver?” Iqsa asked.

“For every week D’umbra has to wait, a five percent deduction.”

Iqsa had accepted worse deals, but those were always for more common trinkets.

“The desert mantis is a myth.” Not entirely true. They’d pried the friable shadows shed like snake skin of the winged insects from the sand, even stumbled upon the torn remnants of a translucent wing snagged on wild aloe. The mantis existed, but Iqsa had never seen one alive or found the carcass of one entire.

“Myth? So is the shanty-singing striped scavenger who has survived meandering the desert for over a decade, somehow still whole and sane, and yet here we sit.” That smooth smile again, even smoother palm extended over empty glasses. “Deal?”

Iqsa shook then, and continues to shake now, their bones splitting in hairline fractures as they fight the tremors to reach for the specimen jar at their waist.

It had been eight weeks since the meeting in the Silver Caracal, eight weeks of eroding funds, eight weeks of lingering longer than is safe or wise in the desert, eight reckless weeks of hunting elusive quarry.

Only, it is Iqsa who is prey now, their lips shredded by serrated mandibles.

The mantis chews and Iqsa writhes, trying to find the jar, trying to avoid the imminent invasion.

Insect legs on gums and teeth, wings scratching soft palate, tickling epiglottis, as the mantis creeps down Iqsa’s throat. Not to stomach, though, not to acid death, but to lungs. Soft tissue as spongy as aloe flesh. Iqsa feels the growing pressure behind their sternum, the internal quake intensifying, an agonizing reshuffle of bones and organs.

The mantis spreads its wings, slicing through shoulder muscle. Iqsa’s back splits open, blood like glass stretched on the protrusions. The metamorphosis continues, Iqsa’s skin folding along the ley lines drawn from birth, god-craft schematics marked in freckles, a new form realized now as Iqsa’s molt completes.

The specimen jar turns to crumbs in the grip of tibial spine.

Slowly, still learning how to move six limbs, how to hear with the ear on their belly, how to parse the visual bombardment, how to flex their wings and work their jaws, Iqsa stalks toward the aloes. They feel the vibrations of the old power, a god stirring, an echo in the insect aspect now manifest.

Night has drawn dark curtains across the sky, stars salting the black, dim and swirled by the still groping fingers of the Schism. Iqsa reaches the silent aloes, forelegs like scythes, and begins a ritual harvest.

Succulents wrenched out by the roots, wither in mantis wake. The god below exhales and ghosts rise, slender figures whittled from mist and memory; from grief and loss.

Rage bubbles from the earth, geysers erupting from the clefts left by torn roots. The ghosts feed on the god’s ire and rows of aloes perish as Iqsa sets compound sights on the irrigation system, on the control towers and pylons.

The god-power grows and so does Iqsa, forelegs slicing through steel and concrete, a prison destroyed. Iqsa moves on, from one plantation to another, drawing a slow circle around the city of Welter.

Drones buzz like flies, flinging projectiles at Iqsa’s armoured hide. They sting like sand flung into eyes, but they cannot stop Iqsa’s inexorable destruction. The Corps and Incs were not prepared for such an attack. Their wars are fought in boardrooms over stock prices, battles to gain the greater marketing ground, combat waged in pursuit of consumers.

They can only watch in despair as Iqsa razes decades of hard-sown profit.

By dawn, the plantations have been decimated, ghosts released, the earth turned mirror and cracking open in obscene imitation of the sky. The Schism undulates with sympathetic contractions as the forgotten god rises and Iqsa collapses. They shed chitin and serrated claw, wing and extra limb.

Human once more, but hardly whole.

The ground lurches as the old god approaches. Its breath a billowing wind, gusts and lifts Iqsa’s remains, a flurry of glitter tossed among the dunes like salt scattered across the waves of a receding tide.

* * *

There’s a prayer they murmur at the edge of the world, here in the city hemmed by rot. A prayer begging for forgiveness, penitent citizens on scabbed knees in burning sand, voices raised in pitiful ululation.

A prayer spoken in reverence and humility, syllables sharp as Schism shards, claiming blood from tongues as penance: those who abandoned and forgot, who chose to love–to worship–the clink of coin instead.

A prayer of exultation, of adoration, for a god risen from the shifting dunes, released from grave and prison, to grasp the magic leaking from the stars in raptorial leg and sing the world anew.

END

Climber, tattoo collector, and peanut-butter connoisseur, Xan van Rooyen is an autistic, non-binary storyteller from South Africa, currently living in Finland. Xan has a Master’s degree in music, and–when not teaching–enjoys conjuring strange worlds and creating quirky characters. You can find Xan’s stories in the likes of Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Daily Science Fiction, and Galaxy’s Edge among others. Their latest releases include adult aetherpunk novel Silver Helix (Android Press) and adult aetherpunk novella Waypoint Seven (Mirari Press). Xan is also part of the Sauútiverse, an African writer’s collective with their first anthology Mothersound out now from Android Press. Feel free to say hi on socials @xan_writer.