2044: The Black Widow Syndrome

2044: The Black Widow Syndrome
By
Matthew Foster or Maksimuz Faustus

In the year 2015, humanity bore witness to a War that made the concept of Armageddon seem like a schoolyard scrap, as the King of Kings descended upon civilisation with an impact that scattered our nations into tribes. In concrete jungles we live, fight, and die; a new world disorder emerged, gripping our hearts in a self-consuming cobra clutch of anarchism.
Cast into a myriad, divided we stand and together we fall. On these bloody grounds our
ancestors were flung, and 29 years later man has found a new moral duty to survive by any means necessary, whether collectively or as walking islands traipsing the land, searching for game.

My name is the Agent. Nothing more. It is best you know less. I, among millions more, do not know where I am from or where I wish to go, for without a star to fall and a god to catch it, our wishes are null. In a forgotten and unknowable time, it was forbidden to do what I have done to keep breathing, living, I guess. In an old shelter, where I have made my home, there are documents of written history that tell a tale which will never be repeated; a tale that men once lived, but this is all I know of “good” and “evil.” These books are outdated. Many would have made fire out of them, but I am fortunate enough to make sense of the signs that these books portray. Times have changed, supposedly.

Although our forefathers lost us in time, I have acquired insight into Time itself. Calculating every move, thought, breath, and moment towards my complete and isolated power and all-righteous will of survival, Time is my only opponent.
You see, without a family to feed, I am blessed to be alone, and rich in my own worth.
Nobody can stop me. Not the families who inhabit the festering lots that are dispersed across Old New Town, Johannesburg, like flies on a baby’s carcass, and certainly not another man. I am blessed indeed.

Say I had a baby to nurture, I would eat it. Who wouldn’t? That babe the Mercy family
welcomed yesterday was the very same seedling whose skeleton fed the hounds this morning. A prerogative is breakfast. A birth is a regular source of food that fills my mouth for at least two days. In this beautiful world, man eats man unless man’s adversary can be deceived into sharing his meal, which is, of course, man. Old New Town’s streets flow with lush rivers of blood below the black sun, blue moon, and red stars. In this heat it’s essential to quench your desired lust. The moon rose in the Great Abyss on the day I entertained my worst fear. Fear has given me
more courage than the Force which took my family and blessed me with loneliness.

“Agent, you are now a man,” was the last thing spoken to me by my mother who smiled at the spade flung into her chest. My father said in his final breath “Love none, survive.” Blessed is he who is confined by his own freedom; that has no family or tribe to support or depend upon; who is reclusive; whose four shadows are his only followers.

From the Mills I wait for it. My thoughts are kaleidoscopic in shape, surrounding my view of the world and painting colours across the dark canvas of reality. Freedom is this. In my mind is emptiness, serenity, peace. I crouch behind the balcony overlooking a view worth killing, hiding in the shadows shining through the grid that keeps me from free falling. The patterns of darkness tattoo my face, my eyes flicker like two flames in a cold furnace, from right to left, similar to two soldiers changing shifts, to and fro, following a head of white bleached hair through the brown fog that covers the dusty patches of road that remain. My belly roars with bulging pride, as thunderous as my hunger when it strikes. Shocking, the adrenaline rush is intensely flashed when I dart from the round.

At the speed of lightning my feet dribble my body through the decaying corridors of the
building that I am in. on my way out I prepare the bait. If it is a male, I will offer my
allegiance, invite him on a hunt, offer to share the meal, and kill two birds with one stone. If it is a female, my intention is to devour her heart through a seductive means, and I’ll promise to take care of her, lest she decides to walk alone. What’s true to me is true to it, so I am never wrong, whether eaten or eating.

I’m bouncing between bent poles, bringing myself from the ground to the iron branches
on the old bridge that Mandela once built to show the people a shortcut to freedom. In,
out, inhale… exhale; my heart beats a violent rhythm and my eyes are glazed over. “Doof-doof-doof” it pounds. Why am I this nervous as I reach an overhead position in complete synchronicity with the wind? An acrobatic flip of my body casts me to the ground, swinging in crescents toward its feet. Black toe nails, maroon stains of blood at the ankles, the two towers that keep her standing resemble sculpted marble splattered with the aftermath of a hunter’s conquest over his meal. My prey is feminine. From my landing I rise to meet the eyes of a dragon, a flaming inferno
fixed upon my eyes, green as emeralds, windows to something grimly complex.

Before either of us can react to the other, Death throws itself at us. A rusty blade gracefully tears through the air in the gap dividing her and I. back we both paddle, maintaining the stare. Her eyes are nothing like mine, nothing like I have ever seen in time, and I can see them illuminate some kind of energy that I, myself, must surely have inside of me. Two figures emerge from behind the pillars supporting the bridge. Behind them I can see two families of four, mothers, sons, and daughters, observe the confusion with anticipation. Hungry smiles that drool with delight have eyes that follow the two men, as though they are learning the ways of the world. In the mind of a hunter, they are not important, and are about to learn the true meaning of reality.

Our adversaries take their places alongside one another, shoulders perfectly aligned and legs in a synchronised position. Breaking away is the last thing on my mind, but I think of it anyway. If I ran I’d be a “righteous meal” that the other three would have to divide among themselves, for the Law of Survival forbids the survival of a coward. The red-haired assailant on the left has me under surveillance, while my prey silently and nimbly draws two crescent-shaped sickles from the inside of her torn and battered coat. The blades glisten in the pale light. I watch as the human camera swiftly whips out eight, thick cords of leather, made from a man’s tanned skin, off of his buckle, crack it at the middle of the triangle we form, and leave on the path what looks like bite marks. The whip’s tips are furnished with canine teeth.

We mount a deafening silence, and allow for the bubbling tension to settle underneath our skins. There is no wind to blow the green-eyed dragon’s bleached hair into her lashes, and the families watching bear witness to a dilemma that will forever change their sons into men. My prey turns her eyes to mine, and I acknowledge her with a wink of my right, as a symbol of my allegiance in this situation. The man on the right, whose hand looks like it was mauled by a hound, sees this, then picks a stone out of his sack, and slings it at me but misses. With no time to indulge in an unknown attachment towards her, my attention is diverted to the stone’s keeper, rage thundering in my heart.

My calculations had been retarded during my chronic infatuation. In my direction cracked the whip, but I was fooled once again, and when I look again, the girl’s legs are wrapped in brown threads, hooked behind her knees, preparing chunks of flesh to defy gravity. I want to grab the whip, but impulse tells the man’s hand to retract, then blood gushes across the white pillars of the bridge, staining its concrete canvas as an artist would a pastel, or Shakespeare would Julius Caesar. To her knees she collapses, and I am overcome by gravity. The one on the left is chucked a pitchfork by one of his women, and is rushing into my leg as I fly like a spear into his knees, leaving his knee snapped at the joint. He falls face flat, wailing. I can see his bones bulge through the back of his knee. I divert my attention, but can hear a child being
constrained by one of his mother’s.

My prey boosts herself into a cartwheel, and leaves a trail of claret in her wake. She cannot use her gashed leg, so she is clearly confined to one space at a time. The man with the whip sees this, but decides to come for me. At the same time, the fighting child has broken loose and is heading my way. I time their arrivals, and the child is first to get to me, which is when I spin my heel into his throat. The sound of a vacuum sucking the child’s life out causes the man to stop for second as the rest of his family begin to cry about how their dead son disappointed them. The man rushes at me again with a furious war cry. I spring myself over him and flip myself back to the girl.

“My name is Love,” she says, then closes her eyes. There is a puddle of blood at her legs, she is going to die, and I will have to choose between her and the child when it comes to supper. I grab hold of one of her sickles and move toward the hooded man. He has picked up the pitchfork and is coming my way. As he gets close, I can see in his eyes that he is going to try and put that fork into my chest, so I weave under his thrust, and swing the sickle into his hip. His upper body is now sagging, so I rip the sickle out and force the crescent into his windpipe. My cuticles are dirty again, I need to clean the blood out.

The child I kicked is less than a metre from the man’s fresh corpse, so I ignore the families and hoist it onto my shoulders. It’s the only thing that I am allowed to take. I call for Love, but get no reply. I decide that she is dead, and is useful to somebody else as I turn my back on her, then I hear her moaning, although I am usually deaf to my surroundings after a successful hunt, and my shoulders are rotated toward her. I put my prey down, and look at its siblings register everything that has been going on in front of them. No good hunter forsakes his original prey. I walk over the man with the broken leg’s unconscious, though alive, body as I make my way to see her porcelain face. She is as pale as a stale corpse, but after she forces her eyes open I know that she isn’t. She shakes her head, but can only look at me. After a hunter catches his prey, he must take it and leave, but here I stand between dinner and Love.

Never have I cared about another being. I have kept my word and become a man, but instead of feeling content with a meal, Love makes me feel a hunger to feed someone other than myself. I look into the emeralds in her face, and see my own black diamonds shine back. I put Love on my shoulders, and grab the child’s leg to drag it with me. I can hear the families gasping at this sight of greed.

“There is a coming famine,” I say, watching her hair fall onto my chest, “but I will hunt for you.” I look at her lips spread slightly, and then she whimpers that it will not be necessary. She nearly bled to death. Her fatally wounded leg lay outstretched on my bed, while I stitch the maroon split in her skin shut. Love looks back at me and says thank you. I have never heard someone live to tell me that before, and I can feel my cheeks heat up, then cool off again. That feeling that you get when you barely gained victory in a fight. It made me feel proud to have done something for somebody other than my own Self. I tug at the fish gut and cut the line. She cannot get up with such fresh stitches so I tell her to relax while I go get something to drink. We are both famished, so I leave her alone in my shelter to go search the dwellings of Old New town for something to drink.

I can hear nobody inside or outside. About two hours after I went searching, here I am back at my shelter. Blood is luxurious, but when you are wounded you need water. Nobody has any to spare, because nobody is there. The famine seems to have come earlier than I expected. So I reach for the door knob, turn it, and it falls off. I laugh, and turn to notice a black widow strolling across my window pane, behind my view of the town, to its web. Black widows are cunning females with unparalleled survival prowess. Just then, Love’s hands trace my shoulder blades, and I relapse into her eyes.

She begins to explain that her parents were part of the King’s infantry during the War. I
listened to how she survived so attentively that I forgot my own principals. She was against lying to bait the prey, saying that she is a warrior, and only warriors are supreme. She said that if her and I multiplied ourselves and started a tribe together, we could flourish and never go a day without food. While I was gone, she had begun eating the catch, and was standing again. I thought about how my parents forbid love, and concluded that they were wrong, for Love had made my heart rattle the bars of my ribcage.

I leaned over and put my lips against hers, then pulled back and went for my dinner. Love began to kiss my neck from behind, and I quite enjoyed getting my muscle tension tended to by such warm hands while I enjoyed my meal. I finished the leg, and say that there was very little food to spare for the next few hours. That, however, did not stop me from eating more. Love moved her hands to my chest and begun to unbutton my rag of a shirt. While she did this I wiped my mouth with the child’s t-shirt. I turned around to face a broad smile. Love was looking at my body, and I had been aroused. She pushed me onto my bed, though this knocked her off balance. Nothing stopped her from falling onto me. She took her coat off at this point, and I noticed that she still had one more sickle on her. I looked at the sickle, and then shifted my eyes towards her. Her smile develops a foamy edge, as she grabs for my Adam’s apple and cracks it with her thumb. I cannot move!

“What about tomorrow?!” she shouts, “there is no more food, you fool! How dare you save me?! I choose who lives, and that was my cue to die!”

I am no longer aroused. Love elevates her sickle to what seems like the Heavens, and then lets it down into my chest. She tears me in half to divide amongst her and herself, because she has more strength than two men. I fell for the bait, now I am just a ghost reflecting on my first and only mistake. I should have left her for the starving family…