hand unwrapped itself from the scientist’s waist, leaving a welt. I shook and screamed into the gag and kicked against the shackles but the only thing free was my nose to huff. The Bad Ibeji pulled his head off the twin’s shoulder and one eye popped open. The head, a lump upon a lump, upon a lump, with warts, and veins, and huge swellings on the right cheek with a little thing flapping like a finger. His mouth, squeezed at the corners, flopped open, and his body jerked and sagged like kneaded flour being slapped. From the mouth came a gurgle like from a baby. The Bad Ibeji left the scientist’s shoulder and slithered on my belly and up to my chest, smelling of arm funk and shit of the sick. The other scientist grabbed my head with both sides and held it stiff. I struggled and struggled, shaking, trying to nod, trying to kick, trying to scream, but all I could do was blink and breathe. The Bad Ibeji crawled up my chest, his body swelling like a ball and squeezing out breath like a puffer fish. He extended two long, bony fingers that walked past my lips and stopped at my nostrils. The Bad Ibeji’s eye blinked sorrow, then he shoved two fingers up my nose and I screamed and screamed again, and tears sprung from my eyes. The fingers, the claws scraped the flesh, pushed up the hole, pushed through bone, cut through more flesh, moved past my nose, and between my eyes started to burn. His fingers passed my eyes, pushed through my forehead, my temples pumped and throbbed, and my mind went black, came back, and went black again. My forehead burned. I could hear his claws, cutting, scurrying in me like mice. The fire spread from my head down my back, along my legs to the tips of my feet, and I shook like a man whose head was taken over by devils. And dark came over my eyes and in my head and then a flicker.
And Sogolon came through the door and walked to the cell and the guards opened the gate and she walked in and bent to look and straightened herself and walked backward away from me, and nodded, and walked backward out the cell and backward on the steps, and the guard walked backward to the cell gate and locked it and Sogolon backed out the door that closed. And she stepped out and she stepped in again and Venin stood at the cell watching me and she stepped away backward and I yelled, and the bound boy jumped up from his fall and back to the balcony and sat in the chair and looked away from the balcony, and we retied him and pushed him back on the dried bush and the wall healed itself, sucking back up each broken chunk and Mossi and I unrolled on the floor, and I swung my one free arm and he caught it and he unlocked his legs from my legs and stopped choking me with one arm, then flipped me under him, choking me with one arm and locking down my legs with his legs and he yelled and pulled his punch from the wood as I dodged out of his arm and stood up, then I pulled back from punching him and fell back on the floor, and he withdrew his offering hand, but I pulled him down, punching him in the stomach, and in the house my grandfather is fucking my mother on the blue sheet that she bought to make mourning clothes and the climax goes back in his mouth and he is fucking up, not down, and he pulls out and slaps his hard penis until it gets soft and drops into the white bush of his hair, and my mother stops looking away and looks at him and spirits are in the tree that is not ours but the spirit is my father and he is mad at me, and my grandfather and every living thing sounds as if sucking the air back in, reverse breath, and the lighting jumps back from outside back inside and runs backways past me and the Leopard and that boy whose name I never remember and the Leopard is attacking a boy in the forest who wears white dust who I know but I can’t remember his name, and then the Leopard is attacking me and then we go through