After Hope Dies Read online

  After Hope Dies

  Lilly Haraden

  A Story Told in Six Parts:

  Run the Jewels Fast

  Hard R

  Closed Circuit TV // Hope and Despair

  Civic Obligation

  Thank You, Daniela, For Everything You Have Done For Us

  Author Afterword

  After Hope Dies Copyright © 2018 by Lilly Haraden. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover illustration by Federico Paoli

  Edited by Abigail Nathan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Lilly Haraden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

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  50% of author royalties will be donated to charity until publication costs recovered, and a higher percentage thereafter.

  First Edition .mobi, Finalised October 21 2018

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  ISBN - 978-0-6483920-0-2

  For Adrien, Mr. Free, Patrick, Lucy.

  For you, those that can no longer see. Always.

  Content Advisory

  This story includes racist content, depictions of rape and strong themes of child sexualisation/exploitation.

  Story one is written in US English while stories two through six are in UK English – this is intentional.

  Content in square brackets is part of the story and not leftover editorial markings.

  CONTENTS

  Content Advisory

  Story 1: Run the Jewels Fast

  Resurrection

  Permission

  Plan B

  Hugo and the Mirror

  Hur-uhh-ha

  School, work, schoolwork

  Ice cream! Ice cream! Mother-fucking-ice cream!

  Belief

  Dancer

  Jewel vomit

  The Law of Twins

  Met-ro-nome

  Story 2: Hard R

  Whitewash

  Nymphette

  Hebephilia

  Parallel

  The Arcade, or, Shout out to the blerds (Nice Childish Gambino reference)

  Take my mind, take my hand

  Story 3: Closed Circuit TV & Hope and Despair

  Birds & Blood

  Eyes & Waves

  Aerosol & Ice cream

  Sister & Saviour

  Last Hope

  Story 4: Civic Obligation

  Mistake #1 – The Nameless Girl

  Mistake #2 – The Mayor

  Mistake #3 – Maple

  Mistake #4 – The Front Door / The Back Door

  Mistake #5 – “Modified MPR, PTV, Universal Suffrage and Freeloading: An alternative voting platform for a modern, democratic election process.” by Monae, D.C. and Banks, E.N

  Mistake #6 – The Dead Man

  Story 5: Thank you, Daniela, for everything you have done for us

  María, llena eres de gracia

  Forgiveness

  Kindness goes a long way

  First shift

  Last Night of Love

  And Mirror’s Reality comes crashing through:

  Story 6: Author Afterword

  Blaxploitation

  Final Note

  Story 1:

  Run the Jewels Fast

  Resurrection

  The monster digs deep into the young girl’s throat. Claws worm around her voice box and pull, pull! Gasping strokes, scissors cutting sinew, and out comes her soul dripping in gunky tears.

  Janelle screams with every ounce of strength left but instead of sound she coughs up a ruby waterfall, all dark and thick. Thick like the monster that is killing – has killed – her. The little girl watches this otherworldly beast bring her voice to its lips, watches it savor the blood, the taste on the tongue, the crunchiness and soft parts as those jaws chomp chomp. A tar-dark tongue rolls in and out. All done – see? Empty mouth – and the monster smiles.

  Everything is unreal. This place: with the sky dripping LSD blood and oceans of noise lapping at her body. This monster: the shadow with two sun-on-water eyes and teeth too opal, a hand like morning’s kiss cold-cradling the girl’s nape and back. Where this creature moves, every light dies. Hungry eyes take her up, down, but she is empty now. He has no more use for a human girl.

  With infinite force, the beast takes Janelle and launches her to heaven. Ragdoll, limpdoll, girl soars up to false sky. Her blood traces a viscera comet, a starry, pulpy trail. She feels herself being undone with the rush of speed and the gut-lurching hammer of gravity. None of it matters, really. Not the cold sting of the creature’s hands on her throat or the crude pain between her legs or the free force of flying. All pain is meaningless because she cannot undo the damage. Why fight against the midnight tide? So goodbye, monster on the shore far, far below. Where to now for my dead body?

  Janelle breaks the acid skyline and chunks of glass follow her into the vacuum. A very dark place engulfs the child; the snowdome egg of the monster’s lair shrinks under her feet as she flies on with the shards of the ceiling. Watch. The broken sky quickmorphs into birds that fly with her. Every time they beat their wings, diamonds and sapphires fall like snow from their feathers. How beautiful! How sad. Two very large pieces of ceiling congeal into a pair of cranes. Together, they swoop in and wrap their wings around Janelle’s cold body until she is enclosed. Inside this zoo cocoon of white, with two beaky heads nuzzling up next to her, Janelle curls up in their warmth.

  It feels so right to die like this. So soft and quiet with the universe humming low. Shhhhhh…No need to stifle the flowing blood from your open throat. No need to worry as your sticky life burns through the down of your feathered friends. You will be in heaven soon, carried there on the backs of two beautiful cranes. Just like momma always sang:

  ♫ O sleep, my little one, sleep ♫.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Heaven smells like garbage. Heaven feels like pointy things in bare skin.

  Wake. Breath comes fast to her lungs and the little human pulls the atmosphere in, suckles it deep as real pain greets her. Janelle lurches upright, clutching her throat, tearing her eyes open from murky death. Wake. Shaky hands, no shoes, no pants, messy underwear, no shirt, no bra, blood on the fingers, runny, smelly, a line on her throat – trace it all the way from ear to ear with vivid cartography, bees stitching up the river.

  The little slut is back from the dead. Here: alleyway, exit sign, trash bags, night sky, grimy sleet.

  Janelle tries to cough but pain squeezes her throat too tight. Scrabbling from her burial site on Trashbag Mountain, the little creature finds the alley wall and hurls a stomach-full of blood onto the bricks. It runs too fierce, too thin, like ghostly water with a mind of its own. Tastes like medicine. Why not bloody? Janelle vomits once more. But little by little now, pain slips away – why? Why did that monster take her soul and bring her back to life? Why didn’t it stop those other men from carving h
er throat open and leaving her to die here in this alley?

  A shade of something gold roars between her face and the wall – whose hair is this, these copper-gold strands solar bright against alley and snow and trash? Yellow and white and red. Take a handful of the stuff; why is she a blonde now?

  Janelle rests two hands against sore eyes. Head on brick. Come on, girl. You’re here now. Think.

  Just to double check:

  Alleyway, outside where she works. Exit sign kept alive by after-hours power; Dani sometimes escorts her in and out of the club here while this sign keeps watch. Trash bags, where those two men from the club left her lifeless body…shhh, focus. Focus. Trash bags, always trash bags and the smell of rat piss. Not the smell of the club. Night sky –look, no stars! Just clouds shitting gray snow. Janelle feels the cold bite on her pinky-brown toes, waits, lets her body shiver, lets her eyes leak and cry. Hiccups like the child she is.

  No monster here. Not any more. She cannot feel his presence. But wait…a sound from the mouth of the alley. Janelle gasps and finds the source: a human, not a shadow, standing at the far end.

  It is her. A thing remarkably like her but in many, many ways not her at all. Dark hair, hard eyes, wearing a different set of her work clothes: short crop, belly free and skinny, candy-tight legs on display, bangles. She is she, like a mirror shrouded by dark.

  ‘Catch ya round, little slut,’ says the girl with Janelle’s voice.

  And the thing scampers away with tricky laughter. Darkness takes her. Janelle throws a hand after her and cries, ‘Wait!’

  That voice. A voice so small and croaky, never used. Virginal. Barely a whimper, but to little Janelle’s ears: cannon call. This is not her voice. That other girl has stolen her voice, or…did the monster give it to her, plucking the song right from Janelle’s throat to manifest it inside that thing?

  Whose voice does she have now?

  Alone now. Janelle must find her way home.

  Her poufy jacket is all the men left behind. Mirror Janelle could have used this – she won’t last long in this cold wearing so little. It’s near freezing. But real Janelle has the same problem, so she zips the pink bomber thing up so nobody can see her horrible nudity, her soiled panties, her Colombian necktie. Wait. Where’s her phone? Can she call Dani? Quick pat of the jacket pockets. Nothing. Maybe the club is still open? It’s after closing time — no light from the windows. Girl, you need to leave, now. Nobody is going to help you.

  So her hands shake. And her body moves like this:

  Feet one in front of the other. Lazy staggering steps. Drunk and intoxicated neurology. It feels so wrong but on she walks. Home…

  On and on and on through the back ends of Detroit. It honestly doesn’t matter where she is. It matters to her but not to you. Detroit suits, although Detroit is technically the old name. It could also be Compton if you stretch your imagination to breaking point. More likely Flint. More likely Atlanta. So: D, or C, or even D.C, maybe Boston, maybe Chicago. What does it matter? But here, the public streetlights don’t work after 10 PM so they serve as dark yard markers instead. There are many things like this in the modern era, where everything has a new and unintended job. Even little girls.

  Janelle walks through a museum of these outdated things: rail lines, stores, suburbs wobbling, on a bender, streets unsteady and uncertain, all gray, all gray. The bitter chill rots her resolve and makes the young thing slow. Nose-dribble runs into her mouth, all salty like blood. She may not survive the night. Look where they are. A sleepy neighborhood where ghosts and spirits wander across the road. Boys and men on bikes, giving her the eye as she walks past their frame of sight, their bonfire-eyes and dealings. Only boys and men with trick-pulling ladies are out. Everything is so quiet though. The houses sit all squashed and lonely: vacant and straight, vacant and delinquent, repeat.

  Janelle hides her bare hands beneath her jacket armpits, shivering as she trudges home in the slushy cold of November. Little specks of snow sleep on her golden hair, brush her cheeks clean. Around and around they swirl through the horrible nightlight. But everything is still unreal. She isn’t here. She is still inside some sort of eggshell dream. She is still inside a giant cocoon with a ceiling as thin as nail polish. Maybe she can crack the sky and ride home on two beautiful birds…

  ‘Hey! Yo, little miss, where you goin’?’

  Janelle ignores wherever the voice came from but ignoring people can get you killed. Pedals and wheels clash in the girl’s ears and a man on a lowrider pulls up beside her. See: darker than sin in the night; a real ‘won’t show up with your camera flash on’ kind of nigga. Who are you? Oh, you’re Ross. Two-Spitter? That’s what he goes by. Ain’t nobody wants a name like Ross. Which is to say, ‘nobody wants a name like Ross’, because the words ‘ain’t’ and ‘nobody’ confer double negation when placed together and don’t make literal sense, like the proper definition of irony. Right, Ross? Ross, with your little playa cap on sideways, oversize shirt cos youze a gangster jus’ tryn’ to get that paper, right? Banknotes are made from polyester now, Ross. Look at you – you’re a living, breathing stereotype, Ross. Sweat shining against the tar midnight Ross, teeth like headlights Ross. It’s so cold Ross, why you wearing just that wifebeater?

  ‘Bich, I ax you a question…Whoa! Whole up, whole up, slow down, little miss. I know you.’

  Slow down, little miss. Janelle keeps her lips tight but looks to the man with a silent plea in her eyes. Please, don’t make me speak. Don’t make me open my mouth and explain why I’m here, why I’m half naked and walking along the streets of D/C/DC at night, why, if you unzip my bomber and try to feel me up, you won’t find no (any) undershirt or breasts.

  ‘Yeah, you work for Bax, don’ you? You’re J. Down at the club. I saw you thuther nite. You workin’ your stuff on stage, grinding me in the back. You’re a fihn dancer.’

  That’s right, little miss. Janelle nods like a good little girly and tries for a smile. Fails. Starts walking again. Ross keeps on the bike but uses a free foot to push on the broken sidewalk, keeping pace with her. He is a devil in the shadow of a lonely child. Man says as he cycles with the prostitute, nodding and nodding, ‘Yeh, Bax treatin’ you right? Makin’ sure you gettin' your pay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Oh. It’s the second word Janelle’s said since her resurrection but saying it feels like a mistake. The intonation, the clarity, the pressure on her throat – it’s all wrong. She is not talking, is she? Those words don’t belong to her. Dirty thief. So don’t let it raise suspicion, don’t let it cause alarm…

  ‘Hey, I ain’t gon hur chu. But you know these streets dangerous at night, yeah? Tell you what. I’m a gentleman, but I’m not the kind of person to do nothing fo’ free. Momma tol’ me that. Good advice, right? Got bills to pay, etcetera etcetera. So. I escortcha home, you gimme somma that pay money I know Bax be givin’ you. We good?’

  They come to a corner and stop. No streetlight to illuminate the actors, just an oily moon casting beams: here, there. Nobody else around now. Not anybody else that wants to be seen, at least. Janelle knows the way home, knows the risk of going alone. But this is not a single or transient event, no. The consequences of her actions will spill into the future like kindness or crime.

  Say she pays the thug an escort fee – what happens tomorrow and the day after when he comes back for more, making it clear that she only paid half her dues? And, since he will know where she lives, what if he demands more work as an escort to or from the club? What if Ross gets into a fight with Dani over who has the right to take her home after work. What if Bax gets wind of it? What if Two-SpitterSplatter wants more than her money, more than her body, more than sex? What if he steers her down a little street and has her pinned butterfly-naked to the wall? All of these are game complications. And sometimes the best way to win a game is to not play at all.

  The night is so cold and her feet are so tired and blue. Janelle just wants to go home.

  Solution. Janelle do
esn’t like it, but…it’s a solution nonetheless. She reaches for her zipper and takes a gamble by opening her mouth: let’s see what comes out.

  ‘I could pay you the cash but I see a few problems. Cash won’t last with a man like you, and right now, I don’t have any money on me. None. See, about half an hour ago, I was killed in the alleyway outside my club.’

  Ziiiiiiiiiiii–

  ‘A couple of men had me in the back room and then beat me until I couldn’t see straight. They dragged my body outside and pinned me down on a bed made of garbage bags. You know what they did then?’

  iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii–

  ‘One pulled out his phone and took a video of his friend sodomizing me. I can’t remember everything, unfortunately, but I do remember the part where they left me to die and the demon came and took my voicebox out.’

  iiiiiiip.

  ‘See?’

  Pull. Curtains open. Cock the head. The audience panics. Janelle sees the man’s eyes working her over, those white orbs of orbiting panic and lust. Little girl with her flat chest on display, girl with a rough, deep line of red brushstroked across her throat, still with a little trickle oozing from the corners. Ross straightens and shakes his head, side to side, whispers, ‘Naw, naw, man…whaz goin’ on? You hurt? How you alive?’

  Janelle finishes, ‘I died a little while ago. When I woke up, I’d changed. My hair changed and my voice changed. Wonder why I’m speaking like this? It’s not because I’ve discovered that now is an opportune moment to surface my latent perspicacity. It’s because – are you listening? – I’m a ghost. I must be. Why else do I talk like a white girl? Well? What are you going to do? Don’t you understand me? “I ain’t got no money and no phone.”’

  All color drains from the gangster’s face. He lets out a staggered breath and holds up two I-surrender hands in the air. Lowrider clatters to pavement. Man says to the bushes, ‘Look, is this some kinda trick? You got cameras somewhere, ain’t you, trying to catch me out as a pedo? Huh?’