Free This Thing Called the Future by J.L. Powers Page B

ocean.
    I crawl across the floor, looking for places that are steady and reliable, but it heaves and buckles wherever I rest my hand. I sit back on my haunches, contemplating how I’m going to get to the bedroom.
    My body feels heavy, as though it’s going to sink right through the floor and drown somewhere beneath the earth.
    â€œKhosi, what’s wrong?” Gogo calls from what seems an ocean’s distance away. Then she’s beside me, reaching out her hand through the watery waves.
    â€œI don’t feel well,” I mumble, grasping her hand, letting her help me stumble into bed.
    Zi and Gogo stand over me, the same worried expression on their faces. “Do you want some food?” Gogo asks.
    â€œNo,” I say. “I just want to sleep.”
    She covers me with a blanket.
    â€œDo you want some water?” Zi asks.
    â€œNo. Leave me alone.”
    Closing my eyes only makes the spinning worse. So I stare at the ceiling, which is no longer the ceiling but the road outside our house, the one that leads to the tuck shop and that drunk man, who is sitting on his bucket, drunk, nodding off.
    As I float past, his hand snakes out, fast, grips my shirt and pulls me towards him, so close I’m looking at the tiny yellow lines streaking across the whites of his eyeballs.
    â€œWho’s going to save you now, Ntombi ?” he growls, shaking me so hard, I can feel my bones move. “Is your mama going to keep you safe? She’s nowhere in this world.”
    I’m shrieking, glancing away from his eyes to the empty street all around me. The houses are vacant, lights turned off. Gates dangle open and there isn’t a single dog in sight. The tuck shop is barren, its shelves bare.

    His hand slips towards the skin revealed by my bunched up shirt. His eyes shift to my waist, little shots of fire spurting from his eyes to my flesh, burning a round mark of desire on my hip.
    I open my mouth to scream, “Help me, somebody,” but I can’t make a sound.
    The drunk man’s mouth opens wide, laughing, revealing wide teeth, long teeth, changing into a long crocodile snout right in front of my eyes.
    â€œHelp!” I screech, hopeless that anybody can hear me from wherever they’ve gone.
    But then—a miracle! Both of us find our eyes riveted to the horizon as a dark-suited figure bobs up and down, moving closer until I recognize the face on the body.
    Babamkhulu. My very own grandfather. Fire in his own eyes as he looks at the drunk man holding me captive. Slowly advancing, menacing. At last the drunk man’s claws relax and he lets me go.
    Â 
    I come to consciousness, gripping a pillow, the sheets soaked in sweat.
    Zi is lying in the other bed, sleeping peacefully, but Gogo is sitting beside me, dipping a washcloth in water and cooling my forehead.
    â€œKhosi, you were somewhere deep,” she says now. “I tried to wake you but could not.”
    I sit up, draping my feet over the edge of the bed. Put my arms around my body and huddle there, hugging knees to chest. I lift my shirt—I’m still wearing the same shirt I was wearing when I drank the herbal remedy—and glance at the skin on my hip where the drunk man’s gaze burned me. Though the coin-sized sore he burned in my flesh is gone, there is a small circular shape, black as night, darker than my coffeecolored skin. I’ve never noticed it before. Was it already here?
    I feel like he’s branded me, like cattle. Marked me as his.
    The nausea is swift and sure and I barely make it to the toilet, bits of bile, chicken, and tomato pouring out of my mouth in a bitter acidic mixture.
    Gogo knocks on the door. “Khosi? Uyagula ? Are you sick?”
    â€œI’m okay,” I call, and wait until I hear her shuffling down the hall to
the kitchen. In the dark stillness of the house, I hear her turn the burners on to heat water for a cup of tea. She stumbles a little, and finally