Lit Fic #16 Heart of November. Ch. 8
As Sakombí and Hairball try to find the pimp/drug dealer Kurtz, I realize I skipped Lit Fic #14. Sorry about that, but this is the next installment after Lit Fic #13.
This chapter includes a scene I lifted out of Heart of Darkness; the sick native Congolese dying in the shade upgraded to current conditions in parts of Africa where AIDS is beyond epidemic; thanks in part to religions which disavow condoms and beliefs that people can not get HIV/AIDs if they have sex with a virgin.
Another research I discovered was that many females in parts of the world that have experienced decades of warfare have become de facto doctors; at least, they can patch up wounded males and others. This talent is especially true in parts of African where a civil wars have lasted for more than a decade or two. This research found its way into this chapter.
In re-reading, editing, and reading yet again, I think I have made this better and hope you can enjoy it (and the other Lit Fics).
A Warning: there are some curse words in this chapter; the F word predominant. If you wish not to read obscenities, please feel free to skip this chapter.
««« Kurtz’s Woman’s Daughter »»»
Sakombí danced away from the house. He held a bottle of lotoko and handed it to Hairball. “She is not the man we seek,” he smiled. “She’s bootlegger, not a pimp.”
“Well,” Hairball said as he crammed the whiskey into the back Sakombí’s bag. “A few more to go.”
“Should be finished by October,” Sakombí smiled. “Not this year.”
“Look.”
Kurtz rushed across the street and disappeared into a one-story house with a bright blue door.
“Let’s go,” Hairball said.
“First, check the address. Is it on our list, yes?”
But too late, Hairball was rushing across the street. He jumped to the blue door and knocked. He looked in the pale yellow window. Sakombí ran after him. He scurried around to the side of the house.
A woman answered the door and was shocked to see a white man with unruly hair staring into her window.
“Oui?” she asked.
“Miss?” Hairball answered in fractured French and smiled before yelling, “James!”
The woman stepped back. She grabbed the door. She slammed it on Hairball’s foot.
“Monsieur,” she pleaded, “S’il vous plaît, laissez-nous seuls. Go away from the house!”
“Kurtz!” Hairball yelled.
“No Kurtz here, you lumpy piece of hippo butt,” she shouted, pushed the door, and turned to her small home. “Macondo! Thieves!”
“What?” Hairball asked, then yelled again, “James!”
“Get away from me! Ubakaji! Ubakaji!” The woman yelled.
Kurtz rushed to the door. He was half naked and grasping a nine iron as if it were a sacred poisonous snake. “Get out!” He yelled, the nine iron above his head, ready to strike.
“Kurtz!” Hairball yelled.
“Macondo, get this mbakaji out of here!”
“Hairball? What’re you doing here?” Kurtz asked, lowering his golf club.
“Looking for you,” Hairball answered. “But get this crazy lady away…”
“Penelope,” Kurtz ordered in French, “two lotoko and fufu for my friend and I.”
“Three,” Hairball whispered.
“Three?”
“Good afternoon,” Sakombí announced as he walked up to the blue door. “Remember me, asshole?”
“Macondo?” Penelope argued. “Are you getting him out of here?”
“Beers! You hippo butt!” Kurtz yelled in French. “Three! Go!”
Penelope glared at him, gave Hairball and Sakombí the evil eye, but spun around. She pushed three small children out of her way and skittered into a backroom.
“Whaddya doin’ here?” Kurtz asked, his eyes studying Sakombí carefully.
“We’re here to save a woman,” Sakombí replied. “A woman you know, yes?” He touched his blue fedora and smiled.
“Hey!” Kurtz yelled as one of the small children wrapped his arms around Sakombí’s leg. “José! Get away from him!”
“Hey, it’s no…”
“I tell José to get offa ya. He gets off!” Kurtz spit out. “Get outta here ya little hippo butt!” He yelled and tried to kick José in the back as he ran to his two older brothers.
“Yours?” Hairball asked.
“Wouldn’t be caught dead havin’ kids in this blasted country. Penelope’s. All of ’em. Waiting for her husband to return, ya know?” He looked at Sakombí, “In Paris. A cook, don’tcha know. Whatcha wan’ me for?”
“Well,” Hairball said, but stopped when Penelope appeared in the living room with three chipped cups of the local moonshine.
“Fufu?” Kurtz complained.
Penelope stared at him and spun around with the angry air of a woman who has to put up with too much bullying from the men she meets.
“Husband’s in Paris, eh? How long’s he been there?” Sakombí asked.
“Hey, you, José, how old’r you?” Kurtz demanded of the youngest child.
The kid raised six fingers and laughed.
“Six years,” Kurtz replied. “Why?”
“Long enough to steal his woman, right?”
“You remember that Australian chick we met in Kinshasa?” Hairball interrupted.
“Yeah?” Kurtz answered. “What about her? You here about her? God, Hairball, I don’ know what the fuck she’s doin’ and don’ care, ya know? Now,” he stood up.
“Who’d ya sell her to?”
“Penelope!” Kurtz yelled. “Fufu, bitch! Nobody,” he answered Hairball. “She was just a one-night stand, that’s all.”
“Where is she?” Hairball asked.
“Ah, that’s what yer here for, ain’t ya? To get some poontang, ain’t that right?”
“White,” Sakombí answered, “poontang.”
“Well, you gentlemen have come to the right fuckin’ place, ya know?”
Penelope marched in with a tray with fufu and a bowl of sauce. She dropped the corn balls on a scratched-up table and the bowl of sauce next to it. She stared at Hairball.
“L’hippopotame blanc manger de la nourriture congolaise?” she hissed.
“Hey,” Kurtz yelled back. “I’m white. I eat this shit.”
She stared at him, grabbed her three kids, and stormed into the kitchen.
“And keep the little bastards outta here! Doing business here!”
“Does she speak English?”
“Not a fucking word. Want some white women, no?”
“Just the one.”
“Ho ho, eh? The ole menage a threesome, eh?”
“We just need to find,” Sakombí glanced at Hairball.
“Amelia.”
Kurtz sipped his lotoko. He stared at Sakombí. He took a piece of fufu, eating it without dipping it in the sauce. “Why her?”
“Cause I don’t think she should be sold into sex slavery, wanker,” Hairball said. “Plus, she’s Australian.”
“Huh uh,” Kurtz replied. “Can’t find no Australian chicks at the festival?”
“Nope,” Hairball answered. “Where is she? You raped her, right?”
“Nope. I did not. I… convinced her to put out for this guy I know. Strictly business. He comes to me, asks if I know a white chick willing you, ya know, to do the ole humpty-humpty. First person I thought of was her.” Kurtz put on his best leering smirk, “She puts out real good, ya know.”
“You slept with an Australian whore!?” Penelope shouted as she rushed into the living room. “You sleep with an Australian whore and bring that diseased pecker into my home!?”
She raised a cleaver over her head. She swung it at Kurtz.
He ducked.
She smashed the chair.
He rolled away from her.
“Get away from me, bitch!”
“You get away from me! Whore!” She swung the cleaver.
He jumped.
The cleaver smashed deep into the floor.
He grabbed the plate of fufu. He tossed it at her.
She pried the cleaver from the floor. The fufu splashed into her face. She spun away. The cleaver clattered to the floor.
José ran out of the kitchen.
“Leave mommy alone!”
Penelope turned to her. “Florence-Maria! No!”
Kurtz grabbed the chance to slap her in the face. He kicked her in the crotch. She fell to the floor. He grabbed her by the hair. He yanked her up. He pummeled her face.
“Hey!” Hairball jumped up, “Knock it off!”
“Keep outta this…” Kurtz yelled.
Sakombí grabbed Penelope.
A surprised look swept across Kurtz’ face. He dropped Penelope.
Sakombí held her.
Kurtz turned around.
Hairball looked.
Sakombí stared.
José yanked the cleaver out of Kurtz’s back.
Hairball grabbed Kurtz and pulled him out of the way.
Penelope pulled José to her and wrapped her arms around him.
“Oh, baby,” she cried.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Kurtz yelled.
“Open the door,” Hairball ordered.
Penelope grabbed the door.
Sakombí and Hairball dragged Kurtz out of Penelope’s house.
“Where’s a hospital?” Hairball asked.
“Hospitals are busy. Look for an old woman. Old women patch up soldiers all the time. There’s one!” Sakombi pointed and they hauled Kurtz over to the old woman sitting in front of her colorful but small house. She was smoking a doobie as big as her fist; her face clouded.
“Grandma,” Sakombi begged and pointed at Kurtz’ blood dripping at her feet.
She smiled. She pointed into her house and struggled to her feet.
“War?” she asked in Tutu.
“Love,” Sakombi answered.
“Love, it is brutal,” she said. “Inside. Lay him on the table.” She pulled his shirt up to his neck.
“Hey,” Kurtz complained.
The old woman looked at Sakombí and mumbled a few words in Tutu.
Sakombí nodded and looked at Hairball. “Money,” he said.
“Yes, money,” the old woman and inhaled a lungful of marijuana goodness. In French she added, “s’il se plaint, le prix augmente.”
“Kurtz,” Sakombi said, “shut up or the price goes up.” He handed the old woman a twenty-dollar US bill.
She whisked it out of his hand and grabbed a knife. She grabbed a bottle of lotoko. She poured the contents over the knife. She peered into Kurtz’s wound. “Not a bullet wound,” she said to no one. She pulled the edges of the knife wound apart with two expert fingers. She looked into it. “Fresh,” she added. She poured the lotoko into the wound.
Kurtz screamed.
Sakombí handed the old woman a five-dollar US bill.
She looked at Hairball and then at Kurtz. “Who does this?”
“The woman in the house with the blue door,” he answered.
“Penelope?” She backed away from Kurtz. “She does this? She has a good reason, yes? She is a good woman. Three children.”
“José stabbed him.”
“Who is José?”
“Penelope’s youngest.”
“Penelope’s youngest is Florence-Maria.”
“A girl? Kurtz, you said…”
“Dunno none of their names. Call ’em all José. Has the blood stopped?”
The old woman pulled a tattered box out from under her sink. She rummaged through it until she found a shish-kabob skewer. She lit the stove and held the skewer in the flame. “The knife,” she said to Sakombí in French, “maybe it touches a kidney. He might bleed to death unless…” she held up the red hot skewer.
“What’s she gonna do with…”
The old woman looked at Hairball.
He pinned Kurtz’s head and shoulders against the kitchen table. His hand slipped in the blood. He laid across Kurtz’s body. The old woman spread open the wound. She plunged the skewer in.
Kurtz howled in pain. And passed out.
Hairball threw up at the smell of burning flesh.
Sakombí’s stomach lurched at the smell of Hairball’s vomit.
The old woman pulled the skewer out and tossed it in with the rest of her dishes.
“Maybe my skewer nicked the kidney, too, yes?” she said to Sakombí. “Maybe he’ll bleed to death anyway.”
She grabbed a loose ball of thread and a used needle from the box. She held the needle in the flame. When it was hot, she pushed the thread through the eye of the needle and returned to Kurtz.
“Oh,” Sakombí reacted, holding his nose against the odor of burnt flesh and vomit and the sight of a needle piercing Kurtz’ skin.
“Next few hours,” the old woman said and smiled, her grin a pale replica of Frankenstein’s monster, “Maybe he will wake up.” She sewed the knife wound with wrinkled but practiced hands.
Sakombí pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to her. “When will he come to?” he asked as he looked down at the bloody Kurtz.
“Maybe never,” the old woman replied. “But…” she looked at Kurtz, then her open door.
“Okay, okay,” Sakombi answered. “Hairball?”
“Give me a sec, will ya?”
“Never smell burning flesh before?”
Hairball shook his head and wiped his mouth. He looked around for something to drink but all he could see was the cheap moonshine called lotoko and a bucket of water crowded with dirty dishes, including the flesh-burning skewer. He stumbled outside and spit. He looked at Penelope’s house with the blue door and saw her standing with Florence-Maria balanced on one hip. One child hugged her left leg while the oldest child hid behind his mother. Penelope was glaring at him, so he waved. She didn’t wave back.
A man with an AK47 walked past Penelope and looked where she was looking. He saw Hairball. Hairball stepped back into the old woman’s house.
“Guy in a uniform just eyed me,” he whispered to Sakombí.
“Out,” the old woman shouted. “Out! Now!”
“We…” Sakombi said, but saw the anger and fear in the old woman’s eyes; a uniformed man with an assault rifle was seldom good news.
He grabbed Kurtz by one arm. Hairball grabbed the other. The two yanked, pulled, lifted, and dragged the unconscious Kurtz off the table.
“We gotta find a place for him to recover,” Hairball said.
“Screw him. We find a place we can hide from the law, yes.”
They pulled Kurtz to the door and looked out. The man with the AK47 looked at them, studied the bloody Kurtz, and walked on.
“We scared him,” Hairball said.
“Strange,” Sakombí replied. “What’re we gonna do with him?”
“Wait until he’s awake enough to tell us what he did with Amelia.”
“We need shade. Water.”
“And an air conditioner. Is it always this hot in this country?”
“Air conditioner? You mean you want a room with electricity?”
They dragged Kurtz until they found an empty spot beneath a tree near the river. They laid him face down beside the tree to expose his cauterized knife wound to the air. Hairball sat beside him and Sakombí scurried off to look for water.
“Kurtz? You alive?” Hairball asked the prostrate smuggler
Getting no reply, he fanned himself with his shirt and felt the sweat evaporate off his body. He watched the overloaded barges plow their way upriver and small, fleet dugout canoes with outboard motors whisked up and down the river like so many sand fleas. One barge pushed by a boat that spewed black smoke, darkening the pale blue sky that seemed to sink lost and bewildered into the dark green jungle that enveloped the river.
He no longer wondered why a country with so much richness in resources was so poor. There was no government or leader that could manage and support the honest workers. It was, Hairball realized, a Wild West atmosphere; everyone was out for himself. And that included the American companies that encouraged chopping down huge swatches of jungle; the Belgium companies that had stripped everyone of their dignity and possessions; the warlords and bandits that preyed on the honest and moral citizens; the absolute free capitalism that Ramboed uncontrolled across the land.
If he only knew back in elementary school what he knew now, his and her report would have depression and sadness slapped across it like paint spilled on a mildewed carpet. But it took him coming here, bribing immigration officials, meeting Kurtz and Sakombí, and seeing the violence and horror that permeated this poor land to understand that. And now, Sakombí was out bartering for water.
He smiled. He realized he was learning and not out of a book like back in school with teachers lecturing about things they harvested out of a book as well; he was learning from life. He saw the poverty and hopelessness up close and personal. He saw the cheerfulness and joy as well. He saw a country with huge Huge potential stifled by government flunkies and western exploiters. Still, he discovered he preferred reading about the horrors of a lawless land to living in one.
He watched a bird slip down the river and land on the barge. It pecked at a sack of grain or concrete, then flew off. He watched a ripple in the river maneuver upstream and wondered what made it. An crocodile, perhaps? Or a water-loving snake seeking a corpse to devour? Or just a fluke; a bent twig that decided today it would go against the physics and rigors of water and flow upstream. Just because it could.
He pulled his iPad out of his bag and took a quick series of snapshots. He checked his wifi signal and wasn’t surprised to find it non-existent. He settled back in the feeble shade and studied Kurtz. His back was still rising and falling; small blades of grass shivered when he exhaled; proof that he was still alive, even if just barely. Living, Hairball thought, was good. This animal had to lead him to Amelia.
He swaddled himself with his bag and closed his eyes. He tried to trick his mind into thinking he was back in Wisconsin; walking the halls of Madison Memorial with his friends. Worrying about forgetting his locker combination. Wondering how he was going to convince his father he needed the latest iPhone. Wishing Sally — she of the Boobs — or Bobby would go out with him but knowing he was too shy to ask either of them out. And Bobby was too much of a … too much an independent woman to go out with him.
He imagined bicycling down Johnson to his part-time job at the Captain Jake’s Fish Trough out by I-90. He tried to trick his mind into thinking he wasn’t sweating in the strong humidity or wishing the slight breeze from the river wasn’t stagnant with oil, burnt coal, or the spoils of meat and fish.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a woman’s voice said.
Hairball at first wanted to open his eyes and stare at the speaker. But he was afraid she had a knife, pistol, or AK47 pointed at him and was intent on robbing him.
“Why not?” he asked, his eyes closed, his hands behind his head, his bag wrapped around his chest and arms.
“Dangerous.”
“Everything on this river is dangerous,” he replied, still keeping his eyes shut in hopes that when he opened them, he would be in Captain Jake’s Fish Trough doling out undercooked cod dipped in a deep-fat fryer to a gaggle of giggling high school girls.
“Don’t move,” the woman said.
Hairball opened his eyes. He saw the woman. Her skin was coal black; the blackest he had ever seen. She held, as he feared, a knife in her two hands. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Kurtz. Hairball looked at the newly knifed man. And saw it. The snake. A very large constrictor with a head as large as Hairball’s. Wrapped around Kurtz’s right leg and moving up. Up to the freshly cauterized wound that still stank of burnt flesh; cooked meat. Kurtz was a month’s worth of food for the snake, maybe more.
The woman lunged over Hairball, her breasts pounding against his chest. She grunted and drove her knife into the snake’s head. The snake withered and slapped itself against Kurtz. It surged against the knife but couldn’t escape. It shuddered and stopped moving.
“Don’t touch it, white man,” the woman ordered as she backed away from the snake, Kurtz, and Hairball, but leaving her knife buried in the snake’s head.
The woman sat back. Sweat dribbled down her face and neck. She waved a handkerchief at herself and studied the snake and the unconscious Kurtz beneath it.
“Your friend?” She asked.
“Kinda.”
“Kinda,” she repeated. “The worst. No friend, no stranger. No acquaintance. Just kinda a friend.” She wiped sweat from between her breasts. “Sad.”
“He knows what happened to a friend of mine, but he won’t tell me where she is.”
The woman leaned over Hairball. “I kinda stabbed your kinda friend. He might need a doctor.”
“You what?” Hairball said as he looked down her blouse at her breasts. He sat up and moved away from the dead snake lying beside Kurtz.
“Maybe,” the woman said as she lifted the big snake’s head away from Kurtz’ body, “my knife went through… Nope, at least, I don’t think so.” She bent close to Kurtz’ back to check for fresh knife wounds. “When did he get this?” she asked as she touched Florence-Maria’s recent handiwork.
“’Bout an hour ago.”
“Ah,” she said. “Here,” she touched Kurtz’ back. “My knife nicked him.”
“Just a nick. No problem, then, right?”
“Poison from the snake’s head might’ve seeped into it.”
“In which case?”
“Be dead in an hour or so. Maybe.” She lifted her blouse to clean her knife and Hairball became mesmerized by the darkness of her stomach. She watched the river flow toward the Atlantic. “That one,” she said, nodding her head at a barge heading down river.
“What about it?”
She examined her knife, determined it was clean enough, and shoved it into a sheath she hung around her neck. “It has either bales of marijuana or slaves.”
“How can you tell?” Hairball asked as he watched the barge. It looked like all the other barges: pushed by a boat whose glory dwelt in the Zaire years, four or five men with AK 47s smoking as the barge drifted along, a group of travelers burdened down with bags of food or hand-made wares to sell in Kinshasa or the many villages along the way.
“The guards.”
Hairball looked again. The guards were smoking, but they were also surveying the riverside and watching the smaller motorized dugouts zipping up and down the river; on watch for river pirates. A guard stood beside the captain. Another stood facing upriver.
“Why slaves?”
“Not so many passengers. Look at that one,” the woman said and pointed at a tired barge working its way down the lake. Nearly every available space on or around the cargo was taken up by people traveling to sell or buy goods. In contrast, the first one only had a half dozen people, mostly old women, who smoked and chatted, laughed, and remembered the Seto years.
“I see.”
The woman stepped over Hairball and pulled the snake off of Kurtz. She hefted it to her right shoulder and wrapped its body around hers like a heavy, reptilian shawl.
“What are you going to do with that?”
“Gut it and sell the skin. But first, there’s a crazy white man in a camp outside of here. He claims to be a snake researcher.”
“A herpetologist.”
“But he’s just crazy. Américain, of course. He wants this beast’s DNA.” She looked across the river where the crazy white man’s camp was. She needed a boat and that cost money. She walked along the shore.
“Wait,” Hairball called after her. He jumped to his feet to walk after her. “Who are you? I mean, what’s your name? I mean, you saved my life.”
“And maybe killed your kinda friend.” She continued walking to the riverbank where several dugout owners shouted for passengers or cargo. Each owner was shirtless, carried a large knife; almost a sword, and stared at her body.
“Your name? So I can tell people who saved me?”
“I’m Nyoka,” she smiled. “But look at your friend.”
Hairball turned around. Kurtz was still lying on the bare ground but now he was surrounded by five Congolese. The skinniest men Hairball had ever seen. He could see rib cages and the joints of knees, elbows, and shoulders. He turned to say goodbye to Nyoka, but she was gone; swallowed by the crowd swarming the river banks, looking for new pots, pans, or knives or looking to sell marijuana, cocoa, or cassava.
He kneeled beside Kurtz to protect him from the five Congolese men, but he soon realized they were not there to rob or kill him. They were there for the shade. They were there to die. They embodied death and they knew it.
Hairball picked up his water bottle and offered it to the closest man.
“Merci,” the man mumbled. He reached a skinny hand out to take the bottle, but gave up. Too weak to even grasp a plastic bottle of water, he dropped his hands to his sides.
“He’ll be dead soon,” Sakombí interrupted.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“AIDS, no doubt. Here,” Sakombí handed him a fresh, almost cold bottle of Primus beer.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Sakombí cracked open his beer, took a deep swig, and shook his head. “Not for him. Not for this country.”
Hairball sipped his beer and stared at the dying man. He held his bottle of water to the man’s lips. The man sipped, smiled, and closed his eyes.
‘We should wait until…”
“That could be several weeks, ya know,” Sakombí answered. “And I have to get back to Kinshasa.”
“There must be something.”
“There must. But nobody wants to try anything. The church is against condoms. The government doesn’t have the money. Nobody trusts NGOs from other countries, other religions.”
“Must be something we can do.”
“I suppose.”
They both watched the five Congolese men sleep in the scant shade of the tree. Kurtz stirred. He rolled on his side, groaned, and rolled back on his stomach.
“Water,” he complained.
Sakombí helped him sit up. He gave him a sip of his Primus. “Better for ya than water, ya know,” he smiled.
“How would you know?”
“Kurtz! He just helped save your life!”
“Did I ask him to? No. Did he stop that creepy little kid from stabbing me in the back? No.” He turned to face the river, but the pain in his back forced him to lie down. “Beer,” he ordered.
Sakombí held the beer out for him but when he reached for it, Sakombí snatched it away.
“One question, one answer, one sip of beer.”
“Fuck you. Fuck you both.”
“Well, okay. Shall we go?”
Sakombí nodded and the two got to their feet.
Kurtz struggled to get to his feet but the pain in his back was too powerful. He was forced to sit down again.
“You’ll know when that gets infected,” Sakombí said, “you’ll be able to smell it. A powerful rotting smell.”
“You can’t leave me here!”
“Sure we can,” Hairball said.
“Awright, awright. Whaddya wanna know?”
“Where’s Tipu Tip?”
“Who? Don’t know nobody by that name.”
“You sold Amelia to him.”
Kurtz stared at Sakombí’s beer. He looked at the dirt he was sitting on. He looked at the five dying AIDs sufferers.
“Don’ know nobody like that,” he muttered. “Give me a drink.”
Both Sakombí and Hairball took big sips from their Primus beers. They looked at the barges toiling up and down the river.
“That one,” Hairball said.
“Why?”
“No passengers. Whatever cargo they’ve got, is either really really illegal or is owned by some really powerful thug. Powerful warlord.”
“You’ve learned a lot since you’ve been here,” Sakombí said.
They both took another mouthful of beer.
“Hey,” Kurtz ordered. “What about me!?”
“Actually, Nyoka told me.”
Sakombí looked at Hairball, an eyebrow up in a question.
“She killed the snake that was trying to eat Kurtz.”
“A constrictor?”
“I guess.”
“Hey, assholes! Where’s my drink!”
Hairball looked down at Kurtz. He looked at one of the five skinny Congolese men dozing in the shade. He squatted next to the man.
“Here,” he said as he held his beer for the man.
The man smiled, sipped, and laid back down.
“Now,” Hairball said to Kurtz, “Want some?” He held up the can.
Kurtz looked at the man dying of AIDS, then at the can of beer.
“Nyoka thinks poison from the snake might’ve gotten into Kurtz’ wound,” Hairball said.
“He’s not dead.”
“Yet.”
If you have any comments, critiques, criticism, compliments, or just want to correct my French, I welcome your feedback.
I post a bit of fiction semi-irregularly and hope you can enjoy them.