Vampires of Avonmouth by Tim Kindberg

Author:Tim Kindberg [Kindberg, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tim Kindberg
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I, Pempamsie, returned to the Royal after the day’s fruitless search for whoever knew of vodus and Super Mare. My questions about vodus were always met with incomprehension; mention of Super Mare provoked recognition but equally incredulity that I should ask about it.

Because of what I was about to put myself through, I stood awhile at the hotel’s threshold. The city hummed and whined behind me. The white sky in UK.land burned us all.

The Nkonsonkonso in UK.land was broken in many places. Flesh dissembled. Flesh had forgotten true flesh: unlike our Accra.city, with its artists; the rivers of us; our towers; our striving, restless energies. In Westaf our beads hummed together, but they blocked the sensa from outside, from Big Mind.

In Avonmouth.city, IANI held sway. I took a deep breath and entered the Royal.

The robot at the desk was receiving a client who had entered past me, directing him to room 71, where I would put myself on sale – but not be sold – with the other women. We all had our own rooms just for ourselves, where I would retire later, and a pool of rooms to use with the clients. Few bona fide guests stayed in the hotel. It was a sex work node.

Some of the women were robots, others flesh. They engaged in a ritual re-enactment of love-making. I sensed that little true love was made in UK.land, even outside the walls of the Royal. Not that I, Pempamsie, knew this love.

I told the robot at reception about my availability and walked to the room.

The clients entered. They barely remembered why they came, a spasmic urge. In their bright outfits, with haunted faces, they were ghosts. I searched their faces for the man who knew of vodus. It was he I had to find.

And there he was. My senses told me so.

I took him in silence to my own room, where I kept the painting. I could see as we walked that he understood the significance: not to use one of the sex work rooms. We were met inside by a searing beam of sunlight that had broken through the heavy white sheet of cloud, past the buttresses, monorails and towering node clusters of the near-above, all silent behind the windows.

I, Pempamsie, would be I again. I would remember my mother and father. I would lose the other that trammelled me.

“Why don’t you lie on the bed?” I said.

He had barely entered the room. Sunglasses. Suit. He remained standing. He was examining me.

“Take off your jacket.”

Sweat.

“I know what you are,” I said. “An ID officer.”

He did not reply. I walked over and helped him out of his jacket, started to unbutton his shirt, but he stopped me. Sweat.

“Relax. I won’t hurt you.”

Wouldn’t I? I felt him through his shirt.

The arms: veins like cables under the skin. As have I. Inhabitance, a sign. Nsoroma was wise to send me here.

Unlike the others, for him I took off my blouse. Showed him veins like cables under the skin. He saw, and understood.

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