Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks

Author:Jacqueline Crooks [Crooks, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

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I wake up shivering in the dark. I walk down the dusty corridors, follow the music coming from the main room, four rows away. There’s Monassa, sitting cross-legged on the floor and rocking from side to side. He’s at the music deck playing a spell-casting, slowed-down riddim.

‘Come yah, baby, keep me company.’ He pats the black sheepskin rug next to him. His voice is soft, calm, controlled.

I’ve been here all this time, and he’s asked for nothing but my attention and my tunes. I can grant him this.

‘We’re duppies come back from the dead to take control,’ he says. He’s laughing. I kiss my teeth.

Static on his fingertips when he puts them to my lips. The stench of his pheromones under my nose. Drop my face and he tips it up, pushes the chillum pipe to the back of my throat.

‘Pull,’ he says.

I inhale a black storm. Separation of positive and negative.

I become supernatural.

He twists my nipples. Tuning me.

‘What are you doing? No. I ain’t ready for this,’ I say.

He drowns me out, spits lyrics: ‘Let’s get inna this, baby. No time to play.’

Fight, flight or freeze. I freeze, like I always do. Unsure.

Then he’s on top of me, thrusting inside me, grunting, heating his blade. Whenever I pull away, he pulls me back.

‘Wind you waist, gyal! Smooth me in.’

I become supernatural: shock-out-shock-out. Leave my body. Float. Inna the cave of my gut, a split-faced god watching me with snake-coiled eyes, its vex-line mouth chanting: fight! But I’m frozen stiff.

Monassa ain’t done. He’s stroking my hair. ‘Baby, you need to let loose.’

Static in his hands as he pulls me outta my roots.

I become supernatural. Pray to the god in my gut, its hollow face silent.

Jumping needle record on repeat.

There’s static in his eyes as he comes.

My body stays in lockdown. I’m outside myself, hanging with spirits until it’s safe to return.

Afterwards, he gets up and leaves without a word.

I stumble to my room, hashish smoke winding through my veins.

Don’t feel anything except a heaviness under my ribs.

This feeling won’t go away. There’s no release from grief.

I’m too far inna shadow. The light nowhere in sight. I finally realise there may be no escape from the Safe House.

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