Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Author:Tlotlo Tsamaase [Tsamaase, Tlotlo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, Black fiction, Black horror, Octavia Butler, kindred, IVF, Women, microchips, inequality, Crime, Murder, Mystery, parable of the sower, handmaid's tale, african fiction, Pregnancy, scifi horror, Cyberpunk
Published: 2024-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

17:39 /// These Dark Thoughts

Pistons of skyscrapers cram into the skyline as the highway curves into the city center, where the horizon is grey and mist-covered. Rain slashes against the windscreen. This is the life I’m living.

Gunshots.

Blood spatter.

Danger at every corner, and an ever-escalating speedometer.

My brother’s knocked out beside us in the back seat, clipped back by the seat belt. Myself in the middle, between him and Jan. My brother’s blindfolded, legs tied, hands tied, still unconscious. A flurry of worried texts from Mama. She boarded a flight two hours ago. I sent her reassurances that Papa was suffering mild symptoms of dementia and that we put him to bed. To dead.

Papa’s dead. Papa’s dead. Papa’s—

Jan shakes me. “Did you hear me?” My arm burns in pain. He unbuckles my seat belt, holds my face in his hands. “On the bright side, your family’s consciousnesses will be transferred into other bodies. They’ll be back before the end of week, tops. Back home. It’s murder. Not suicide. So they’re guaranteed a body.”

My father just sacrificed himself for me. For my crime. There’s a secret in this family burning us into molded corpses, our skins wilting into each other like flower petals.

“I’m so scared,” I whisper, hyperventilating. “All I wanted was love, intimacy, a body to hold, someone to have my heart. I just wanted connection. Why was that too much to ask? Our affair has done this, Jan. Our affair is killing people.”

Jan rubs my cheek, and I realize I’m crying. “He’ll be back home sooner than you know it.” He taps his chin as doubt fizzles in. “He did keep up with his premium subscriptions, right? Made sure to stay connected?”

The air tilts, sweaty and claustrophobic. The three-tiered health plan only benefits the rich. Premium earns you less time on the waiting list, around ten years to receive a donor body. The second level and third level, you wait twenty to fifty years, cheaper, but at the expense of your family members becoming far more separated.

On the far-left side of the A1 highway towers the crematorium, a bland concrete block. Its smokestack sticks out like a poorly done joint, and every evening it lights up and breathes out the smoke of burning flesh into the sky that’s turning gloomy. I watch the pyre smoke of burning flesh rise into the sky, the heavens smoking it up. Lightning flashes on the horizon, across Gaborone Dam. If it was way back then, the crematorium chamber would be his bed tonight. I stifle a breath, and Jan holds my hand tightly as if he can hear what I’m thinking. Papa preferred traditional interment at our family estate grounds, and each time he drove me to the prestigious university that he and Mama paid for with their mortgage, he’d glimpse that smoky shroud obscuring the treetops and mutter an, “Mxm,” and say, “God is smoking all these assholes’ sins.” I was only twenty. I didn’t understand how you could be religious and still commit blasphemy by putting “God” and “asshole” next to each other.

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