Parallax Unbound

By Aly De Angelus and Robert Haynes

Toni’s chest heaved under the weight of the rubble. Each labored breath ignited a furious cough, while the settling dust and ash caked dry the tears on her cheeks. She felt the warmth of blood on her leg as she sat up and looked around.

“Hello?”

Her face contorted as she swallowed.

Then there was a muffled response a few feet from her head. A hand quivered up from under debris moving aside a wooden plank.

“Mr. Manzi? Are you okay?” she asked.

“Mutoni, I’m not okay.”

“What happened?”, she asked in exasperated tears.

“Mutoni, this was no accident. Come here. I must give you something.”

His hand raised, holding a necklace with a pendant shaped like a human heart, a dull sheen glinting off the haze of the settling dust. The pendant shook under his quivering hand like a puppet.

“Mutoni. I can feel the life leaving my body. I bleed from my stomach. I’m in great pain. You must take this locket—”

“Mr. Manzi! You must be fine. Who will look after me now? I am but an orphan,” whimpered Toni.

“Hush, child! My time is short. Take the necklace. Use it to escape town. You must leave.”

Manzi dropped the locket into Toni’s hand and released his final breath.

Sitting in the solitude of a decimated mine, Toni inhaled a mix of coltan ore and human flesh. She stuffed the pendant in her knapsack and painstakingly tunneled her way to the surface.

Rain beat down on Mutoni’s back like a drum, pushing her closer toward the war-torn land. Her neck hung low in exhaustion, her injured leg leaving a trail of blood in the sludge. With what little balance remained, she limped to the nearest market two miles south of the mine.

What did Manzi mean the explosion wasn’t an accident?

Who set it off?

These thoughts saddened Mutoni, but she was determined to escape this town. This country. The war in the Congo has been spilling over the border for months while the local government pretended there was no radioactive fallout.

A wooden cart with broken wheels rested tenuously against a wall whose drab and depressing bricks were all different sizes. A dingy sheet hung lazily over a merchant, who seemed indifferent to the flies buzzing around his face. Bananas, potatoes, and reusable jugs of tinted water were on display.

“Is this all you have?” she asked.

“And what do you have, young one?”

“I have this,” she said, pulling the locket from her pocket. “How much can I get with this?”

His hand reached out to touch the glimmering heart on a weathered chain. The vendor cupped his hand and brought it closer, but the pendant disappeared.

He looked down as if it had dropped, maybe into a bunch of bananas. The vendor looked back at Toni and pointed to her chest.

“I need to see it. Hand it to me.”

Toni followed his finger and startled when she saw the locket hanging around her neck. She hastily removed it, her face befuddled. She held the chain and pendant out again, this time pinching the chain at the top and letting the full length of it extend down to the heart-shaped locket.

The vendor stared at Mutoni, his hand slowly reaching for the necklace. As his fingers were about to touch it, it disappeared. The merchant’s eyes flashed in anger, believing Toni was pulling a prank on him.

“Go away, girl!” he shouted.

“Whatever,” Toni scoffed and limped away.

With each staggered step, Mutoni became fully entranced by the movement of her necklace. Toni pulled the chain to one side and released, watching the metallic heart sway like a hypnotic pendulum. For a moment, a world of crime and chaos was replaced with a simple force of nature. And then, the shrill of gravity pulled Mutoni back to the ground again.

“Let me go! Now!” yelled a woman, whose scream echoed from a nearby alley. “Get off of me! Help, somebody!”

The woman coiled in fetal position while two armed men clawed at her garments. Her linen top was tattered and drenched in blood, her belongings strewn across the alley.

No one helped each other anymore, and this was commonplace.

Mutoni, however, was different. She felt hope and strength, and a vague sense of comfort radiating from the center of her chest.

“Leave her alone!” Toni shouted.

The men turned, raised their pistols, and fired. Their bullets struck everywhere except Mutoni, whose arms covered her face.

Out of ammunition, they dropped their guns and resorted to brute force. Mutoni did not want to fight, but she’d seen countless crimes since Rwanda declared Martial Law last year.

Mutoni stood firm with her hands in fists, eyes squinted, bracing for impact.

Right punch.

Left punch.

Uppercut.

Round house.

The attacks did not strike her.

She looked around her and saw a swirl of motion, like a tornado of shadows. The thugs, exhausted and terrified, fled from Mutoni’s unfathomable power.

“Are you alright?” Toni asked the woman.

“I’m okay ... thanks to all of you. I would have been dead, or worse, without the help of you and your friends. What are your names?”

Toni looked behind her and back at the woman.

“You’ve really taken a beating. It’s just me ... My name is Mutoni, Toni for short. What’s your name?”

The woman rubbed her eyes.

“Sh-Shyaka. People call me Shy,” she said, with a long pause. “And Toni …?”

“Yes?”

“I can clearly see three people behind you. They are dressed like you, too.”

Mutoni looked at Shy and then looked down at the necklace in confusion. There was no explanation for this, so Mutoni decided to change the subject.

“Shy, we need to find shelter.”

“I know a place. Follow me.”

After a few minutes' walk across some fields, they approached a farm house next to a dense forest. An old woman sat on the porch, slowly waving a wicker fan and giving no indication that she noticed the two moving towards a utility shed behind her home.

Shy lifted the handle and the wooden door creaked open. Inside was a matted pile of hay and a bottle of dirty water.

“Is this where you live?” Toni asked.

“Yes. I have no home.”

“Who was on the porch?”

“I don’t know her name,” Shy admitted. “When my husband died last year, I lost my house. The police seized it and kicked me out. I sat in the market for a few days. Then the old lady walked by, pulled me up by my shirt, and walked me to her house. She pointed at this shed and then sat on her porch.”

“How did he die?” Toni probed, taking a seat next to her.

“He was a great fisherman. He owned his own boat and made a good living for us. Last year, he was making a delivery to the big island on the lake.” Shyaka’s lip quivered.

“He was making a delivery when the dirty bomb went off,” she continued. “The government said everyone on the island died.”

After a moment, Toni asked, “For us?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said he ‘made a good living for us.’ Who is us?”

She pulled a small, faded picture from under the hay. The picture was of a tall, handsome man holding a young boy. Both wore bright, mischievous smiles.

“What were their names?” asked Toni.

“Akimana,” Shy said, wiping a tear and smiling at the photo. “We named our son after my husband. He wanted to be a fisherman like his father. I finally let him go, and then the bomb went off,” her voice bitter with guilt.

“I’m sorry,” Toni said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

Shyaka shook her head and stood up.

“How did you fight those men?” Shy asked.

“I didn’t … Well, I don’t know. When they turned to attack me, I heard fluttering around me, like birds. Then they started fighting the air.”

Toni stood up and pulled out the locket.

“It may be this necklace.”

“May I hold it?”

Toni gingerly lifted the necklace over her head and handed it over.

Shyaka’s hand dipped a few inches when she held it.

“This is very heavy,” Shy exclaimed.

“It is when it’s carried. When it’s around my neck it’s weightless.”

Shy shoved it back to Toni, believing the pendant to be cursed.

“Shyaka, I need to leave here. This town. This country. My parents also died last year. Do you know how to get out of the city?”

Shy thought for a moment then nodded.

“I might.”

Toni and Shyaka left the shed and headed toward the harbor.

Resting on a hill a few kilometers away, Shyaka pointed west.

“We go there.”

Toni peered into the afternoon sun to see a checkpoint by the water.

“Why the harbor?” Toni asked.

“Once we get there, we steal a boat.”

As they descended, screams erupted from a small house nestled in some trees. Toni and Shy traded glances, then ran toward the commotion.

Behind the house, two masked men carrying machetes corralled a family, hands bound and kneeling, into a chicken-wire cage. The decapitated body of a woman lay nearby.

“Let them go!” Toni shrieked.

The men turned and ran at them, disappearing into a flutter of shadows. One of them tripped and dropped his machete. Shyaka picked up the blade and thrust it through the man’s back.

One of the captives unbound his fetters and tackled the other thug, who swung wildly at the air. The captive unleashed a vengeance of fisted blows until the attacker died.

With captives released, Mutoni and Shyaka began to leave.

“Wait,” a man declared. “Who are you?”

“We are nobody,” Shyaka said. “A widow and an orphan.”

“I am Chuma. Those men killed our mother,” he said, nodding at the woman’s body. Five young men stood before them. “We are now orphans.”

“We head to the harbor to leave here,” Toni declared. “Would you come with us?”

“Let us bury our mother. Then we travel with you.”

At dusk, the group approached the checkpoint manned by three guards.

“Go away!”, shouted a guard. “The harbor is closed.”

“We will leave,” Toni said, “through the harbor.”

The boys rushed toward the first guard who opened fire. Toni and Shyaka dashed to the other. The seven appeared to the guards as a mass of people, and the third guard radioed for help.

The boys killed the first guard, taking his rifle. They ran to the second who fired sporadically at the parallaxes of Toni and Shy.

The third guard fired at all of them, striking the second guard in the chest. Two of the boys and Shy charged the final guard, pummeling him to death.

Shyaka counted the brothers. Two of them lay limp next to the third guardsman. Then she saw Mutoni, lying in the dust by the second guard’s body, her chest bleeding from a bullet.

Shy crouched down and whispered into Mutoni’s ear.

“Toni, don’t worry. We’ve got you now.”

The three remaining brothers swarmed around Toni.

“Don’t you dare give up on us,” Shy cried.

Mutoni shook her head, coughing blood.

“Leave me … I’m dead weight.” Mutoni took in a belabored breath. “Protect the boys.”

Mutoni peeled off the necklace and dropped it into Shyaka’s hand. Beheaving her last breath, Mutoni locked eyes with Shy and said, “The more you save, the more that can fight.”

Shyaka held the heavy heart in her hand and wept.

A squad of police officers quickly approached, opening fire from a distance.

“We go to Lake Kivu,” Shyaka declared.

“That’s radioactive water. The harbor’s been closed since the explosion, and there are no boats,” a brother said.

Shy saw the police men gaining ground and then looked back at the Lake behind the gate.

“I know,” Shyaka answered the boys. “Can you swim?”