Lagoon

by Nnedi Okorafor

“Maybe my husband is right,” she said. “Maybe I am a witch.”

“Look,” Adaora said, desperate. “I met Agu last night. We were both walking on Bar Beach. We and one other man were in the same place when we heard the boom. It was painfully loud. Then . . . something . . .” She bit her lip. No, she didn’t think this was a good person to tell about them being taken. “This woman came . . . from the water.”

She isn’t made of cellular matter. And she’s not the only one. There are more of them . . . in the water. That’s why the water is rising.”

“My uncle is very ill.” “But he is still the President, sir,” Agu said, trying to control himself. “He has not relinquished even one presidential responsibility, isn’t that true? Absurd as the idea of aliens in Lagos, in any part of Nigeria is, it’s real. It’s happened. He must get involved.” Peripherally, Agu could see Adaora, nodding.

“Is it green?”

Agu frowned. “Well, sir, she’s—” “Slimy? Does it have antennae and those big yanfuyanfu eyes?” Benson asked, a smirk on his face. “They’re not evil like the ones in all the movies,” Adaora added. Benson grunted, twirling his pencil in his hand. “You know, it was just alcohol.” “What?” Agu snapped. “At the checkpoint last night,” Benson said. “We were all drunk and tired. And you can’t tell me she didn’t want it.”

“Women don’t scream, cry and fight if they ‘want’ it!” he shouted.

Adaora frowned, her mind racing. “What if we’re not telling the truth? What if this isn’t really an alien invasion? You’ll look like a fool in front of everyone.” Benson smiled as he took her arm again. “Agu never lies. That’s his biggest problem.”

The President of Nigeria had been in the same place for over fifteen hours since waking from his heart surgery, staring and staring at the news on television.

He wished he were at his home in Abuja with a glass of cool Guinness, watching Star Wars on his high-definition widescreen television. He loved Star Wars, especially the more recent installments. There was such honor in Star Wars. In another life, he’d have made a great Jedi knight. Being a vigilante loyal only to justice was always better than being any kind of head of state. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said in his dry voice.

as this woman, thing, whatever she was. Philo was positive that the woman-thing was evil, with her pleasant demeanor and long, too tightly braided hair and wicked ways. God will punish her, Philo thought darkly.

Troy only looked out the window, a dark expression on his face. He was thinking about the phone call he’d gotten a few hours earlier from his cousin Inno, saying his sweet pretty cousin Oregbemi had been raped last night by some soldiers or police, one of whom had had the nerve to be on television last night.

Adaora was fuming. Why did we think the man would behave rationally? When had the Nigerian government and military done anything for its people?

She wanted to slap her other cheek. She’d been an idiot. She and Agu, rare patriotic Nigerians trying to do the right thing. Stupid members of the populace. Insignificant, powerless civilians. She should have known better.

For the first time in his entire life, he was immensely proud and intensely ashamed at the same time.

They’d been hiding for such a long time. Not so much out of shame, but out of a need to stay safe.

With each step he took toward the car, the need for revolution left him like air from a leaky balloon.

Opening his eyes, Agu found himself trapped in the water beneath the boat. He saw a huge swordfish-like creature stabbing the boat with its spear almost playfully. Then he saw something terrible. A shark was tearing Biko’s arm from his body. Then Private Agu ran out of breath, and saw no more.

The bishop leading the pack looked a little crazy. Moziz noted that some of the people with him looked angry. He rolled his eyes. These kinds of people always showed up whenever the masses stopped “suffering and smiling”.

“What have you done to the ocean?” Agu asked the manatee. Were the monsters attacking the oil rig and the supply vessel, too? These were Ayodele’s people and earthly allies? Ayodele was not only a shape-shifter, she was a liar. She hadn’t come in peace at all.

“I no dey go anywhere with una,” she snapped. Moziz looked at Tolu and Jacobs, then gave a small nod. All three of them lunged at her. Then they immediately froze. To Moziz it sounded like the house was full of those noisy bugs in the trees, all screeching in terrible harmony. He clapped his hands over his ears, dropping his gun. His mouth hung open and his hearing was muffled as, right before his goddamn eyes, she . . . she . . . melted? Melted! Imploded? Disintegrated? Right before his eyes. Evaporated into something small on the floor. A green . . . He squinted. A green lizard.

“What are you doing?!” Jacobs shouted. “Stop it!” Anthony, Kola and Fred were still trying to figure out which way was safest to flee when the lizard ran out the door between Anthony’s legs.

The way things were going at the moment, something had to give. Something had to intervene. And something was about to. “Ayodele,” she whispered. “Thank God.”

“We landed here in the night,” the woman said, her strange voice smooth and confident. The picture moved a bit. It was obvious that someone was holding the camera and trying his best to stay still. “From beyond earth. From space. You all will call us aliens. We are guests who wish to become citizens . . . here. We chose here. I am the first to come and I greet you.”

The winds of change are blowing. We are change. You will see.”

“In less than twenty-four hours, I have seen love, hate, greed, ambition and obsession amongst you,” Ayodele said. “I have seen compassion, hope, sadness, insecurity, art, intelligence, ingenuity, corruption, curiosity and violence. This is life. We love life.”

In Lagos, father, mother and boy child sat in their family room, watching the alien on their old television.

“We come to bring you together and refuel your future,” Ayodele said. “Your land is full of a fuel that is tearing you apart.”

down. Everything seemed dreamlike.

Even in the midst of such chaos, people were still people. Still hungry and hoping to take advantage of a good situation.

Only then did the people carving up the whale pause to look up. Then they took their meat and got out of that place as quickly as possible.

Nevertheless, the tarantula believes that life is best lived by embracing the changes that come his way. So he gently places a leg on the cool pavement; the leg beside the space of the one he lost. This leg is the most sensitive, always has been. With it, he can feel the soul of the great spider artist of the land, she who weaves all things into existence.

glorious. It was a call for change. Now, he will answer that call.

“These alien beings will be embraced by the Lord!” the man said. “Enough!” someone shouted back. “This isn’t the time for that!” It was a woman’s voice. The boy looked around but he was too small and could not see who it was. “Enough?” the man in white responded. “The size of the Lord’s flock will never be large enough! Not until he has gathered all of his sheep! Today is a new day. A day when—”

for Fisayo, the younger sister of Jacobs.

She got up. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was the rapture, the apocalypse, the end. She opened her mouth to take in more air. She wanted to get to the beach and stand before the water. She wanted to be taken, like those three people who’d been embraced the night before.

When she was washed back onto the beach, she thought she was dead. She opened her eyes and tried to gasp. Instead, she threw up nearly a gallon of water. She vomited and vomited. Then she got up and walked to the water and shouted, “May God set you on fire!”

She felt something break, deep in her mind. Last night, she had sold herself to an American man who afterwards told her she was not dirtier than any other women from any other part of the world. She had watched the devil snatch people into the ocean and return them, infused with evil. She had later seen one of the evil shape-shifters in recorded footage on her brother’s phone and then on the screen of her own phone. A whale had died on Bar Beach. Now she was seeing the city of her birth and upbringing invaded by the evil. And not one of the creatures turned to look at her. To them, she was nothing. Her eye twitched and her

Yards away, Ayodele was still shrieking as Anthony stood over her, unsure of what to do. She had bled not a drop of blood. She wasn’t just melting, she was disintegrating. Her skin was growing grainy, her hands and the lower part of her face losing their shape. She was staring at Kola and Kola was staring at her. Then Ayodele looked up at Benson, her gaze moving wildly between him and the other soldiers. Her left eye had dissolved to nothing but the look in her still intact right eye was one of pure hatred.

Adaora looked up at her, pleading silently. She didn’t know what she was asking for but she was pleading. These aliens had come in peace. Had come. Had.

She’d never believed in God but she was a scientist and knew that matter could be neither created nor destroyed. It just changed form.

The soldier, whose name was Hassam, helped, too, though he had a glazed look of shock and confusion in his eyes. “That woman healed the child,” he said, turning the stove off and opening a window. “She kills and gives life.”

“I hate humans,” Ayodele said. Adaora could hear her clearly, even though Ayodele was in the kitchen and she was down the hall. “I want nothing to do with you, “Ayodele continued. “Any of you.”

“Do you hate all of us?” she heard Kola ask Ayodele. “You just saved me.” Before inserting the key, Adaora tried the door knob. It turned. “Shit,” Adaora hissed. She leaned her head against the door, tears rolling down her cheeks. She focused on the voice of her children in the kitchen. “And just because a few humans acted stupid, it doesn’t mean we’re all stupid,” she heard Fred add. “We learned that in school. And you’re much smarter than everyone at school put together.” Adaora smiled, wiping away her tears. “And you can’t cause all that has happened and then just leave,” Kola said firmly. “You said you had a mission! That you were the am . . . ambah-sidoor, remember?”

Outside, Lagos rioted and aliens invaded.

As he sat there facing the ocean, his back to Lagos, he felt present at the death of something. The death of Lagos. The death of Nigeria. Africa. Everything?

He was alive, and worse things had happened. He chuckled. This wasn’t the first invasion of Nigeria, after all.

To step into this nightmare was to step into the unknown. He’d seen such chaos before, when he was sent north during fresh riots between Christians and Muslims. He’d learned the hard way that he could never trust people during such times. Anyone could get swept in to the mob’s violent mentality at any moment.

“He is one of them! Look am. Get am! He is one of them! I saw him go into the ocean last night and come out!”

Then something smashed against the side of his head and crashed to the ground. A bottle. Coca-Cola? he wondered. The gods must really be crazy.

well that's a really american symbol