Within These Wicked Walls

by Lauren Blackwood

Some of the thematic material in Within These Wicked Walls discusses death, body horror, and physical and emotional abuse from a parental figure.

They were all just the desert’s cruel trick. There was nothing out here. Nothing but me,

It’s said the Evil Eye was the first Manifestation of sin—namely jealousy and greed. In a constant state of longing, it latches on to any human who desires the same thing it does. Thriving crops, a random string of good luck, even receiving too many compliments could draw unwanted attention.

Amharic didn’t leave her mouth comfortably—it stuck in all the wrong places. That is, unless she’d intended to spit the words at me like a curse.

I bowed slightly, trying not to wobble on my exhausted feet. “Yes.” “The exorcist?” Exorcist.

We were healers. Artisans. Trained to attune ourselves to the spirit world deeper than anyone else would dare to. But, I supposed, for the purpose of my employer … “That’s correct. The exorcist.”

Never in my life had I seen so many white people in one place. We hadn’t been colonized like other countries, so my experience was limited to the occasional missionary or activist, who were all nice enough.

“Why doesn’t anyone here wear an amulet?” I asked. “Superstitious nonsense,” Peggy said, waving away my words as if they stank. “Our God protects us.” I looked at the others, but they seemed to be deliberately avoiding eye contact with me. I took a deep breath, trying not to sound annoyed. “We worship the same God. He created the doctors to prescribe medicine, just as he created the debtera to craft amulets.”

“This is your contract. Take your time reading before you sign, of course. Most of it is standard—free room and board, meals, amenities. I know your line of work is normally paid by the hour, but I believe I’ve settled on a flat weekly rate that’ll better serve the both of us. And—not so standard—there’s a list of rules that you’ll be required to abide by.”

I shifted my feet wider to brace myself, blocking my face with my arms, my dress whipping around my legs. Just over the howling, I could hear bangs and scratches, moaning, the creaking of wooden boards. The Waking had begun.

I’d started menstruating on my twelfth birthday. I remember because the cramping in my thighs and stomach was so excruciating, I’d literally begged God not to let me die. I didn’t know any other way to deal with it—topics of a sexual nature, as a cultural rule, weren’t discussed outside the home without drawing shame, and so there was no woman in town I could go to for help. All I could do was wait for Jember to get home, foolishly sticking a glass bottle neck inside myself to catch the blood so I wouldn’t ruin every piece of fabric in the cellar.

“Is there an amulet for this?” he asked, panting. “There’s an amulet for everything.”

Jember sat on the stairs constructing an amulet. He wore his official debtera attire: a white turban—made slightly larger by containing the dreadlocks he refused to cut—and white robe striped with red, green, and yellow along the hem. And his official Jember attire: red leather gloves, a tall black boot on his left leg, and a peg leg made of dull metal on the right. His beard was unkempt, but his clothes were neat.

He smirked. “Is that Kelela? You can’t see her face. It could be anyone, really, if you use your imagination.” My pulse raced, and for a moment I allowed myself to imagine that maybe he hadn’t drawn Kelela. That maybe he had drawn … me. But reality won out. “I don’t think she’d appreciate you drawing her that way.”

look at it. I glanced at the top of the page, where the title sat beside the page number in the header. Jane Eyre. I’d never read that one, but from what I heard it was a romance. A significant one, apparently, because a paragraph was circled in red, wide and uneven as if by a finger. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

“Don’t ever cry over a boy again. Unless he transforms into a hyena and tears your leg off. Until that happens, you don’t get to cry.”

Magnus crinkled his nose like a snarling puppy. “I’m not a little boy, old man.” “Why does everyone your age think thirty-eight is old?”

Jember broke it with a sigh. “I think we can agree the bond between us isn’t based on normal love. We’re survivors. We keep coming back together again because we need each other to survive … but that’s not to say I don’t care about you. I do.”