Pet

by Akwaeke Emezi

The names were of people who died when the hurricanes hit and the monsters wouldn’t evacuate the prisons or send aid, people who died when the monsters sent drones and bombs to their countries (because, as the angels pointed out, you shouldn’t use a nation as a basis to choose which deaths you mourn; nations aren’t even real), people who died because the monsters took away their health care—names and names of people and people, countless letters recording that they had been.

The people of Lucille would remember the temples that were bombed, the mosques, the acid attacks, the synagogues. Remembering was important.

“You know that’s what a lot of religion was, right? Just made-up things used to scare people so they could control us better.”

“Monsters don’t look like anything, doux-doux. That’s the whole point. That’s the whole problem.”

Good and innocent, they not the same thing; they don’t wear the same face.”

We are each other’s harvest. We are each other’s business. We are each other’s magnitude and bond.

“Yes, child. Angels aren’t pretty pictures in old holy books, just like monsters aren’t ugly pictures. It’s all just people, doing hard things or doing bad things. But is all just people, our people.”

Protecting his daughter was a life mission he remained dedicated to.

the problem is, when you think you’ve been without monsters for so long, sometimes you forget what they look like, what they sound like, no matter how much remembering your education urges you to do.

So, yes, people forget. But forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back.

I’m actually in a dream, like one of those that always feel horribly real but as soon as I wake up, I’ll feel silly for even thinking it was real because the real real seems so obvious. Maybe I just need to wake up and that will solve everything.

“Your world is unpleasant, your truths are unpleasant, the hunt is unpleasant.”

the truth is in the knowing.

You think you see everything, so you think everything you see is all there is to be seen.

There is the unseen, waiting to be seen, existing only in the spaces we admit we do not see yet.

You want many things, you are full of want, carved out of it, made from it, yes. But the truth does not care about what you want; the truth is what it is. It is not moved by want, it is not a blade of grass to be bent by the wind of your hopes and desires.

You’re just sorry you got caught. You’re not sorry for anything you did.”

“WE ARE EACH OTHER’S MAGNITUDE AND BOND.”