Bitter (Pet #0.5)

by Akwaeke Emezi

She was supposed to have had a childhood, a whole world waiting for her when she grew up, but instead kids her age were the ones on the front lines, the ones turned into martyrs and symbols that the adults praised publicly but never listened to because their greed was always louder and it was easier to perform solidarity than to actually do the things needed for change. It didn’t matter. None of it fucking mattered.

It was no wonder the people took to the streets, masses swallowing the roads and sidewalks, because in a world that wanted you dead, you had to scream and fight for your aliveness.

Sometimes, when she had music filling her ears and paper spreading at her fingers, Bitter could almost feel the bubble she was building, as if it was tangible, a shield that would protect her better than her weak windows. If she got it just right, maybe she could block out everything else entirely.

There were things she could draw and then there were things she could draw, and when the streets were loud the way they were this evening, only the second sort of thing would do. Only the second sort of thing could make her feel a little less lonely.

Bitter had bounced around foster homes since she was a baby, ending up with a steady foster family when she was eight, and she had removed all memories of the years before that, on purpose, because she needed to stay sane and some memories were like poison.

There was always a deep calm that spread over Bitter when she brought her work to life. It made her bubble into something real—it was a particular magic that she shared with no one else, and if this was so unquestionably real, then everything that was out there didn’t have to be. This was her favorite world to live in.

Bitter stuck her thumb in her mouth and watched with wide eyes as her drawing shimmered and the butterfly lifted off the page, fluttering around her in crayoned silence. Maybe she should have been afraid, but even as young as she was then, Bitter had been alone for too long and she’d seen much more terrifying things than a drawing deciding to come to life. Her butterfly felt like a friend, for the half hour it stayed with Bitter under the table before dissolving into sunshine dust.

The drawings had helped Bitter get through the years before she came to Eucalyptus,

“It’s more than broken, Blessing. Actually,” she corrected herself, “it’s not even broken. It’s doing what it was meant to do: protecting those rich motherfuckers and killing everyone else. Allyuh acting like you could change that.”

That was the power money had: it mattered over people; it could put a bullet into the head of anyone who was too loud, who found out too much.

It was impossible to be a billionaire and be good. You couldn’t make that kind of money without hurting people, without stealing from them, exploiting them, making them suffer while you accumulated wealth that was impossible to spend in this lifetime. Just sitting on it for nothing,

“You didn’t have to say anything, that’s how loud your thoughts are.”

“Everyone does keep fighting and fighting, one generation after another, and nothing changes. If you born lucky, then you live lucky. Otherwise…” She let her voice trail off because it had nowhere to go. “It is what it is.” Saying the words made Bitter feel like a dark cloud had hugged her, wrapping her in soft, thick gray, numbing her skin.

Hope is a discipline.”

She’d never thought of hope like that—as something serious and deliberate instead of something wishful and desperate.

As respectable as Miss Virtue looked, there was always that simmering energy in her, smelling faintly of menace and a shadowed past.

This time Miss Virtue laughed out loud. It should have been a reassuring sound, but again there was something about her teeth that sent a frisson of wariness down Bitter’s spine. She’s dangerous, her instincts whispered, just not to you.

We provide safety here, or at least we try our very best to, but safety is also something you can make for yourself, Bitter, even if it doesn’t feel like it now.”

Sometimes she wondered

how he found the courage to flash emotions as if no one could hurt him with them.

He had no idea, she thought, truly no idea, how much of someone’s world he could shift just by being himself.

Blessing had a gift for excavating a person’s spirit until it shone through their face and could be seized in her camera.

Her best friend wasn’t wrong—it was just that Bitter felt a little silly if she thought too hard about identifying as a painter. No one had told her until Eucalyptus that it was something she could do seriously, and Blessing was one of the loudest voices insisting that Bitter was a real artist, forcing her to hold a brush and stare into a camera and, for those minutes, not pretend she was something different or someone less.

Bitter found herself stretching into someone she didn’t quite know she could be.

Aloe saw the world with such expansiveness that it widened her own field of vision. It softened her armor just seeing how soft he was. That was why she’d told him the truth about her and Eddie, after he kept asking why they got on each other’s nerves so much. Aloe wasn’t someone who deserved to be kept in the dark, but that didn’t make telling him the truth any easier.

Bitter was terrified of what this conversation was going to bring up. It had been so much easier to let Eddie hate her.

Aloe was deliberately tender, so focused on healing, and it made Bitter want to soften her sharp edges so she wouldn’t cut him like she’d cut other people.

Who the fuck are you?” It was an excellent question. The best question, in fact. Bitter knew she had spent a long time hiding what she actually believed from people, and it was a hard habit to break, even when someone was looking at her with the amount of hurt Eddie had in her eyes. Only Blessing and now Aloe knew the truth about how Bitter did want a better world, but also about how hope had been beaten out of her, how it was safer to curl up in the pessimistic dark because then none of the horrific things would hurt as much because you’d made part of yourself dead to them, dead to anything else. Bitter knew that neither of them wanted her to live in that dark place, but Blessing was careful. She wasn’t the type to barge in and shine a light in places someone had curled over to hide. Aloe was the opposite. He barged in, bulldozing his hope and belief into dusty corners, shaking out the rugs and asking questions about what was underneath. He was clumsy and gentle, annoying and soothing at the same time. Bitter didn’t want to turn into someone who kept talking about her fear. Fear was fine, but showing it made you weak.

“You don’t have to have hope. You don’t have to be out there. You’re important just as you are. You matter.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie whispered against her head. “You don’t have to be one of us, Bitter. That’s not how any revolution works. Everyone has their place—mine just happens to be out there. Yours is somewhere else.” She glanced around Bitter’s room. “In here, by the looks of it. Making your work. We need the artists too, you know?”

The real question is, are you judging yourself for not having more capacity than you have?” Eddie tapped on her own chest. “That’s what you gotta figure out, in there. Who you’re really mad at. Us? Or yourself? And whatever system’s got you thinking you have to do or be everything instead of just finding your pocket and fighting from it. Like, imagine if everyone did that—just found their pockets and fought for the revolution however best they could, within their capacity.”

Bitter was proud of herself for opening up and being honest, for doing the work to heal instead of believing things always had to stay broken.

A war that spans generations, and y’all are the fiercest fighters yet.”

if Assata doesn’t have a head, then you can’t chop the head off. Leaders are dangerous. One person is weak; the people are strong.”

Time unspun into textures, the wood against her cheek, the cotton of her sweats against her damp skin. Colorful circles brightened and dimmed behind her eyelids, salt

dried on her face, and the muscles of her arms stayed locked around herself. Everything outside her room, outside the puddle she was in on the floor, it all melted away.

Blessing had been right. Not everything was about money. Some things were about blood.

Things were different now, though, and all that furious oil simmering inside her had to go somewhere. It felt like if she didn’t push it out through her hands, it was going to smother her heart, drown her in the despair of living somewhere like Lucille,

To her surprise, the rage didn’t feel heated as it worked its way out of her. If felt cold, certain as ice, dark as deep water. Her desire was clear—she wanted the monsters gone.

She should have been afraid of what she was about to do, but there was nothing that could scare her inside her bubble.

She closed her eyes and for once let herself feel everything. Not just what was happening in Lucille to people who looked like her, not just what they’d done to all the kids like Eddie, but also the darkness of the years she’d forgotten, the boy hunting her while she hid in the attic, his hands in her hair, the foster

parents who called her and her mother cursed, the shame of knowing her father was a monster, which meant monster blood ran in her, but that was fine because if it took monster blood to get rid of the monsters, then Bitter was ready to do her part, her terrible and necessary part, no more hiding in Eucalyptus, no more staying apart and uninvolved. Her mother was dead and her father was a monster and Bitter didn’t know what she was, but she knew what she could do, she knew it was powerful and she was tired of being scared. Maybe it was time to become the scary one, the one they ran from, the one who could hurt those who thought they were untouchable. Nothing was untouchable. Bitter knew this because of everything that had already been taken from her. The foster parents had said she would end up nowhere, and she didn’t even mind, because if you were nowhere, then you could make up wherever you wanted to be, you could make it real. You could, for example, paint it into existence.

The creature looked like it was made out of compressed smoke that was having a hard time staying together; it kept giving off thick gouts of gray and white that would then pull back to the body. It was already eclipsing Bitter’s room, its head bending against her ceiling as the rest of its body broke out of the wood, long limbs and hooked claws. An acrid smell filled the air, and Bitter noticed that the wooden panel was charring as the creature worked its way through. She stared in shock as the wood burned, as this thing unfolded in front of her, terrifying and absolutely too big for this world. Her desk was pushed aside, then her bed and armchair, all the furniture scraping across the floor as the figure swelled into the room.

“You called,” it said. “You wanted.”

“Child, you wanted what I am.”

“Call me what I am. Call me what you wanted.” “I wanted help,” Bitter said, keeping the smile plastered on her face. “Are you here to help?”

“Call me what you wanted, child,” it said, amused and full of a lethal charm, its voice colder than dry ice. “Call me Vengeance.”

“You humans have always been like this. We have watched since the beginning.” “What you mean, we?” “Us.” Vengeance lowered its neck and rotated its head clockwise. “The angels.”

“Do not be afraid,” Vengeance said. “The world changes when the angels return. You will see it, hear it. It will make its way into your language, it will bend the shape of your air.” Vengeance stretched out, and Bitter backed up against the wall. “The hunters only hunt those who need hunting, those who cause harm and call down the hot light upon their heads.”

“It burns,” Vengeance said, and its voice glitched back into the thick guttural sound, heavy and dead. “Worlds burn when the angels return.” Bitter scoffed for a second. “This world’s already burning.” Vengeance turned to her and smiled again. “Yes,” it crooned. “It is. It can burn even better.” Something about its assurance pulled at Bitter. It sounded like it had a vision. “What does better look like?” she asked. The creature purred roughly, the sound wavering through its smoke. “Death,” it said, and it made the word sound like every desire in the world was caught up in it, like it was everything anyone could ever want, like it had