6°47'56.7"N 5°16'33.8"W – Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast

  21.05.2024- 09.45 UTC +00.00

  My/Demi’s body was lying on the back of the car, small dark spiders crawling on top of her head. A tall man was sitting next to her, pushing her lifeless body inside, the door next to him ajar as he had just pulled her body inside.

  “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” he loudly protested, as blood was pouring from her/my head.

  The radio next to me turned on, its static being replaced by men’s voices.

  “More are coming,” I said and I heard cars’ tires twisting on the asphalt, not too far from here. “Close the damn door.”

  The man pulled the door, and I hit the gas. We needed to go away as fast as possible, wait for me/her to recover, and be weaved again.

  “Who are you?” The man cried in Baoulé.

  “I am her, for now, and she is me. We need to stay alive,” I answered to him using the same tongue.

  “Who? She, Demi?”

  I opened the glove compartment and pulled out a gun. I tossed it back to him.

  “If they appear, aim for their tires!”

  “I don’t know how… what?” The man complained still in shock.

  “Improvise!” I yelled, as I made a sharp turn into one of the main streets of the neighborhood. The more turns I made, the less chances they could find us in a line of sight. If we could avoid the gunfight, we should.

  “Where are we going? Who are you?” He asked as he tried to calm himself. I was speeding through the street, as people jumped and looked startled at us.

  “I don’t know who I am,” I said confidently, “But I know who I will be. A god.” This is what the voice had promised me, before making me immortal, one with the spiders and one with her/me.

  “Okay, nice to meet you.”

  I could sense the ridicule in his voice, but he did not understand.

  “I am trying to get us west. Outside the city,” I explained.

  “What about Drissa?”

  “Who the fuck is…” I stuttered. Drissa? I did not know who he was, but there was something at the tip of my tongue, at the edge of my breath. It was like a promise, a boundary I could not cross.

  I turned the steering wheel and flung us into a U-turn. Cars behind us honked, and people swore obscenely. I grabbed my handgun from the seat next to me.

  “A… god? What’s the plan?” The man asked.

  I lowered my window ready to shoot. Right on cue, two more cars exactly like us swerved sharply in front of us. I aimed for their tires, hitting at least one wheel. I caught them off guard – not expecting us in their sights so soon, but I knew what would follow.

  “Find him!” I yelled at the man behind us, as our enemies shot their first fire. Bullets ricocheted as they hit the car’s protective layers, and I drove toward the center of Dioulakro.

  Chaos was the strategy. If we couldn’t run away, until Drissa was found, we would stall until she/I was stitched up again.

  “Drissa…” I muttered the name. I could not recognize it, the same way I did not remember mine. But I knew I had to do everything in my power to find him.

  I looked at the rear-view mirror. The man in the back seat was busy: he was no longer holding the gun, but he had a darkened dirk in his hand, dripping blood. An open wound on his left biceps indicated he had stabbed himself.

  “I do not want to question your methods,” I said.

  “Then don’t! Let me focus!” He yelled back at me and continued yelling in the same tone. “I can see me in the car and I can count all of us. Every single one of us, the spiders too. I can see the seams of the seats around me, I am them…”

  He continued reciting what he could see, what he could feel, and what he could fathom. As he did, he used his small dirk to mark dots and symbols on the car, using his blood as paint.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I tried not to listen – but I could not help but wonder how a madman like him thought to ridicule my rumblings of becoming a god. I turned swiftly through another turn. More people around us were now screaming and cowering in corners, as we were now cruising in criminal velocity through a highly populated area.

  Another round of bullets echoed, and I drifted left and right to reduce their chances of hitting any critical part of the car.

  “I see the streets around. I see the map from above and beyond,” the man continued yelling in our mother tongue, and I realized the car had received more damage from him inside, as he smothered in blood and pierced whatever point he thought was correct. And then – was he crying? “I see him. He is safe. Turn right!”

  I did as he commanded and ran along a pedestrian’s road. Women jumped out of our way as they screamed for help,

  “Where is he?” I asked frantically, not knowing what to even look for. I looked at the rear-view mirror. The back of the car was unrecognizable, covered in occult symbols carved by the madman. His eyes were glowing with a light blue hue, as tears ran down his cheeks. He was holding onto the seats around him as I drove. And then I noticed next to him: her/my eyes twitched. I/she was not awake yet, but the spiders tirelessly weaved. The madman screamed again.

  “Left! Go left and hit the gas!”

  I obeyed and pulled the steering wheel to the left, crashing partially through a bus stop. I did not want to check if anyone was waiting there. At this point, nothing mattered anyway.

  “Whe…” Everything slowed down for a brief moment, when I wondered where exactly that big white van had appeared from, if it would even make a difference if I pulled the breaks – or if I would even get a chance to become a god as promised.

  I first heard laminates twisting and breaking, and then I saw it was us ramming right into the van. We rammed it right into the wall of the building next to it. For a millisecond, we were without gravity inside the car – and then I got launched to the front window.

  Everything hurt and tasted like iron. A tiny speck appeared on the bottom part of my vision: a tiny spider. I could not move, I only groaned while the spider crawled inside my eye.

  “Drissa!” I heard Julien’s voice yelling somewhere from my right. A bright red and yellow light made everything hard to see. I coughed blood.

  “Where am I…” I tried to ask, but my voice was coarse. I was in a car crash, but this was all I could tell. I groaned again, as I tried to move in the limited space I had. Blood dripped on me, but I could not tell its origin.

  “Oh my god Julien, are you hurt?” Drissa’s voice yelled. He was terrified.

  “I am okay. We must get away, Drissa,” I heard him say.

  Someone else was in the car with me. I heard – and felt – something moving.

  “Help… me…” I tried to beg. My arms were heavy, and I put all the strength in them to pull myself through the crunched laminates and crawl through the car’s remnants. The more I crawled, the more blood ran from wounds caused by hot metal scalping my skin. And more spiders gathered around me.

  Were they there to stitch me up or finally consume me?

  “You… Drissa boy…” I spoke. My voice was cracking – I spat black liquid mixed with tangled webs.

  A young black boy was standing and panting right next to the man still holding his bloodied dirk. They had both turned towards me, their eyes swelling in horror.

  “Th-thank you, eh, god. You saved him,” the man said unsure of my intentions. I had crawled out of the driver’s seat, my left arm still holding my handgun.

  “You are the Drissa?” I asked. A thought was forming. If this was the boy that tethered me/her with a promise, with a pull so strong, I had to drive recklessly through a city, could I ever really be a god? The way it was promised?

  “Yes… Demi is that you?” The boy made a hesitant step toward me, calling me by her/my name.

  Next to me, a bright light turned on and died again. The lamp of the car gave a bright flash, still somehow attached to the metal bumper of the car. I crouched and grabbed the bumper, its sharp metal scathing my hand painlessly and my godly strength allowing me to lift it.

  “Oh… big man. We are friends, okay?” The madman said.

  “I will be happier unbound,” I said angrily, “no god can be bound!”

  I lunged towards the boy. Three steps were needed to end his fate and release her/me. Instead, everything ended.

  The Sparked man’s body violently collapsed as all its webs were snapped, all that was holding it together turned against it and the small spiders consumed it.

  I was crawling outside the car, right behind the Sparked that was about to pulverize Drissa. The bumper fell on the ground right on the spot, as the disassembled body turned to dust. Drissa and Julien looked right at me, hesitating to even make a step after my webbed servant had just attempted to slaughter them.

  “They lose it if I am not here to rail it in,” I said panting, “please help me out of here.”

  Drissa ran towards me as Julien yelled at him.

  “Are you crazy? Let’s run!”

  He wasn’t wrong, it would have been better for them to run and leave me behind, but I was still grateful that Drissa came to my rescue. Pulling debris out of the way, he quickly managed to free me. I could barely stand and needed to hold on to him, but I was finally on my own two legs.

  “If you want to run on your own, feel free,” Drissa retorted. Julien scoffed and ran towards us, taking place next to me and making sure he and Drissa held me from each side.

  I looked around. People were showing up with mobile phones from the far corners of the small plaza that we had ended up in, somewhere in northern Dioulakro.

  I pulled my hoodie on top of my head and picked up the pace as we quickly started walking.

  “I know a place nearby,” I said before Julien could speak, “let’s hope there is no one else following.”