[i][b]Marange, Nyundo[/b][/i] Somber silence settled on the hangar, just as dust settles on abandoned sarcophagi. Mixed light sources conspired to compound the chamber’s crypt-like brevity: the amber dance of small isolated flames, the monolithic quartz ceiling’s diffused aura, and the prismatic bands that streamed sharply from Najwa’s machete. Miraculously, this was not yet a [i]chitunha[/i] and, as the Ibhumubi lilted body to body, Makemba wondered how it was so many survived the bedlam. As Najwa sprinted away and she knelt on the cold stone by Lydia’s supine and disfigured form, she checked her optimism. [i]“Omari, are there triage markers amongst your supplies?”[/i] As she glanced at the doctor, she noticed how her question disrupted his fixated glare at the tunnel to the coliseum, as yet uncollapsed. He jerked his head briefly, murmured a despondent [i]yes[/i], and rushed into his supply hovel. Momentarily he emerged, dropped a pack of green tape beside her, and sighed, [i]“Green for mind, yellow for body. Around the right wrist.”[/i] With a nod, she pulled off a strip of green tape and extended it to Omari. [i]“No,”[/i] he insisted. She acquiesced and peered down at her erstwhile victim. With a frown, she decided nothing could be done for the woman. Lydia’s memories—each brutal collision, each garish scene—already throbbed in her bosom and compounded with her own experiences. Still, it felt abstract; tolerable. She wrapped a strip of green tape around Lydia’s wrist and cupped her good cheek in her hand. It didn’t matter how gentle she was, Makemba realized as she eyed the shattered jaw’s ugly purple bruise, for she felt the damage was deserved and that brutal truth hollowed her act of tenderness. Eyes shuttered briefly in a stolen moment of meditation, she steeled her mind and turned to her next charge, a boy propped against a hut with a blanket haphazardly thrown over him; not clutched for comfort, but clumsily cast to conceal. His abuse was plainly evidenced by his swollen, cracked and bloodied lips, the bruise that swept across his throat, and incessant sleep tremors accentuated by soft cries of [i]hayi, hayi[/i]. She sat beside him, wrapped an arm around his shoulder, and placed her hand on his brow. Almost instantly, she sensed the child’s suffering ablate. Simultaneously, her eyes narrowed on Omari as he moved from patient to patient. Tears poisoned with fury stung her eyes as she felt him on top of her. Internally, she recoiled as his huge dark hands grasped and tore her clothes; the last of all her worldly possessions. Her favorite pants, her favorite blue and white Ørsted Energy t-shirt, her only pair of big boy underclothes. She struggled to breathe, but her throat was constricted by a frigid plastic hose. The ground was rough, the doctor was rough. Suddenly, she felt him on top of her. The absolute worst—the worst was the crazed mask of his face. Wide eyes, open mouth, close breath. Then it suddenly wasn’t when pain lanced into a place nobody was ever meant to touch her. It burned so much. She tried to cry for help, but her tenuous rasps for air were stifled when his tongue invaded her mouth and his nicotine-tinged saliva filled her throat. Urine soaked her loins and stung as acid upon her fresh wounds. [i]“Nceda moya omkhulu, hayi le,”[/i] she choked out as a hushed sob, for she now knew the truth of what transpired. Unsteady, she pushed herself to her feet and pushed the unabashed tide of tears from her cheeks with the back of her fist. The cruel experience was too familiar to her own childhood and defiled innocence amongst Boko Haram, a memory deliberately buried. However, she could not stop: hundreds of others remained to be assuaged, thus she needed to be strong; not merely for NYUNDO, not merely for the people here, but for herself. A deep moan interrupted her ruminations. Omari rocked back and forth on the floor, face in his hands, and sobbed, [i]“Kakhulu, kakhulu. Ndifanelwe kukufa.” [/i] Anger welled within her, but experience tempered her tongue’s edge. Without a word, she exhaled, stepped behind him, and placed her hands on his shoulders. While he rocked, she massaged away the tension and relieved him of his anamnesis; except it wasn’t another life, another person, or malevolent spirit who committed these atrocities. Omari raped J’sie. Makemba pummeled Lydia. Although their bodies acted on another’s volition, as marionettes in a sociopath’s puppet show, their hearts betrayed how it all made them feel. Even as he despised himself and longed for death, Omari exulted in and climaxed to the warmth of the boy’s soft, moist lips; the piquant nectar of his spit; and the provocative resistance of his tongue as it feebly wrestled back his own. He lavished in the tactile sensation of skin on skin, something put aside for too long in the pursuit of medicine. Almost forgotten, now awakened, his brain surged with dopamine at the touch of another’s body. The power he felt! The mightiness of his adult form atop a timid stripling! Then the ultimate release when he pushed through the boy’s defenses, his member engulfed tautly and fully by... Makemba abruptly stepped back and impulsively shuddered. Bile rose in her throat, but she choked it down. It was enough—it had to be enough. [i]“What is the last thing you remember, Omari?”[/i] [i]“I—I am missing time. Resetting a dislocated wrist, maybe. What happened here?!”[/i] [i]“Time for that later. Focus on healing people now. They need help, Omari. Yellow triage markers for those you’ve healed.”[/i] She needed to get away from him. She couldn’t so much as look at him anymore. Overwhelmed, she turned around and set herself to the task of extracting the wounds of the past from a victim. And so it went, victim and victimizer. In the end, she knew they were one and the same. Still, the sadistic delight, however well hidden, taken by these people—her people. It filled her heart with agony. Each mind she cured with her empathic siphon brought more pain into her bosom; numbness, meanwhile, remained an elusive hope. The mothers who murdered their babies; how much was she to taken from them? What lie could conceivably be spun to mend that open wound? Was she to entirely wipe their minds of their children’s existence? It hardly mattered as the implantation of false memories was beyond her capacity. Instead, she surgically ripped months of time away and prayed they never learned the truth. Exhausted, she paused to catch her breath. Already, one roll of tape was spent. Three more remained in her pocket. She panned across the hangar wherein, finally, the destructive fires were quelled and peace again reigned. Omari’s efforts already surpassed her own. Nkosiyabo busily levitated bodies and cots toward a central staging area directly beneath Najwa’s machete, by then only somewhat faded. Amidst the stain of blood, chemiluminescent mold sprawled across the floor in a massive mandala that grasped all present. So focused were the people on their sexual violence toward another, a remarkable amount of infrastructure remained unscathed. Jeeps and convoys with their canvas enclosures sat in perfect rows. The dozen or so wood shanties, hastily-erected in preparation for Phalaborwa’s refugees, stood unspoiled. No, it wasn’t the sight that bothered her. It was the smell that clung to the motionless stale air. Fuel oil, dust, mildew, blood, urine, feces, sweat, fear, anger—death. It smelled like death. Resolved to continue, she moved on to the next dreamless sleeper. A corpse marked by Omari with red tape. She continued on. Time for prayers, mourning, and closure would come later. Explanations would come later. The lies, oh the numerous incredulous yet absolutely necessary lies. Tears openly flowed over her crusted lashes and down her cheeks and throat by the time she reached Kamuanya, the shapeshifter girl; perhaps an hour later. Above, the light of Najwa’s weapon was nearly depleted, yet there were so many left to heal before she could beg Nkosiyabo to grant her relief in the form of slumber. Perhaps it would be compulsory, should fade the light that shielded them all from their worst impulses. Long ago, trepidation usurped the tenderness of her touch; now raw exhaustion gripped her. As skin touched skin, Makemba felt the girl’s terror pulse through her until it matched the beat of her heart. The sideshow mockery of the girl’s youth was tragic, but tragedies were bountiful in Marange that day. In contrast to the plights of others, this one’s recent pain was mild; a confusion ripe with terror, physical pain as her body contorted unnaturally into shapes beyond her ken, and regret at last at the damage her rampage caused. It was over for this young one, yet, as Makemba confusedly took in the hand that rested on Kamuanya’s brow, with its gnarled ancient flesh, melanomas and splotches, and arthritic bones deformed in a claw-like posture, a defeated horror flooded her bosom. [i]That is my hand[/i], she thought and, stricken, collapsed.