
SATURDAY, 1 JULY 2147
My dearest Willow,
What I have to say is stranger than the fiction I was angling to write. The book I was writing is going nowhere, I’m afraid. But I have more things to fear here. Beloved, it seems forever since you kissed me goodbye at the satellite launchpad, thrilled with me about this excursion to Woop Woop in New Australia. Who would imagine the day would come when I’d live true an embarkment to the olden days excursion of our dreams?
I am sorry you couldn’t make it with me this time. But moving up a place in the ProcreateGold™ program is too important to miss, I understand. My dearest hope is for the success of our nano-fertility schedule. Still, I miss your company on this adventure we planned for so long, with such dreams, with such joy. I love you, mwah.
Mwah.
Remember our excitement at the launchpad! I almost expected them to offer me a paper boarding pass, a barcode on it to scan like how it was in the past. Travelling on an airbus that rocketed for two or more hours in the sky, enough time to serve refreshments. I confess that I had an earnest want to experience those things, everything that would make this odyssey from Planet Nine to the past more real.
The space bus trembled and surged upwards on takeoff. We should have reached Woop Woop within five minutes. But something terrible happened! I was buckled in my seat and looking out the window at the firmament, when the sky lit with the most glorious flare. A white shooting star speared past my window, then there was a large explosion and the space bus wobbled, swerved, circled downward like water through a sinkhole. The automated seat belt lights flicked on and the autocrew spoke calmly, reminding all passengers to secure themselves and stay seated, that it was a minor turbulence that would shortly pass. Then we were topsy turvy in an overturned space bus. Screams everywhere.
An explosion.
Willow, my dearest. You know all that stuff about your life flashing past your eyes? It’s true. I remembered the first time you lowered your holo, showed me your sweet face. Our first moment of soaring, needing no rocket. Your warm, sweet breasts pressing mine. Your laugh, the way it ripples along your throat, the way you throw your head back, the light catching your eyes just so. How shocking from that geisha-smooth holo you wear in the office. I remembered our goodbye, the promise we made. That future vision of me bringing home a new book, fresh out of my head, worth a quintillion bezos, and you bringing me our baby, worth even more. Our baby! Oh, Willow!
But, instead, I was crawling out of a life-dhow, not the space bus, on a never-ending beach, white sand everywhere, sand!
I looked about for the rest of the passengers but no one else was around, miles and miles of sand. Not another life-dhow in sight. I was Robinson Crusoe—remember that story? Or the Space Family Robinson, but no family.
Alone.
At least I was alive, that’s what I thought. Luggageless, bare-toed, shit scared, bug-eyed, but alive. No shuttle car, preset to a destination, glided to collect me. I dragged myself off the beach and followed the white-glint promise of buildings in the distance.
I came to a town full of stone walkways of a manner I have never seen. A sign post read: Welcome to Kizimbani, Zanzibar.
I was nowhere near Woop Woop.
There was nobody in sight to ask for directions to the nearest tourist kiosk, just stone house after stone house. They were all the same. Solid stone, brick latticed, perfect squared. Even the roofs were made of stone. Each house had a black wood door embossed with a carving. The carvings differed from door to door. Here a bird with two heads, neither of them birdlike. There a saber-lion cub, its tusks of teeth spearing longer than its body. A bushbuck with eight legs, tail like a lizard. The door with the headless snake was the worst. That thing had eyes all along its sides, and every one of them watching me.
I called out, ‘Hello? Is anybody here?’
I rattled doors, rapped hard on them, but their woodenness riposted, bruised my knuckles, carvings biting me back as if all those creatures were alive. Soon as I took my hand away, those dark doors looked like fucken, dead-as-dodo, solid wood.
I reached a stone cottage, also brick latticed, at the end of the narrow street. It was distinguishable from the rest by its red door and a low, equally red window. I peered inside the window, but it was clouded, frosted glass too thick to see through. To my astonishment, the door opened itself as if anticipating me.
I walked in to the oldest dwelling you’d ever find in history. It was just like the drawings: it had a cooking area and what looked like an oven. There were static walls stuck on a spot, not anticipating you, reshaping from room to room as they do back home.
It’s all decent, I said to myself. I should be joyful—isn’t this the setting I wanted for my book? I looked about. There were no holographic wall papers, creatures and lightscapes wafting across them. No screen savers on every window.
Dearest Willow. This cottage felt—
Unusual. An outdoor coat and shoes loitered by the door. I had this feeling at the back of my neck that creatures were lurking in all corners. Darkness fell very quickly, and the cottage did not brighten itself up. No lights talking to me, like they do back home.
This oldies stuff is weird. Just as the books say.
So I looked for switches at the walls, and turned on a bright white light. I was famished, and found a chilling box in the kitchen. But no food in it.
That’s when I heard the singing in the next room, the bathroom. Somebody was having a shower, singing a soulful melody in words I could not fathom.
‘Hello?’ I cried. ‘Somebody home?’
I rushed to greet them, and the water was running. A wet soap. Suds on the walls. Steam in the air. But there was nobody there. Dearest Willow. Nobody!
I rushed to the bedroom in a terrible fright, barricaded myself in with an oaken table so heavy, my intestines fell pushing it to the door. As I did, a drawer flew open, and olden writing tools scattered out. It was a pen, and paper, the same ones I am using to write to you now. The pen moved as if it was a stylus on a screen.
Exhausted, I switched off the light at the wall, threw myself on the bed too hard to deserve the name, the feel of fibers and coiled springs too close to me. The bedhead loomed like a creature, red-painted wood. When I closed my eyes, I felt it falling onto me. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Couldn’t, my Willow! Would you have slept? Especially when the light turned itself back on, when no one had touched it?
Just then, I heard footsteps, someone rushing from outside toward my bedroom. I shut my eyes, as the doorknob turned, and someone rattled it, tried to push in.
How frightful!
After they gave up, I tried again to rest, maybe snatch some sleep. But I heard sounds of cars rushing on wet roads, crashing through puddles, dogs barking after them. I dozed, woke, slept again.
In the morning, to my greatest petrification, I woke to the door ajar. The barricading table was back in its place by the window. I looked outside—it was dry and white sanded, a fresh sun rising. Where were the roads? The cars? The puddles?
Oh, Willow! I worry as I write this now. What have I got myself into? I want to tell you so much more, but it will have to wait.
Forever yours,
Luna
SUNDAY, 2 JULY
My dearest Willow,
This morning, I tried to go outside, but the door won’t open. I’m stuck in this house. Oddly, there’s what looks like milk and bread (just like in the books) in the chiller box. The milk is thin and pinkish, gritty on the tongue. The bread is pinkish too, specked with husks and, I swear, tiny stones. But the taste! How could something so ugly, so gross, taste so reminiscent of home like this? Smacks of mustard and aniseed and cheese, it makes the food on Planet Nine seem like paper, haha. I love you, I miss you, darling. I do miss Nine—don’t let my words and this deceiving food fool you.
But the fresh taste didn’t help it stay in my belly long.
I am so hungry. Famished! And it’s rationed. There’s never enough to save for another meal. The unpredictability of it is killing me, not knowing if I’ll die of hunger here. And I’m not alone.
I had the most miserable day of hearing invisible people calling me by name. Luna! Sometimes whispering right in my ear. Luna! There was nobody present, just a strong scent of perfume. Crushed fennel, violet, and an earthy undertone. It smelt like boots tramping on a crumbling grave, sweet and deathly.
The door still won’t open. I’m ready to gobble my fingers, nails, and eyeballs. I’d push a finger into the socket to pluck one of those juicy eyes if I could. And then chase myself to eat me! As our good book says, on Earth or in the stars we cannot live on bread alone. I went to bed dreaming of the food we have back home on Planet Nine. I could almost taste its goodness, the weft of greenjack on my tongue, the mouthfill of veni-sim, the silky glide of coco junket. What I wouldn’t give for a schooner of black pearl boba tea and some spicy stroopwafelen. I will not talk about the taste of your sweet, musky warmth.
It was some time after midnight—I can only suppose by the brightness of the moon out the window, because my watch makes no sense of this place—I woke to the most wonderful smell of cooking, scrumptious food rich with spices and mouthwatering smoke.
I turned the handle of my bedroom door to see where the tantalizing aroma was coming from. The door won’t open.
The door won’t open.
Forever yours,
Luna
MONDAY, 3 July
My dearest Willow,
This is the strangest thing beyond fiction. I woke to a door ajar from my bedroom, and the whole house smelling of a luscious banquet. I found the kitchen table laden with food I had neither cooked nor served. I think this was rice, shaped in a perfect ball. Beside it was stewed fish of a variety I’ve never seen. I looked at the side plate of lemons and sour cream.
The crockery appeared to be ceramic! I thought it was extinct.
And what were these? Carrots! Shallots!
There was a glass of what must be water—it was clear and tasteless.
I ate it all, ate like Robinson Crusoe must have eaten the moment a morsel touched his tongue. I nearly choked for greed, then for terror, when I heard the whispering from invisible people. Laughing and talking when I couldn’t see them. The table was set for a feast and, by the noise, there were many at the table. But nobody in sight!
Oh, Willow. What is this?
Again, I could not keep that paradise food within me. I didn’t spew it up but—
Soon as I swallowed its goodness, it was as if I hadn’t eaten a thing in eons.
Oh, Willow. What, what, what is this? Will I starve or madden?
Forever yours,
Luna
TUESDAY, 4 JULY
My dearest Willow,
Today the heat pressed against the cottage, goading me to test how much it could hurt me. If I laid my cheek against the wall, I could feel the merciless sun running fingernails on the stones, one by one. The whispering went outside now. I followed it around and around the cottage, in circles like a glitching robodog chasing its coiled tail. Luna! said the voices, near the door. Luna! they called from the opaque window. Luna! from the back porch, Luna! from the ceiling. Luna! down the toilet. Can’t a lost woman poop in peace? At the door again, whining in sorrow, Luna! By the window again, hissing with hate.
LUNA!
Suddenly I heard rocks thrown at the window, yet I could not see who was throwing them. The rocks came from nowhere, not a shadow of a person nearby.
Clunk, clunk, crash. Luna!
I don’t know for how much longer I will be forever yours,
Luna
WEDNESDAY, 5 JULY
My dearest Willow,
A day of fog, the air humid as a steam bath. I was sweating like the ancient Bikram yoga class. Oh, my love, the last time I felt so wet, so warm, so breathless was in your arms, tasting you. What is this place, that caresses and curses and incarcerates me? It loves me, it hates me—can’t it decide what it wants with me?
And in the dining area, another feast I never prepared! Gracious, these look like potatoes, honey chili flavored.
But the strangest thing happened today. All the walls had paintings on them from a distance. When I neared them, the paintings vanished.
I could almost swear they were paintings of a male manhood.
Oh, Willow! What shall I do?
Forever yours,
Luna
THURSDAY, 6 JULY
My dearest Willow,
Worse and worse. Today the sky opened its floodgates and all I could hear was water, rain sluicing over the stones. From the skirting boards, strange creatures flooded up the walls. Ants, I thought, washed out of their tunnels. But such ants you never saw! Hairy all over, more legs than they should ever have. And those legs left trails all up and down the walls. Maybe I wanted to eat them, I was so hungry. But they were trails red as blood, rinsing down to nothingness as the day wore on.
I was frightened, shit scared again.
I sat on the table. Instead of a feast, there was just my panic.
I waited there all day, knees scrunched tight to my chest, panting and squealing if a hairy ant looked at me sideways. What if they came across the floor, reached for me with all those mandibles! One, I could stomp. How many before they overcame me?
But the rain stopped and the red-footed ants melted into the walls. Literally, I’m not making this up. They just melted, the whitewash fading pink until sunset.
I was exhausted. I could do nothing, nothing! but crawl to bed.
I dreamt the oddest thing tonight! I dreamt that I was having intercourse with a handsome Arab-looking young man. He had the face of a historical picture I once saw on a hologram documentary. He had a face of many faces that kept slipping and replacing itself with such exactitude. How sweet the dancing, as if it was happening right inside my groin. Each footstep treading on an erogenous zone.
I would have dismissed this as an awful dream. But I woke and touched my thighs, and they were wet with semen. I know that awful smell from those days when I tried to conform—yuk, yuk, yuk. I touched my breasts, aw, aw, fingerprints all over them.
Not mine.
What the fuckfuckfuck, actual fuck, is this?!
Forever yours,
Luna
FRIDAY, 7 JULY
My dearest Willow,
It is a day of horrors. First thing this morning, I tried the door again. But I am still locked inside, with the entryway more solidly blocked than ever. It was like the door had become a tree, a tree that never moved from its roots plunged deep into the earth of Kizimbani so many decades ago.
The door was no longer a dead plinth of carved wood.
I put my ear to it, carefully, afraid of what it might do. Beloved, I could hear the sap rising, the wood burling and stretching itself, like it was a huge animal scratching itself on the stone of this poor dwelling.
I stepped back, banged my hip on the oaken table.
The cottage seemed dark, yet it was morning. When I looked at the frosted glass of the only window, yes, the red-paned one, all I could see was a shroud of dark green pressing against the panes. The tree was trying to get in! I could feel the urgency of its leaves. But the stone house held so far, and I sat in a chair, wondering what next.
What the fuckfuckfuckety next.
I was still sitting in the living room when I heard water dripping from a tap. I found the leakage in the kitchen. Then I heard another tap dripping in the bathroom. All the taps in the house started dripping of their own accord, with no sight of anyone who might have turned them on.
Outside, I could hear the tree-door lapping at the stream of water flooding from the cottage, like a thirsty hyena—remember that foul beast from the history channel holo? How it hunted in packs and ate other animals alive?
I think I am losing my mind.
Forever yours,
Luna
SATURDAY, 8 JULY
My dearest Willow,
The tree is gone. In its place is the brightness of the sun, of many suns. It can’t be just one sun. The rays are a cruel red color I’ve never seen before, leaching all the way around that red door, slopping heat against the thick glass of the window. Can it be sunsets, is it that simple? Or is it bushfires? And again, those hairy ant-creatures are inside, crawling all over the walls, across the ceiling. Some of them carrying things: could it be food? How can it be food when it’s alive and squirming?
The ant-food looks like tiny humans, miniature babies.
When I stepped a bit closer to see, but not too close, I jumped back, because the baby-creatures began to bawl as if they could see me. I shut my eyes, covered my mouth to stop my screams. When I looked again, the ants and their food were gone as if they had never been there. I staggered to the kitchen, hoping for a drink of clear water.
I found cubes of roasted gamey meat in the chiller box. I believe people ate goat and camel in historical times. I can only hope it’s not cat or dog.
Or ant babies.
Oh, Willow! I can’t eat any of this. Just the sight of it makes me retch.
Tonight, all the taps are again leaking. But they’re not leaking water. They are leaking blood! Somebody help me. Please. The fuck, please.
Forever yours,
Luna
SUNDAY, 9 JULY
My dearest Willow,
Relief of a sort. The gory light is gone, in all its crimson. In its place is the rattle of twigs against the door, tapping the glass window. A fractious breeze is blowing. I don’t like to look at the window. The branches knocking there have the shape of bony fingers.
Another fresh banquet is set. I don’t know who has been cooking, or when. There are octopus skewers and diced fish steak. My word! These are capsicums and cucumbers. Despite the strangeness, I am so hungry.
I must eat.
Must eat.
Overnight, there was a shouting storm. I listened to the whooshing wind and the roaring rain. The sound of falling trees everywhere. What surprised me even more was the melody of giant droplets on a tin roof. But this is a stone-roofed house.
In the morning, it was the brightest sky, as if the weather of the night had never happened. So why the fuckfuckfuck did I find blood footprints of a child in every cursedly, fuckety room of this house?
My dearest Willow!
Forever yours,
Luna
MONDAY, 10 JULY
My dearest Willow,
Today, the wind whacked whole hands of bone against the window, against the door, against the roof, like terrified fugitives running from some terrible predator, devastating captivity or a horrible death. Some of the handprints are red, Willow, but as more and more hands scrabble across them, they turn black, lose their shape.
They look like tears of blood.
Kizimbani is crying blood down on its stone cottage.
More blood trails, some on the walls, as if some footed creature was climbing them inside. Oh, Willow!
Forever yours,
Luna
TUESDAY, 11 JULY
My dearest Willow,
Today, the strangest thing happened. The letters I’ve been writing you were each enveloped, chronologically dated and addressed to you correctly.
Odder still, the front door was open.
But the sun!
The sun appeared to ignite itself and shine even brighter each step I made. It was vicious, gleeful to roast me. I walked under palm trees for shade, but one leaned close and dropped a welter of branches, narrowly missing me. I dove from another tree when it felled coconuts at me in a pelt.
I found a post office, standing there as if it was waiting for me. The doorway was wide open, dust blowing inside. A grinning bronze-skinned woman with the most ebony eyes held out her hand for my mail. I asked her to help.
‘Is there a bus?’ I asked. ‘Is there a way to get to town, to the space port?’
She looked angry for a moment, and then she smiled.
‘Kizimbani,’ she said, nodding her head as if it was a perfectly understood statement. ‘Kizimbani.’ As if that was all I needed to know. And I knew then that if she had another word in her vocabulary, she was not going to give it to me.
‘Kizimbani,’ she said again.
I turned in despair.
A brown-dappled lizard crossed my path, a dart of reptile that made me gasp. My hands, empty of the letters, felt as if they didn’t belong to me. Who could I be, without you, Willow?
I stood and looked at the village of Kizimbani before me. The same stone houses, stone-roofed, black-doored, but people were moving about. At first, I thought they couldn’t see me, because nobody blinked when I went up to them.
So I walked up to them and said, ‘Kizimbani.’ They took it for a greeting, or a conversation. I got some smiles, some nods.
Nobody spoke.
One young girl, her hair braided with crimson beads and scarab wings, laughed at me as she ran past. The laughter was a sound that filled me with hope. So long since I heard such human sound.
‘Stop!’ I called. ‘Kizimbani!’ Nonsensical as the dialogue sounded.
Instead, she pointed back to my cottage, her wide-open mouth a match for the red of my door. ‘Kizimbani!’ she called back at me.
All I could do was return to the wretched place. Let me rephrase this. All I could do was slink back to the wretched place.
Strange, on the way back, I walked past a restaurant—a bunch of people sitting in it. A sign at the door said: Taarab. I knew for a fact the place wasn’t there before. This world, absent of music all this time, not even a bird’s warble or chirp, now hosted a keening hum that wafted in the air. It was the gloomiest melody I’d ever heard. I wanted to lift a knife to my throat and slice through it. What an awful melody. It was like a last song, accompanied by the softest strumming of kora strings—remember from the historic holo?
The last song of a person condemned to execution at dawn.
I sat at the table and couldn’t make head or tail of the menu. A boy appeared. He was thin-limbed, his hair a wilderness of curls asking for a caress. My fingers twitched, but I knew better than to touch him. His eyes were dark like yours, darling Willow. He made me think of our hopes with ProcreateGold™. Could it ever be?
I love you. I love you. I love you.
He wanted to take my food order, but we didn’t seem to understand each other. In the end, he shrugged his skinny shoulders right up into his hair and turned away. In moments, he was back and served me something called curlew tea and some sort of flat bread he called chapati—I think. He pointed repeatedly at it, said, ‘Chapati. Yum.’ And motioned for me to eat it.
That night, I slept with a lighter heart, knowing I had neighbors. Tomorrow, I would explore Kizimbani more, I thought. I would walk out of the village, find a road sign. Somewhere is a city with a space port.
But my dream—!
I dreamt I was at the restaurant again, finishing my meal. I motioned the thin-limbed boy with wilderness hair to bring me the bill and he arrived … different. His eyes were hollow. I looked around in fright and saw that every patron’s eyes were gone—just black empty spaces, streaked around eyeballs as if black ink had randomly leaked all over them. And they were all looking at me with their holes. I leapt and fled the establishment fast and without paying. It was only after a good distance away that I turned to look back. I saw, to my horror, all of them stood silent and still at the windows. Looking at me with those hollows, hollows, hollows in their eyes.
I woke to a specific noise, a step on a faulty floorboard near my head. And then the harshest pain in the dead of the night. Someone had slapped me. I fell from the bed with a shriek, and clutched my cheek. I rushed, screaming, and smacked the lights on.
Nobody was there.
Angry welts buckled my skin. But the sound of a woman sobbing outside the window took my attention. I rushed with an acrobatic leap to look, and found a fingerprint smudged in blood on the pane.
Nobody else was there. What was the meaning of all this?
I took to bed, closed my eyes.
Then is when the walloping with a stick began.
I am cursed. Cursedcursedcursed.
Forever yours,
Luna
WEDNESDAY, 12 JULY
My dearest Willow,
I am truly disconcerted. I found all the letters I posted yesterday neatly bundled and innocently sitting on the solid table, next to the pen and paper. I am too despondent to be happy about my other find.
Yeah, right. Okay.
Guess what? I found money. Lots of money. Wads and wads of it. In a currency I don’t know. It was under my pillow. There was an instruction note in a language I understood. It said, in cursive script:
Do not use this money to help anybody.
Do not buy alcohol with it.
Do not buy cigarettes with it.
I don’t know how much it’s worth, or if it will be of any value to me, you, our child, or anyone on Planet Nine. But it appears that I am rich in a foreign land that’s not Woop Woop.
What use my wealth can be is the real question.
Oh, Willow. I have a nosebleed. Now look, I’ve stained this sheet. So much blood. It’s almost as if my brain has melted and is escaping down my nose.
But something else is catching my eye. The bedroom walls are all lined top to bottom with hangman symbols that disappear when I move closer to study the markings.
Oh, Willow. Oh, Willow!
Forever yours,
Luna
THURSDAY, 13 JULY
My dearest Willow,
I woke to the sound of footsteps, someone rushing from outside toward my bedroom. The doorknob is turning.
They are coming!
I—