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Baruti was not a patient man. Butchering animals did not instill patience; selling the meat in Johannesburg's summers, enduring the flies they brought did not either. And if the animals braying and the flies swarming and the heat beating down did not create any tranquility, the endless lines of prawns actively robbed him of it.
Three months into the evacuation to District 10, and still they found a way to swarm around him. Hundreds in an hour. Thousands in a day. Flocking to his stall on the east edge of Johannesburg, clicking and pointing and offering stolen shoes as payment. Demanding sulfurous cat food alongside his prized steaks and chops. Reeking of garbage and stealing whenever they could. Banning them from the stall didn't work; the Reconciliation Pact commanded equal access to goods and services, prawn or human. And the bliksem profits commanded it, too.
He didn't have to like it. Had to serve them, but didn't have to like them. Baruti gave the masses a brief glare and got to work, drowning out the clicks and chitters of his customers with the steady thud of his knife. Separating lamb joints was loud, messy work, but the bone was right and the blood normal. No antennae pointing at him, no claws rapping on his counter, just the wet noise of cleaver meeting meat, the burning in his shoulder as he pulled the blade out. Normalcy.
<Want—food.> A series of stilted clicks interrupted his reverie, jerked his eyes upward. A prawn stood before him, bilious green. <Sell? Sell food?>
Baruti brought the cleaver down on a lamb skull and let it stick there, vibrating. He looked the prawn up and down, rolling the soreness out of his shoulder. This one wasn't offering shoes, but it didn't seem to have any money, either. Baruti rummaged through the stall, found a dented three-pack of Lucky Pet, and slapped it down in front of him. Normally the prawns would leap at the cans, or at least reach out; this one just stared, twiddling its claws. Ratty bandages dangled off its left arm.
“You got money?”
It looked away. If they were capable Baruti would have thought it looked ashamed. <Money...no, no money.>
Baruti spat on the ground and reached for his cleaver. “Then piss off.”
The prawn waved its arms, desperate. <Need food!> It dug into its bandages, hunching over in front of the stall; a moment's digging produced a surprisingly decent cell phone. It stared at the device, hesitating, and then slumped into putting it down beside the cans.
“...that is a nice phone.” Baruti wiped his fingers on his apron and scooped it up. It was one of the new flip phones, gleaming in the midday sun. “Stolen?”
His customer straightened and glared, if they could glare. It pointed at the phone. <My fucking phone! If you give me the food, your fucking phone!>
Baruti watched it, smirking, and tapped the back of the phone with his cleaver. Stenciled in gray letters were the initials M.N.U. “Making a lot of corporate calls?”
The prawn made a sound somewhere between a choke and a whine, then looked around warily. None of the market seemed to notice. <Found,> it clarified. But then, defiantly: <Found so it's mine! Give me food!>
A corporate phone was worth two hundred if he could activate it, fifty if he couldn't. Easily worth a crate of cans. “This,” he said, “is worth one.” He set the phone down, ripped a can out of the three-pack beside it, and slid it towards the prawn. “And you're lucky to get that. Piece of shit probably doesn't even work.”
It eyed Baruti for a moment, watching him roll the cellphone back and forth between his fingers. Then it slumped again, folding into itself and staring at the ground. <All right.> It reached out across the counter, put its horrid fingers around the can, and let out a long, wet sigh. <All right.>
Then somehow it had all three cans, stuffed into its bandages, and it was kicking in the front of Baruti's stall. The lamb's skull slid back and into him, brains cascading down his apron, while the rest of the meat tumbled into the dust at its feet.
“Son of a bitch!” Roared Baruti, bringing up his cleaver. But the green prawn was already gone. The others were staring; he kicked a hunk of bone their way, cursing, and watched two of them fight over it.
…
Ejimeke found the weird green prawn just inside the gates to District 10, seated off the main road. He—Eji had decided it was a he—was hunched over a can of Lucky Pet, two others empty beside him, eating noisily.
“Aweh, prawn!”
The prawn did not look up. <You did it?> His voice was so weird. Millions of prawns in Joburg now, chattering everywhere, and this was the only one Eji had ever met with an accent. His clicks were different. Thicker, wetter, and often annoyingly slow. Like he wasn't used to his own language. <You gave her flower?> He buzzed, irritated, and corrected himself: <The flower?>
The flower was weird, too, a little sculpture made out of coke cans and wire, but Eji had to admit it was pretty. Who knew why the prawn wanted it delivered to Sandton, to some woman in a photograph? The prawn promised payment, so Eji had done it. “Yeah. I put it on the white lady's doorstep.”
The prawn looked up sharply from the cat food, bits of meat trailing from his mouth. <Didn't give it to her?>
“Well—no, man.” Eji shrugged. “You want to knock on doors in Sandton, see how fast the police come? Some white lady sees me at her door with flowers, what's she going to do?”
Abruptly the prawn stood, throwing his empty can down and looming over Eji. <Supposed to give it to her! Someone could take!>
Eji flinched, held up his hands. “Who's going to take it, then? Sies, man, it's a stupid little metal thing, not a diamond! And anyway, you still haven't paid me.”
It was the prawn's turn to flinch.
“My phone, yeah?”
<Didn't see her?> Clicking softly, now, the prawn dug into the bandages around his wrist. <Didn't see her at all?>
“No—well, yeah.” Through the house's huge front window, he'd glimpsed her: blonde hair, tired eyes. “She looked...sad.”
<I do not pay.> The prawn turned away, bandages trailing down his wrist. There was nothing left in them. Eji balked and followed, outraged.
“Oi, I delivered to your stukkie in the suburbs, now pay—“
“Voetsek!” The prawn shouted, the word mangled and barely comprehensible. The order to get lost wasn't surprising, but hearing it in an earthborn language was. “Donner bliksem!” Familiar words dragged across unfamiliar vocal cords. The effect was so grating and terrible it stopped Eji in his tracks. The prawn seemed just as shocked; he looked around wildly, a claw over his mouth.
“What did you—“ Eji started, but the prawn fled, hurrying off into the rows of tents and shacks. Eji stared after him.
What kind of prawn cursed in Afrikaans?
…
Barely any light shined into the tent. He'd taken it for that reason.
A tattered sleeping bag occupied one corner. Scrap metal filled everywhere else: coke cans, tin, a few bits of steel. A bent silver platter sat propped against one corner, polished mirror-clean.
Wikus sat in his one ray of light and looked at himself in his dented little mirror.
“It's not so bad, man.”
English actually hurt, every syllable fighting its way through his throat. He looked in the mirror, and the mass of tentacles and chitin staring back hurt even more. He tried again.
<Not so bad.>
Shaking his head, Wikus turned from the mirror and sprawled across the sleeping bag. Not long enough for him now. He didn't really care. He adjusted unfamiliar muscles, wiggled horrible antennae, and stared at the hole in the roof of his tent at the utterly empty sky.
Three months was a long time.
Three years was going to be an eternity.