Fast and Furious Feet

"Many, many cycles around the sun ago, there was a king before he was king. A voodoo priest approached him. The voodoo priest offered that the man could have two out of three but not all three. The offered choice was to be a great ruler, have a beautiful wife, or to have children. The man was young and didn't like children very much. They were noisy and needy. He was very proud. He only wanted to be admired. So he told the voodoo priest: Give me the throne and the hottest woman!"

"That very night the king was eaten by a hyena that jumped through his bedroom window. That very night the man that had married the most beautiful woman in all the lands was eaten by a hyena that jumped through his bedroom window. You see, voodoo priests can shift their shape into anything they want to. The next morning, he was crowned to be king and the most beautiful woman threw himself in front of his throne for him to take her."

"The king was happy, but he was a terrible ruler. The famine grew worse every year. He rewarded the thieves and punished the hard workers. He drank and partied. When there was a person happier than him, he had that person lashed. His wife was not much better. She was evil, greedy, and jealous. Yet most of all, she wanted children. She tormented him to try to make her pregnant every day. She bathed in the blood of slain virgins. Her evilness was so intense that the sky started turning green."

"The people went on pilgrimage to Kaduah and begged the voodoo priest to put an end to it. The voodoo priest said that he couldn't undo that level of magic once it was laid. However, he would think of something. For 101 days, he went into the wilderness to live with the gorillas. When he returned, he changed his shape into that of a beggar. He walked to Kigali to the royal palace. He told the guard at the gate that he would give the king the secret to fertility for a bowl of soup and a piece of bread."

"The voodoo priest knew that the king rejected any wise advice. Yet, the king always liked tricking people. The voodoo priest knew that tricking an old beggar to hand over such a supreme secret for a bowl of soup and a piece of bread would be such a boon because he would have offered many crates of gold for that secret. The beggar must have been very stupid. So the king sent word to the gate guard to let the old beggar inside."

"The old beggar was at the bottom of the throne. The throne was built on a podium that was thirty steps tall. It was quite a distance. The beggar couldn't even speak loudly enough with his frail voice to reach the king. A messenger had to ascent the stairs to pass the beggar's words to the king. 'Do you know that Rwanda is the land of a thousand hills?' asked the beggar. 'Yes,' replied the king through a messenger. 'Well there is a secret about those hills,' sent the beggar word back."

"If you run up the hill fast enough, you will go through three faces. First, you will feel very sick to the stomach. That's the pukinawa stage. When that nausea passes and you keep running, you'll enter a bliss face, called nirvana. When you keep running more, you'll eventually see visions. You'll get an experience of god. And when you run through that, you'll experience the unique power of that hill. That's valhalla. One of those hills will give you fertility."

"The king was mad. He felt like he was duped by an old man. Instead of holding up his bargain, he threw the beggar into the darkest cell of his dungeon. The voodoo priest turned into a song bird and flew out of the dungeon. But the king didn't know that. And the guards were too scared to tell the king that the cell was empty."

"That night, the queen, having heard about the potential chance to get her a child, yelled at the king to start running. The king was stubborn and refused. Her screaming turned into beating. With all her power, he punched, kicked, slapped, and pulled the king's hair. The king was stubborn for an hour, two hours, but when the rooster crowed for the first light, he was so bruised up that every additional punch hurt bitterly. So he went to the first hill outside of Kigali."

"He ran up the hill. After ten minutes, he felt nauseous. He knew that he had to keep running, but he was out of breath and stopped. When he came back down the hill, the queen saw that he came back to early and started beating him again. So he started running up the hill again. He got nauseous again. He wanted to stop, but he kept thinking about the beatings that were waiting on him. So he kept running. He got sicker. He felt as sick as he had never been before. And right when he thought that's the worst moment of his life, a happiness spread all over him. He couldn't get enough of that happiness. He ran harder. The ground suddenly started to lift up. The winding path like a snake straightening itself raised into the sky. He started running into the sky. All this was a hallucination that only he could see, but once he was high enough in the sky, he could see the whole kingdom. He could see all of his citizens. And he saw their sadness, suffering, and anger at him."

"When he came back to the ground and the valhalla had passed, he knew two things. He was a terrible king and the beggar had spoken true."

"From then on, every day, he ran a new hill. And his queen would wait for him at the top to ask what power that hill held. Two things happened to the kingdom. First, because he was so busy running, he stopped running the kingdom to the ground. He let his ministers administer the kingdom. The food shortage started lifting. Second, the process of experiencing the powers of the hill slowly changed him like the vision of all of his citizens."

"But he could only run about half the hills in the kingdom. The other half were too steep or too long. Despite training as hard as he could, he didn't have the strength to reach valhalla running up the hill. Eventually, he realized that he needed to beg the voodoo priest to help him master the last hills to find the hill of fertility. Having become humble, he put on beggar's clothes and made a pilgrimage to Kaduha. The voodoo priest was nowhere to be found. The king knew that he had to give penance. So he lived with a group of gorillas for 101 days only eating the leaves and grass that they were eating."

"At last, the voodoo priest revealed himself. He had always been close but concealed. He explained that the king needed power boosters to reach valhalla on the hardest hills. And only women could bestow those power boosters. A man has to help a woman reach an experience of god. When she does, she'll tattoo her mark onto an energy line on his body. That will give him strength."

"The king was fine with that. But! The voodoo priest stopped him, you can only give her that experience if you win her in a sacred race. The king wanted to know what the sacred race was. So the voodoo priest explained the rules of how the king had to compete with ordinary men. And the winner would get a prize with a woman."

"That's fine, said the king. But! The voodoo priest stopped him. You can only race if you surrender your soul to a woman. And the woman can only hold the soul if she has shown commitment and purification to take on the soul. Do you see what the voodoo priest was doing? He was layering on rite after rite that the king and the queen had to step through. Each rite corrected and refined them to turn them from monsters into aware, caring, wise, and responsible people."

"That's the story of how we have so many rites. Everyone in Rwanda is born to want to be king or queen. But to rule has a lot of impact on people. So we give them rites to cut their personality like a gem into something brilliant."

"When you want to find your soul again, you have to walk in a straight path. Don't let anything stop you, no tree, no house, no hill. Keep walking straight. Thoughts will run through your head with all that loneliness out in nature. When you can admit a denied truth to yourself, a regal sunbird will appear. You'll recognize it by the red chest, yellow sides, and turquoise head. It'll have your soul. By morning, the polisi will let us out. Start on your soul quest right away. Sleep now!"

With that, Ntwali's big hand pushed Boris' head against Ntwali's giant pectoralis muscles. Boris closed his eyes obediently. He nestled against the big warm body. He could sense that Ntwali would stay awake the whole night guarding everyone while everyone else went to sleep. Boris sensed that Ntwali had some kind of supernatural powers so that he wouldn't need sleep. Boris wondered why the police had never searched him. His soggy flip phone was still in his pocket. The police never asked him for his name or charged him. But once his eyelids closed and darkness fell over his vision, he quickly fell asleep drained from all that had happened.

When his senses slowly came to him, the first thing he noticed was the red light behind his closed eyelids from the morning sun. The second thing was a musk, feminine smell that had a darkness like the dark taste of dark chocolate to it - to bitter to be enjoyable but so addictive that one can't help but to want more of it. Third, there was an incredible softness under his right ear. It was a warm and soft thigh that his head was resting on. Fourth, there was a gentle hand caressing through his hair, raking his blond strands backwards with a patient, caring, maternal rhythm. He opened his eyes and saw the knee that belonged to a woman right in front of his face. Fifth, he became aware of the drool that he had pooled on that woman's thigh. He quickly rose up to turn and look at her face. Keza was sitting Indian style and had held his head on her thigh. Ntwali was gone from the cell with his four women.

"Go straight on our soul quest," instilled Keza. "You are a sweet boy. I want to feel you in my fingers again." Her voice was so sweet and had so much ring to it that it painted love, happiness, cheeriness with a few simple words. The cell door clicked open and a jumpsuit guy waved everyone to get out.

Boris walked out into the early morning light. The sun was barely over the horizon. The air still felt crisp from the night. He figured that he'd give the walking straight a try for the length of the parking lot. So he walked with his worn feet over the hard pressed and baked dirt with the tire marks. His legs felt so sluggish. When he reached the end of the parking lot with nothing happening, he grabbed his hamstrings. And they were so soft that he could move them to the front of his leg. He checked his body. Nothing was staying much in place anymore. He got a sensation of terror that receded like a wave from the beach back into the ocean, only for the numb, solemn nothing feeling to remain.

He tried to walk straight. The ground was uneven. There was a silly push in the way that he had to push his way through the middle and scratch up his legs. There was an old, dilapidated hip high wall that he had to climb over. Then a slight hill required him to walk up. He was getting away from the paths into the open savannah. He felt his mouth parched from not drinking in a while. That made the sun harder on his head. He kind of wanted to stop, but he also got a sense that after the way that his body reacted that perhaps he was actually dying even though it made no scientific sense that a kiss could do something like that.

So he walked back down the little hill. There was a long, even stretch that dulled his brain to send his thoughts wandering to what life back home had been like, how he had gone to school everyday, how his friends hadn't cared that much about him, and how here two Rwandan men had touched him so lovingly. Then his thoughts circled around Janice like a vulture. His first thoughts was about how guilty he felt for not doing anything to save her from the police - not even a peep had come out of his mouth. All he did was giving her a dumb stare. He emotionally beat himself up about it. But then again, he was a real gentleman when she had taken off her bra.

I'm a real gentleman, he kept repeating to himself. A sudden ray of clarity suggested that he was holding onto that idea like a drowning person holds onto a straw. What he was really afraid of admitting was that he was really drawn to her boobies. He was really drawn to her boobies. He got visions of her boobies under that shirt, he remembered the way that they swayed and the nipples. "You like her boobies," he told himself. That's when he saw a colorful ball moving on branches of a tree right up ahead of him. When he tried to run for it, the bird fluttered away into the sky to where he couldn't see it.

He went back to drudging through the savannah under the bright sun. As he relaxed, the thoughts of her boobies came back. He started embracing the thought that he wasn't really a gentleman in his heart. He really wanted those boobies. He was simply too shy to show her who he really was. And then it escaped his lips, "Oh, I wanted to suck on those boobies!" Right then, he saw again a colorful bird on the ground in front of him.

As he started running, the bird started flying. He slowed down and brought those boobies back into his mind and how he wanted to suckle on them and hold them in his hands and that his heart wanted nothing more than that. And the bird started coming down from the sky and settled on the ground in a little farther distance. Boris got an idea how this worked.

The more he admitted his truth to himself, the more the bird would settle and let him come close. The obvious answer was that really from the first moment, he had caught his composure at the memorial, he had wanted to bang her. Taking her to her hostel room was the first thing on his mind. He was a naughty, nasty, despicable men who only wanted to bang her. He wanted to get his cock inside of her. The bird sat quietly on the ground to let him come within fifty yards.

Seeing how this worked, Boris realized that the more he admitted things that he didn't admit to himself the more the bird stopped hopping away from him. Really, he wanted to throw naked Janice on her back on the bed, pull her by her hips right to the edge, drill his cock inside of her and have her legs straight up the front of his body as he stood next to the bed. He'd use her ankles to hold onto her firmly so that he would hurt her a little bit. And he would railroad her hard. And she would love it! Right before he came, he would pull out his dick and would spray her face to make her makeup all runny. Then, he'd order her to smear his cum into her face to defile her while she would look at him with a happy puppy face.

There was the whole truth out in the daylight of what he wanted to do to her. The bird was right in front of him. He couldn't get any closer. He lifted up his finger. The bird fluttered up and landed on his finger. The colors matched: Yellow, red and turquoise. It's head cocked to different angles in fast succession. The eyes were black.

Suddenly, he could feel his body. Suddenly, he felt the pain of his scraped knees. He felt the pain of hunger in his belly. He felt the headache from dehydration. He felt sad, depressed and exhausted. He felt the joy that his lungs had at receiving fresh oxygen with each inhale. He remembered the musk body smell of Keza. That smell felt like home, like a place he never wanted to leave, like a place that made him whole. He felt like a hero for having run. He felt anxious about meeting his dad after being out all night. He felt dread at having to study again. He felt curious to learn more about Mihigo. He desperately wanted to run again and prepare for the next race. All the emotions, feelings, and memories crashed into him as the regal sunbird fluttered away.

Then he felt horrible about himself. He was the nasty man that he always had tried to suppress. He had to admit it to himself in such vivid detail that it was hard to rationalize it away. He was a very flawed man.

It took him until the late afternoon to get home. He didn't even know his address. The school building was the only reference point that he could tell people. Not many people spoke English or could understand his hand signals. Their home was empty. Mikhail had left a note that he had made pancakes with pancake mix, dried milk, and water. The note also said that Boris was in a lot of trouble and that Mikhail would be home by 5pm.

The first cup of water was pure glory. The first pancake gave him so much energy. When he was done, he leaned back in the chair with a bloated stomach and waited for everything to digest into his bloodstream. When he got a little rest, he pulled himself up to shower and put clean clothes on. Getting all the grime and sweat off made him feel like a new man. With the blood washed off, his knee and shins didn't look that bad, only a handful of deep pebble gashes.

The opening door startled him. Boris walked out to meet his father.

"Listen, you can't party on a school night," burst Mikhail out in anger.

"I'm so sorry, but it's worse. I spent the night in jail!" confessed Boris.

Mikhail paused, processed, and grinned, "I'm proud of you, son. I regret never having beaten you in your whole life. That's why you turned out so weak. You are mentally very weak. A night in jail will give you what you need. Building your prison skills here in Rwanda is a great idea. A criminal record here doesn't matter. We can simply leave the country when your rap sheet gets too long." Mikhail hugged Boris and pinched Boris' cheek to show his Russian affection.

Whistling a happy tune, Mikhail disappeared into the kitchen to pick through the canned food.

"What makes the everyday grind a grind is a million things: A million things that have to be done, a million things that don't matter if they get done, and a million things that are neither great nor terrible. You get lost in the million things and wish for that one grand challenge and that one grand reward."

That night, Boris went again to sleep right after the setting sun because there was nothing to be done and because he was dog tired. Yet, his body was sore as well. The low intensity pain of soreness didn't let him sleep. He stared at the ceiling without realizing that he had fallen asleep and was still staring at the ceiling in his sleep. He looked out of the window but only in his dream. He saw the mountain hard pear tree in the night. At first imperceptibly from one of the pink flowers, a fog or steam thread lifted like a cigarette smoke line, but it was more alive, he moved around. And then as more stars seemed to rise, another finger of fog or steam lifted out of the pink flower.

The vane fog fingers swayed in the air like seagrass until they started floating towards his window as if a current was pushing them that way. They floated over his bed. He could see the strings floating in the air above his face. He could see the fog particles in them. He could see the light reflect. Then the fog fingers, which had become quite numerous by then, cradled around his body. They wrapped themselves around him. They felt snuck. They were cocooning him.

When he was wrapped tight like a baby in a swaddle, ever more fog fingers reached from the tree over to him and gathered in front of his face. He tried to move and couldn't. He tried to pull and couldn't. He was completely constricted. His body didn't obey him anymore. Then two fog fingers reached into his nose. He tried to scream but no sound came out of him. He fought the reflex of his nose disliking the intruders as they went all the way down his nostrils, into his throat and filled his lungs. He should have kept his mouth closed because all said five fog fingers pushed themselves into his mouth and down his throat, making him gag. The fingers accelerated to push into both his ears, then his anus, and finally even through his dick hole. He tried to writh against the intimate intrusion everywhere. When he was thoroughly stuffed, he could taste and smell the almond scent everywhere in his body. The fog fingers had burrowed their way through his lungs and through his intestines into his blood vessels and from there dispersed into everyone one of his cells.