The Real Punishment

Every day the bulldozers closed in, clearing more and more of District 9 and sweeping the area for the last remaining caches of weapons. After the first few days, no one bothered to check whether or not there were prawns in a shack before they razed it to the ground. They laughed to see the creatures explode out of the collapsing cardboard and wooden frames in the dozer's path. The best thing, I found, was to stay as far away as possible. They'd catch me eventually, but being caught by MNU officers would be better than having a bulldozer driver take pot-shots at you for fun as they passed by. They knew as well as I did that by the time all of District 9 is relocated to the new reservation, there will already be too few tents to house the entire population. What difference could it make if a few of the stupider aliens were killed off now? This wasn't about the grown prawns walking around today; it was about the eggs hatching tomorrow. MNU had made no secret of the fact that a whole wing of their labs was exclusively devoted to finding a way to sterilise the creatures. A chemical leaked into a separate water supply. Some manmade germ carried by mosquitoes or flies. Something remote.

I had no choice but to live by the prawns' rhythms, hiding by day and scavenging the heaps of dozed material by night when most of the workforce went home. What chilled me most wasn't the questioning stares the other prawns gave me when I first began shovelling through the scrap with them, but the moment they stopped paying attention to me. With an empty feeling in my stomach, I realised that they no longer saw me as different.

I'd learned soon after helping Christopher back to the ship that the other prawns had picked up on the stress pheromones. My stress pheromones. That's what brought them over and set them on that trigger-happy bastard Koobus. Some animal reflex drew them in and told them one of their own was in danger. No prawn would ever leave another of its kind to die. We had them down as self-serving opportunists, but they're much more of a collective than that. You'd never notice it if you weren't looking for it, but the aliens hardly ever fight among themselves. We all assumed scraps went on all the time, but I'd seen – what, two, three? – since I'd started hiding out here, and none of them major. Nothing to compare with the riots or the muggings or anything like that. Thing was, so long as it didn't involve prawns assaulting humans, nobody cared enough to probe into whether there was any violence in the camp or not.

I felt like screaming and yelling at them that I wasn't the same as them, whatever the hell I looked like from the outside. Fuck, I couldn't be the same. I knew, though, that whatever I tried to say to them would come out as total nonsense. What with all the months of training I'd gone through with the MNU in order to be able to understand or at least approximate what the prawns were saying, I hadn't considered that learning to speak through the same clicks and rattles wouldn't come naturally to me now. There was nothing in my head that was even close to a human mouth or tongue, and I could hardly bring myself to try speaking even when I was alone. It was a horribly isolating feeling, not being able to talk. I had no control over how prawns or humans saw and treated me.

All the while my brain screamed out for answers why this was happening to me. I kicked at the scrap corrugated iron and old cat food cans rusted from the rain, trying to fight down the gut-churning desire to inspect their insides for any left-over lumps of processed 'meat' and runny brown jelly. Fuck! I didn't deserve this! Whose fucking idea of a joke was it to make a chemical that would turn something like me into something like them! I cursed myself over and over for not thinking to ask Christopher how exactly the fluid worked and what made its effects on my body so perverse but so bloody precise at the same time. I'd missed my chance. Every day he was away felt longer than the one before. The only thing I had to look forward to now was feeling my mind slip into either some basic prawn consciousness or madness. And even then there was no guarantee that either of those terrible, wonderful things would happen.

Half the time back then I'd have given anything to forget, that things would be better if I could only forget – Tania maybe, but first of all myself. There were days when waking up and not knowing my own name any more seemed like the best thing that could possibly happen to me. Back in the old days when I was re-training with the MNU, after the ship first appeared above Joburg and no fucker knew what the hell to do, there were some theories floating around about the majority of prawns being like bees, like the drone bees. All this stuff about individual identity meant nothing to them; they have some menial job to do, they do it, and if they don't have anyone to tell them what to do next, they run around like headless chickens. The blissful ignorance of an insect mind. Right then and there I would have given what was left of my good arm for that, not that it counted for a lot any more. To be one, or to be the other. Totally just one or the other – I didn't want to be stuck in the middle anymore.

The flower that I put together was a long shot, I know. Twenty years ago they'd be talking about first contact and all that kak, but this here was last contact. She had to know that I'm still alive and I'm here. Not knowing is worse than knowing. This is what I keep telling myself. Fuck knows where it'll lead. I'd give anything to forget, course I would, but I'd just as soon give anything to hold my Tania again.

I paused and, the next moment, considered giving up on the whole thing. How can I do this to her? What can I possibly be to her now? When you're going prawn, it's the worst sensations that still stick with you from your old body, and my stomach's churning something awful at the idea of it all, just like it did when I saw those doctored pictures on the TV screens and the newspapers. Even if I can go back, even when Christopher returns, things will never be how they were before. Teeth dropping out of your head, nails falling out … stuff like that won't be coming back.

And the things those guys from the labs said about the aliens' sex organs, about how they reproduce asexually… You have never known fear like I have, dreading the possibility that, on top of all of the other obscene changes, one day I'll discover that I've laid an egg or something.

You can stare at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself over and over that you're still a man, that what you have are the soul and the passion of a man, but when you catch yourself off-guard at some random moment and find that unconsciously you no longer believe you're one, you're gone.

My past is not a foreign country; it's a completely different planet.

They caught up with me eventually. District 9 had been almost completely flattened and there was nowhere left to hide during the day. Initially I'd thought about trying to get out of the compound and heading for the wilderness, way beyond their reach, but I realised that as powerful and fearsome as this new body was, I didn't have the first clue about how to survive out there by myself. Yeah, sure, I'll start foraging for nuts and berries and all that kak. Great fucking plan, only I found out that prawns couldn't digest that stuff. It was meat or nothing, so sooner or later I'd start scavenging off people, and that would just leave me walking right back into MNU's hands again. Ultimately I ended up staying put, and it wasn't long before they dragged me in.

They rounded the last of the prawns up and pushed them into the back of one of the armoured vans. There was a weak feeling of gratification in realising that I'd held out as long as the most intelligent prawns. I could tell from the hushed exchanges between them as the van drove towards District 10 that several of these aliens were as articulate as Christopher. Still unable to communicate with them, I sat in silence listening to what snippets of their conversations I could catch over the sound of the van's tyres struggling over increasingly rough and stony roads.

'Tck, it stinks in here-'

'How far away do you think this new place is?'

'…absolutely tiny. Yes, I noticed that too. You can judge how big those tents are by comparing them with the fences in the photo. There's a human standing beside one of the ones in the background, too, and the top of the tent's only just level with its head.'

'-chance it could come back soon? I never heard what the problem was-'

'I don't really think anyone knew. But somebody must have cracked it. I just hope they have the decency to come back for-'

'…after twenty years, I'm not keeping my hopes up.'

'What you saying, tkakakitiscsh?' One of the larger prawns at the far end of the van spoke up loudly, using some prawn expression I'd not heard before. It wasn't just the smarter prawns that had managed to stay in District 9 this long; the more aggressive ones had been equally difficult for the MNU to catch. They also had an odd habit of rushing to protect the intellectual types, as if they were bodyguards or something.

'Nothing important, chktkt. Just thinking out loud.'

Half an hour later the van pulled to a stop and we were led out to a marquee at the entrance of the compound. I focused on matching the shuffling pace of the other prawns as they entered the check point, eyes on the ground. The human voices around me meshed together in an indistinct buzz. Innumerable hands stretched out under the piercing white beams of the lamps dotted around the marquee to grip and inspect my limbs. I didn't look up as another hand ran over my lower body. Someone cleared their throat loudly. I started to shuffle forward again when a cold metal shock ran through my abdomen. With an angry screech I jumped away, knocking into the prawn in front of me. A strong hand clamped down on my shoulder, tugging me out of the line.

'Eh boss, this one hasn't been stamped.'

I recognised the voice: Thomas. He pulled back the visor of his helmet and leaned into my face.

'It's a full-grown prawn. How the hell did somebody miss it?' said another officer, walking over from where he was inspecting another prawn. He looked over at me. 'Where are your papers, man?'

Thomas drew back and laughed. 'You're crazy, boss! You think prawns hold onto paperwork? Nobody bothers with that bureaucracy shit anymore. Come on, come on, we're wasting time. Slap on the stamp and shove him through.'

But the officer kept pushing me. 'Speak to me when I speak to you! Hey! Why haven't you been tagged?'

I shook my head listlessly.

'You been lurking in some hiding place we don't know about, fucker? Answer me!'

If I only could have answered him. If only. I would've saved myself the pain of everything that happened next.

'You got a death wish? Either you're one dumb prawn or you've got a fucking attitude on you! Don't you give me the fucking silent treatment. Don't you think for one moment that anyone'll care if we blast off your head right here and throw you back on the tip! But maybe you'd fucking like that, huh?' His face contorted in anger again. 'Talk, you filthy bastard!'

The sudden slam of his gun into my gut made me cry out, a garbled shrill yelp. The officer laughed – 'See, we're making progress already!' – but his laugh cut off sharply when he saw the ring hung from a chain around my neck. He grabbed it.

My blood ran cold.

'What's he got there?' asked Thomas, craning his neck to get a closer look.

The other officer turned the band over in his dirty fingers. His face was deadpan, eyes fixed on me like some stone-cold killer. In that moment, death would've been better than having that chain yanked off my neck.

'It's some guy's wedding ring,' said the officer. 'Ugly fucker's stolen it. So you're not as much of an idiot as we thought, eh? Sneaky prawn got itself a plan here, Thomas. You were going to sell this off, right, get yourself some prime gear, man? Could trade this in for a couple of weapons, learn yourself how to use the things.'

I shook my head vigorously.

Don't take it. Please don't take it.

'No? High-end cat food, maybe? You prawns know how much these things are worth, don't you? Smart fuckers.'

'Watch this one, Lowe,' muttered Thomas. 'He probably killed a guy to get that ring.'

If I had, I would have bloody well finished what MNU started.

'You make me sick,' growled Lowe. 'I always knew those pussies before were playing a losing game trying to reason with you lot. Things like you don't have a soul. Only thing keeping us from blasting District 9 to kingdom come was the bloody ethics groups and the media, but they haven't got the faintest idea what you prawns are really like. What does it matter to you that some woman out there's had her heart ripped out, just so long as you get a full belly for the next week. Why give a shit about some poor fucker's wife?'

She's my wife, damn you.

The officer tugged the chain free of my neck with a sharp tug. He rammed it into his trouser pocket with one hand and seized my head with the other.

'I've got this theory I want to try out,' he said. 'Something I've been saving up for just this sort of special occasion. What do you think, Thomas? Can we still shell a big fat prawn like this? Shall we try and snap his head off? See if there's something nice and tasty inside?'

Thomas shook his head, laughing incredulously. 'You are sick, boss, really sick.'

Lowe slipped out a knife from his belt. 'Hey, you never know, man, this could be a whole new culinary phenomenon we're missing out on. Could be a massive step forward in, uh, human-alien relations, yeah?'

Horrible pain ran through my flesh and I bucked out of his grasp. I saw that he had prised a plate of exoskeleton off the top of my head. The exposed flesh burned as if acid had been thrown on it. My vision was shaken, but I could see that mulched up with the shell was a clump of brittle greying hair matted with blood. Hair that had remained trapped under the bony plate, completely different in texture from the sparse and sensitive black barbs that grew all over the prawns' bodies and that could sense delicate changes in the air and surroundings ten times more acutely than a cat's whiskers.

'Euch!' grunted Lowe. 'What is this, some kind of prawn-rot? Sorry fella, you're no good to me mouldy.' He turned back to Thomas and shrugged. 'There go my dreams of opening my own restaura-'

Almost before I knew what I was doing, my body lashed out and reeled round to slash at Lowe. The sound that escaped my throat was an animal shriek that terrified me as much as it did Lowe and Thomas, but the anger and hatred that drove it were completely, recognisably human. I had to take the ring back. At that moment, I didn't want oblivion any more. I needed to feel that this wasn't really me. That last scrap of human hair had made it all so clear. I had to have something I could physically hold onto, just the smallest reminder that once not so long ago I was a man…

My claws drove into Lowe's thigh, tugging at his pocket and scrabbling for the ring. Blood welled through tears in the khaki fabric as the two were slashed and mulched into one another by my furious scratching, but my mind was fixed only on finding the ring. Lowe screeched, his arms flailing around madly, his hands balling into fists and hammering at my shoulders. I was only dimly aware of the impact through the thick shell, and for a brief moment I couldn't help but feel ecstatic about the advantage this new body had given me.

Suddenly, a splintering pain shot through my body. I recoiled from Lowe, realising that he had found the patch where he had torn the shell from my head and had pressed his thumb down into it. I heard myself snarl at him, but my arms were suddenly too weak and heavy to raise in retaliation.

'What do you think, Thomas?' Lowe was breathing furiously through his teeth, cringing at the pain in his leg. The hand jerked my head around to face my old friend. 'Who'd be to know?'

Lowe shoved my head to the ground and pinned me down with the heel of his boot. The edge pressed hard into my back. Thomas stepped forward and held up his rifle. I stared into his eyes. I couldn't beg him. I didn't know what else to do.

Recognise me, man! It's me! This is Wikus under here! Don't do this!

In the last few seconds, I thought back to Fundiswa. Where was he during all this moving-around? I joshed him all the time for being soft, but there was no one I needed more than him now. I did so many stupid things back then. Opening that canister was just one mistake in a long line of god-awful senseless kak I did.

It crossed my mind then that maybe it was best this way. Perhaps this way, I thought, it will be fairer on Tania. If somewhere later down the line she should ever hear about what happened to me, at least this will give her closure. She can move on and forget about me, just as I've tried to do myself ever since the day that my skin fell away from bones that had already reformed into the hard black-brown plates covering this new flesh. That thought was weirdly soothing. All of a sudden the panic in my mind cut out. Everything would be alright. No more waiting, no more agonising over whether Christopher would ever come back, no more remembering. Just let the end come now.

I looked up at Thomas determinedly and braced myself for the bullet's impact.

Suddenly, Thomas lowered his rifle. Lowe looked at him quizzically. In the brief hush, I heard my breath rattle through my – through these – mandibles.

'Maybe it's not such a great idea, boss,' Thomas said with a resigned grunt. 'The other prawns who come through here, if they see all blood and guts over the floor, they'll freak out. It's more trouble than he's worth, eh? I say we stamp him and pass him through. I wanna clock out on time for once today.'

I'll never know why, but Thomas didn't kill me that day. The boiling glue from the stamp seared into the fleshy gaps between the layers of shell on my head, but I knew then just what luck really is. The stamp read 'Property of MNU', which seems kind of unnecessary to me. What I realised when the change began was that I'd been MNU's property from the moment I was employed there. I'd definitely been it once I married Tania and shook hands with my new father-in-law.

No. I can't think about that anymore. I can't afford to get angry. If I'm going to survive the next three years, I've got to keep my head down.

'Fucking prawn,' growled Lowe. As I was frog-marched away by two more armed men, I caught one last glimpse of him as he pressed a hand to the wounds on his leg. Tears welled up in eyes stamped into his puffy red face. 'Filthy fucking animal.'

A strange feeling of elation rippled through me. Takes one to know one, you fokkin' bastard.

They tell me I shouldn't be doing this. The security guards say they park their cars half a mile away. Even with several lines of electric fence and gun towers trained on the aliens day and night, they wouldn't take any chances.

'Is what I'm doing illegal, officer? I'm not technically on the premises. I just like to eat lunch here. It's quiet.'

The guard snaps the sweat off his brow with his finger and smiles stoically at me. It's obvious from his expression that he is trying to be patient and is politely searching for a suitable euphemism for what he really wants to say next.

'It's not illegal, no. But ma'am, this is no place for a woman. You want to be careful around prawns, you know. You may think you're doing nothing, but the smallest things provoke these creatures. They're very unpredictable.'

Surely, he says, I've seen the footage on the news. These are dangerous animals. Like a nest full of killer ants, when they have their mind set on something they'll bring it down as a swarm. It could just be your tyres and the metal from the car, the guard says, but if they see an opening they'll push for something more.

'This might seem like a nice quiet picnic spot to you, ma'am, but there's a very good reason why we moved these things out to the middle of nowhere. Please. I'm telling you this for your own safety.'

He's being kind and very patient, and it's not his job to watch out for me, so I apologise and move on. As I drive on past the perimeter, I look out across the countless white tents and laugh a little at myself for hoping that by some amazing coincidence you'd be hiding out in one right near the fence. And if you were there, would I recognise you? The news said you were in District 9 at the time the ship left. For a while I was crazy enough to think that maybe you'd escaped on the ship, until the flower turned up on my doorstep. When I found the flower, I knew, baby, I knew. People always said you weren't that bright, but I know you're smart enough to find another place to hide out. You're creative and resourceful, and if you survived the first few days after the accident, you could survive anything.

I taste salt at the corner of my mouth. Initially I think that it came from my lunch, then I realise that a tear has crept down my cheek. Rather than giving into the tears, I'm more bemused by them. I'm crying in spite of myself. I pull over at the side of the road and I feel that familiar inner struggle flare up again. Then it ends the way it always does. In a now unconscious gesture, I've already dialled our home telephone.

The day after they took my Wikus away, dad told me to delete the answerphone message. He told me it would just make things harder, as if standing in A & E hearing my husband's frenzied screams and shouts and not having the slightest clue what was going on wasn't hard enough already. A couple of hours later, with the break-out and those … horrible news reports, a thirty-second recorded message didn't seem quite so important any more. I told dad I'd wiped it and he didn't ask any questions. He may still know it's there, but the company's attitude when I finally persuaded them to bring all of Wikus's stuff back said it all: they just didn't care anymore. The physical reality of Wikus, whether he was alive or not, didn't matter to them; in their minds he was already just a missed opportunity. An exceptional missed opportunity, true, but now only worth dissecting in scientific papers.

Business moved on. I haven't spoken to dad in six months.

The ringer cuts out and the answerphone greeting starts playing. A lot of people say it's the weirdest thing to hear your own voice being played back to you. I don't notice it any more. I just listen for him. The weirdest thing, really the weirdest thing is when a voice you replay every day becomes less, not more, familiar every time. I'm starting to hear the message differently, breaking down the way he says words, building up in my mind what his expression must have been at the time he said them.

I remember recording this stupid little message when we moved into the house. From the moment we signed for the place, his parents and my parents were hassling us about putting in a landline the second we crossed the threshold. So, before we'd even unpacked so much as to able to make a pot of coffee, but not so soon that we hadn't finished drinking the bottle of wine that was our home-warming present to ourselves first, we linked up the handset and recorded the message. That is, we tried recording the message. About thirty times. By the tenth attempt we were competing to see who could speak for the longest without bursting out laughing. It was so dumb.

What I wouldn't give to be able to listen to all those screwed-up messages now. If only I could hold onto just one piece more of you.

The pain in my side is so intense that I'm still fighting to breathe a good half-hour after the struggle, and now I have a stitch to boot. It was a good mile's run back to my tent from the clearing where they'd tossed the cow into the crowd. We'd gathered there three hours in advance, just as we did every morning, waiting for the carcass to drop like manna from heaven into our claws. This time I was lucky: I managed to get away with a full shoulder of the meat. My own strength amazed me. Just weeks before, I'd be lucky to swipe a knob of gristle, but the urgency of the thing has filled me with an energy and power I've never felt before. I was shocked to find that I could have broken another's arm if they'd even got away with the thinnest strip from my joint, and even more shocked that after the initial scrum the others backed off, like they recognised the look in my eyes. I don't know what stopped them for sure. Prawns are still a bloody mystery to me, but I'm not half grateful they backed down this time. I hold the glistening still-warm meat to my face and sigh with gratitude. I realise as I pull back the flap opening of the tent that this is the third day now that I've held a lump of raw meat like this without gagging at the smell. The thought passes by, barely acknowledged.

'Good news,' I murmur. 'I've brought back a feast.'

I disentangle the scrap of fatty meat from the mess of black cords stuck into what were once its fleshier parts, and replace it with the shoulder. I hear the cords suck at it hungrily, drinking up its freshness. I put out a clawed hand and rest it on the egg.

From the looks of it, it should feel rough and hard, but the surface is so soft and yielding I can barely stand to touch it. I'm afraid I'll tear it, but I have to touch it. I have to feel the throbbing heat of the life inside, this life so weak and fragile I'm terrified every waking moment that it will just flicker out like a candle and die. Under the membrane, a tiny arm turns and presses back against me.

'I know, I know, I know, sweetheart. Daddy's here. Here I am.'

I know that soon we'll be able to hold hands properly, and that's my real punishment. Not the change, not even losing Tania. My real punishment is taking this child's hand and walking with them through the world I helped to create, coming closer and closer to the day I'll have to tell them what I've done. I'll have to try to explain all of this injustice they will suffer whilst knowing that they themselves are justice for the horrors I've done and allowed. However much I apologise, it will never be enough.

It's only now that I realise that the claws, the antenna, the egg, these things don't make me less of a man. Far from it; this is the first opportunity I've had in my life to be one.

Author's note: I'm starting to realise that every story I write reads like an on-going competition to find the corniest line to end a story/paragraph/story segment with ever.

Anyway, in case it wasn't clear enough, the idea behind this fic was to show Wikus gradually breaking through his self-pity and conflicted thoughts about his situation and accepting some responsibility. Oh, and I was also hoping to give myself a challenge by trying to write in that character's voice - yah, I know, I failed horribly. It's insanely hard without reducing him to a caricature with token catchphrases. Apologies, but I just couldn't bring myself to replace every 'fuck' with 'fook' or 'fokk', which seems to be the done thing in District 9 fanfiction. It would have just reduced me to fits of giggles every time I wrote it.

Yeah, I have no clue what was going on with all the changes in tense. Originally the whole thing was in the present tense but I changed the first half because it didn't suggest enough of a progression … but then it goes all stream-of-consciousness, and then – well, it reads like it was written: disjointed. In any case, any reviews, thoughts and such are greatly appreciated!