Chapter Nine: For 53 Days and 53 Nights
Anja broke out of her fugue, she pushed and clawed at Jericho's frantically moving fingers.
"Get your hands off me," Anja shrieked, pulled abruptly from sleep and into the land of the terrified.
Jericho didn't hear Anja anymore, his eyes were trained on her swollen belly, whispering in the language of his people.
Anja held rigidly still under his hands.
Her racing heart returned to normal as Jericho prayed.
He prayed to the god that had led his family since the beginning of the first instance of patriarchal cell division.
Jericho prayed for a safe journey, it was time to leave this place and he wanted the eyes of his savior upon them all.
He invoked the protection of the god of his father's father.
As Jericho prayed, Babagorl stirred awake. She rubbed the corners of her eyes before joining him in prayer, kneeling at his side, placing her tiny hands over the scarred, weather-affected hands of her father.
After his words ended, Jericho slowly opened his eyes and looked away from Anja's belly to look at her.
"Babagorl will help you ready for our journey, do not cause difficulty."
Anja nodded, keeping her lips smashed together to prevent them from quivering, reading and understanding the vast unspoken words and warnings between the lines.
She allowed Babagorl to flit about, pack their belongings, knowing that fighting was futile. Anja dropped her hands to cradle her growing belly, knowing that she needed to adapt.
To conform and obey.
As the weaker sex, capitulate.
Acquiesce or die.
As a woman, she'd be in goddamned silence.
The fetus inside Anja's womb would continue to develop.
To Anja it seemed Jericho was wondering, leading them to nowhere, but Jericho was not lost.
His genetic sequencing knew the way, the knowledge had been passed on, he was guided by the stars that were created by the fingers of his god.
Across the world, Bane was dreaming, sweat blossoming on his exposed skin from where he was lying on top of the bed linen.
In the labyrinth of his dream world, he took his scarred hand off the wall and was lost in a circular hell.
He was tormented by what he saw.
Bane was unable to stop the images from bombarding his optic nerve and searing themselves in the front of his brain.
He would never be able to stop being a spectator to horror when he discovered his eyelids had been shorn away.
Every direction he found Anja, always just beyond his reach as he ran for her.
Bane's voice wouldn't come as he watched Anja drown in a river whose waters had turned to a shade of freshly spilled blood.
He was helpless to watch Anja surrounded by bushes that burned, eventually consumed by flames and white-hot fire.
The smoke blinded him, when it cleared he found himself standing in front of a brackish sea, it was murky but might've passed for red at some point.
Bane found his voice, a guttural shout spilling from between his lips.
Lighting split the sky and the sea parted, the floor of the sea littered with clumps of kelp and empty shells.
A roar challenged Bane and he was at once seeing a gold bull, its musculature tight and shiny.
Its gilded arterial intersections pulsed on its broad chest as it scraped its front hoof in the sea floor, mud clumps flying up as it issued a thunderous primal cry, echoing against the towering walls of water on each side of it.
The ferocious bovine's maw opened, its square teeth wetly gleaming, its primitive shouts turned to words, words spoken with Jericho's booming voice.
Bane froze at the edge of the exposed seabed, listening to the gilt bull speak.
Jericho spoke representing himself and the herd that followed.
"We will wait for you, then we will do do what we have done before with those that trespass against us."
"We are assembled together on the holy field of battle with the desire to take the lives that have come for ours."
"We will not stand for this on our on the soil of our homeland."
"This land was here before your woman attempted to raze it to the ground."
Bane watched the golden bull raise a leg and gesture towards the tall seawall on its right, an image of his village appeared in the waves, a moving projector playing the picture of life.
"Our animals have long eaten from this earth, shared in the bounty of vegetables we brought forth from the sweat of our brow, toiling under the cloudless sky and attempting to find respite throughout a bitterly cold night."
"Our children were lost as the moon was high overhead to disease before your woman brought her virulence here and attempted to overthrow this dynasty that existed eons before she was even a biological flicker."
The flickering image of the animals and gourds disappeared, replaced by a sepia-toned moving picture of Maribel's dead body, her swollen belly torn open in an effort to save the son.
Bane's heart thudded in his chest, rage filling him when Maribel was replaced by Anja, hugely pregnant with blood staining her body.
"You brought this to me, you laid this at my feet," the golden bull accused, its word sharp, acidic as they slapped at Bane who was stuck on the shore.
Bane curled his hands into fists as the watery image of Anja changed to reflect her screaming, her lip lacerated, each cry forcing fat droplets of blood to flow down her chin.
The shape of his child was visible under the stretched skin of her belly, thrashing amidst the amniotic fluid.
"Bow your head and walk away son," the gilt bull murmured, sea foam clinging to its shiny, thick horns, the phallic curvatures dripped with temptation.
Bane roared at the bull, nothing coherent but it was all from within him, his broad chest expanding as he took in full lungful's of the brisk sea air.
The bull bellowed in rage as it began to charge him, the walls of water collapsing in its golden wake.
Anja disappeared into the crashing water.
In the moment before the collision of flesh, the screams of beast and animal blended into a zealous, murderous harmony.
Bane was instantly ripped from his dreams, at once awoken by the screams of his first-born son.
Bane bolted upright in the bed, his hands clenching the tangled bed linen, out of the bed with purpose when Sebastian gave another series of mournful cries.
He pushed open Sebastian's bedroom door and found Madeline with her arms around his young son whose shoulders were shaking, his small body wracked with huge sobs.
"My son," Bane murmured.
"Papa," Sebastian cried when he looked up and saw his father, rushing to him, would've crashed if Bane hadn't scooped him up.
Sebastian had refused to be comforted by Madeline, Bane could see the fatigue on her face, the children's sleep being further erratic with each passing night.
"Go find some rest," he murmured.
Bane settled on top of his son's bed, adjusting Sebastian in his strong arms as he whispered a soothing lullaby to calm him.
Sebastian reached out and gripped onto Bane's larger hand, a gesture seen in the much younger, making Bane's thoughts go to his unborn child.
Sadness fell heavily around his shoulders thinking of the child that might not still be living, not knowing if his son or a daughter was growing inside Anja.
"Where's momma? I miss her papa," Sebastian sobbed, a hiccup distorting his words.
Bane's tongue was paralyzed in forming soothing words to feed to his son.