May 12, 2081

I woke up feeling weak and sick. It wasn't a good morning and as I thought of what this day signified, tears filled my eyes. Today was 12th May, the day my parents died. A tear rolled down my cheek and I used the back of my hand to wipe it off. I turned to look at the space beside me and realised Mrs. Abimbola had already gotten up. Mrs. Abimbola was the woman who had taken me from my house after the death of my parents and has taken care of me since then. When I say taken from my house, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it was for my own good, I guess.

Seven years ago, the earth became polluted with ink. The world had grown over the years and so had modern science. New machines were invented and they contributed to the pollution in the world. Several people who had foreseen the bleak future ahead, warned us about it but they were ignored. Erik Coal had the population brainwashed. He was head of RICCO CORP, a company producing high tech machineries. His machines helped. Sure, they destroyed the earth but who cared, it had more advantages. There was a robot who could do all your chores for you, a machine who could somehow get information into your brain, a robot you could customize to look and act like you - it could always be traced back to the owner so it limited the use of it for crimes. There were several other machines like that.

My mum had a few of them but my dad wasn't so crazy about it like she was. My mum had a thing for status and having a machine from RICCO CORP helped to raise a person's status. Dad didn't mind since it meant other big firms became interested in partnering with him. I also didn't mind, I was too young to understand the warnings about the machines but I wonder if I would have cared. I was a spoilt brat with the world at my feet, maids at my beck and call and toys expensive enough to feed a family well for three months.

That changed seven years ago when the world started becoming inky. It started small, little ink dots appearing once in a while until one day we woke up to see inky splotches on buildings, cars...everywhere. The water became inky, the air too had ink like substances. Scientist started researching on it but they couldn't get anywhere.

The ink started causing deaths, some were slow, some were fast but it all had the same death, a horrific painful death. When one noticed the symptoms, they became doomed. The infection started by infiltrating a person's body and turning the person's blood to ink. The ink then turned to acid and burnt the person from the inside until the person finally melted to a puddle of ink.

For my dad, the infection spread slowly but for my mum it was fast. Dad's skin started itching him and I had seen ink come out from his nose once. He visited the doctors and they told him there was nothing they could do, his blood was slowly turning to ink. They tried to slow it down and I lived each day wondering if it would be my last with my dad.

One day, rain hit the world, an inky rain. It seemed to quicken the rate of the spread of the ink in people's bodies. That day, as the rain fell, dad started jerking, crying out painfully and bleeding ink from every part of his body. Mum and I were afraid and cried but I noticed that while my tears were normal, my mums' was not. She was crying ink. She started jerking too and I cried, watching my parents die painfully in front of me and reduce to an inky puddle.

I wiped the tears rolling down my cheeks as my mind replayed that day. Each year, on the day they died, I mourned them. It had been seven years and I was only young then but still I remembered it clearly. I reluctantly pulled myself up from the bed and straightened the sheets. Then I grabbed my brush and my towel. There was a bucket of water at the door and I guessed Mrs. Abimbola had left it for me. She knew how sad I usually was on this day.

The house was silent so I guessed Mrs Abimbola and Tobi, her son, had gone out. I carried the bucket out to the bathroom, which was outside the house, to take my bath. It was a small square space with tall zinc coverings surrounding it. It also doubled as a toilet with a pit toilet in it. After freshening up, I made my way back to the house.

"Good morning ma," I greeted in a quiet voice when I got into the house and saw Mrs. Abimbola arranging some papers on the only table we had.

She stood up and smiled sadly at me. "How are you, Ivy?"

I shrugged. There was no need saying anything. She knew I wasn't fine. She also knew that I usually liked to be left alone on this day. She nodded and I made my way into the room I shared with her. I got dressed and grabbed my bag. The bag contained the things Mrs. Abimbola had taken from my house when she was taking me away. I held each piece in it dear to my heart. I threw the bag over my shoulders and walked out of the door.

"Come back early," Mrs. Abimbola yelled after me.

Another ritual I had on this day was going to a place where I could quietly mourn my parents. Mrs. Abimbola let me but she was always worried about me coming back on time. I followed a shortcut, wanting to avoid as many villagers as I could. The village was situated deep in a forest in the western part of Nigeria, precisely Ogun state. My eyes were fixed on the inky ground until I got to my destination. It was a few metres away from the village. Tall, spine like trees surrounded me with their inky roots visible above the ground. At times, I came here to sit and think. It wasn't too far way from the village but it wasn't too close to the village either. The quietness in the air had a special way of calming me down.

As I walked past a tree with low branches, a drop of ink fell from one of the leaves unto my shoulders. I ignored it and continued walking, stopping when I found my favourite sitting spot. Its inky root was quite comfortable to sit on, and long enough for me to lie on, though it was uncomfortable to lie on. I sat on the inky root, feeling the ink soak into my dress.

Opening my backpack, I pulled out the first thing I touched. It was a framed picture of me and my parents on an island. I traced my fingers around it as tears rolled down my cheeks. My mum had a smile on her beautiful face. Even as an ex beauty queen, she always looked beautiful without trying. My dad had his arms around her as he smiled into the camera. He was handsome, huge and had a slightly big stomach. I stood in between my parents in a pretty blue dress, shining my white teeth. A lot has changed since then. My parents were dead, the world was infected and my teeth weren't even white again.

As I pulled items out of my bag; stuff given to me by my parents or even stuff I had before everything changed, more tears rolled down my cheeks. When I had emptied the bag, I held the picture of my parents to my chest and sobbed hard. I really missed them and each time I remembered how they had left me, how painful their deaths were, I couldn't keep tears from my eyes.

I don't know how long I had cried but I woke up hours later to see the sun was going down. I had slept off and as I stood up, I winced. The tree roots wasn't exactly a comfortable thing to sleep on. I was also covered with ink that I guessed had dropped from the leaves above me. I gathered my things into my bag and made my way home.

When I got home, no one was in but the door to the hut was wide open so I guessed either Mrs. Abimbola or Tobi was nearby. I entered and went straight to the room, feeling exhausted. The hut was quite small, with only two rooms. I shared a small mattress, on the floor of one room, with Mrs. Abimbola while Tobi slept on a mat, or sometimes the sofa, in the other room that doubled as a parlor. Few minutes later, Mrs. Abimbola entered the room.

She sighed in relief as she saw me. "Thank God. I was getting worried. Will you eat fufu and vegetable?"

My stomach rumbled in response and she chuckled.

"I guess that's a yes."

©Jesutofunmi Fekoya

GLOSSARY
Fufu - An ancient african dish. It is a thick paste usually made by boiling starchy root vegetables .

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