The grey moon hovered a great distance over the earth casting its subtle rays across the Yakasai grass lands as they swayed in tune with the circling breeze. Saida of the Zazzou tribe hunched low to study her environment and map out a strategy for surviving the night.

It had been well past noon when she had left the others back at the camp to enjoy the sport of hunting. If there was one thing Saida reveled more than taking a long swim in the Yakasai Lake, it was hunting down the wildest creatures. She believed it gave her value and the number of body parts she kept from her kills increased her warrior spirit. She was used to being the hunter but this night, as she soon discovered, she was being hunted for a change.

The strange presence she felt since the setting of the sun drew closer and just the thought of the nearing danger made her hairs stand on end, not because she was afraid but because she felt her blood rise in excitement. Saida listened for a sound of approach from her stalker above the chirpings of the night dwellers but heard none. She concluded that a game of cat-and-mouse would leave her at a disadvantage and so she rose to her full height to tower over the blades of elephant grass scattered around her.

Saida, female warrior of the Zazzou tribe and daughter of late Yusuf the Great, stood tall with her chin up in defiance to night’s winds and against the moon’s gentleness. Her chest and hips were wrapped tightly in the elastic boar skin she had washed, dried and softened in snake-skin oil, having the amulet of a boar’s tooth hanging on a silk string around her neck. Under the light of the moon, her full bust outlines and rounded hips where enhanced by the sheen of the reptile’s skin and her burnished hair trailed the wind behind her. She was Zazzou and her pride as a warrior demanded that she faced her enemy.

“Show yourself,” she challenged in her native tongue. “Or are you a coward who drives the spear into his enemy’s backside?”

Silence was all that stood up to her challenge.

“Show yourself, coward!” She bellowed into the night.

“I am not so far away that you should scream.” A voice came through the darkness. Saida spun around to face the dwarf tree behind her from where the voice had come, to see a man crouching gingerly on a branch.

“Why have you followed me?” She demanded, unsheathing the slender blade she carried on her waist band.

“I have come to kill you, Saida daughter of Yusuf.” He said and hopped off the tree to land just before her. Saida’s muscles tensed when he landed so close to her and she prepared herself to strike if he made a move. She immediately recognized the markings under his left eye. He was definitely an assassin for Usman Jirier, a man who would stop at nothing to reclaim the pride he had lost to Saida’s father. From his neck hung a collection of amulets and sacred pebbles which meant he was probably an invoker or a summoner. Or worse still, he could be both.

“I have no business with you,” she said trying to buy more time to come up with a plan. “If Usman has any drop of dignity left in him let him face me himself.”

“Ah, but I have business with you,” He said. “And tonight you shall join your father.”

With that he withdrew a blade very similar to Saida’s and in a flash he swept the sharp edges across his thumb. He felt among the amulets on his neck and selected a small sacred pebble. With his now bleeding thumb, he coated the milky stone with red and proceeded to whisper a few words to the stone he held.

‘Daughters of the Earth,” He shouted. “I awaken you from your slumbers to do my bidding. Arise and obey!” On command the earth rumbled and spewed forth thick tendrils with thorny coverings. With a motion of his hands, he directed the surge of nature towards the warrior girl.

Saida smiled knowing that it would take more than a few vines from the bowels of the earth to kill the chief’s daughter.

“For one with bold words,” she said mid-air, “You definitely are below expectations.”

“You still do not understand the powers of the Kakei tribe, young one.” He replied, unperturbed by the ease at which she evaded the plants. “That was just a demonstration.”

The vines seemed to sprout all around her and she had little time to co-ordinate an attack between trying to avoid the attacking vines and watching the ground for where new one threatened to burst from. Her slender blade only cut skin deep when she slashed at the unfeeling tendrils and she knew it was going to be of no help. Saida miscalculated a jump and one of the thorny fingers slithered around her ankle, digging in the razor sharp thorns into her flesh. Jirier’s assassin smiled when Saida’s cry of pain rang through the night and he willed the earth to divulge more of the deadly vines.

Sharp pain tore through Saida’s body as she cut herself loose from the plants’ grasp and struggled to keep away from them. She realized that if she depended on skill alone in this battle she would be dead before long and so she held on to the boar tooth hanging from her neck and chanted the summoning call.

“Come to me great creature who’s presence is unknown to the weak. Come to me great creature who would strengthen the bold. Come to me great creature and share in the victory you bring!”

I rode on, my cycle wheezing and puffing as I passed the leaning houses, their walls a patch work of wood and junk metal. Scarecrows of abandoned pylons vegetated the area dangling their creaking rusty arms in the wind. A car door swung open on the roof of a tarnished house and a dreadlocked midget peered at me from his shadowy dwelling. He smiled at me with big coppered teeth, three of which were missing, and swung at me with all his strength. Something dark wheezed past me missing my head by barely an inch; the polythene tail whistling through the air trailing behind it an all too familiar acrid stench. Bastard! The little cretin threw shit at me! No doubt he’d been saving his last deposit for any passerby. I guess I was lucky I was riding my cycle then.

A short distance down the puddled street and I came before a small house that stood out amidst the bizarreness that surrounded me. It stuck out of the ground at an odd angle, leaning away to the side as if windblown then having its roof, a meshing of thatch and zinc, slant to the opposite side to almost graze the ground. Its number, a single digit, stretched across its side in a harsh violet fluorescent paint.

I stopped my cycle and flipped the little black card over in my hand, checking for the address and making sure I was at the right place. That wasn’t really necessary. The place not only looked like a shrine, but smelled like one too. Every user I’ve met always said it was the smell that pulled them in. They just fascinated me; one minute the sickly sweet smell of anger stung your nose and the next, you were inhaling the teasing scent of fantasy and daydreams. I was definitely at the right place; Mama Iyobe’s little shrine.

A little wooden trapdoor slid open on the rusting zinc roof and a figure emerged. She stepped out of the shack, barely grazing the surface with her toes, her oiled black skin gleaming with vibrant energy. Her fat and twisted dreads drifted behind her like the flag of our African soil. I could feel her thoughts. They bounced off me like pebbles down a rocky face, leaving only a split second of a faint impression. She looked at me and smiled, her eyes droopy but focused and sharp as blades. Time seemed to stand still, curtseying aside for her to walk over to me.

“We’re running out, Jasa. We’re almost out of mind juice.” She whispered, her shoulder brushing slightly against mine as her arm snaked over my chest and stopped around my neck. My skin tingled as her mind washed over mine, sharp needles prickling at the base of my skull. “We’re almost there, can you feel it Jasa?”

I stood motionless, wanting to tear her hand off me and scream into her face but there was nothing I could do so I asked the one question that made no sense. “Almost where?”

“The gates of heaven. The Angels are waiting, Jasa, I can hear the cherubim. Can’t you?” She laughed softly almost as though in regret and then shoved me aside. “I’ll be waiting when your time comes.”

With a sudden gust of wind she was gone, just like a mirage. I stood alone where I was, holding the little black card in my hand and staring at the glowing number painted on the house. She was gone leaving nothing but that dull teasing sweet smell of daydreams. She was definitely an addict who was losing control, just like the thousands of blacks out there. It wouldn’t be long till she blanked. Oddly, I found myself wondering just how long it’ll take for me to get there. We’re almost there, she’d said.

“Are you going to stand there all day, sir?” A gentle voice pulled me out of my daze and I looked up at a pixie sized girl of no more than twelve years standing by the trapdoor. No doubt Mama Iyobe’s assistant. She wore a pout, bare-chested with her subtle mounds peaking proudly against the cold and her sides ridged with rows of malnutrition. Her tiny fingers worked the multicolored beads that hung around her hips, showing her impatience. She stared at me with the same heavy lidded eyes as the other kids in the neighborhood.

“You’re late, sir. Mama Iyobe has been expecting you, Mr. Jasa.” Her clean shaved head gleamed like her full lips under the evening sun. “My name is Isade, please come this way.”

In a different place and time I would have spanked the skin off her coal black buttocks. The shrine was much more than just a shack. Isade led me into a musty coolness that glided just above the surface of my skin, down a wood paneled spiral stairway that led into the darkness below. We followed the stairway, coiling like a millipede into a cold dark center. The smells became stronger and almost tangible as we moved deeper. There was a strong urge to reach out and grab hold of the effervescing wisps and squeeze them into me as I felt myself get tipsy from the clashing waves of aromatics. Already, the little girl was skipping ahead to a light tune she hummed, oblivious to the steep stairs.

The shrine’s bowel resonated with a slight echo that rippled through the coolness, spreading from its center to wash over me. Darkness hung like a breath upon the effervescing glow of the deprivation chamber as viscous violet pulsed through glass veins that spiraled around and away from it, hugging on to its luminescence while drawing the blackness around itself. Watching unprocessed Voodoo weave through tubes and around electrodes, bubbling soundlessly in its own royal light, weakened my knees. My groin hardened and I felt a familiar heat spread from it. The white doctors had interpreted the sexual reaction as the body’s expression of anticipation of immense mental and physical libration. They were always much for words. Sexual climax was but a dull glimpse of Voodoo’s power, it was nothing compared to the purple pills’ explosion. A black poet once said;

Voodoo’s like a sigh. It rises from deep within, warming its way up like a thought to fill your head with an uncanny clarity that is in itself a hazy feeling. Then explodes with your breath, stretching beyond the boundaries of reality; an infinite expanse of nothing and everything, opening to you a universe of pure imagination and boundless possibilities. In an instant you become a god. But just for a moment.

That was Voodoo.

The chamber itself held nothing but the bare form of a lady floating weightlessly within the glass sphere. Tremors ran through her body as she twisted and moaned through the gas mask strapped on to her face. Hair-fine electrodes extended from her head brushing against copper rings that circled the top of the sphere giving off hundreds of tiny sparks that looked like undulating waves of violet from where I stood. Another donor. Feeding off her thoughts, dreams, imaginations and memories for a couple of purple pills. Well at least we didn’t have to spend hard-earned money to get them.

“See how her juices flow, Jasa.” A voice slithered from the dark, interrupting my thoughts. I turned around to see the shadows reveal a lean and shapely figure slinking with ease through the dark coolness. Mama Iyobe smiled licking her lips and running wrinkled fingers through her grey braids, the thin lines of age on her face seemed to meld with the shadows. “See how she writhes with pleasure.”

The chamber’s glow intensified and I saw the woman moan as she parted her thighs and thrust her hardened nipples into the nothingness surrounding her. She trembled as more fluid spurted out from between her legs to drift as bubbles glowing like fireflies in the dark. I knew the pleasure of being a donor and I knew exactly how she felt. It was the height of carnal indulgence but at what price?

“Rashid gave you the details?” I asked, wanting to get straight to the point. The woman made me uneasy. That I was traded to this milking factory was a thought I tried really hard to avoid.

“Yes, yes Jasa. You do have your schedule, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Good, you start tomorrow, seeing as we only have one cipher.” She threw a slender finger in the direction of the chamber. “And it’s occupied.”

Voodoo essence flowed freely from the core of the Thought cipher, undergoing processes that would finally lead to it being condensed into the most vibrant capsules I’ve ever seen, pulsing with their own light and swollen with human psyche.

“I’m sure you want your pills, Jasa.” Mama Iyobe’s eyes flicked in my direction.

“How long do I have before I run out?” The question was out before I could stop it.

Iyobe’s smile faltered. Thinking back I’m sure the thought of her losing a donor was enough to cause a bit of a shock.

“What do you mean, run out?” She asked, her smile snapping back in place, fitting smoothly between wrinkles.

“You know what I mean Iyobe. How long till I’m dry?”

“Running dry, as you put it, Jasa, is relative. We all expire one way or the other, what difference does it make if you’re a donor or not?”

“Don’t patronize me.” The old hag was trying to play word games with me. I hated her at that moment. “Donors don’t just expire, we run dry. We become Blanks, empty mindless vessels without a thoughts, memory or imagination. Blanks don’t even dream Iyobe, so don’t even think of patronizing me and tell me how long I have till I run out of my mind.”

She faced me, ran her fingers through her hair distractedly and shrugged. “Give or take, at the rate at which we cipher from you, five years.”

Five years. It sounded like a lot of time but I knew it’ll be reduced to mere seconds at the final hour. I looked back at the chamber. ”How long does she have?”

“Two sessions.” My eyes widened. “Don’t worry she knows. It was her choice to be in there.”

Isade walked to her mistress’s side, holding a small transparent box in her little fingers. I could see the rows and rows of the purple pills. My heart began to race, I wanted to snatch the pills and gulp them all down not caring if I would die of brain exhaustion or extreme pleasure. I just wanted Voodoo inside me. Iyobe smiled, seeing the expression on my face and I realized she knew that this donor wasn’t leaving her employ any time soon. I knew she was right but it only made my hate intensify. The old witch knew she owned me.

“Two dozen, Jasa.” Iyobe took the box from Isade and held it out to me. “Voodoo.”

Voodoo. The most powerful and expensive drug in the black-market, the only drug with a death penalty in Africa, the most common drug on the continent. People would kill for three pills of Voodoo; twelve pills would birth a bloodbath. Two dozen? I’d rather not think of it. With Voodoo people could see into the future, tell the past, levitate, and move things with their mind. Voodoo made things possible just as far as your imagination could reach. The very same things that formed the pills. Imagine compressing all your imagination into a drop and releasing it all at a go. That was Voodoo.

I took the box, stared at my droopy eyed reflection then opened it and pulled out a single capsule with trembling fingers. Its hum reverberated through my arm and I couldn’t help smiling. I dropped the pill on my tongue letting the sharp tingle flash like electricity through my skull and down my spine as I pulled it in. The humming capsule began to melt slowly in my mouth and my smile widened.

I closed my eyes and I waited for the purple explosion.