In Darkness by Nick Lake

a game: you had to flick bottle caps and make them jump into a tin can. It was a good game. We had five bottle caps each and if I won, then Marguerite had to be my slave for the day and do everything I told her. I could have been really mean, but I never was. If she won, which wasn’t often, then I had to be her horse, and she’d sit on my back as I rode her around the street. I told her it wasn’t as good as having a slave, but she loved horses. She’d never seen one, but she loved them all the same.
    Biggie never saw a Cadillac Escalade or a bottle of Cristal, but it didn’t stop him rapping about them.
    Anyway, on this occasion I had lost, so I was on my hands and knees, Marguerite whooping on my back, pretending to whip me with her hand and laughing.
    Suddenly there was a scream. It sounded like Manman.
    I bucked Marguerite off and she landed in the mud.
    — What’s happening? she said.
    — I don’t know. Stay here.
    I ran over to the shack and ducked inside. I saw anpil young men in there, with baseball caps on their heads. They were carrying baseball bats and machetes, and had scarves around their faces like bandis.
    Manman was backed against the wall of the shack, screaming and screaming. One of the men grabbed me and held me tight, my arms against my sides. He held me a long time. I struggled and he hit me and the world went black, and I don’t know how much more time passed after that.
    More men came in from the street.
    — The girl? said one of them.
    — Done.
    — No, not my – began my papa, but one of the chimères kicked his legs out from under him and he fell hard on his back.
    — Shut up, another man said.
    Papa got to his knees and swore. It was the first time I had ever heard him swear.
    — Let my family go, he said.
    The chimère who seemed to be the leader sighed. He made a little gesture and one of his friends slashed down with his machete, then Papa’s arm was gone below the elbow. That’s how easy it was. After that the others started hacking and stabbing, too, and I was struggling in the arms of the one who was holding me, and he was laughing, and everything was flying blood and twisted faces and terrible, wet noises.
    Eventually, I closed my eyes. I think I maybe fainted. I remember hearing someone say:
    — What about the woman?
    And another man said:
    — He said she should live.
    Another said:
    — Well, yes, but . . .
    And all his friends laughed.
    Then blackness.
    See? I’ve been in darkness before, with bodies. I know this place. I wonder now if the hospital is only the shack again, and maybe I wasn’t shot in the arm but in the heart or the head, and all of this is hell, or the land under the sea where the dead go to be lwa of the Gede family. Maybe I’m back in the room after Papa’s murder, and that’s where I’ll always be now.
    I take a deep breath. Everything I remember is too vivid. My fallen-down hospital room is a cinema with the lights turned down – it’s total blackness, and my life is too bright against it.
    So, the shack.
    At some point the darkness ended and I was looking up at one of the men with guns. He winked at me.
    — This is what happens when you fuck with the Boston crew, he said.
    Another chimère laughed.
    — For sure, he said.
    I didn’t understand. Papa hadn’t fucked with anyone. All he did was take us away from the peristyle, where we were pretending to bless people. Even then, though, I think I knew that this had nothing to do with that, cos I understood that the chimère was Boston, not Route 9. I clung to that.
    I told myself, one day all of these Boston pigs are going to die.
    Then there was a loud bang that I recognized as a gun firing. I looked up and Manman was standing with a semi-automatic in her hand. She was crying. One of the chimères, the one who had spoken to me, was screaming. Blood was pouring from his shoulder. I noticed that there were skulls and crossbones on the bandanna over his face.
    — Bastard, he said.
    — Get