Oakaigus #1: Red Bloom

OAKAIGUS

Written by Nathan S. A. Sanders

No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any way without the written consent of the author.

Copyright
© 2016 Nathan S. Armstrong Sanders

All
Rights Reserved

U.S.A.

Book
illustration by Nathan S. Armstrong Sanders

CHAPTER 1

At the rising sun, a petite girl awoke from her
cloth-stuffed pillow. She felt a slight tingle on her forearm as her vision
sharpened. She looked down and saw a furry, 4-legged insect with a red stringer
scurrying up her arm. “Hate these things,” she mumbled as she slapped her palm
against her light-brown skin.

She lifted her palm up, only to find nothing there.

“Dammit,” she said as she lunged across her bed to
grab her sandal. “Where’d it go?!”

Her eyes darted across the dusty room, but she
couldn’t find it.

Finally, the corner of her vision caught a small,
red blur to her left.

She turned, and there the insect was; latched to the
wall with its red stinger erect.

She felt her heart drop in her chest as she held her
breath.

The insect launched itself towards her neck,
shrouded in a blur.

With the stinger only an inch away from her neck,
her body jerked to the side. She swung her sandal around, catching the insect
and crushing its body against the rocky wall.

“Phew,” she said as she lowered her sandal.

She rose to her feet and treaded across the rugged,
stone floor coated in a bed of dust.

She stopped at another bed across the room, occupied
by a tan-skinned boy fidgeting and whispering in his sleep.

“Jo,” she said as she tapped his shoulder.

No response.

“JO!”

Still no response.

Her brow slumped into a furrow. “Allllright,” she
said as she stretched her fingers forward.

She extended her arm towards his forehead, aiming
her fingers at the small mineral protruding from the middle of his head.

Once she plucked it, his eyes bulged open the
instant he felt the shock rattle down the nerves of his spine. He slapped his
hand over his mouth, breathing heavily out of his nose.

“WHY,” he said with a heaving breath, “WOULD YOU
DO
THAT?!”

“Sorry,” the girl said with her finger up her nose, “I
tapped you but you wouldn’t get up. We gotta’ work today.”

He sighed as he rubbed the mineral on his head.

“Oh yeah,” the girl said, “you were moving in your
sleep again. Bad dream?”

“Uhhh…”

“…Was it mom again?”

The boy’s muscles tensed all at once, making him dig
his fingers into his lap.

The girl sighed as she reached down to gently place
her hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Jo,’ we’ll find her.”

“I hope you’re right,” the boy said with his head
down.

Suddenly, they both heard a booming voice from the
down the stairs: “JOGEN! LILAH! WHAT’S TAKING YA’?!”

“Oh,” Lilah said, “COMING!”

Lilah ran back over to her side of the room and
forced a clothing bag open. She flung out wrinkled, brown pants and a burgundy
tunic with tiny holes in it. “Better hurry up,” she said as she pulled her
pants over her shorts.

Jogen rose to his feet, stretched out his lanky body
and scratched through his curly, brown hair. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

Soon afterwards, Lilah came fully-dressed, hopping
down the stairs and into a kitchen filled with steam from a boiling pot.

“You’re late,” said a tall, bald man with his heavy
voice.

“I was trying to kill a bug.”

“And Jo?”

“Uhhh-“

Before Lilah could answer, she heard steady
footsteps up the stairwell. She turned around and saw Jogen slowly hopping down
the stairs on one leg, struggling to lace on his right shoe.

“I-I’m here,” Jogen said, “I just gotta’ get
this--AH!”

Jogen lost his balance and rolled down the last few
stairs crashing into a stack of iron pots. “S-Sorry Mr. Singu…”

Mr.
Singu rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said with
an exhale.

With
his shoe on, Jogen hopped to his feet and scrambled to stack the pots back up.
When he finished, he stood next to Lilah, brushing off his tunic.

“Anyway,”
Mr. Singu said, “today’s gonna’ be a bit different. A couple of my associates
actually spotted some Jhama Jhama berries growing in the Badigeon Fields.”

“Wait,”
Lilah said, “I thought those couldn’t grow in this region.”

“I
thought so too,” Jogen added.

“Same
here,” Mr. Singu said, “as long as we knew, they couldn’t grow in climates this
hot. But for some reason, they just started popping up…”

“So
you want us to pick them?” Lilah asked.

“Yup!
This is our chance to get a leg up over the other cooks, so we need to pick all
the bushes ‘fore they find out!”

“Meaning,
this is gonna’ be a long day,” Lilah said with her finger up her nose.

“I’ll
make it worth your while! I’ve got a surprise for you two when you’re
finished!”

“Really?”
Jogen said with a smile.

“Not
only that, BUT, if you two can pick all the bushes before 28:30 AM, I’ll throw
in an
extra
surprise!”

A
smirk grew on Lilah’s face.

“I’LL
WIN,” Lilah shouted.

“Uh,”
Jogen said softly, “I don’t think it’s a competi-“

“READY,
SET G-“

“WAIT,”
Mr. Singu said, “before you go, make sure you use the bulk carts. You’ll need
‘em. I want
whole
bushes: leaves, wood,
everything
.”

“What
for?” Lilah asked.

“Jhama
leaves give a real, exotic kick to the flavor when you use it for seasoning,
and the wood is supposed to give meat a special flavor when smoking with it.”

“Okay,
got it. We’re off!” Lilah rushed to the back of the kitchen and through the
back door connected to the shed.

“Oh,”
Jogen said, “uh, see you later!” Jogen ran after Lilah to the shed.

“Be
safe out there!” Mr. Singu yelled.

Mr.
Singu’s halved grin dissolved into a straight face. “Still,” he said under his
breath, “why are those berries growing here? Strange…”

CHAPTER 2

From
inside the shed, Jogen and Lilah stepped out into the blistering sun, pulling
out two, four-wheeled carts cladded in iron with crates attached to the back of
them.

Lilah
hopped on her cart and fastened the safety belt over her waist.

“Ready?”
she said.

“Yeah,”
Jogen replied as he fastened his belt.

The
two of them started to pedal and rode off from the sandy lot of the diner.

Jogen
and Lilah made their way onto the rugged, muddy streets of their town. They
rode past smaller children kicking rubber balls and women filling the
atmosphere with the smoky aroma of fifty-pound ribs that massaged their noses.

Lilah
looked to her side and saw a man lying on the ground, groaning as he massaged
his ribcage that protruded through his skin. His wrinkled stomach touched all
the way to his spine, while his bone-thin limbs showed patched of scabs on his
crackling, dry skin.

“Poor
guy,” Lilah said.

“They
still haven’t found a cure for PID yet?” Jogen said.

“I
don’t think so. He’s probably gonna’ die there…”

“Dammit.”

The
two of them rode past more people congregating near abandoned buildings. On one
of the buildings, there were wrinkled, dirty posters hanging up with pictures
of people that had the word ‘
Missing
’ at the bottom of each poster.

Jogen
turned his head to gaze at a poster with the picture of a brown-skinned woman
with long, dark hair.

Jogen’s
grip tightened on his cart handle as he gritted his teeth.

Lilah
glanced over at Jogen and saw the shift in his expressions.

“We’ll
find her,” she said, “whoever took her is gonna’ get theirs. Trust.”

Jogen
squinted his eyes as he turned his attention to the path in front of him.

As
they rode through the streets, Lilah stopped to look down a dead-end alleyway.
She saw a man standing above a cornered woman. “Hey, Jo, look,” she said.

Jogen
looked over in the alley. “What’s going on?”

“Not
sure…”

As
they stared longer, they saw the man choke the woman with one hand, and ripping
off her garments with his other hand.

“NO,”
the woman cried, “PLEASE STOP!”

Lilah
noticed people who glanced in the alley but kept walking by. Her fist shook as
blood rushed to her face. “I
HATE
these people.”

Lilah
pulled her safety belt off and jumped off her cart to look in the back cart.
She grabbed a toolbox and pulled out a short, sharp blade.

Lilah
dashed into the alley with the blade behind her back.

While
the man tried to tug the woman’s pants off, he stopped the moment he heard
footsteps.

Lilah
shouted at the top of her lungs, swinging the blade from behind her back. In an
instant, Lilah’s blade sliced through all the meat in the man’s wrist.

The
man hollered as his forearm burned with a bloody sting. He pulled the bottom of
his shirt over his bleeding arm and fell down. He squirmed in the dirt with
drool leaking from his mouth, tensing every part of his body to fight the
shock.

Lilah
swiped her blade through the air and splattered blood in the man’s eyes. Lilah then
snorted up a ball of saliva in her mouth and spit in the man’s face.

Lilah
reached out her hand to the woman. “You okay,” she asked.

The
woman nodded a “yes” with tears in her eyes as she fixed her clothes back on.
The woman stumbled to take her first step, but caught her balance and ran away.

“Wait,”
Lilah shouted.

“THANK
YOU,” the woman replied as she kept running.

Jogen
watched as the woman ran away into the street. “Hope she’s alright,” he said.

Lilah
left the man wallowing in the alley and hopped back on her cart.

“Damn,”
she said, “I was trying to see if we could help her. Guess we better get
going.”

Jogen
and Lilah resumed pedaling.

As
the minutes passed by, Jogen and Lilah rode through the town quietly, focusing
on the road.

“Hey,
Li,” Jogen said, “what made you do that back there?”

Lilah
let out a slow, deep sigh, “It’s just…I feel like nobody cares about girls
around here.”

“Hm?”

“When
something like that happens here, people act like they don’t see it. You
saw
‘em! People walked
right
past her and didn’t even
think
to help!
And what makes it worse, when people DO pay attention, they act like it’s the
girl’s
fault.”

“Why?!”

“I
really don’t get it. I just can’t wait ‘til I’m bigger so I can change all
this.”

“How?”

“Not
really sure. I just know that I wanna’ fight for girls to be treated right.”

“Sounds
good.”

“What
about you, Jo?”

“H-Huh?”

“You
thought about what you wanna’ do when you get bigger?”

Jogen
felt his heartbeat punch against his chest. “O-oh, I, uh…I’m gonna’ be an
‘
architect
.’
Yeah
…”

“…You
don’t sound too sure…”

Jogen
exhaled as he relaxed his body. “You’re right,” he said, “truth is, I really
don’t know. Just thinking about it kinda’ scares me…I just need more time,
that’s all.”

“Okay.”