Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana (5 page)

“So, I improvise a little. They love it.”

“I’m not messing around Sapna, you stick to the script or I’m switching you to a job that you can handle,” he huffs. “I don’t need you getting hurt and
calling attention to this place.”

“I know this is just cause that Backlasher Anita is sucking your dick and wants my job.” He ducks his head at the mention of her.

“Don’t call her that,” Val says.

“Of course, you would defend her on that point. What’s your real name Val? Raj? Oh no, wait, maybe it’s Vivek? That was always a popular name for an Indian boy.”

“You don’t know anything
about me,” Val shakes his head. “I’m just trying to look out for you.”

“What? Are you joking? I have enough shit going on without this. If I was losing percentages, if people were asking for something else, that’s one thing, but I do a good job, so leave me alone.”

“Sapna, look…I…don’t know what’s going on with you, but don’t do it,” Val says seriously, looking down. His cheeks are red,
even through his dark skin, and he looks suddenly like a little boy.

“What are you talking about?”

“The recruiters. I have to let them come in because of…because of some of our investors, but, please, don’t talk to them.”

“I have to,” I say, embarrassed.

“Look, it’s against your contract. You break your contract and we’re gonna have big problems,” Val is all business again and I can’t
believe for a second I thought he actually cared about me. I stare back at him evenly, though my heart is hammering with fear. I don’t know if he’s bluffing or if he really could trap me with some stupid contract shit.

Suddenly Monroe comes in, the fur on his left leg hanging in a strip. “Val, man, I need an upgrade. I sweat like a mofo out there and it just burns through this body glue.”

After my run-in with Val, I jump into the ion shower that removes all the sweat and makeup, but never leaves me feeling very clean. I think about the Ravana, how he could barely read and his rage-filled eyes, like how he would have murdered me if he could have gotten close enough. I know the space station jobs would mean I would play Surpanakha without a barrier.

I check my browser and see a
message from my mom saying she got home okay. She knows that I don’t work at a call center, but we keep that charade going to keep things simple. She doesn’t get the cosplay scene. My mother is fourth gen, so she doesn’t actually speak any Indian language or know much about the gods. I know more about Hindu mythology than she does because I grew up with it on TV. The Reverse was just ramping up when
my parents graduated from high school. They met in their mandatory agriculture year, farming inside the domes in Iowa. Now everything is grown or synthesized in India. Anyway, agri year sounded crazy—a year of hard labor, drugs and poly sex. Ma was wild, living up to the expectations of it all. My father was quiet, she said, the type who did his work and whose only contraband was a pile of paperback
books, which were banned just that year when everything went mandatory digital. She heard about his stash and went to see him one night and found him with a light source under the covers of his bunk, reading. She says she fell in love with him right then.

After agri year, they decided to take another year off and travel around the Americas. Ma says they rode around in an old electric pick-up.
Dad was part of a whole underground scene of analog-heads, and they would get together and trade in paper books and vinyl records—smoke drugs rolled in paper. After settling down in North Vegas, they became a part of the “slow life” movement. Americans who were against the reverse and thought they should embrace the times by becoming self-sufficient—growing their own food, creating their own media,
even making their own paper—my dad’s specialty.

Their parents and brothers and sisters kept putting them on lists to reverse. My mom’s brother had a good job lined up for both my parents as managers in digitizing a jute mill outside of Kolkata, but they were against it, too caught up in their stupid movement to understand that it had no future. My dad started a blog called
Slo-merica
about
his analog interests and Ma helped out by getting a call center job. When they got pregnant with me, Ma realized she wanted to be with her family and friends, but by that time India had shut down the border and you needed to have millions to make it back. We were stuck.

I’m back on the floor extra fast. I don’t care what kind of mind games Val is playing, there are obviously recruiters around
and I need to find one. It’s getting more crowded now, and I’m in a silver wig and white sari that glow like a beacon in the black lights. I do a pretty standard Lakshman. He sticks to the script, and giggles through the whole thing—not getting too riled up, even though I stick it to him about his emasculation next to his God Brother and dirty talk him about how he masturbates at the thought of
Sita.

Then I’m back out with a long braided wig and an ancient sari wrap with no blouse. I set up by the bar this time. Tania appears in the balcony next to the DJ booth. The crowd murmurs, looking up at her as she undulates and even I can’t look away. She
disappears again and a bunch of people run to the kiosk to bid on being the one to capture her, which pretty much means a private dance
where you get to aim arrows at her until she dissolves. It’s a lot more sensual and pretty, less harsh and violent than my job. The Lust Dust people love it, the arrows have these light bursts at the end and the whole thing is mad erotic.

After the buzz around Tania’s appearance settles down, I see a Lakshman clocking me from across the bar. I can tell from where I am that his costume is upscale,
his simple arm bands have the heft of real gold or at least painted metal—not like the usual soft plastic. Instead of waiting for him to come to me, I move towards him and he watches me dispassionately.

“Hey there,” I greet him. “Wanna dance?”

“Let’s cut the shit and go straight to the room,” he says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” I protest, turning to move away.

He reaches out and grabs my wrist, his hand like a vise.

“I heard about you,” he says lecherously, motioning to the VIP section and I see that the Ravana is watching us. Next to the Ravana, is a short Russian man. They point at me and talk. Then, suddenly, Val is there, whispering into the Lakshman’s ear. He looks at Val menacingly, but drops my wrist and walks away.

“What the fuck are you
doing?” I yell at Val.

“I wanted to do a session.”

“What? Did you see that guy’s costume?”

“I’ll pay you double,” Val grabs me by the upper arm and I know he’s not playing. I see Anita clocking us from behind him.

He pulls me into the DFR and once we get inside, I look at him and he motions towards the pedestal. “Go on,” he says.

“Those were recruiters, weren’t they?”

“This has
nothing to do with that. Think of this as a performance review.”

“There’s no script for you,” I say.

“Freestyle it. That’s your thing anyway, isn’t it?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because there are people in line for your job.”

I roll my eyes and then realize there’s nothing to do but play.

“So, what, the timer has already gone off ?”

“Whatever.”

“I can’t just start from
there.” I go to the control booth and punch in an especially sultry number, low bass and deep beats. I order Val a double elixir, push him back on the sofa.

“There is a whole art to this thing,” I say, winking, trying to get the rage out of my head. I want to show Val that I’m an expert.

I dance for him in my costume, letting my sari slip and my waist beads jingle in time with the music.
Val eyes me warily, his eyes darting to the door and to his watch.

“What? You gotta be somewhere?”

“No, just go ahead,” Val looks increasingly uncomfortable. I come off of the platform, and kneel next to Val.

“So, Great Sage, I’ve heard of your amazing feats, that you meditated for so long that you can control all of your animal instincts and urges,” I whisper into his ear, breathily.
I place a hand on his leg. “Is it true what they say, that you have mastered the arts of…”

Val brushes my hand away and stands up, looking angry. “See, you shouldn’t be down here. This is what I’m talking about. Just get on the platform and go ahead and transform.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” I get onto the platform and press the button that changes the music into the manic frenzy of beats
I use for my transformation.

“Oh Valmiki, great sage, I recognize you better up close. You’re nothing but a thief, a lowlife…you didn’t create this story, you just wrote it down,” I say harshly. “You hide behind this disguise, but I can see through you.”

I throw the braided wig onto the floor and shake loose my
real hair, that’s gotten increasingly more and more tangled as the night has
progressed. I quickly insert my fanged retainer.

“You dirty old man,” I yell. “You false idol, you fakester! You should have been buried by those ant hills you sat upon, that would have been better for this world, than perhaps Sita could have told the story properly, Ravana…even Hanuman would have created this world better than you. You think I’m a demon, a raksha? You’re every bit a demon
as I am, but at least I can admit it.”

All the while, Val sits on the couch staring up at me, holding me steady with his gaze. My costume is in shreds, my sari hanging off my shoulders. I don’t know what he wants from me.

“Do it,” I say.

Val shakes his head. I hand the sword to him. “Do it! We have to play it out!”

“I know what you do, Sapna.”

“Then why are we in here?”

Val stands
up, takes the sword from me and puts in back in its stand. “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure you get paid for this. I want you to take the rest of the night off .”

“What? Val, you can’t fire me for Anita.”

“You’re off the floor, tonight,” Val looks down.

“Look Val, is this about the recruiters? I’ll pay you the contract difference. I need the money.”

“No. I’ll give you an advance. How much
do you need?”

“Val, what the hell? You can’t help me, okay.”

“Tell me how much you need,” Val pleads with me and I can believe his intensity.

“I need a reverse voucher,” I yell and Val looks shocked. He slams his fist onto the platform by my feet.

“You don’t know what it’s like up there, okay, my dad worked space station jobs because he thought that’s how he could get us to Reverse,
and…and he never came back. It was just me and
my brother, okay? So, we didn’t have anyone to protect us from everything. So, don’t get on me for not claiming being Indian, okay, I’m not. They beat it out of me a long time ago, all right?”

The transformation beats are still blaring and I hit the button with my toe to turn it down, and then we just hear the beats distorting from the rest of
the club, the movement of hundreds of people.

“Look Val, I’m sorry about your father. But you know, my father went half a mile from our house and never came back. And now, they’re gone and we’re surviving, however we can.”

Val nodded at me solemnly. “Just be careful,” he says. “I don’t want to lose you.”

I look at him and see the weight of running this place, the stress of the years of
passing, the sincerity of trying to protect me from whatever danger he thinks is out there. I kiss him on the cheek, and he smiles. It looks sad.

Back in the costuming area, I sit down at my mirror and wipe away the make-up with a shaking hand. I pull out my demonness retainer that gives me big sharp teeth.

I was a little girl when the Epics first started dominating all the media. The backlash
was just beginning and there were protests against the movies and TV shows and cartoons, before they became the only stories told. I used to watch the Ramayana anime with my dad. His favorite episodes of the original series was when there would be guests from DC and Marvel, like when Superman was helping Ram fight Ravana, or when the Wolverine from X-Men came to India and fought and then became
friends with Hanuman. My dad used to complain about the Epics, saying that the Indianification of everything was a sign of the end of times.

“Even if it’s one of the greatest stories in the world, there are a lot of other stories out there,” he said. My mom teased him, told him to go out and join the protests himself. It was when
that could still be joked about, before Indians were being shot
in the street.

He was writing about comic books then for
Slo-merica,
trying to go around and collect them, even though my mom was trying to convince him into a practical job with her at the call center. He was going to pick up a collection of old magazines and comic books that talked about the Ramayana. He was going to do post about it, but I know he wanted the artifacts especially to show
me, show me the history of the stories. It was at a warehouse in North Vegas where he often went to trade or buy contraband paper goods. The police later said that someone was probably tipped off , knew an Indian was coming, and that he would probably be carrying cash. A lot of Indians were known to have cash at that time, in getting ready to Reverse, a lot of people liquidated their accounts so they
wouldn’t have to declare anything and leave behind the thirty percent that the US government instated that year. It was probably four guys with cro-bars, or planks of wood. When they looked in his wallet, all they found was a benefit card for people with low percentages. No one was ever charged with the murder.

I pull off the remains of my wig, and try to untangle my black curly hair. The streaks
of whitened skin and dark skin make me look diseased, mottled like those Indian kids who waste away from plugging directly into the web for twenty hours a day. I need to get Val out of my head, I need to get everyone out of my head and just do the work, get Ma to India, or somewhere close enough that at least has good dialysis machines.

It’s Tania’s time of night now. I watch for awhile from
the tunnel before emerging onto the floor. The Golden Deer is always a dancer—gyrating and twirling on the platforms. My Golden Deer crush makes me think she’s otherworldly, and the crowd does, too. They are going wild for her now and she leaps from dance platform to platform. I decided to forego the wig this
time, though I straightened my hair, made it a big mane around my head. I wear a black
sari with fluorescent embroidery. I step out onto the floor and ease my way into the crowd, the Lust Dust creating large masses of writhing bodies—connected by a hand, sweaty waists, tips of fingers. I went easy on the skin lightening, at this time of night, it’s better to get out to the crowd, people tire of the disguises, they just want the story.