I am Legion

You know a party is winding down when just a few guys and girls are on the dancefloor, and all the rest of us want to do is banter. Ema spent the last hour making passes at me: she did the head-roll; the laugh; and the backward hair flip—she’s sporting braids. She’s even flirted with a few guys to make me jealous. She’s with her friends now, sipping wine, and looking like she’s having fun, I guess. Time to approach.

She’s about to take a sip of wine when I stroll up to her, and she sees me and keeps her glass glued to her mouth. It’s the equivalent of a jaw-drop. But I’m not strolling up to her; I’m strolling up to her ensemble. I don’t want to talk to her straight away. I want to warm up to it by chatting with the group.

“Chike, my guy,” I say to Chike, who isn’t really my guy. “The party was slamming. What did you think?”

“It was off-the-chains, man.”

“Everyone’s just chilling now.”

“Soaking it up, man.”

We’re shouting at each other even though we’re shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s the music. It’s really loud.

“I didn’t see you on the floor, Fine Boy,” Abebe says in my ear. “Did you not see any chicks you wanted to grind up on?”

“I don’t know how to dance.”

“Who’s talking about dancing?”

Ema is silent. She’s cold. Her friends notice her reaction towards me being there and copy her. Popularity gives you this kind of power over people, and Ema is popular. Abebe who is still talking with me discovers they’ve isolated and shuts up. If their taciturnity is supposed to make me feel unwelcome, it’s working. But it’s not me who leaves first. Ema steps back and storms off, her heels clicking against the tiled floor. She’s got great calves. I should go after her, I think.

I track her to the swimming pool area. The tank glows aqua like a giant flashlight. (Ema is a dark silhouette gazing into the water.) Judging from the slant of her wineglass, she’s absent-minded, lost in whatever it is she’s looking at, or thinking about.

I come up from behind and stand next to her. We stand in silence. I can’t think of an opening line. I know what I want to say to her; I just don’t know how to get to it. I’m blown away by her perfume, the tang of it. Definitely designers. Yeah, she smells good.

“What’s your favourite position?” she says out of the blue.

“Position? Where?”

“How do you like to be fucked?”

She’s tipsy, despairingly so, I can tell. She sort of asked me out, and I sort of said I was dealing with stuff and would get back to her. That was like… six months ago?

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Let me guess. Doggy style.

I laugh to break the ice. “Why do you think that?”

“Because you’re pretty, that’s why. You’re too pretty.”

I laugh again like I know what I’m laughing about. It just seems like the right thing to do.

“I bet boys like you too,” she says. “Bet they like to give it to you from the back. You like that, huh?”

“I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

She does a ninety to face me. “No? Then how come you don’t have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

“How come you don’t want this?” She draws a circle around the cleavage area of her gown’s low neckline using her wineglass. It’s not the only thing she draws; she draws my attention to her love handles in a tight dress. God, she has killer legs. I must be out of my mind to be standing up Emamuzou Benson like I am. If the guys knew she was throwing herself at me and I was thinking about it, they would have had my head examined. Guys like me don’t get chances with girls like her.

I don’t respond, and it’s not because I’m gawking at her, so she says, “You’re such a dick.”

I titter. She doesn’t know how funny that is.

I can feel her about to walk out on me—again.

What the hell. There’s no letting her down easy. I might as well let her have it. She looks ready to pass out anyway.

“Can I show you something?” I say.

She tosses down her drink and widens her eyes at me, flirting.

I unbutton my shirt and expose my left shoulder. This is the part I should describe from her POV.

A small bump appears on my shoulder. It dimples as if something were crawling underneath my skin, and shoots up. Up and up. Up like a plant. Except it’s not a plant. It’s an arm. An arm that grows a hand. And fingers. It produces fingers the way a bud opens up and blossoms into a flower (if you can see it in super-fast forward). I wiggle my petals at her.

She gapes.

“Say something,” I say.

“How did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I just know I can.”

“Good trick. You’re an illusionist.”

“You see, Ema. This is why I can’t go out with you. I can grow extra arms, extra legs, even an extra head. But I can’t grow a dick.”

She keeps a straight face, stung.

I thought she would laugh. That was funny. Even you have to agree.

She lifts one hand to feel the forearm rooted to my shoulder like a mountain tree. She touches it. She studies it, her fingers crawling to its palm. She stays there like a palm reader. Reaching higher, she feels the itty-bitty finger. She’s handling it pretty well. I’m impressed, I must say—

Oops. I spoke too soon. Her body goes limp and she slumps forward. I catch her before she hits the floor.

When she recovers, I overhear her talking to her friends, telling them about ‘the freakiest thing she ever saw.’ They tell her she was drunk, pass-out drunk. She’s not entirely convinced but thinks… they’re probably right. That’s how she leaves it. That’s how I’ll leave it too. I guess my secret’s still safe, after all.

Hmmm. I don’t know where to start. You won’t believe me anyway, not one bit. Fact is, I don’t believe it myself. I’m still waking up to parts of it. Like the fact that I’m standing up Ema Benson. But if you’re wondering about my strange ability, about how it all started. I can’t tell you that either. I wasn’t bitten by a radioactive hydra, or anything like that. I was born like this. I was born with a congenital anomaly. I heard it’s called aphallia (a failure). The older I get, the more embarrassing it becomes.

How about I tell you about the time I travelled with my school team for the National JETS (Junior Engineers, Technicians, and Scientists) Competition and got mobbed in the shower? My teammates were trying to see my ‘Mr. Fantastic’ because I always hid it from them (hid the lack of it from them). Yeah. I should start there. But since I’ve already started with me and Ema, how about I tell you what’s up with that? Cool.

I can’t go out with Ema. I can’t go out with her because… Because I can’t, alright? And I can’t because... Because she’d want to have sex. And if she wanted that, I wouldn’t know what to do. Yes, I’m a virgin. I’m not proud of it. It’s not by choice, believe me. I’m not saving myself for marriage or anything like that.

The point is, I don’t have a Mr. Fantastic (that’s what we’ll call it from now on) because I don’t need a Mr. Fantastic. I don’t need one because I can procreate on my own. No, I’m not a hermaphrodite. I’ll need genitals for that. I’m more like a hydra. I bud. I can grow more of me from any part of me. It’s like making copies. And those copies make more copies.

My copies don’t live very long—five hours, tops—and they can’t live independently either. Or think independently like clones. I have to keep all of me teamed up. Working towards one goal. I will get all confused if I don’t. It’s easier that way, believe me. Dad calls my copies ‘ephemerals’ or ‘pseudo-clones’. If they were independent, they would be clones. I just call them copies. Basically, I’m one person who can regenerate himself in parts or wholes. Having more than one head is like having extra pairs of eyes and a focal pair that changes as I choose. I simply zone in and out of my copies. When a copy is destroyed, I lose my sight in that area. It doesn’t hurt one bit; it’s as painless as shutting down a security camera.

If you’re still unclear, this is how it works: I push and push, and something pops out. Voila! A new me. It’s push, push, pop. Like closing one nostril and blowing a slimy bubble with the other. I can blow me and produce body parts or whole beings. Sorry. That came out wrong.