Luna: New Moon

‘I will, mãezinha.’ The most intimate term of endearment.

Unseen, the spying fly disengages from its cranny and floats after Rafa.

The bolt of electric blue hits Lucasinho square on the abs. Blue splat to join the red, the purple, the green, the yellow. Almost none of his bare body is unstained. He is a harlequin of colours, as bright as a reveller on Holi.

‘Whoa,’ Lucasinho says as the hallucinogen kicks in. He spins, gets a shot off from his splatgun and then the world unfolds into millions of butterflies. He turns, grinning like a fool, at the centre of a tornado of illusory wings.

The game is Hunting, played up and down and through the Madina agrarium, with bare skins and guns that fire random bolts of coloured hallucinogens.

The butterflies open their wings and link and lock together. Reality returns. Lucasinho ducks under the fronds of a towering plantain. Rotting fronds mash to slime beneath his bare feet. He advances, gun at the ready, still wide-eyed and trippy after the blue. He has been shattered into diamond tiles, flown up the side of an endless skyscraper, watched the colours drip from the world into purple, been his left big toe for what seemed an eternity, chasing and being chased through towering cylinders of dappled light, sniped at from positions high among yams and dhal bushes.

Fronds rustle: movement. Splatgun muzzle next to his cheek, Lucasinho ducks under foliage into a small, damp clearing, heady with growth and rot, a hidden nest.

Something touches the nape of his neck.

‘Splat,’ says a female voice. Lucasinho awaits the sting of the ink-hit, the trip into somewhere else. He came to the party because it was at Twé and he might meet Abena Asamoah. Guerrilla games were not Abena Asamoah’s fun. But it is exciting to chase and be chased, to be lost and a little bit scared at times, to beat people to the draw and shoot them, to snipe them so that they never knew what had hit them, and be hit in return. The gun against his neck is sexy. He’s at the mercy of this girl. Arousing helplessness.

He hears the trigger click. Nothing.

‘Shit,’ the girl says. ‘Out.’

Lucasinho rolls and comes up, splatgun levelled.

‘No no no no!’ the girl cries, hands held up in surrender. Ya Afuom Asamoah, an abusua-sister of Abena and Kojo. Leopard abusua. AKA kinship makes his head hurt. Her skin bears five colour-blots, right hip, left knee, left breast, left thigh, the right side of her head. Lucasinho pulls the trigger. Nothing.

‘Out,’ he says. The same call rings out across the tubefarm, down from the high terraces and the sniping positions in the solar array. Out. Out. Faintly, down the tunnels that connect the agrarium tubes. Out. Out.

‘You’re lucky,’ Lucasinho says.

‘What do you mean?’ Ya Afuom says. ‘I had you on your knees.’ She looks him up and down. ‘You’re covered, man. You need a bath. Come on. This is the best. You’re not scared of fish, are you?’

‘Why?’

‘You get them in the ponds. Frogs and ducks too. Some people freak at the idea of being touched by a living thing that isn’t human.’

‘I think this game is broken,’ Lucasinho says. ‘The more you get hit, the easier it is to get hit.’

‘It’s only broken if you’re playing to win,’ Ya Afuom says.

The bar is set up on the decking. Drinks and vapers in plenty but Lucasinho has had so many chemicals through his brain that he doesn’t welcome any more. The pools are already full. Voices and water-splash ring up the shaft of the tubefarm. Lucasinho lowers himself carefully into the water. Do fish bite, do they suck, can they swim up your dick-hole? Mildly hallucinogenic skin-paint dissolves into the water; halos of red and yellow and green and blue. What does that do to the fish? What does that do to the people who eat the fish? He can’t imagine eating anything that’s shared water with him. He can’t imagine eating anything with eyes.

‘Hey ha!’ Ya Afuom splashes in beside him. Hips, butts touch. Legs entwine. Bellies rub, fingers walk.

‘Was that a fish?’

Ya Afuom giggles and Lucasinho finds he has a breast in his hand and her fingers cradling his ass. His own hands dive deeper through the blood-warm water, seeking folds and secrets. ‘Oh you!’ She has the best ass since Grigori Vorontsov. Then he’s hard and they’re touching foreheads and looking on each other’s eyes and she’s laughing at him, because naked men are ridiculous.

‘I always heard the Asamoah girls were polite and shy,’ teases Lucasinho.

‘Who told you that?’ Ya Afuom says and pulls him in.

Abena. Glimpsed through tomato leaves. Moving from the bar towards the service tunnel.

‘Hey! Hey! Abena! Wait!’

He surges up out of the pool. Abena turns, frowns.

‘Abena!’ He strides dripping towards her. His semi swings painfully. Abena raises an eyebrow.

‘Hi Luca.’

‘Hey Abena.’

Ya Afuom slips in beside him, puts her arm around him.

‘Since when?’ Abena says and Ya Afuom smiles and presses closer. ‘Have fun, Luca.’ She drifts away.