The Depressed Infant

It is a late Thursday evening in downtown Bweyogerere. In, Kakana Clinic, a shoddy establishment run by even more shoddy staff, a woman is placed on one of the rickety beds in the maternity ward as she screams her way into labour.  She is not accompanied by anyone and part of her wailing involves requests for food which the nurses tell her they don’t have on the ‘facility’.

One of the patients next to her hands her a kavera with mushrooms and tells her to eat like 2 to ease the hunger and the pain. The woman grabs the bag and shoves a handful of the mushrooms into her mouth, barely chews them and swallows. The other patient looks at her with alarm and snatches the bag away from her as she is about to grab another handful.

Those are special mushrooms, woman. I said you should just take a few. Now you’ve almost exhausted my stash.

Before the woman can react to this news, the doctor rushes in and preparations for delivery accelerate as her mushroom induced trip kicks in.

Within the woman’s body, we see her brain light up and a spark is ignited that travels down into her entire nervous system, through the umbilical cord, into the baby, into her entire nervous system, straight to her brain. The baby jerks and we see her brain light up. The conscious of her mother has been shared with her. The baby gets flashbacks of her mother’s existence and jerks as each memory is registered in her brain.

We get shots of the mum on graduation day. We get a shot of the mum being abducted by thugs. We get a shot of a pimp shouting at the mum, telling her she is now his property. We get shots of her mother standing on a street, waiting for a client. We get several shots of the mum having sex with different men with an emotionless expression on her face. The expression on the baby’s face as all these memories register is one of shock and revulsion.

Meanwhile, the mother has gone into labour and the contractions to childbirth have started. The baby realises what is happening and thinks to herself, I do not want to be born into this cruel world. She starts pushing back against the contractions, attempting to refuse to be born. The contractions are stronger than her but after every contraction, she still grabs onto the umbilical cord and pulls herself back in. Eventually, one of her legs comes out and the nurse grabs onto it and starts nudging the rest of her out while the baby holds onto the umbilical cord. Bambi she loses this fight and a final energetic push brings her out into the world screaming in protest.

Once Baby is out, she is severely depressed because of her mother’s memories and becomes suicidal, making several attempts to kill herself. She thinks of refusing to take breast milk but her biology is not in class and her mouth sucks energetically and she cry-feeds when a nipple is placed in her mouth. She rolls of her bed so she can fall on the ground and die but fails because her bed is a mattress on the ground.  Next, she tries to drown herself in her bathing water but that also fails because the basin has holes and the water keeps on draining out. When people throw her in the air, she tries to change the course of the fall so she can land on the ground but physics is not her ally and this plan also fails. To make matters worse, she sleeps in the same room as her mom who is back to her life as an abducted prostitute resigned to her fate.

After the first month in this world, our baby gives up on crying as a form of communicating her displeasure at being alive. She instead takes on a constantly sad face as she is tormented by her mother’s memories and the nasty business she has to witness daily. The only relationship that seems to matter to her as she grows is Bosco, the stray neighbourhood cat, who Baby is somehow able to communicate with. The cat, which is a Buddhist (not the Myanmar type), keeps on trying to talk Baby out of her suicidal plans and encourage her that life can and will get better but his pleas fall on depressed ears.

One day, two months after birth, her mum’s pimp comes in pissed about something and slaps her around. One of the blows is so heavy that her mum is knocked to the ground. As she is falling, she hits her head hard on the bedpost and dies instantly. The pimp curses, calls 2 henchmen, they bundle up Baby, who is now pretending to be asleep, and her mom’s body and dump them in a garbage pit on the outskirts of the town.

Bosco, who witnesses the murder, follows the thugs to the garbage pit. When the pimp and his henchmen have walked off, Bosco runs to Baby who has now opened her eyes and is staring into the night sky unblinking. In a steely tone, Baby tells Bosco she has decided to abandon suicide so she can avenge her mother instead. Bosco is pleased with this news and offers to teach her the Cat Buddha Annihilation Fighting technique so she can make a worthy opponent.

Bosco carries Baby to an orphanage where they can take care of her. At the orphanage, Bosco sets up a thrice a week program to teach Baby how to fight. Baby also shares her story with the rest of the kids and they all join in the training so that they can provide the necessary back up when Baby is seeking his vengeance.

One day, about a year after Baby was brought to the orphanage, the caretaker at the orphanage tells the children to tidy up because the owner is passing by so they need to welcome him. At assembly, the owner turns up Baby is shocked to realise it is the pimp. She immediately stands up in rage and yells while pointing at the pimp, “YOU ABDUCTED, PROSTITUTED AND KILLED MY MOTHER. VENGEANCE SHALL BE MINE!”. With that out of the way, Baby flies out of her chair with a tetra chop chopper flying kick straight to the pimp’s face which floors him and breaks his nose. The pimp picks himself and, before he even has time to register how a baby knocked him out, starts fighting back Baby’s endless gravity-defying fight moves.  The other kids take on the pimp’s henchmen and it quickly becomes bloody for both sides.

Still, Bosco has done a good job in training the kids and they have the element of surprise so they start overpowering the pimp and his crew real quick. Pimp is on the ground after another tetra chopper kick and as he tries to get up while looking for Baby’s whereabouts in order to guard himself against the next blow, he sees her jumping from the roof above him with a flying dragon kick. He has just enough time to yell to his henchmen, ‘F**KIN RETREAT’ before the dragon kick makes impact with his nether regions and turns the contents of his pants into a RIP situation for any hope of descendants. As he howls in pain, one of the henchmen, who is fleeing while ducking from blows and kicks, grabs Pimp by the collar and drags him out of the orphanage with the kids in pursuit, throwing toys and whatever they can get their hands on at them.

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