The Down Days

by Ilze Hugo

  “But how does that tie in with us? I mean, it’s not like you see brains on the menu at your local takeaway joint.”

  “According to this source, we’ve all been eating corpses for years. The whole city has. Brains, too. Ground up into boerewors. All courtesy of one of our leading supermarket chains. What with the skyrocketing price of beef, the goons upstairs started resorting to other sources of protein, like raiding the city’s mortuaries. All hush-hush, of course.”

  “You know I’m a sucker for a good conspiracy theory, but that sounds ridiculous. Too ridiculous even for the likes of me.”

  “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”

  “Ja. Whatever. Next, please.”

  “Next what?”

  “Next Laughter theory. That one’s over the top. Don’t think I’m buying it.”

  “Whatever. You don’t have to believe it. But don’t knock it too fast. Stranger things have happened.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well,” said Lawyer. “Enough chitchat. What is it?”

  “What’s what?”

  “What we’ve been dancing around this whole time. The reason for your sudden visit. What it is you want.”

  She looked down, trailed her eyes the length and breadth of his white furry paws. Next to the left one there was a chip in the cement floor. It looked a lot like a broken heart. Then his paw shifted and the heart was gone.

  “I’m working on a case. A missing boy. And I’ve run into a dead end. I was wondering if you’d heard anything.”

  “Heard anything about what?” he said, sticking his paws behind his neck to fiddle with the zipper of his suit.

  “I don’t know. Missing children.”

  “This is Sick City. Children go missing all the time.”

  “I was hoping for something more specific.”

  “Well. There is one thing.”

  “What?”

  The Bunny shed his fur, lifted one leg out of his suit. Underneath the fur, he was all skin. “Don’t you read my column?”

  “You know I do,” she said, looking away. “Which one?”

  “About the amakhosi gangs. Last week.”

  “Must have missed it. Tell me?”

  “There are rumors floating around.” He was scrounging around on the shelf above his head for a T-shirt now.

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “About kids going missing. I don’t know much yet, but I’ve been doing some digging, and the theory I’ve been working on is that the city’s amakhosi gang kids are being kidnapped by the government and shipped out to war zones across the world—the US mostly, but also Africa—to work as mercenaries for hire.”

  Amakhosi gangs were a favorite topic for the Daily Truth. A subculture of Xhosa teens who ingested a mix of muthi and alcohol in order to become possessed with ancestral spirits. The kids believed the spirits would make them super strong. Like superheroes. The gangs had been around for years, since way before the Laughter arrived, but popularity and numbers had spiked recently. Lawyer interviewed this sociologist about it a while back, who said the whole thing wasn’t a supernatural phenomenon, but a social one. He put it all down to the fact that the kids felt dispossessed, powerless. As a reaction to their circumstances, they ingested the amakhosi muthi to feel like they had some kind of power, that they belonged. The sociologist seemed very sure of himself.

  “Anyway, Faithie,” said Lawyer, “it’s all in the column. You should read it. I have a source who says they even recruit here.”

  “What do you mean, here?”

  “Right here. In this therapy bar. That they find kids with a good right hook or whatever and proposition them. The new medic who works here, I think she might be in on it, the recruiting. I’ve been following her but I haven’t seen anything concrete yet. Call it a hunch.”

  “I’m the one who has hunches, remember?” Faith said. “You’re the journalist.”

  Lawyer smiled. “Yes. Well. But she didn’t turn up for work yesterday, nor today, so I’ll have to wait and see. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  Back in the therapy bar the crowd was roaring. Some poor sod in the ring was most probably kissing the floor and they were loving it.

  “There’s something else,” said Faith.

  “There always is, isn’t there?”

  “More blood! More blood!” the crowd chanted from beyond the cubicle’s walls.

  “A library card. I need a library card.”

  “You’re kidding. You know I can’t do that.”

  “Yes. But you—”

  “No buts. You knew how it worked from the start. You have to follow the code. Or you get kicked out. You didn’t. So, you got the boot. No, Faith, don’t. Don’t look at me with those eyes. You had your chance. You screwed it up. Plain. Simple. Done. Dusted. Game over. The end.”

  “But I had to. It was important.”

  “It’s always important with you, isn’t it? That’s your problem.”

  There was a red vanity case on the table next to the door. Lawyer picked it up and held it out to her, like an offering.

  She raised her eyebrows. He shrugged. She opened the case. Inside were some bandages, scissors, salves: a medi-kit.

  “While you’re here you might as well help patch me up.”

  “Don’t you guys have a medic for this sort of thing?”

  “I told you. She didn’t pitch up tonight. Management hasn’t said anything yet, but the rumor around the office is that she caught it. You know, the Great Equalizer. Poor thing. But then, she never was good with keeping her mask on.”

  They kept silent while she worked. The crowd had piped down. There was always a lull between fights. In the room next door someone was humming something, but Faith couldn’t place the tune.

  “Ow! Be careful! Didn’t your mother teach you how to tie a bandage?”

  “Oh, shush. Sit still. Don’t be such a manbaby.”

  “A what?”

  “A manbaby.”

  “Is that even a word?”

  “Sure it is.” She put the scissors down. “How does that feel? Too tight?”

  “Perfect. It feels perfect. Thanks.”

  “Cool. So. About that card . . .”

  “No way. Not this time. You got your privileges revoked. You know that. There are rules.”

  “But you can talk to him. To the librarian.”

  Lawyer dropped his chin to his chest. He ran a finger across his stubbled skull while resting his elbows on his thighs. “I don’t know . . .”

  She bent downwards, dropping her knees to the floor to catch his eye. “Please?”

  The Easter Bunny looked into her eyes. His fingers kneading and drumming at his skull.

  “I’ll color inside the lines this time,” she said. “Cross my heart . . .”

  - 34 - SANS

  The entrance to the Green Point Stadium Quarantine and Disease Control Sanatorium was swarming with visitors clutching flowers and other tokens. The kiosks where soccer fans used to stock up on beer and boerie rolls back when the center was still a stadium now supplied masks and yellow anti-infection suits. The locals called this Limbo, the place where you were brought before being deported to one of the infected zones: the Island, the no-man’s-land virus prisons of the Cape Flats, or the breezy upper-middle-class sanatoriums in Kalk Bay.

  Sans passed a group of foreign volunteers huddled together in their yellow space-invader suits. Masks around their necks, they were passing a cigarette from hand to hand. Nicotine was getting scarcer by the day—a luxury few locals could afford. The spacemen were jabbering away in French, oblivious to the looks of longing cast their way by the locals. The burning cigarette continued its slow circular journey from one hand to the next. Some of the volunteers had taped photographs of themselves to their chests to make them look less faceless space invader, more human. Although putting away those bloody entjies would probably work better.

  He found the reception desk at gate seven. “I’m looking for a guy. Goes by
the name of Mostert, I think? I was told he hangs around here sometimes?”

  The receptionist looked up from the pages of the Sick City Gazette and tapped her fingers on the counter. Her blue tartan gloves had little touchscreen-friendly patches glued to the tips. “Mmm . . . You mean Fred? Sure. The new matron, Abrahamse, has banned him from the wards, but he’s still about. I don’t know how he gets away with it. Must have the warden in his pocket.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “There’s a coffee stand around the corner. His office, he calls it. Good chance you’ll find him there.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Big guy. Moustache. You won’t miss him.”

  “Thanks.” There was a stack of A5 pamphlets on the counter. Sans picked up the top sheet and pulled it closer: DON’T LAUGH, warned the header, in big, bold, capital letters. Then:

  Laughing in public is illegal.

  If you feel a surge of laughter bubbling up, try these techniques to stifle it:

  Try thinking of something sad or upsetting.

  Practice your breathing exercises.

  Try pursing your lips into an “o” shape while frowning.

  Induce a coughing fit.

  Stuff a clean sock or a handkerchief into your mouth to stifle laughter.

  If the above techniques fail and you still feel an urge to laugh, take your temperature immediately, then proceed to your nearest medmachine for a more comprehensive test.

  Always report any illegal laughter by phoning the city’s tip-off line at 0800 11 12 13.

  And remember: It’s not snitching if you can save a life.

  “This is terrible. Who writes these things?” Sans asked the receptionist, crumpling the piece of paper into a ball. “Has every decent propaganda copywriter in this whole damn country kicked the bucket? This is so bad that I don’t know if I should laugh or cry about it.” He tossed the paper ball over the counter into the receptionist’s empty wastebasket.

  “Rather cry, please,” said the receptionist, lowering her spectacles to throw him a deadpan stare. “Anything but laughing. I just don’t have the energy today for all the extra paperwork.”

  He grinned at her beneath his mask and turned to go.

  “Hold on,” said the receptionist. “One more thing. Tell Fred he still owes me, Cindy, that tenner he borrowed from me last week. If it’s not here by tomorrow morning, as sure as hell is hot and the sky is blue, I’m charging interest. Make sure you tell him that, too.”

  * * *

  Cindy was right. The sin-eater was just where she’d said he would be, sitting at a plastic table beside the sanatorium’s coffee stand, chatting to a chick in a yellow dress. A queue of jittery bodies snaked from the table all the way to the door. None of them looked nearly as embarrassed as Sans was to be there.

  He watched the queue of crazies, fiddling with their phones or making small talk about the weather—one chick was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning over so far that the top of her head kissed concrete, another guy in a suit and tie was talking to the ceiling. “Shut up, Margie,” said the guy in the suit to the ceiling. “I told you to shut the hell up!”

  He was about to turn around, make a run for it, when his pocket vibrated again. Screwed. If he didn’t find Lucky and his money—soon—he was screwed. Especially if his plan B was a ghost. Fine. Whatever. One foot in front of the other. Get it over with. Talk to the fat bastard. It’s not like he had anything more to lose. Apart from the last tenuous dregs of his sanity, perhaps.

  When his turn came, he took a step towards the fat man’s table. “Fred? Fred Mostert?”

  “Have a seat,” said Fred, and pointed to a plastic chair.

  Sans sat down.

  The fat man lifted his hand and the girl manning the coffee kiosk stirred into motion, spooned some chicory into two paper cups, filled both with hot water, and brought them over. “We’re out of milk,” she said, as she handed Sans the cup. “Sugar, too, of course.” Sans paid her and she left.

  “Go on,” said the fat man, taking a sip.

  Sans had worked out his game plan beforehand. He was going to interrogate the guy first. Even if the blue-dreaded dead collector had sort of vouched for him, he needed to make sure the guy was legit for himself. But now that he was here, staring into the fat guy’s bottomless eyes, he couldn’t quite get it up. Couldn’t remember a single question or line of attack.

  The silence grew golden while the fat man just sat there, staring at him, playing with the lid of his coffee cup. Sans wasn’t normally one to shy away from a round of eyeball chicken, but there was something about this guy. The way his Pantone blue eyes seemed to stare right through you, gnaw at your innards like some kind of empath vulture.

  So he cracked. Spilled his guts like a snitch with a tik problem. Started with his money problems, and worked his way around to the bit about the cherry—that bloody, beautiful cherry—his unicorn. The way she kept popping up and out of his life like some kind of demented jack-in-the-box.

  When his story was done, and the tepid cup of instant coffee emptied, the silence shining like a big fat grand prix cup, the guy still didn’t speak. Just turned the plastic lid around and around the merry-go-round in his stubby fingers.

  Sans’s pocket vibrated again.

  And again.

  Stress and fear bubbled like lava at the back of his tongue. Bloody fat bastard! Just say something already! he wanted to shout, then ram the bloody plastic lid down the fat fuck’s throat for good measure. But he kept a grip and tried to ease the silence by eyeing his surroundings. At the table next to them, a stubbled guy in a jacket and tie was crying into his Coke. And behind him, a cocky young janitor was chatting up the coffee kiosk girl, who batted her plastic lashes, and curled a black lock (synthetic) around one finger.

  “Well, your girlfriend might be right. It might be guilt that’s eating you up,” said the fat man finally, breaking Sans’s trance.

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Is she a girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she a friend?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Then it’s all semantics, isn’t it? Anyway, it might be guilt, yes. But there is another option, too.”

  The guy had an annoying habit. As he talked, he swayed his head from side to side. It reminded Sans of one of those bobblehead toys you find on dashboards.

  “Okay,” said Sans, wrapping his gloved hands around the cup. “I’m listening.”

  “Going by the type of things you’re seeing, which doesn’t sound like your garden-variety spook to me, and the fact that you haven’t stopped sweating buckets since you walked in, even though it’s a pretty breezy day outside . . . it sounds to me like you’ve caught the big one.”

  “The big what?”

  “Why, the bug of all bugs, the throw-you-on-the-Island-and-end-your-life-as-you-know-it-big-fucker-that-the-guys-upstairs-will-have-your-neck-for-in-a-jiffy bug, of course.” Wobble-bobble went the fat man’s head.

  “Nah. I’ve read all the pamphlets, listened to the radio announcements, seen all the billboards. This isn’t a symptom. And besides, I don’t feel sick.”

  “That’s just what they’d like you to believe. That it’s all coughs and keeling over. They don’t like to talk about the unlucky donners who get stuck with a bad case of the Eye when the sickness hits. Keeling over seems like a right picnic compared to that. And it causes a heck of a lot of PR problems for the okes upstairs.”

  “What are you talking about? The Eye? There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

  “Noooo. You know, the Eye. The second sight. As in channeling your ancestors. Visions and whatnot.”

  “That again. I should have warned you going in. I’m not into all that stuff. Traditional healing. Sangomas. Whatever. I don’t believe in ghosts, either, just for the record.”

  “Oh? Then what exactly are you doing here, boet? I have a number for a great
psychiatrist if you want it.”

  “No. Please. No head doctors. I don’t know why I came here. You’re right. Maybe I should go.”

  “Hold on,” said the sin-eater, rocking his head hypnotically. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. You don’t have to believe me if it kicks you out of your comfort zone too much. Just hear me out before you run away. I know it’s all a bit much to take in. I sometimes forget to bring it on slow. I can be too quick to the draw, like Dirty Harry. Too heavy on the ears at the first hear. A lot of my new customers, the voodoo virgins, as I like to call them—not that I do voodoo, you understand, it’s just a bit of fun with alliteration—are skeptical in the beginning. And while I can’t make you believe, I can tell you this: if you’re looking for an expert in this field, if you’re looking for the best, you’ve come to the right place. The dead and dying are my business, boet. Have been since I was a laaitie. Death has always run in my family, one way or another. I would have loved to have a regular job—but I got born into this.”

  “Yes, yes. I hear you. But how do I know you’re the real deal? That you’re not making all this stuff up just to screw with me? This city is full of ‘healers’ who get rich off desperate suckers like myself. Next you’re going to tell me you can double my penis size as well.”

  “You don’t know, boet, you don’t.” The sin-eater grinned as he chucked the empty cup into the bin and stood up. “Look. I’m late for an appointment, but I’ve got an extra anti-contamination suit in my bag. Might be a bit loose around the waist, but it’ll do. Want to come with and help out? After we’ve sorted out this customer, you can buy me a dop and we can talk about your Eye problems.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

  “Suit yourself, but what have you got to lose, right? Seems to me drinking a dop with a mad oke on the off chance of him being able to help is a lot better than having waves slamming you into the pavement willy-nilly.”

  Sans’s pocket vibrated. “What about the money?” he asked.

  “What money?”

  “When I phoned you, you said you would be able to help me find the money I lost.”