Why You Were Taken

by JT Lawrence

  ‘But then how did they find her so quickly?’

  ‘She hadn’t been showing up at her shrink’s appointments, had been avoiding her calls. It looked like she hadn’t left the place in a week.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’

  His phone rings, but he mutes the tune. ‘Not much else to tell. Suicide is contagious now, didn’t you know? Bitch went schizo and offed herself. All in a day’s grind in this crazy-ass city. Believe me, I’ve seen worse. A lot worse. In fact, I remember thinking, how considerate of her to take a clean way out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you know, she could have jumped out of the window, slit her wrists, put a shotgun to her head. Can you imagine having to clean that shit up?’

  The pictures of her wax doll parents come back to her. Dark red holes, weeping.

  ‘Never thought of it that way.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they’re mostly selfish bastards, Suiciders. We used to call them suicide victims but, ha! Hardly. Men are the worst, always the messiest. Pigs. They seem to like the drama of leaving blood and bits behind. Leave their mark, like a dog pissing on a tree. Women are more considerate. Usually do it with more grace: pills, asphyxiation, walking into rivers.’

  ‘But she was a victim,’ says Kirsten. ‘I mean, she was ill... she couldn’t help it.’

  He purses his lips to show that he doesn’t agree. His phone rings again.

  ‘Anything else I can help you with? I have a 6pm deadline and I don’t have any of my facts checked yet.’

  She gets up to leave, binning her coffee cup. Caffeine dulls her synaesthesia, so it feels as if she is moving in monochrome. She still can’t believe normal people see the world this way. Flat.

  ‘Was there anything weird about it? Anything that you thought was strange?’

  He uses the back of a pencil to scratch his scalp. Shakes his head, but then stops, narrows his eyes. ‘There was one thing... I wanted to put it into the article but Ed said it was unnecessary. He didn’t want it to sound like we were making fun of the lady.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was something the shrink said to the cops. I didn’t interview her personally but she said that the woman had out-of-control paranoid delusions. She heard voices talking to her and telling her to do shit. But she also had this idea that she had been microchipped, I don’t know, by aliens or Illuminati or something. She had a lump on the back of her neck—had it for as long as she could remember—and she started to believe that it was a tracking chip. Thought someone was monitoring her. Maybe she watched too many nineties movies. But it’s cool, you know, in a way, that’s why I wanted to put it in the article. I mean they say they want more readers but I had to pull the most interesting part. Ed can be a bastard.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that she really was crackers, and she really did kill herself.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Oh, and one other thing...’

  Cheeky shit, calling her ‘ma’am’ as if she is twice his age. ‘Yes?’

  ‘There were dog bowls—and dog hair—but no dog food, and, well... no dog.’

  She stares at him. His outfit is now desaturated of colour. She snaps a pic of him with her locket.

  ‘You look like you stepped out of a fifties Drum magazine cover. I like your style. Thanks for your help.’

  ‘You’re Kirsten Lovell, aren’t you?’

  She is surprised, and nods.

  ‘I’ve just recognised you. I loved your photo essay on Somali pirates. It was really cool. Bang tidy work. Epic stuff.’

  That was years ago, how could he know it is hers? The essay is from a time when she had been young and irresponsible, doing dangerous work to try to fill The Black Hole. It hadn’t worked, but she won some awards. It advanced her career, made her semi-famous in the journo circuit.

  ‘You a freelancer now?’ he asks.

  She nods. ‘Now I have the flexibility to panic about my job insecurity at any time.’

  It’s an old joke. He smiles, holds up the coffee cup in thanks and farewell.

  He waits until he sees the escalator swallow her then dials a number. ‘She came.’

  He doesn’t know why the cop wants to know this, but that is the deal, in exchange for a copy of the police report. Mouton is a cop, after all, Mpumi reasons, trying to assuage his guilt. It’s not like he’s a psychopath.

  Seth is reading the news while he waits for The Weasel to go to lunch. A headline about a woman committing suicide catches his eye. So young, so alone. He feels a jab. He knows better than to think it’s compassion; it’s just his own mortality raising its head to give him a nudge. That could be you, dying alone in your apartment. Not suicide, never suicide, but people die all the time, and you could be next. Freak accidents, dehydration, murder. And who would miss you?

  The Weasel leaves his desk at 1pm every day, on the dot, and goes downstairs to the American-styled health diner. He has a cheese fauxburger, which is less delicious than it sounds, and certainly not anything vaguely sexual, which is what Seth first thinks when he overhears Wesley’s order and almost chokes to death on his whole-wheat carob-chip doughnut. Choking, falling, earthquake. No one would miss him.

  The Fauxburger is a shamwich: the diner’s healthy take on the old classic, with a full-grain rye roll, cottage cheese, masses of micro-greens and sprouts, a black bean and wild mushroom schmeat patty, topped with a black tomato-chilli salsa, and sweet potato wedges on the side. Since meat and fish have become so expensive, many sheeple have switched to meat alternatives. Not before, not to save massacring animals, or to spare thousands of cows/pigs/chickens their sorry battery lives, but when steaks start to cost a week’s wage. Enter the age of carnaphobia. Then all of a sudden soya loses its bland taste; vegetarianism becomes mainstream and schmeat steaks and Portobello burgers become the food of choice to bring to Saturday braais. Hairy men snapping their tongs and discussing the merits of citrus versus balsamic marinades over their fire-warmed tins of lager.

  Seth still eats steak—ostrich, duck, venison, or any GMO version thereof. His favourite is still real beefsteak, AKA cow-meat, bovine oblivion. Medium rare: he likes it a little bloody. It’s not that he doesn’t have empathy for the animals. He just believes humans are top of the food chain. You don’t see a leopard crying over its prey.

  After The Weasel eats his sad burger, wipes his too-full lips with the old-school red-and-white checked linen napkin, he goes to the bathroom, presumably to wash his hands. Then he opens the communal drinks fridge and gets himself a CinnaCola, which sits on his desk for the rest of the afternoon. Seth has never seen Weasel drink the stuff—after all, he would know what’s in it—but there it is, every day, sweating on his desk at 1:30 sharp. Seth no longer takes lunch breaks because it’s the only time he can escape his manager’s beady eyes. He uses this time very carefully.

  Journal Entry

  January 24th, 1988, Westville

  In the news: 6 African National Congress guerrillas are injured in a car bomb explosion in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

  What I’m listening to: Johnny Cash is Coming to Town

  What I’m reading: Dr Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care

  What I’m watching: Good Morning Vietnam

  P loves the babies so much. He is good at comforting them. He sings in a really deep voice—these silly made-up songs—and makes these funny faces and then they stop fussing and laugh. Sometimes they laugh at the same time and that’s the funniest thing, then we all laugh together.

  Chapter 11

  Corpse Fingers Stroke Her Neck

  Johannesburg, 2021

  Kirsten watches Keke pull into her building’s entrance in a wide arc and is reminded why she has so many suitors of both genders: her punk hairstyles, roaring bike, deep, easy laugh and fuck-you fashion. It’s a hot little package.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ She deflates her helmet and hugs Kirsten. Keke smells like leather and something more feminine. Hair prod
uct? Little violet shiny balls float in the air around them.

  ‘No problem. It’s probably my punctuality karma finally burning my ass.’ Kirsten had, herself, been twenty minutes late.

  ‘There was a breaking story and I was five minutes away so I had to pop in.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Not really. Just a little shoot-out between the AfriNazis and the Panthers. Some scratches, some crocodile tears, no fatalities.’

  ‘Oh my God, racism. It’s so 2016.’

  The two groups were extreme right and left wings, white and black respectively. No one took them too seriously; in a nation that is now indifferent to skin colour, their bizarre antics leave everyone shaking their frowns.

  ‘Just some punks looking for an excuse to spill blood.’

  ‘Too many video games.’

  ‘I blame hip hop. No, marabi.’

  ‘I blame sugar. And processed food.’

  ‘Hyperconnectivity.’

  ‘The Net.’

  ‘GMO produce.’

  ‘ADHD.’

  ‘Neglectful parental units.’

  ‘Lack of corporal punishment in schools.’

  ‘Boredom. There’s nothing to rebel against anymore! We’re a nanny state and it’s a very gentle, easy-going nanny, with no tattoos or inappropriate piercings.’

  ‘Although she must have a very high libido.’

  ‘Ha!’ laughs Keke. ‘This nanny likes to screw!’

  ‘And get screwed,’ adds Kirsten. ‘It’s a mutual arrangement. And also: polyamorous.’

  ‘Hey,’ says Keke. ‘Don’t knock polyamory. It’s the way of the future.’

  Inside Kekeletso’s Braamfontein apartment, the door automatically locks behind them.

  ‘Too early for wine?’ asks Keke, glancing at the clock on the wall. 12:55. A giant Elvis Presley poster looks down at them.

  ‘I don’t understand the question,’ says Kirsten.

  Keke smiles and grabs a bottle of Coffeeberry Verdant-Pino. Two glasses. Kirsten instinctively reaches for a nearby empty Tethys bottle, fills it up with grey water from the waterbank (Liquid Smoke), and goes around watering Keke’s sad-looking houseplants. Using her father’s pocketknife, which she now always keeps handy, she snips a few dead leaves off the aspidistra on the lounge coffee table and sends them down the communal compost chute.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t love them, you know.’ (That’s what she always says.) ‘It’s just that I’m never home.’

  After binning a long-dead and crumbling plant a year before, Kirsten had suggested keeping succulents instead as they wouldn’t need as much care, but Keke said she had read somewhere that thorns were bad for your sex life. ‘Feng Shui or some shit. What is it with you and plants, anyway?’

  Kirsten had shrugged: ‘I don’t know. I just like looking after them.’

  Keke had pulled a ‘you’re sad!’ face, and Kirsten had thrown something at her.

  ‘If you knew how amazing they were, you wouldn’t perpetuate mass murder against them like you do.’ This is her pet hate. Her mother had been just as bad. Her teenhood had been strewn with dead chrysanthemums. ‘Besides the whole filters-the-air-we-breathe thing, do you know that there is a flower that turns red when it grows over landmines?’

  ‘Okay Miss Greenfingers.’ Keke had sighed. ‘I get it, no more needless slaughter of our plant-friends.’

  ‘If you’re like this with plants I’d hate to imagine you being responsible for something with actual feelings. Ever consider getting a pet?’

  Keke had almost choked. ‘No!’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So, what’s the emergency?’ Kirsten commandeers the bottle and passes Keke a glass of wine, who in turn opens a packet of chilli-salted beetroot chips and empties them into a bowl, which may have needed a bit of a wipe beforehand. The shape of their taste is unusual: spinning flat discs, like frisbees, but not as rigid. Rubber. Quite uniform, earthy, with little spikes of salt and a halo of warmth from the chilli.

  ‘Something came for you today, through The Office.’

  This isn’t unusual. Keke and Kirsten office-share in the same building in the CBD. As card-carrying members, or colloquially: ‘Nomadders,’ they are allowed unlimited access to everything they might possibly need in an office environment, from receptionists, couriers, IT support, boardrooms, carpooling and bad filter coffee to 4D scanner/printers. A steady stream of people is always coming and going, as well as a 24/7 cleaning team to make sure that each new client gets a sparkling office. They charge by the hour, but the longer you stay, the better the rate. They even have a (legendary) annual end-of-year office party.

  Keke knows someone at The Desk who keeps a premium office free for her when he can, at no extra cost. It is one of the few with a fridge and a concealed safe where she can keep some of her grind paraphernalia and clean underwear without having to drag it around town on her bike. It also has a dry shower and a SleePod.

  ‘Through The Office?’

  Kirsten thinks it must be something she ordered online and had since forgotten. New lenses for her camera? Prickly-Pear Verjuice? Sex toy? Bulk box of pregnancy test strips?

  Keke produces a small white envelope that looks a bit worse for wear.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yip. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  Kirsten takes it from Keke’s hands and examines it. The address is scratched on, as if the penman-or-woman was in a hurry. She doesn’t recognise the handwriting. Two colourful stamps are glued on the front: an illustration of the president wearing too much lipstick, and an extinct fish. The post office stamp obscures both of the pouting images. No return address.

  ‘I mean,’ says Keke, ‘when is the last time you saw an actual letter? In the—you know—the post! In an envelope! It has stamps and everything.’

  Kirsten uses her pocketknife to slit open the envelope. She takes out the note, and as she does so a key drops into her lap. She picks it up and inspects it, recognises it; feels corpse fingers stroke her neck. Hands it to Keke.

  ‘It’s the same one,’ she says. ‘The same one James threw over the bridge that night...’

  ‘It’s a wafer-key,’ says Keke. ‘For a safety deposit box. This part,’ she says, touching the head, ‘contains some kind of circuit, to allow access. So, for example, the wafer will get you into the bank and into the safety deposit box room. Then the key itself is used to unlock the box.’

  Kirsten opens the note and sees more of the scrawl: DOOMSDAY.

  ‘The fuck?’ Keke comes around to read it over her shoulder.

  ‘Who’s it from?’ she asks.

  Kirsten studies the signature. ‘A ghost.’

  At exactly 1pm Seth watches The Weasel make his way down to the Fontus diner. Seth waits five minutes. In that time, three different sheeple stop outside his office to say hi and ask how he is. He recognises the same vacant look in their eyes as the employees he sees around the campus: scoffing ultrabran muffins, playing squash, jogging, waiting for the decaffee to percolate. Staring, expressionless, as if a zombie had eaten their brains. And then as soon as they register him (eyebrow ring, Smudged eyes, faux-hawk, hoodie) they snap to attention and greet him effusively. Their smiles become wide and full of white teeth, but it never reaches their eyes.

  Once the coast is clear, he slips into the filing room, which is really just a giant computer in the middle of the room full of whirring fans. He’s not allowed access to this room but the door is sometimes left ajar. There are clearly people in the world less paranoid than him. Ribbons in different shades of blue are tied to the fan skeletons, giving the feeling that the room is some kind of stage design for a scene out of Atlantis, or an experiential advert for Aquascape.

  He closes the door and sits backwards on the swivel chair, starts to work on the machine. The security on the files he wants to look at is ironclad. There will be a chink, there always is, but as he looks around he realises that it will take him months to hack. He smacks the s
ide of the flatscreen.

  ‘Fuck a monkey,’ he says.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Seth spins around. Weasel.

  ‘Oh,’ says Seth. Fuck!

  With all the white noise of the fans he hasn’t heard Wesley come in. He quickly uses a shortcut to close his windows. Has The Weasel left this door open on purpose: a test?

  ‘This is a limited-access room,’ says Weasel, ‘you’re not allowed in here.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ says Seth.

  ‘It was in your Fontus Welcome Pack,’ says Wesley.

  Seth gives him a blank look. ‘I needed to find something.’ It wasn’t a lie.

  ‘Look,’ starts Wesley, rubbing his beard and drumming his fingers on his chin. ‘I’m going to have to report this... incident. They’re not gonna like it. They’re not gonna like it one bit. We’re talking a warning, or a disciplinary meeting at best. You’d better come in tomorrow wearing that suit I’ve been asking you about.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ asks Seth.

  The Weasel starts guffawing. Seth looks on in astonishment.

  ‘Of course I am, Mr Maths!’ he snorts, whacking Seth on the back. ‘You genius-types sure lack a sense of humour. Ha! Ha!’ He steers Seth out of the room with a firm hand and makes sure he closes the door behind him. It beeps twice to signal that it’s locked.

  ‘Beep-beep!’ says Wesley, and guffaws again.

  Kirsten reads the letter out to Keke:

  KIRSTEN/KATE—

  I know you didn’t believe me when we spoke. Am sending you extra keys. THEY ARE WATCHING YOU. DO NOT LET ANYONE TAKE THEM FROM YOU. Take care of yourself. Do it for your mother. Despite this mess, the list is proof that she loved you.

  DOOMSDAY is the key. God help the Taken Ones if you don’t get this. ACT NOW. B/B

  Keke lets out a loud wolf whistle. ‘No prize for guessing which particular delusional schizophrenic sent this.’