Mindf**k

by Fanie Viljoen

  So, he’s back, my heart raced. I gulped. The anxiety shot from my spine to the tips of my fingers. My hands trembled on the steering wheel.

  It couldn’t be him, you are imagining things! something screamed inside of me.

  But look! Fucking look! shouted another voice, even louder.

  It felt as if every nerve in my body was being carved up with a deadly sharp Minora blade. Stay calm, just stay fucking calm. Go do what you came here for.

  He’ll go away, he doesn’t exist. You know that by now, don’t you?

  I tried fixing my gaze on the road ahead of me, but my eyes unwillingly shot back to the rear-view mirror. Time and again. Searching.

  And the questions flashed through my mind. The same questions over and over. Quick, just like rush-hour traffic on a highway in Jo’burg. Where was he? Did he take another road? Did he know what I came here for? How long has he been following me? All the way here my mind was caught up in other things. I was thinking about Partygirl.

  He was out of sight now. It was all your imagination, said the voice.

  I drove down the hill to the caravan park. Over the speed bumps. The trees hung droopingly wet beside the road. Then the tar road ended and the gravel road started. It was still raining but not as hectically as before. I followed the gravel road for a while, and then stopped to try and find the spot where we had pitched our tent. Everything seemed different now.

  I drove closer to the dam, then followed the curve of the water. It had to be around there. Perhaps I should get out, I thought. I stopped the car and got out in the rain, glancing back over my shoulder to see if the black car was approaching. It didn’t look that way.

  I strode forward. The ground was muddy beneath my feet. My eyes scanned over the dark brown earth. Puddles of water started forming, fresh green grass had emerged out of the mud.

  And then … an area where the ground had given way. A subsidence in the form of a grave where the ground started caving in from the rain.

  My eyes blinked uncontrollably while I paced up and down, up and down beside the sunken earth. My eyes were glued to the ground. It was here.

  I swung around and darted back to the car. I got it going and quickly drove nearer, the thought of possibly getting stuck in the mud not even crossing my mind.

  When I stopped, I leaned forward onto the steering wheel for a second. My body wanted to keep on going but I knew I had to calm down. It was the only way I could think clearly.

  I felt sick now. And empty. The moment of truth.

  Who are you, Burns?

  Totally fucked up? Or would a girl’s body be proof that I sometimes still had my senses together? That I too was alive.

  And that she had lived.

  I got out, opened the car’s boot and took out the shovel.

  The slamming of the boot still echoed in my mind when I turned the first sod. The mud sucked back on the shovel blade. I heaved the wet sandy soil aside and stuck the shovel back into the ground. Again and again. It was as if every shovel of dirt got heavier. I was becoming short of breath. But I kept on digging. I tried to quiet down the noise in my head. I needed calmness. As I imagined it would be like in the middle of the dam.

  A deep silence.

  When I straightened up after the umpteenth shovel to catch my breath I heard the rumbling of an engine. The black car came driving along the embankment, heading straight towards me.

  Forever and ever love

  It was as if he did it on purpose: driving slowly.

  Because he knew what I thought, how I felt. And the longer he could postpone the meeting, the better it was for him. The more the anxiety would tighten my chest; fight-or-flight reactions play up against each other.

  He stayed sitting in the car for a while. I saw him moving behind the tinted windows. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that he was watching me.

  The door opened. Kerbs got out. Black jeans, black T-shirt. He slammed the door shut, swaggered closer, really full of himself.

  ‘Burns,’ his voice grated. ‘What are you doing, buddy?’

  ‘Kerbs.’

  ‘Surprised to see me?’ he smiled. A treacherous smile. Like one would imagine a snake would smile if it could.

  ‘What … what are you doing here?’

  ‘Ah, you know, I was a bit bored, so I thought I’d come see what the fuck you are doing with yourself these days.’ He looked at the pile of dirt, smiled again. ‘If you kept your side of the bargain. Same old shit. You know.’

  I swallowed, didn’t answer him.

  ‘And it seems like I came at just the right time. What the fuck are you doing, Burns?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I stuck the shovel in the ground, felt the mud sucking back the blade.

  ‘Sky said you would come back to her again. Somehow he knows these things …’

  ‘Leave Sky out of this.’

  ‘Can’t. He’s just as much a part of what happened as you and me.’ Then he shouted over his shoulder: ‘Aren’t you, Sky?’

  The door on the car’s passenger side opened up. Sky got out. Head lowered, but with his blue eyes staring out from the shadows of his eyebrows.

  ‘Sky?’ I asked.

  ‘Burns. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s like a family reunion, hey?’ laughed Kerbs. ‘Oh no, wait, wait. Someone is missing. Wait, let me see who it is … Partygirl!’

  His words were blades slashing open the arteries in my arm.

  ‘So, what do you think, Burns? Who’s behind door number three?’ He shot a glance over his shoulder to the car.

  I looked at Sky. He avoided my eyes. I knew that he knew.

  ‘Come on, Burns … Where’s Partygirl? Is she lying underneath your feet? Or is she sitting in the car, waiting for you? Where do you want her to be?’

  I stared at the car, then at the hole in the ground.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Crap, Burns, you do know!’ cried Sky. ‘Listen to yourself. What is screaming out the loudest? Your head or your heart? Your heart wishes for her to be in the car, wishes for her to be alive, sort of alive … like Kerbs and I.’ For a moment it seemed as if Sky’s face expanded outwards. ‘Your head wishes for her to be dead. Stretched out in the ground below your feet and genuinely dead. It would mean that you’re not really as crazy as Kelly and all the other people say you are.’

  Kerbs’ smile broadened. ‘Profoundly poetic what Sky said, isn’t it, Burns? I couldn’t have puked it better myself. So what do you say, Burnsie?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I paced up and down alongside the pile of dirt. Again flooded with the rush hour traffic of muddled thoughts. I could feel my brain throbbing, feel it growing bigger and bigger, the pressure increasing inside my skull. And any minute now it would explode and I would collapse into this shallow grave. Then it would be over.

  ‘What’s it gonna be?’ taunted Kerbs’ voice.

  ‘I don’t fucking know, okay?’ I shouted.

  Now Kerbs and Sky were both laughing out loud.

  ‘Allow me to help you then, Burnsie,’ hissed Kerbs. And then he cried out in a booming voice that rolled over the wet earth and the water, resounding somewhere in the distance and came echoing back. ‘Partygirl! Partygirl! Get up! Wake up, girl! Come on, come on!’

  I shut my eyes tightly, felt my body tearing in two.

  Then I opened my eyes, my terrified gaze fixed on the black car. Searching for movement inside the car, behind the tinted windows.

  Minutes went by, by, by.

  There was nothing.

  The car’s doors stayed closed, nothing happened.

  ‘Mind magic, Burns,’ said Sky. ‘You know what you want. You want to be sane. You want people to like you. And when that didn’t happen, you created us.’ Sky’s voice was like the waves lapping on the edge of the dam. ‘Look there, Burns.’ With an outstretched finger he pointed at the hole I had been digging.

  A piece of fabric showed. The sleeping bag, now wet and muddy.


  I got down on my knees. Started to wipe away the dirt, bit by bit. And with every handful of dirt that I wiped away, more and more of the sleeping bag was revealed. It was clear that there was a human body inside. I zipped open the sleeping bag.

  It was as if Partygirl was being born out of the earth.

  ‘You did it, Burns. You alone,’ rustled Sky’s voice. ‘It could have been so beautiful. Like in the movies. You could have loved her. And she could have loved you. She did say that, didn’t she? But no one had ever told you that before her, right? And you thought that you didn’t deserve it. Because she was like an angel. And angels don’t love people like you. You thought she only said it because she didn’t know you; after all you had only been together for one day. And if she found out who you really were, she would change her tune. And you needed to prevent that, right, Burns? You didn’t want to show her who the real Chris Burns is. The guy with the darkness inside his head. The guy who creates people like he sees fit and then carries them around with him. Conjuring up stories about them so that it seems as if he at least has a life …

  ‘All of this you realized when you rolled off her. After the two of you had sex and you looked at her. Your Angelgirl. And then you bashed her head in while she stared at you with her angel eyes that grew fainter and fainter with each blow. And her blood running down your fingers. And her love that would be yours forever and ever and ever, like in the movies.’

  I’m still breathing

  It was a voice from above that woke me up. But I kept still, lying there with my eyes closed.

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked the man’s voice.

  ‘I don’t know. Have a look.’

  I heard someone jumping into the hole.

  ‘He’s breathing.’ The man tugged at my wet clothes. ‘Hey, boy, are you okay?’

  I opened my eyes. It was an old man. Probably a fisherman.

  ‘Are you okay?’ repeated his friend, who was still standing on the edge of the hole.

  ‘Yes, I’m okay.’

  ‘Why are you lying here in the hole?’

  Partygirl! They would see her!

  I moved my hands over the ground, felt the mud pushing in underneath my nails. The memory of Sky and Kerbs came rushing back like a tidal wave. But my head felt clear from all the crying.

  She wasn’t there. I jumped up.

  ‘What are you looking for, did you lose something?’

  It was the second time that I had stood there and someone had asked me that.

  Then I saw it: the drag marks leading away from the edge of the hole into the water.

  ‘No, nothing, sir. Nothing. I think I found what I was looking for.”

  ‘Where? In that hole? What’s it for?’

  ‘It’s only a hole.’

  ‘Only a hole?’ The guy frowned. ‘I’ll never understand you young people. Let’s go, Frank. I’m cold. The fish won’t bite in this weather anyway; only thing you’ll catch is a cold.’

  His friend laughed at his stupid joke.

  I watched as they walked away. Luckily they didn’t see the drag marks.

  Again I stared down at the place where she had been. Now I knew that she was real.

  In a way it made me feel better, but then again … somewhere in my mind there was a sadness that slowly, like poison, spread through my body, paralysing my arms and legs.

  I curled myself up in the hole again. From the deep water of the dam a distant voice called out to me, like in my dream: ‘Burns … Chris …’ The echoes washed over me, dissolving in the misty air.

  The cold enveloping my body made me realise that I had to go home.

  But first I had to take the stolen car back to the café. Perhaps the car’s owners were still around. If not, someone would probably let them know that their car had been returned.

  I hitched a ride back to Bloemfontein. It was a talkative man with an old car that picked me up. He spread a blanket over the seat and wanted to know what I was doing on this road. Why were my clothes covered in mud? And, and, and …

  I didn’t tell him everything.

  He stopped at the Jakkelsdrif roadside café to find out if they sell coffee. I waited outside for him and watched the cars speeding by on the N1.

  It was the black car with the flames on the doors that caught my attention. The windows were rolled down. There were three people in the car.

  One of them, the girl, waved at me.

  The End

  I waited in the hospital bed. My dad would be visiting me in a while. And later my mother, without her toy boy. He would remain in the car.

  My dad eventually found a job. He now peddles TVs at Game. My mom started with divorce proceedings. And all was going well. They were geared for a Disney divorce. Clean, safe, quick. No surprises. All that was missing was the soundtrack by Phil Collins or Elton John. Something like:

  The end came like a car crash

  And if you ignored the broken bones

  And flesh and blood

  You’d have to say:

  Now wasn’t that fun?

  The pills lay in my hand. I felt them getting soggy with sweat.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink it, Burns,’ said Kerbs. ‘Fuck, buddy, they’re going to poison you with that shit.’

  I stared at the trees outside my window. Kerbs sat with his back against the wall. Sky sat at the foot of the bed. And Angelgirl held my hand in her pale, pale hand.

  ‘They found a girl in Aldam,’ I said when the silence lasted too long. ‘At first they reckoned she had drowned … but then they found this massive hole in her head.’

  I sighed. And placed the sweaty pill on the tip of my tongue.

  Swallowed.

  If you liked MindF**k, you might like other titles in the Cutting Edge series.

  The following is an extract from another Cutting Edge title. It’s the first chapter of Ecstasy by A. C. Flanagan.

  CHAPTER 1

  I am just 17 and my life is over. Head spinning, hands shaking, I need to throw up again. The lights are so bright I can only squint. I can hear people passing, but they’re just blurs.

  Sitting here, sweat carving lines through my make-up, I feel as if everyone is judging me. The seats either side of me are empty. People are standing, rather than sit next to me – the junkie. Funny, isn’t it, that I’m drowning in a sea of people, but if I died in front of them, it’d be alone.

  I came here with Mai-Ling but they took her away, through those clear plastic swing doors. She was totally out of it. I thought she had just partied too hard when she fell on the footpath and started throwing up. But then blood started trickling from her ears and nose and I panicked. I got her here as fast as I could but it was hard, no-one would help. I haven’t seen her since and nobody’s telling me what is happening.

  You think I am self-pitying. You’re thinking I’m another spoilt rich kid whose daddy gave her everything. Shit, they called the cops before they called my father!

  The only time anyone comes near me is to question me again. They want to know everything but I can hardly think, let alone focus on what they are saying. I’m still too smashed to concentrate and they know it, but they keep hammering me. I don’t care what they want to know, I just keep on back at them: “Is Mai-Ling OK? Is my friend alright?”

  They act like they don’t hear me.

  On and on they go with the same fucking questions, “What did your friend take? What did she drink? When did she start losing consciousness?”

  I keep saying to them, I’ve already told you everything – just leave me alone!

  “Fuck, I’m going to throw up again!”

  It’s been half an hour since I spewed but my stomach won’t settle. My father is still not here, even though I’ve called him like a million times. I have no-one and I’m scared.

  “Carrie Jones?” a voice startles me from behind. As I turn I am face to face with two cops. I can hear the whole waiting room exhale. The cavalry has arrived! Someone to take the druggie away.

&n
bsp; “Carrie?”

  They want me to talk to them but the room is spinning and I can only hold my head in my hands and nod.

  “I am Constable Adams and this is Constable Cummings, we need to ask you about what happened tonight.”

  Taking my hands from my face, the neon lights burn. I see a woman who could only be three or four years older than I am. The realisation is starting to hit me that I’m in a shit-load of trouble and things have gone way too far. If the police are here then something really terrible must have happened to Mai-Ling. Or am I still tripping and this is not real. But it feels real – too real.

  I swallow hard to stop the tears, “Is Mai-Ling ..?”

  The Constable’s face is blank as she glances at her partner. It is as if they are talking in some kind of silent code to each other.

  “Is she alright?”

  Still no answer.

  “Is she?” I am screaming now, I need to know! “For Christ’s sake, will someone tell me what is happening with Mai-Ling?”

  My words have poured themselves into my tears and I can hardly catch my breath. “She was just pinging, right? You know, she’s just high. She’ll be okay now that she’s spewed, right?”

  The female cop sits down next to me and looks me straight in the eye. She’s freaking me out. My heart is racing and sweat is pouring down my face. My hair is dripping wet and I can’t stop shaking. She is still just staring at me like she’s searching for a way to break the terrible news to me.

  She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Mai-Ling is still unconscious. This is very serious. We don’t know yet …”

  About the Author

  Fanie Viljoen is a well known Afrikaans South African author, living in Bloemfontein. A full-time writer, illustrator and artist, Fanie has written numerous short stories, radio plays and books for children and teenagers. Several of these books have won awards for children and youth literature in South Africa.