Why You Were Taken (4 page)

Kirsten loves the flat she shares with James in Illovo. It’s an old building with high, ornate pressed ceilings, parquet floors, and decorated in her shabby chic bohemian style, accentuated with knickknacks from their travelling and orphaned props from previous shoots.

It’s an old block, aged but sturdy. It has soul, she tells Marmalade, not like those new edge-of-cutting-edge buildings going up in town with their moving walls and pollution-sucking paint. Superglass everywhere so that you are constantly walking into walls. Hundreds of pivoting cameras to catch you walking into said walls. Not a comfortable chair in sight. Fake pebble fireplaces. Not like theirs, which they light with actual matches and feed with solid hunks of wood, and watch the florescent flames slowly work away at the grain.

  God knows she likes this brick-and-mortar building,
she thinks, punching the worn-out elevator button for the third time,
but this lift could really do with a(nother) service.

Eventually it cranks into life, something whirrs and settles with a dull thud from above, and it begins its unhurried descent.
Good thing I’m not in a hurry,
she thinks, as the numbers-caught-in-amber buttons light up painfully slowly: 4.

There is another noise, closer, a shuffling behind her and Kirsten whirls around, expecting to see someone, but the lobby is empty. 3.

The overhead lights flicker, and she thinks: just perfect. She is in just the mood to walk up three flights of stairs in the dark. 2.

The lights seem to stabilise, and then they go out. The elevator stops mid-groan. She hopes there isn’t anyone stuck inside. The auto-generator will kick in any minute but the person trapped might not know it.

She flicks her watch’s torch function on and begins climbing the stairs. It’s hardly a searchlight, but it will do. She wishes James was home but he’d touched down in Zimbabwe a few hours ago, to work at the new surgery they had set up there. He had always spent a lot of his time grinding out of the country, but lately it seems that he is never home.

They often discuss emigrating: James would be cooking some wholesome dinner while she reads the Echo.news tickertape out to him, and on bad-news days, which seemed more frequent lately, they would invariably end up wondering out loud to each other how much worse South Africa could get before they seriously considered moving to a safer place. Sometimes, sitting in the dark of loadshedding, talking by candlelight, eating olive sourdough and cheese, they’d say all they wanted was a more efficient place, a country that didn’t seem as inherently broken. And while James was always ready to leave, eager to leave, Kirsten couldn’t bring herself to, as if bound by some stubborn magnetic force.

Kirsten is slightly out of breath when she reaches the third floor (Wheatgrass Shooter). When they first moved in she would say she lived on the green floor, or tell visitors to press the green button in the elevator, and they would think she was crackers. Of course there was no green button, and there was nothing green about the floor she lived on.

Marmalade understands her colours though: If he asks her how many slices of toast she’d like and she answers ‘red’ he would know that meant two. Or yellow: one. Wasn’t it obvious? No, he says, I’m just used to your type of crazy.

She walks down the dim corridor and fumbles at the door, dropping her access card. Swearing purple (Aubergine Aura), she bends down to pick it up and a dark figure steps towards her.           
 

DON’T ASK

DON’T TELL

3

Johannesburg, 2021

Seth sits in the lab. It’s late, but he feels as if he is on the point of a breakthrough in the project he’s grinding. It’s his second last day at the smart drugs company and he wants to leave with a bang. It would be good for his (already enhanced) ego. He adds another molecule to the compound he is configuring on the screen of his Tile, subtracts one, then adds another. It’s almost ready.

Seth is the best chemgineer at Pharmax and he knows it. No one can map out new pharmaceuticals like him. To add to his professional allure – and to his considerable salary – he is known to be mercurial. No one company can pin him down for more than a year, despite offers of fast-tracking and bonuses. Some colleagues blame his exceptional intelligence, saying he bores easily, others, his drug problem. While both hold some truth, there’s a much more pressing reason Seth moves around as often as he does, which he keeps well hidden.

In the short ten months he had been at the pharmaceutical company he had already composed two first-class psychoactive drugs, and was now on the brink of a third. His biggest hit to date had been named TranX by the resident marketing team. It’s a tranquiliser, but modelled in such a way that while it relieves anxiety, it doesn’t make you feel detached or drowsy. After the tranquiliser hits your bloodstream, making you feel warm and mellow, it’s followed by a sweet and clean kick.

It’s all in the delivery system, he told his beady-eyed supervisor and the nodding interns as he showed them the plan. All about levels, layers, the way they interact with each other and the chemicals in the brain. The molecular expression was beautiful, they all agreed.

The drug before that was a painkiller. It didn’t just take your physiological pain away, it took
all
your pain away: abusive childhood, bad marriage, low self-esteem, you name it. It was one of his favourites, but then he always had a soft spot for analgesics. Based on the ever-delicious tramadol, Seth had used the evergreen African Pincushion tree for its naturally occurring tramadol-like chemspider, allowing for a rounder, softer, full-body relief, without the miosis or cotton-mouth.

Genius, if he didn’t say so himself. The formula wasn’t perfect though: too much of it was taxing on the liver. And he wasn’t sure what the long-term effects on the brain would be, but that was for the Food & Safety kids to figure out.

He knows he can babble about synapses and neurotransmitters all he likes, but the main reason he’s so good at this job, apart from the fact that he is an excellent mathematician, is because he tries all the prototypes on himself. Seth knows the company knows this, but they have a don’t-ask-don’t-tell arrangement, which suits them both well.

He moves to an appliance on the counter, clicks ‘print,’ and after a rattling he takes out a tray of pills. Shakes them down a plastic funnel and into an empty bottle, catching the last one before it disappears and popping it into his mouth. The bottle makes its way into his inside pocket after he scribbles on it with a pen. These particular pills are green; they look innocuous enough, like chlorophyll supplements, or Spirulina. His latest project involves experimenting with salvia, or Diviner’s Sage, as the hippies used to call it. Mexican Mint.

On his way out, his tickertape blinks with a news update. A minister has been fired for having a secret swimming pool. The NANC is contrite and apologetic; they don’t know how this could have happened. They have hard lines for mouths and use words like ‘shocking,’ ‘unacceptable,’ ‘unconscionable,’ and say they will certainly press charges. The journalist reporting the story looks familiar: a young, uncommonly attractive woman in cornrows and a tank top; leather bottoms. Biker? A white lace tattoo covers her shoulder; she has kohl eyes and an attitude. Just his type.

He thinks of the swimming pool and remembers a sunblock-slathered childhood of running in the sprinklers, drinking from the hose, water fights with pistols and super-soakers. Having long showers and deep bubble baths. Flushing the toilet with drinking water. Chlorine-scented nostalgia: kidney-shaped pools, dive-bombing, playing Marco Polo. The feeling of lying on the hot brick paving to warm up goose-pimpled skin. Then one day they weren’t allowed to water the garden, then domestic pools were banned, then all pools were illegal, then, then, then. It had been so long, he’d do anything for a swim. For a tumble-turn in drinking water. How decadent that all seems to him now.

He shrugs off his lab-coat, replaces his eyebrow ring and snaps on a silver-spiked leather wrist cuff. He puts his black hoodie on, squeezes the gun in his pocket. Applies some Smudge to his eyes, ruffles his hair into bed-head and checks his appearance in the glass door on the way out. His mood starts climbing; he can feel the beginning of the slow-release high.

The Algaetrees detect his movement and flicker on. The back street smells like tar and trash. A rat scurries out in front of him, but he doesn’t flinch. He takes it as a good sign. He expects the drug to peak in 2 hours, maybe 3. Optimism in a bottle. He clicks his earbutton and all of a sudden his life has a soundtrack. He’s ready for a bright night.

Journal entry

3 March 1987

Westville

In the news:
a guerrilla is shot dead by Gugulethu police after firing at them with an AK47.

What I’m listening to:
The new Compact Disc (CD) of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ by the Beatles

What I’m reading:
‘Watchers’ by Dean R Koontz. It’s about two creatures that emerge from a secret government laboratory, one to spread love, the other doom.

What I’m watching:
Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Totally gnarly. Usually I enjoy scary movies but I had to walk out of the cinema. Life is grisly enough.

I went in for my abortion (hate that word!) today. I felt so trapped and alone but it seemed like the only solution. I got up really early, I had to be at the ‘family planning clinic’ at 7 and after waiting for a while in a grubby room with two other girls with shame-flamed cheeks they gave me a depressing pink gown to change into. Had to take off all make-up and jewellery, even my new nail polish. There was a mirror in the fluorescent room and I just looked at my face and I was so pale and looked so terrible. I kept thinking ‘what have I become? What have I become?’

I am NOT the kind of person who sleeps with married men, and definitely not the kind of person who has an abortion! And once these things are done they can never be undone. I will be forever bruised. My soul will be dented. I was looking into that mirror thinking that I didn’t even recognise myself, and I just started crying. Weeping, really. That hyperventilating ugly-cry.

Shame, the nurse was so kind to me, she could see that I was really shaken up. She held my hand. Told me if I didn’t want the baby then I was doing the right thing. That the world doesn’t need another unwanted child. It would be best for everyone, if I was sure that I didn’t want it. It’s not that I don’t ‘want it’ I wanted to say to her. It’s that I can’t have it. Look at me, I may be 24 but I’m just a child myself.

So I was on the operating table after taking the pre-med and feeling totally woozy and my legs were in stirrups when something just happened, like a bolt of lightning. All of a sudden the abstract idea of pregnancy became a real idea of a little baby (a little baby!) instead of an ‘it,’ and the thought was there as clear as day that there was no way I could go through with the termination. Mine and P’s baby!! A little pink gurgly precious baby! The anxiety fell away (I blame the drugs) and revealed my true wish, even if it was clouded by conflicted emotions.

I felt so embarrassed telling the doctor but he didn’t mind. Usually I absolutely hate doctors but he was really nice: said it was better to be sure, and that I still had another 3 weeks to change my mind if I wanted to, said he’d take care of me. But I won’t. Something happened to me on that table and it totally wasn’t what I planned.

The nurse squeezed my arm and gave me her number in case I wanted to talk. I started crying again – something about the unexpected kindness of strangers in hard times. Also, the meds! I am going to have to tell P about the baby. I’m sure he will be angry and end things. I will probably have to find a new job, a new town. My parents will, like, never speak to me again! No duh. My life as I know it is over. Never felt so lonely before!

All that said I can’t help feeling a tiny jab of excitement (stress?) when I think of the baby. Eeeek! An actual baby. What was I thinking? I’m totally terrified.

Bon Jovi’s song is constantly playing on every radio and in my head. I’m living on a prayer!!

A BIG RED

BLOOM

OVER HIS HEART

4

Johannesburg, 2021

Kirsten gasps, clutches her chest.

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘I’ve been called worse,’ says the dark figure. The overhead lights flicker back on.

‘The fuck are you doing here?’

 
‘Hai wena.
Is that the way you would greet the son of God Almighty?’

  ‘As far as I know, the son of God doesn’t skulk in dark corridors with inflatable motorbike helmets.’

  ‘And how would you know, being the infidel that you are?’ asks Kekeletso, arms akimbo. ‘And, bless you,
sista
, still such a filthy mouth.’