Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 11

Charm 6/22

Rain Falling

By midnight it is freakishly hot inside Red Room. Seriously. I do not know how Rain hasn’t melted yet. The air-con is overloaded as usual and there are now so many people squeezed into the tiny club that I’m breathing in their sweat, their beery stink. I’m in a tee-shirt and jeans, and I’m still feeling like a witch in water. At least I’ve made my traditional midnight switch to energy drinks so that I don’t end up passed out in the toilet or on a bench. This way I get pre-diabetes to go with my eczema.

Rain’s been staring at every tarted-up emo boy who’s wandered in tonight, and it’s beginning to more than piss me off. Stupid hair, stupid me. I don’t even know what I was thinking. Of course it wasn’t going to work. You don’t get to tell broken people you’re the only one who can fix them. Repeat after me: I am not an Elastoplast.

I’m all on edge watching the people shuffling on the dance floor. The place is so tiny that it can’t hold all that many people, but somehow it manages to be bigger on the inside, like a magic castle, and I keep seeing more and more new faces arrive. None of them appear to be Caleb, and more importantly, no-one seems to be sporting the latest in Irene-nightmare club-casual—a pair of wings and a set of baboon-bright teeth.

I sigh, and take another swig of my drink. Way too paranoid, Irene.

“Nice,” Rain says. He’s looking at a man with long black hair and slanted eyes. Even in the crappy light of the club, I can see he has the kind of sleek skin that makes him look like he’s been modelled out of a tin of Nestle caramel. Time to cut this potential romance short. It’s obvious I can’t compete. I look around as a blast of cooler air briefly touches my skin. Someone’s opened the side door off the raised dance floor, so I grab Rain. “Come on. I can’t breathe in here.” We head for the open door before the staff wise up and close it again. I shove my way though the crowd. Fresh air, a bit of cool breeze on my body, that’s all I need now. We slip through the doorway and squeeze our way onto the little metal fire escape. A couple of people have had the same idea, and they sit on the iron steps or on the concrete downstairs, panting.

An older man looks up at us as our feet hit the first rung.

Caleb.

I don’t win. I swear dead man stalking is everywhere I go. Not dead, Irene, just…uh…really unconscious.

He recognizes us too, raising one hand in silent greeting. Caleb has that skinny look like he’s living on his nerves and his own body tissues. Rain is hopping down the steps toward him, muttering excuse me’s every time he has to press past someone.

I grab at his sleeve and haul him back. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What?” Rain gives me his best I-am-totally-innocent expression, eyes wide.

“What-what?” I mimic. “I mean, why do you want to talk to him?”

He frowns. “Irene. Are you blind?”

Oh, right, and this is it. It’s not like Rain’s ever made any secret out of his penchant for tall skinny men with hard faces. Tall, skinny older men. But still. “He’s like…fifty.”

Rain’s frown smooths away and he laughs. “He is not—are you jealous?” He shakes his head in mocking disbelief. “You are, aren’t you?”

“I’m not jealous, you tit. I just think he’s too old for you.” And a freak. I shove my hands in my pockets. I’m the only freak Rain gets to like.

Rain presses his face right next to mine, and licks my ear. Not in a sexy way, in a really-gross-brother way. “Jealous,” he whispers, loud enough that it makes my ear hurt.

“Drunk,” I hiss back.

And he doesn’t deny anything, just steps away further down the stairs and grins at me.

“I hate you,” I tell him.

“You do not.”

“Okay, fine, I don’t hate you. I just hate you a little bit right now.”

But he’s already gone, pushing through the tight-packed group of people on the stairs. Bee-lining his way to the previously-dead Caleb. I sigh, and follow. Caleb’s just a person. And he’s about to get hit full force with Rain’s secret weapon. There are few who survive when Rain has decided to turn on the charm. All people fall before him.

Caleb lifts the brim of his hat as we approach. His eyes still have a flat black quality, but up close, I can see he’s a fair bit older than us, but yeah, not fifty. Mid-thirties, I guess. Still old. Lines are gathered in the corners of his eyes.

An electric itch has begun to burn just under my skin. I scratch one arm, then stick it behind my back. It’s ignore the itch, or have the whole place think I have fleas or scabies. And scratching just makes it worse. If I give in, by the time I get home the insides of my arms will be weeping and scaly red. The itch gets worse as I get closer to Caleb, like my body’s warning me. Caleb’s not to be trusted. It’s the kind of thing my mother believed—that our bodies can act as warning signals. She was also a fruit bat. So. Yeah.

Caleb blinks as I stare at him and his mouth curls in slow sneer.

I back away, just a little. and the prickle begins to fade.

What. The. Hell.

I can’t explain what’s going on whenever I’m near him, but I sure as hell don’t like it. Caleb is not Mr Normality. Not that I can explain that to Rain without sounding more than a little touched. Best thing would be just to stay here and keep an eye on the twit, make sure he’s not, I dunno, kidnapped, or whatever it is that the walking dead do to pretty, vacant, idiot boys. I sigh and look away from Caleb, deciding it’s better to watch Rain instead. The bare electric light makes him look unnatural and haloed; his features washed out to a photocopy-paleness. A smudge of nose and mouth, two smears where his eyes should be. I make mental notes for my painting, sketching him down in my thoughts. This is the most obvious of Rain’s weapons—he is freaking beautiful.

I kinda want to see if Caleb notices how Rain gets more beautiful when he wants someone, like it’s a skill he can turn on when he feels like it. I’m a spectator at some bizarre game of tennis, and no-one notices me.

Caleb looks at him with an intensity that I recognize from myself. Chalk another up to Rain’s magnetism. He’s unnaturally pretty, and because he has that fragile waifishness to him, people always want to coddle him, buffer him in cotton wool so that he never splinters. We treat him like he’s not real.

My energy drink is too sickly-sweet, too warm, and I sip it slowly.

Rain’s settled himself in place, and his charm is working. Already Caleb is chatting to him like they’ve known each other for years, making small talk. He has a throat-rattling growl, gravel in a cement-mixer. He moves his long-fingered hands as he speaks and under the bare light, it’s almost as if I can see skeins of gold following the movements. After-images. I shake my head and they fade a little. It’s hypnotic to watch, and the part of me that obviously needs to be locked away in a small padded room thinks magic.

It’s probably just some weird trick of the light, but it seems the gold threads grow brighter, dancing like a subtle net over Rain, as Caleb draws closer to him.

Nervously, I edge back toward them, ignoring the itch so I can hear what they’re saying.

They’re talking music. Meaningless conversation, but Caleb is already leaning in close, his head bowed over Rain’s. And Rain, with his innocent mouth, is watching him, his grey eyes wide.

I’ve got a bad feeling, and while I’m really good at ignoring stuff like that if it suits me, this time I have this urge to get myself and Rain out of here, far away from Caleb. That, and I really don’t want to watch Rain playing this game, selling little bits of himself to get whatever it is he thinks he can.

“They’re playing my favourite song,” I say. “Let’s go dance.”

Rain drags his gaze off Caleb long enough to flick me an uninterested glance. “You go,” he says. “I’ll come along just now.”

What he means is, when I’m gone, he’ll break out the big guns. He’s already hooked Caleb with his surface sheen of naivety, soon he’ll be reeling him in. He just doesn’t want to do it while I’m watching.

Damn. I do actually like this song. And there’s no reason to torture myself by watching Rain play out his little line while Caleb keeps shooting me these mocking looks that say I know what you’re thinking, with his hands dancing magic all over Rain’s skin.

There’s no such thing as magic. And if I keep telling myself that, it might just be true.

I’m gone. Off to lose myself in the press of bodies and the drum-machine beats. Whatever happens between them, I refuse to think about. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to me.

I dance longer than I mean to. Even to songs I don’t really like or know. Eventually I’m going to have to go back. Rain has all the cash, and my drink ran out ages ago.

When I stumble back outside, I don’t see Rain, and my heart stops for just one panicked second before I spot him sitting on the concrete downstairs, in the shadows.

His one hand is tangled in Caleb’s long black hair—hair that hides Rain’s face like a curtain. I feel nauseous. It never takes Rain all that long to get what he wants. He must hear me coming down the iron stairs, because he pulls away and looks up at me. Rain grins and raises a hand to beckon me down. I have to button up all my insecurities, zip them away. I push the prickly fear down under the surface and let myself look easy, relaxed. It’s harder than it sounds.

“Enjoying yourself?” I say, before I can stop the words.

“Yeah, actually.” He has no shame.

Next to him, Caleb leans back against the wall, he gives me a thoughtful look, appraising.

It’s really cold out here now. Noticeably, unseasonably cold. Maybe it’s the sweat cooling on my skin. I shiver.

“Here. Sit.” Rain pats the ground. “Caleb bought you a drink.”

He did too. Obviously he’s one of those smooth hunters who knows the value of keeping the best friend happy. I take my drink from Caleb and sit cross-legged on the concrete. Music is pounding in my ears, buzzing away at my brain like a legion of bees. My drink is icy, cold enough to kill the unpleasant sweetness.

“Rain’s been talking about you,” Caleb says. He’s got a mocking smile. Just the same as the one in my painting. “You’re an artist.”

“Kinda.” I shrug.

“Caleb says we should go back to his place.” Rain’s not looking at me, but at the ground instead. He’s playing with the frayed laces of his trainers because he bloody knows.

“Uh, why?” I say, and inject as much arch loathing as I can into my voice. It comes out sounding petulant instead, and I cringe inside.

“Just to chill.”

I’m too tired to fight with him, and I know the high mood is just a reaction from his down—swing earlier. And if I say no, Rain’s going to go anyway, and then I’m going to worry about him all night. So I nod. “Yeah, sure.”

Caleb and Rain are sitting close, their thighs pressed up next to one another, knees overlapping. Caleb smokes black herbal cigarettes, they smell like fish heads and petrol. So vomit-inducing that even Rain doesn’t bum any off of him.

I tap out a Stuyvesant for Rain, and Caleb leans over to light it with a silver Zippo, battered and plain. He lights mine next, and the flame is blue and black at the base. As he moves in to hold the Zippo for me, a wave of cold air hits my face, biting into my skin like a thousand needles. I look into Caleb’s face, and he winks once at me like we’re sharing a secret joke.

My hand shakes, the red cherry shiver of the lit cig the only give-away. I’m not leaving Rain alone with him. I don’t care if everything that’s been happening in my life is just some prolonged hallucination, I don’t trust this

dead

bastard.

“You should show Caleb your art sometime, I’m sure he’d be interested.” Rain is trying to keep the conversation going, but his voice sounds a little desperate.

“Yeah.”

“Really,” Caleb says. “Rain is right. I’m always interested in art.” I can’t place his accent, there’s a tinge of something there, not quite American, but like maybe he’s spent time there. His voice drawls a little, catches on vowels like a burr in a dog’s coat. He stubs out the last of his herbal cig and stands, looking down at Rain, his hand held out.

As he pulls Rain to his feet, I see the moment frozen under electric light. Shadow and snow. My mental camera clicks, saving the image for another painting. Rain is shining, beautiful, and his hands and face are so white. Chiaroscuro. I swallow the last of my drink and stand to follow the couple through the Red Room with my cigarette still in hand. Outside the stars are distant and faint in a smog-black sky. I feel like I could be swallowed up by all this immensity of nothingness, disconnected from reality. It’s achingly lonely, like hearing a radio in another room.

Rain is standing at Caleb’s car, head tilted up as they kiss. He’s holding Caleb’s shoulders, and Rain’s face is cupped by those narrow hands. Shameless. I want to sit down in the middle of the car park and cry. I don’t know why it hits me like this, I think it’s the empty sky. I don’t even want to finish my cig, and instead just flick it off toward the fence. It tumbles through the air like a tiny meteorite, glowing red, then disappears.

“I’m going to drive with Caleb, all right?” Rain calls to me. He’s leaning against the walking dead man, one arm slung about Caleb like he’s hanging on to a prize he’s won at a tombola. Sometimes, I really wonder if Rain actually has any grey-matter in that thick skull of his. “Irene?” Rain says again.

“Yeah, fine. No problem.” I’m already pulling my car keys from my pocket and heading past them to the street. On the plus side, my dad’s car is exactly where I left it. I unlock the gorilla-lock just as the horned car pulls out past me, the scraped and painted side passing in a swirl of hallucinogenic colour. Caleb flicks his lights.

So I’ll follow them in the Beetle, even more an outsider. As I pull away, something makes the scraggly bushes shiver. There’s no wind and my heart leaps into my throat. I accelerate after Caleb’s monstrosity of a car, and when I finally dare to give a nervous look into my rear-view mirror, I see a hunched shape standing by the bushes. No, not one, several. I swallow and take deep breaths.

It’s getting harder to write these things off to an over-active imagination and a crazy mom.

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previous/next

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Till Wednesday!

* You can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo. *

I think it’s a map

It’s deluge time here in the Cape, so I am feeling all sorry for myself and waiting to be drowned.

On Submitting

I’m going to talk a little about short story submissions, because a comment on facebook made me realise that for someone just starting out submitting their stories, it can feel very daunting, and that a lot of information seems to contradict.

 

I’m going to talk about my process and experience, which is mainly with speculative fiction. When it comes to submitting to literary journals, you’ll have to dig a little more for relevant information, though the basics should remain the same.

 

So there are a few things that need to be done.

1: WRITE. This is kinda a big one. Talking about writing is not the same as writing. Sit down. Make words. If you need prompts, there are sites that give prompts, or go look at art, or ask yourself “What if?” or read newspapers and see what strange things the world offers. Without an actual story, the rest of this list is useless.

2: REVISE. Don’t send out your first draft. Just, don’t. And don’t only revise your work – read and critique the work of other writers. It’s easier to see the flaws in other people’s work than your own, and it’s a great way to learn, and build community. Find a writing group and get stuck in. You can also hang out on boards like AbsoluteWrite and find like-minded writers and learn more.

3: SUBMIT. You don’t sell anything that sits on your hard-drive, slowly forgotten. I use The (Submission) Grinder to find suitable markets, but others also use Duotrope. I tend to filter for pro-markets first (highest paying) and work my way down. Not because I’m a meanie, but because I want to be paid for my work. Some semi-pro and token markets are better venues for particular stories, though, so never assume Highest Pay = Best Market. Always follow the market guidelines; not doing so is asking for an automatic rejection. Many places want a cover letter. Here’s mine, and you can totally steal it:

Dear [EDITOR NAME]

Please consider my [WORD COUNT] [GENRE] story, [TITLE] for inclusion in [NAME OF VENUE].

Thank you for your time,

[MY NAME]

(because I have a few sales, I have an extra line after the first one that says, I have previously published works in THIS MAG, THAT MAG, and THAT OTHER MAG. Don’t stress if you don’t have this. It will come.)

Keep subbing. Don’t self-reject after a few magazines have turned you down, just keep looking for new venues. Not all editors want the same thing.

4: KEEP RECORDS. Many markets don’t allow multiple submissions. This means you can only send your story out to one market at a time. And markets can take a looooong time to respond. Do not think you will remember. I use a very basic spread sheet to track stories with title, venue, submission date, rejection date.

5: DO NOT BEHAVE LIKE A JERK. This might seem obvious, but apparently it’s not. Don’t respond to rejections (at all, not even to say thank you for reading – you are just cluttering up the editor’s inbox) but especially not to berate them for their stupidity at passing over your work of genius when they publish all that other shit. This happens. Friends of mine read slush, THIS HAPPENS. Please don’t be this writer.

 

I hope this helps you, and if you think of other things that I’ve forgotten to include, ping me.

The first line game, and a prompt for June

I have a game I play every now and again when I’m feeling bereft of ideas and creativity:  I write ten first lines.**

I don’t need to think of anything beyond a first line that would make me go, “hmmm, I want to read this.”

Then I look at my lines, and see if anything sparks. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. If I do end up writing something, the chances are pretty high that I won’t even use that original first line. It doesn’t even have to be a good first line. It doesn’t matter – it served its purpose simply by springboarding me into a pool of imagination.

While cleaning up this weekend, I found a page with an exercise from 2014 (possibly? there’s no date.) so, here they are, just to give you an example of what I do.

# The pigeons were the first ones we noticed, lining the edges of the city buildings like feathered sentinels

# Every year the girls would nominate a trickster to fight on their side, and they would dress him in silk and pearls and rub kohl about his eyes.

# We came back to earth after the Long Season, our harpoon-ships empty.

# Seduction in Alien Biology: How to start a revolution using sex.

# Today is an important day – no fairs or public holidays, no saints or martyrs, no revolutions started.

# We left Cacophony to sell dreams on The Long Road.*

# The last star went out today, though the world is still spinning

# It is my sister’s job and mine to stamp down the grapes for the Oneiric wines.

# I fell in love with him over email; his OKcupid profile having neglected to mention the missing arm. Or the extra wing.

As it turns out, the highlighted sentence did actually prompt a short story, and the opening line *almost* stayed. The Story begins so:

 

We left Cacophony to gather dreams on the Long Road. It was decemberish and the light was fading so the pilgrims were all wrapped up in constellations made out of wires and lights, and the sound of their plainsong moaned down the wide barren stones of the Long Road. We travelled behind them in a caravan drawn by three black manticores, their teeth pulled and their eyes put out. It was the easiest way to keep them docile.

Now, I think that any of those prompts in the hands of different writers are going to produce uniquely different stories. So instead of giving a single prompt for June for #12months12stories, feel free to use one of those. (If you decide to use Cacophony. I ask that you *not* use my exact words, thanks

You Are Probably Better Than You Think You Are

So many writers I know have a tendency to self-reject, to tear down their own work and make themselves feel like crap. Some days they bluff it and say, “I’ve been doing this for ten years, my stories are good, my language is good, this industry sucks,” when underneath the bluff they are thinking, “the industry doesn’t suck, I do, obviously my stories are just not good enough, and if after ten years I still can’t write a decent story, who am I fooling?”

The thing is, the industry both sucks and doesn’t – it publishes god-awful repetitive hits-by-numbers, and works of staggering beautiful genius. (we don’t always agree which is which, but hey, variety is the spice of etc). And those writers I know who are struggling *are* damn good. Their work is polished, their stories carefully crafted, the language rich or deceptively simple, but always theirs.

I can’t write a feel good post about how this one writer I know struggled for years then suddenly got a million dollar deal because I don’t know those people (and those deals are few and far between) but what I do know is a host of writers who have not given up, and some have achieved a measure of success they are happy with in mainstream publishing, others have hybrid careers, others keep their work in small presses like Immanion where they know their work will go directly to the kind of people who love their style. Some have self-published novels while concentrating on short-story sales, some have patreons, some kickstart final stories in a series, some write for hire under pseudonyms, some write fanfic, some are still working hard on that perfect first novel.

The thing they all have in common is under the despair, and under the bluff-masking-despair, they all keep writing.

A small success here, another there – a short story sale, a poem in a respected journal, an essay that went viral, a growing fan base that buys their every work…these things take time, and most of all they take constant plodding effort in the face of grim indifference. They find the next handhold and they raise themselves another inch, mark off the rejection and resub, rewrite and revise for the nth time, brainstorm a new idea, outline their next novel, make words.

So. you are probably better than you think you are. Don’t self-reject, keep subbing, keep pushing, and mark off the days with stars. My husband likes to tell me – there are plenty of people out there happy to tear you down, don’t do their job for them. And he’s right about that.

As Margaret Atwood wrote in The Handmaid’s Tale: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Charm 5/22

The Red Room

The taxi is crowded and sweaty, smelling of Sunlight soap and poverty and I’m crammed right into the back, squashed like an old tissue at the bottom of a handbag. The driver pretends to not hear me when I yell, “Robots!” so the women around me have to repeat what I say until he brakes at the next set of traffic-lights. I squeeze out of the taxi, half clambering over the other passengers.

The refuse in Orange Grove is really piling up and the bags overflow from the plastic trolleys. A miasma of flies and muggies and a stench so powerful it’s probably sentient hangs over the black bags. Some of them are split open—torn by dogs. Or rats, I realize, when I see one scratching through the spilled banana peels and tea bags and god knows what else. The rat is massive and sleekly black and it looks up as I approach. Instead of running, it just watches me with its beady little rodent eyes.

“Scram.” I kick out at it as I pass, and it finally ducks into the litter. They’re getting bold, the little shits. That story about the chewed-up baby doesn’t seem quite so unbelievable right now, when the damn rodents are sitting out bold as brass under the bright sun. I stop in front of the old-fashioned house with its low brick wall, the garden shadowy with overgrown delicious monsters and blackjacks. Light flashes at me from the windows as Lily’s mirrored trinkets revolve in the slight puff of a hot breeze. I will myself to walk up and knock.

Lily isn’t home. Rain opens the door himself, something I don’t expect. He looks okay, a little thin, but that’s not exactly unusual. I glance over him, running through a mental check-list. “Where’s your jersey?”

Rain starts shivering as I ask, and he doesn’t stop. He’s wearing a black zip up tracksuit top to cover his arms and even though it’s the middle of summer his teeth are chattering. “Lily,” he finally says through the brittle click of teeth.

The bitch. “Where is she?” More to the point, what did she do with that damn jersey? Rain is already unravelling.

“Dunno. Out.”

Of course Lily isn’t the shiniest spoon in the cutlery drawer, so I go straight to the rubbish waiting for pick-up. It’s not in the first bag, and I have to tear through unimaginable wads of filth, discarded hair, rotting banana peels, and wadded tissue paper in order to discover that. I find it in the second bag, covered in ash and fag ends. Some unidentifiable fruit is stuck on the one sleeve. It smells rancid and cidery. Apple, I guess.

I bring it inside, holding it out like it’s the holy grail. Or a dead cat. Rain stills when he sees me.

“I’m going to clean it,” I say.

“That’s what Lily said.”

I want to strangle her. It’s enough to hate her for all the times she dragged Rain off to specialists and doctors for no reason except her own sick needs, but now to try and take away the things he uses to keep himself together. She’s like a crocodile, willing to eat her own spawn when times get lean. “It’s cool. I’m just going to wash it in the basin. You can watch me. I promise that’s all I’m going to do.” God, I’m talking to him like he’s eight, soothing him, crooning.

He follows at my heels, never taking his eyes from the filthy jersey. One day, I swear I’m going to kill Lily.

Rain can’t wait for his jersey to even dry properly, and he puts it on though it’s still damp. As he changes I catch a glimpse of the long scar that run from his wrist to his elbow. A flash of red tissue, like a dirt track. That’s what you do when you really want to die, none of these surface nicks across the wrist.

Luckily he was still in that place when he did it. Someone found him, I guess. It also meant he had to stay even longer. Sometimes I wonder if he shouldn’t still be in there, and then when I see his eyes and remember him from before, I wonder how much more that place messed him up. More than even his mother managed, I’ll bet. If I’m here when Lily gets back… “Come on.” I grab Rain’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

I’m prepared for an argument, but Rain just nods and follows me. At first I think of going to my place until I remember the picture of Caleb. I don’t want to be around it, near it. Not with Rain, anyway. I think about calling Memory, but he said something about band practice this Saturday, so he’ll be busy.

We end up going to my dad’s house because it’s closest. Fuzigish’s swaggering brand of Joburg ska blares from Dale’s room, and I knock on the one of the tiny window panes in the front door until my brother finally hears me over the noise.

“What?” Dale pops his head around the door. There are voices, other people and the smell of dope and cheap incense.

“You’re smoking in the house?” I raise one eyebrow. “Dad’s not completely stupid you know.”

“Howzit, Rain,” Dale ignores me. He’s sixteen and untouchable.

“Hey.” Rain scuffs his feet along the carpet. Hugs himself.

Dale looks at me with a knowing glint in his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, just doesn’t shut the door in our faces. From Dale, that’s as good as a gilded invitation. “Boxes,” he says.

“I know, I’ll get to them.” And this time I kind-of mean it. Maybe. I’m sure I made a promise with myself that I would face Mom’s stuff someday. “Dad’s out, yeah?” Even though I know he must be. No car in the drive, and Dale smoking? Of course he is.

Dale eyes me balefully, like I’m too stupid to deserve a response. Yay, baby brothers, right?

A couple of his scruffy friends from school are leaving. They’re standing in the front hall, skateboards under their arms as they bounce a skinny joint between them. Dale’s friends are interchangeable—the same dyed black carefully mussed hair, the same baggy pants, boxers showing. They all wear Vans. Rich kids trying to look street. The name brands always give them away. One thing I will say for them though, is they can all skate. They do just about nothing else.

One of the interchangeable skater boys flips me the last of the joint, just as Dale sprays the entrance hall with his deodorant. I cough, my eyes watering—this must be what a cockroach feels like under the Doom onslaught. Death by Ego for Men

When they’re gone and Dale’s retreated back into his ska-tuned hibernation, I get orange juice from the fridge and dig around in my dad’s stuff until I find a half-jack of vodka. He’s more of a whiskey man, which is why this is still unopened. He’ll probably never miss it, so I take it along with some plastic high-ball glasses back to what used to be my room. My dad’s changed it into a neat little study. His mac purrs on one corner table, and the bookshelves are crammed with ancient DTP manuals from back when he was at college a million years ago, and the ubiquitous fat design magazines that were a constant fixture of my childhood. Other people’s parents read You and People and Mad Magazine, my dad read PRINT and Bitterkomix.

A cracked faux-leather couch covered with a cheap throw done in last season’s Moroccan spice line colours stands in one corner. Rain and I both squish onto it and drink the screwdrivers I make. The orange juice is a sharp burn on my chapped lips, like the sting of a throw-away kiss.

Rain curls himself up small and rests his head against my shoulder. His hair is dry and splitting and the ends tickle my cheek.

“Do you want to crash at my place tonight?” I don’t want him alone with Lily, not if she’s in one of her moods, and while he could stay here and my dad wouldn’t mind, it would mean parental questions.

“Maybe,” says Rain. He’s stayed at my place once or twice. I like it when he does, waking up spooned together under the Indian cotton, so I’m hoping the maybe translates to a yes.

“So did he call you?” I guess this is me trying to make normal conversation, trying to pretend that we are friends, that this is what friends say to each other.

“Who?” Rain lifts his head, bleary puzzlement in his frown.

“Uh, the guy from Zeplins.”

“Oh.” He drops his head back down. “It wasn’t anything like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like anything. You know.”

And suddenly I’m happy, the world is good and wonderful, even if actually it’s shit and sucky. For a moment, I can pretend. I curl one arm around Rain’s shoulder and rest my cheek against his hair. I touch the tip of my tongue to his ear lobe. He squirms and laughs, making me spill orange juice and vodka down my front.

“Crazy wench.” His term of affection. He sits up and kisses me.

Vodka, acid orange, the faint lingering under-taste of toothpaste. Even though I know that this is just Rain’s way of passing time, of thanking people, I close my eyes and kiss back. He slides his fingers through my shorn hair and I have to remind myself that it didn’t change anything, that I’m still not real to him.

The desk fan whirs, outside I can hear the rattle of skateboard wheels on loose tar, the whit whit whoo of the laughing doves. I catch the moment, press it down. I’ll add it to my collage: moments with Rain. I have enough of them, jumbled and patched, the diluted fragments of past summers. I’ve never told Rain that he’s the only person I’ve ever kissed, and if he does know he’s never mentioned it. I’m such a loser sometimes. Rain’s fucked more people than I can count—one night stands and casual hook-ups—but he always runs away from them in the morning. I like to flatter myself that he runs back to me.

He drops his hand, and slip his fingers under my tee shirt, just stroking the jut of my hipbone, and before I have to push his hand to less gross areas of skin, he pulls back. His eyes are clear and grey. “I love you, Reenie,” he says. “You know that.”

And he does, in his way, I guess. The unspoken part: You’re my best friend. He doesn’t even have to say it because I know what he means. “Yeah,” I say, and hug him tight, like friends do even though my heart is black and empty. “Me too, kid.” Get over it, Reenie.

“I don’t want to go back.” His voice is muffled in the cotton of my shirt, his mouth against my shoulder, moist and hot. He means back home to Lily. It’s not like he has any other family to go to.

“So don’t.” I wish that there was something that I could give him, that I could win the lottery or something, and have the money just to take him away, make him safe.

“Yeah.” He uncurls himself from me and pours us another round, heavy on the vodka.

“You could stay with me,” I say, and I press on faster as he frowns. “Just until you get a job and can afford the deposit on your own place.”

Except he won’t because Rain and his mother are these two awful co-enablers or something, both hating each other, and both terrified the other is going to leave. It’s too close in this room, so I pace over to my dad’s computer and switch on the desk fan and click though his music folders. My dad’s not all hippie like Lily. He does likes his prog rock, and some old school synth-type stuff. He even gave a vinyl copy of Bleach to Rain for his thirteenth birthday—which kinda makes him cool.

I click through the names. Ugh. Pink Floyd. Too melancholy, I don’t want to bring the mood down. I find something bluesy and chilled; Odetta Sings Dylan. ‘Cause sometimes, you’re just in the mood for jangle-twang guitars and mountain vocals and hand claps and shakers.

“So lets go out tonight,” Rain says. I’m usually the one who has to drag him out, kicking and screaming. He’s regained his equilibrium and he’s swinging from the doldrums to a manic high.

“With what? You bankrupted me last weekend.” I look back over my shoulder at him, grin and wink, to let him know I don’t hold it against him. But under my little play I’m suddenly scared. There are things out there, things that are waiting for me.

No. There aren’t.

“With this.” Rain pulls something from his jeans pocket and tosses toward me. A black leather wallet, worn at the edges, soft with time, lands on the desk. “Lily owes me,” he says.

“Fantastic.” And I don’t feel guilty, rifling through Lily’s cash, because Rain’s right—she owes him, she really does. There are a few hundreds, a fifty, couple of twenties and some change. It’ll do.

#

Rain wants to go to the Red Room, and I’m happy enough with that. It definitely beats going to Zeplins where the nightcrawlers are. Honeydew is closer than Pretoria anyway, even if I’m terrible with directions and get us lost. Every damn time. You’d think I’d have finally reached a point in my life where I can remember a route I’ve driven, like, a hundred times.

The narrow car park is packed by the time we arrive that evening. “Wonderful.” I park the Beetle on the side street near the old Le Club sign, and eye the black road. “If this gets stolen, my dad is going to string me from the ceiling by my thumbs.” Of course, he is already going to do that by the time I get round to returning the car. The silence on the matter has become more than simply ominous and is now downright terrifying.

“No-one’s dumb enough to steal a Beetle.” Rain unclips the seat belt.

“Lies. All lies. People would kill to have this piece of crap in their garage.” I thump the yellow hood. I’ve gorilla-locked the gear lever, not that it’s much of a deterrent—car-jackers spray the locks with liquid nitrogen or something and that’s it. Add to that the fact that I know you can open the driver side door with a screwdriver instead of a key. Let’s just say that security is not exactly a feature of this particular motor vehicle.

I give the road a final scan, then run after Rain to join him as he walks through the parking lot. He’s hunched his shoulders up a little, the way he always does when he’s outside a club. It’s like he only relaxes when there’s music around him.

“Oh, familiar,” says Rain. “Check it out.” He’s pointing at a finned monstrosity of a car with a horned skull wired to the grill. Caleb’s car.

My chest tightens, my breath turning wheezy. My spine is cold and my arms are goose pimpled. “Maybe it’s a sign,” I say. I know it sounds stupid, but this car again now. Just like before, before the winged boy in Zeplins. And not just him but the figure in the rain watching my window. It’s making me nervous even though I have told myself over and over that none of it was real. “Maybe we should go.”

Rain has stopped in the middle of the long lot, just staring at the car and at the horned skull. It’s caught him. “It’s just that guy from the bar. Caleb. It’s Caleb’s car. Maybe he’s cool, you know.” he stops, frowns suddenly and says, “A sign of what?”

“The apocalypse. And maybe he’s the angel of death.” I don’t point out to Rain that I’m pretty sure Caleb is dead. How am I supposed to explain that he’s just one of many weird things I seem to think are happening in my life right now. Like Rain’s going to believe that Caleb was the guy I saw on the pavement that day of the accident, blood all around him. Or that some winged creature followed me through the nightclub, that it’s not the first time things have dogged me wherever I go. That it was only my mother who stood between them and me. Instinctively, I reach up and touch my mother’s amulet through my black tee-shirt. Maybe the evil eye works against the undead and demons, but if it does, it’s not doing a particularly stellar job.

“The apocalypse?” Rain drawls. “Are you on some whack drug you’re not sharing with me? And isn’t death supposed to ride a white horse?” He glances over at Caleb’s car. “Whatever you call it, that’s not a horse.”

“I’m kidding,” I say. God, I’m starting to sound like I really am going crazy. Time to pull myself together and at least pretend to act normal. “C’mon, lets get inside. I need a drink.” Maybe it wasn’t Caleb lying dead in the road. A doppelgänger, or something.

Rain pats his hip pocket. “First round is on Lily.”

“Every round’s on Lily.”

We pay the girl at the door and head straight for the back bar where it’s less crowded and we have a better chance of actually getting a drink. It’s still fairly early for the crowd, and it’s just going to get worse, as more and more of Joburg’s alternatives start crawling out from under their rocks. I grab a seat in the corner. I’ve got one wary eye open, but there’s no sign of Caleb the walking dead man, or any winged monster-boys. The horned car probably belongs to someone else—a Pretoria weirdo. It’s not like there’s a shortage of them.

As my beer empties, I stop staring at people’s faces and I relax my shoulders. It’s just the regular crowd—the usual mix-bag of ageing indie-bunnies and slumming goths in monochrome uniforms. Everything seems to be black and white against the red walls. A study in contrasts. After the first drink, I follow Rain to the other bar, closer to the stage and we wrangle a spot on one of the dodgy benches.

The music changes from indie standards to obscure eighties tracks and a more electro sound. I even consider dancing, though the small stage that serves as a dance floor is packed with sweating people. The air is getting steadily more cloying and the only thing cool is the beer Rain just bought for me. Dimly, a part of me wonders how Lily is going to react when she realizes her money is gone. I push the thought away—dealing with Lily and her probable psychotic reaction can wait for another day. For now, I’ll just enjoy the novelty of having Rain buying me drinks for a change, all the while scanning the club for a man who isn’t there. A shadow in a trench coat and cowboy hat.

#

Till Wednesday!

(and if you don’t like waiting for updates, you can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo.)

CHARM 4/22

Reinvent Yourself

Despite tranking myself up with meds, I get barely any sleep—I’m too wired and nervous to do more than cat-nap in little fits and starts. When the time rolls around for my afternoon shift, I’m almost grateful to be going to work, to do anything that feels vaguely normal and doesn’t involve waking nightmares of bent-back boys with black wings and sharpened teeth. Or dead mothers lying on sheets soaked crimson.

Work is busy, the changeover chaos as usual. The cash-up is short, so the day-shift bar tenders are in a foul mood. Sport on the TV, no music. The women perched on their red metal barstools all look tarted up and hostile, the men swill down Castle Draft and boast about when they used to play rugby. I hate this place; the neon makes my head buzz and the clientèle are nightmarish suburban socialite wannabes.

Memory gives me a look like I crawled out of a rubbish tip. “What’s with you, girl?” he says, all Joburg drawl. “Seems like you were a little busy-busy last night, ne?”

I roll my eyes. “Zeps. Rain.” That’s enough information for anyone, really.

Memory has this thing he does with his eyebrows; they have an entire vocabulary programmed into them, like drum beats. He can speak whole novels without opening his mouth. The current angle and shift is enough to let me know he thinks I’m an idiot, and that I deserve everything I get. He knows Rain from school too, from friends of friends who have drifted through our little circle of two. “You need to let that go,” Memory says finally, and he could mean anything.

“Shut up,” I say because he’s right, and I’m so tired it’s as though all the me-ness has drained out of me. I can’t even argue. I hand him the drink he’s been waiting for.

“You have the old man’s wagon?” Memory sits the trick onto his round rubber-coated tray, and nods toward the parking lot, which can’t be seen from the bar anyway, but it’s obvious he saw me pull in with it.

“For the moment.” My dad hasn’t called about it yet, which is something of a relief, but it also might mean he is saving up his ranting for a colossal blow-out. I shudder.

Memory clicks his tongue. “Cool cool, just lemme know when you need a lift again.”

I manage a weak smile before I go deal with the fatheaded dick on the other end of the bar, waving his fist of money at me. Memory is good people. It’s not that he hates Rain, it’s just that he wants better for me. I can’t get angry about that. Not when I spend half my time beating myself up for the same thing. I turn to the annoying customer and feel the world tip and spin as I do. Hold it together, I tell myself as I catch onto the prep counter edge and send a tray of pre-sliced lemons careening to the ground. The crash bounces through the restaurant, and my manager glares at me from where he’s manning the front tills.

By the time my shift ends, the only thing holding me together is my sheer determination not to pass out in front of my co-workers. I grit my teeth and imagine toothpicks in my eyes. That’s pretty much what it feels like, anyway. Today’s tips are well below average. I blame the hair—the men probably think I’m into girls, the women don’t even see me. And my mother’s stupid pendant hasn’t warmed up since whatever the hell that thing was last night. That completely imaginary thing that you did not see, Irene Kerry.

I slip out the back door before Memory can lecture me again, or my manager can look up from cash-ups and deal with me. I already know all the shit he’s going to say. This isn’t the first time I’ve come to work after a night out. He acts like it’s the worst thing anyone could do, like this job is more important than life. Idiot. It’s a shitty job in a shitty franchise.

The muggy weather has turned completely crap by now, and I have to drive my dad’s Beetle home in the rain. The storm has broken and a deluge of fat drops smashes down onto the tarred roads. A dry winter’s worth of petrol and oil rises, giving the tar a rainbow sheen. The summer rain is also the subliminal indicator for everyone in Gauteng to turn into Michael Schumacher, so I get to sit in traffic while ambulances and gawkers block the roads. The Beetle feels like it’s about to airlift off the road with every gust of wind, and one of the windscreen wipers gives up the ghost about a minute after I leave the parking lot.

I probably deserve this, I think, as I watch the water sluice in arcs across my vision. I wrench the steering wheel and turn off the highway—somehow managing to survive a traffic snarl at the M1—and head back to my flat. Lightning turns the tree tops into temporary silhouette sculptures. The branches are tentacles in the wind. Finally, I park the Beetle in someone’s reserved parking bay that they never actually use and dash for the glass doors to my apartment lobby, fat drops pelting me the whole way.

An itchy prickle runs up my spine as I open the lobby doors.

Someone is watching me.

Or maybe it’s just paranoia

Or lack of sleep.

Or idiocy, Irene.

Whatever. I take the stairs two at a time, and double-bolt my apartment door.

Huge rain drops slam against the windows, leaving tadpole silver smears against the darkness. Just as I go to pull my curtains closed, something moves downstairs, and a tall dark figure slips off into the shadows of the trees. I freeze. It was human—no sign of hunched wings folded across its back. Even so I can’t bring myself to take my hand from the curtains, I have to keep watching, to make myself believe it was just a man. Just a man, walking along the grass, heading home in the rain. A gardener finishing work, someone rushing back from the corner café. Normal.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, and the flicker of lightning lights up the skyline. I should be grateful for the rain; washing away the stink of the rubbish, sluicing the gutters clean. Instead it just makes me feel closed-in and trapped.

Carefully, I put one hand against the pendant, feeling the small lump of it under my sweaty uniform. It’s still cool next to my skin but there’s been no other change, no new sudden drop in temperature. The damn thing creeps me out. I should probably just take it off and throw it away. I’ve tried before but I can’t make myself do it. Except for when the clasp broke a few weeks back and I left it off until I bought a replacement chain, I’ve worn it for ten years. I’m not even sure if I keep it to hold onto my mother’s memories or to ward them off. The truth is, even if I keep trying to pretend I’m not really my mother’s child, I still can’t get rid of her pendant. I sigh, tapping my fingers against the glass, as if I could guide the raindrops rolling down the glass, make them follow the music of my drumming fingers. I really should go and get those boxes from my dad’s house and see what’s in them. I can’t move on until I’ve faced my fears.

Because my memories of my mother are all tinted by the magic of childhood and somehow I’ve built her up in my head to be something she was not. I didn’t know her, not really. I knew her the way a child knows a parent, and that’s barely knowing someone at all. I knew her stories, and her strangeness, and her dark hair that smelled of thyme. I knew her hand cold on the bed, skin feeling like not-skin. And what if I look in those boxes and I discover there really is more to her than a stupid pendant that changes temperature when the freaks come out to play.

What then, Irene Kerry?

The steady beat of the rain changes and gives way to the pop and click of hail on glass. Under the glow of the street lights, tiny dots of white gather like jumping puffballs, mushrooming.

No-one. There’s no-one out there. I drop my hand and take a deep shuddering breath. I’m imagining things, and that’s all there is to it. An over-active imagination spurred on by the whispers of a dead woman. My bed is calling me, and I leave my uniform in a crumpled mess on the bathroom floor before I crawl under the sheets. The faint imprinted smell of the Oriental Plaza-incense and dyed cotton-accompanies me into dreams of black knotted hair and round blue eyes.

#

Some time in the early morning when the grey light filters through my curtain, I wake from a nightmare. Rats, screaming children, and a man’s face, blank and empty. I can hear pipe music, long and trilling, and then it fades and I wonder if it was also part of my dream.

#

In the dim light, my room is lined with hazy figures, shadows on shadows that flicker and move with the breeze coming from a window I must have left open. I shake off the cold-sweat of terror and pad to the bathroom, piss, wash hands, run cold water over my face and scrub at my skin. With hands still trembling, I jerk the tiny high window closed. My reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror is a death’s head in the darkness, skull-shadowed. I try remember the dream. Something about rats dancing hand in hand, and a man, playing music that led them to their deaths. Children, who ran after. Bright screams of delight turning to shrieks. I turn the tap on again, the sound of the water overly loud in the empty little room. It’s as though the dream has passed around me, swallowed and excreted me, left me covered in some slick goo that I cannot see but I can feel. My heart is racing, my skin itching and itching and itching. I want to slough it off and peel myself free. Of my mother. Of Rain. I make myself look into the mirror. “You’re going to stop this,” I tell myself. “You’re going to keep your head down and your nose clean and behave. You are not going to call Rain and chase after him like a loser, not any more.”

My reflection snarls.

“What is it you really want, anyway?” I ask this ugly stranger. “Art? You want that? Then take it.”

Finally, my reflection agrees. A small nod. Nothing more.

#

After my nightmare-fuelled decision, the rest of the week speeds past, mainly because I’ve picked up a couple of double-shifts to make up the money I spent at Zeps. And when I’m not working I’m painting. Somehow guilt always manages to spur on a new burst of creativity. I work on a still-life for my portfolio—green apples in a blue glass bowl. I mix river sand into the paint on my palette, and the picture forms in grainy clumps like sand caught halfway to glass. I like the effect.

The resiny smell of oils and the reek of turpentine are a soporific. I stop thinking so much about my mother and about the thing from the club, and put it down to being hyped-up and over-drunk and over-tired. I manage to not think about Rain for whole hours at a time. Peace fills me, and I remember why I’m working myself like a dog, why I put up with the idiots at the Pit where I work. It’s so I can do this, so I can make art.

My one off-day, instead of visiting Rain as usual, I spend stretching and priming new canvases. I love this part of a painting—making a foundation. The edges sharp and the inner planes bevelled, the white canvas taut between the little black tacks. Sweet pine, white glue. Even the plastic smell of pva—it all makes me think of potentiality. Of promise.

One of the canvases is tall and thin, and I have this image in my head of a man with a low hat pulled over his eyes, so that all I can see is a jagged moon-sliver of cheek and a curl of lip. I can’t wait to get started on it, and as soon as the primer dries, I sketch in the lean figure with thinned blue oil paint. I work quickly, brushing the watery lines in. When I’m done, it looks like the man is just stepping onto the snowy canvas, leaving almost three quarters of it blank.

It’s the walking dead man. Caleb.

With some paintings it almost feels like the eyes are tracking you across the room. I never quite get that right, but now with nothing but the under-painting down, I have that feeling. It’s eerie. I pace across the bachelor flat to get a better look from another angle, and Caleb’s blank blue pupils watch me. It even looks like he’s sneering at me. I don’t want to work on it any more. The air seems closer, and my chest aches. When I shove the small kitchenette window open to clear my head, the smell of rot and cut wet grass drifts up. It’s not much of an improvement. I can barely breathe.

The sharp ring of my cellphone breaks the moment and I’m pulled back to my room. Linseed, turps, decay. The sun is shining, it’s over thirty degrees and the rubbish is still sitting out for collection. Everything’s normal.

“Ja?” I say, quick and curt, because I want to get some more canvases prepped before the day is out.

The voice on the other side is shaky and distorted. “Hey you.”

Rain. Damn. He never phones. And I’ve been ignoring him, in my own way. I’m immediately on edge, hackles up. “You okay?”

“Um.”

Meaning no. It has to be Lily. She’s done something again and I think of all the ways his mother has broken him in the past, little things, and larger. She’s more subtle these days, but those scars run deeper even though they don’t show on the skin. “I’ll be right over.” I scrub the paint from my hands and change into something that looks less like the cast-offs of a mad person, while images flash through my head. Rain, always a pale and sickly child. Always off school so that he could go to the doctor. And then that day when Lily finally went too far and broke his fucking arm so that he had a new reason to go to the hospital. Another reason for her to play normal—the concerned parent act. And Rain, who will never tell the truth about her to anyone.

Why I Don’t Know Who You Are

Like most writers, I have fairly unenviable social skills. I say strange and inappropriate things because I want to compliment someone, or because the awkward silence has gone on a minute too long, or because I have had too many glasses of wine at that book launch thing and trying to be a normal human is hard.

But this weekend while I was hanging out with far cooler people than myself at the Franschhoek Literary Festival, I realised I have an added disadvantage.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE.

And this is totally a problem I have with both facial and name recognition. All people look pretty much the same to me unless there is something remarkably distinctive about them, like they have only one leg, or pink hair, or are nine foot tall. And even then we probably have to meet several times in real life, within a context that I will remember because of Events, so that I will be able to associate your collection of features and syllables with that set of conversations or actions.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I have face blindness – I don’t know enough about the condition to know if I fall within those parameters – but it is a very real problem for me.

This did make FLF a little distressing for me because I felt terrible when someone would say  “Hi, I’m so-and-so, we met last year,” and I am literally shaking on the inside because I now have to scramble through my index of associations and try get all the things in the right place and let me tell you that never works well.

So, no matter what it looks like, I am not snubbing you, or being wilfully rude, or pretending we’ve never met, I am just panicking on several levels. Be kind like you would be to a small child, say your name slowly, and give me an association I can use (“We were at Bob’s party and I told that terrible joke about an elephant and I wrote a book you said you liked, you nitwit.”) and give me time to set the pieces in place. I will get there.

Charm 3/22

To Zeplins in a Hand-basket

Zeplins is half-empty. We’re pretty drunk by the time we arrive—all those tequila shooters at the Pink Fairy have finally hit me. I wobble, and I’m in trainers, can’t even blame it on heels. I need to start drinking a thousand glasses of water now, got to pace myself. Also, I need to get a handle on the amount of cash I am throwing around like I just won the Lotto. I slip my wallet out of my bag and do a quick double-check. It’s not looking great: a few fifties, a twenty, a ten and change. Gah. I shove the wallet back and take a deep breath through my nose. Don’t worry about it, Today-Irene. This is Tomorrow-Irene’s problem.

It’s worth it just to see Rain loosened up, laughing at stupid jokes. His body unclenches a little. I fall in love with him for the thousandth time at the bar, with his choked laugh and his grey eyes. And I can pretend that it’s not happening all I want, but that doesn’t change things. I want to touch him, to take his fingers in mine and press mouth to mouth and breathe him in like a hit. He catches my look and for a moment it’s as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking, that he’ll lean forward and change everything. My heart is going cold with feverish hope.

He grins, and everything stays the same.

Damn me for a fool, right? “Come with me.” I grab his hand. “You need eyeliner”

“What—” But he doesn’t pull free. “If I get beat up for this I’m never talking to you again.”

I haul Rain into the girl’s bathroom and smear eyeshadow into the hollows of his eyes so he looks like a panda that’s been molested in a bamboo grove. He has a sloppy grin when he’s drunk, and after I’m done tarting him up, he kisses the corner of my mouth once, quickly, under the bare electric bulb. Our reflections meet in the stained mirror. Who knows if that’s a thank you for the smudged eyes, or for something else all together. He pulls away so fast afterwards that I can almost imagine it never happened, that I wanted it so much I dreamed it up.

Whatever it is, it’s mine, and I’m keeping it. Like a cigarette burn.

We head back out to the club, which is still forlornly empty, revealed in all its grotty dank glory. At least when Zeplins is full, the press of people hides the industrial carpeting, the cheap veneer, the poor fish in their tank above the bar counter.

I order another round of beers from the very bored-looking bar lady near the retro floor. “Make this one last.” I lean the cold beer against Rain’s cheek for a moment, and he shivers before he takes the slippery bottle of Black Label.

“I’ll pay you back,” he says.

With what, I’d like to know – is he planning on taking up streetwalking? “Yeah, yeah, I know.” I wave his offer away. We both know that it will never happen. Rain’s never been able to hold down a job. He’ll be fine for a week, and then with the first little setback he’ll crack like a little glass.bubble Some nights I lie awake wondering what’s going to happen to him, even though a cold little part of me keeps saying, “It’s not your problem. It’s not your problem.” But it is my problem, because I chose it. Maybe I didn’t stand a chance – we’ve known each other since we were eight. By the time I understood that Rain was a lost cause, I was already too deep into the tangle.

The club fills as we wander through the caverns, looking for a place to sit and drink, and where the music attracts the right sort of people. Another bottle of beer passes before we settle on the ebm floor. My least favourite. I’ve nothing against the music, some of it, but the people drive me up the wall. They are layers and layers of false faces, all stacked up to try and make themselves look deep and interesting.

Rain squeezes up next to me on the bench, setting his beer carefully down on the scarred table. He’s moving with the over-exacting care of the utterly wasted. Great. As long as he vomits before he gets back in my car. I drag my attention off him, and try concentrate on the other people. I need to snap out of this stupid Rain-thing of mine. It’s ridiculous, and it makes me pathetic. There are other people in the world. Who knows, maybe tonight I’ll get lucky. I press my index finger against the burn of a memory kiss.Ha. Ha.

The dance floor is empty except for one sad prat twisting himself up like a pretzel, lost in an electro-trance. He’s seal-sleek, pvc glistening under the strobing light.

Rain’s distracted by him, and I can mostly see why. The boy is all hard shiny edges and hair dyed black with cheap dye, so that it looks dry and oily at the same time. Gutterglam, with his face perfectly made up. He dances with his eyes closed, like he’s praying, and his absinthe-green chiffon scarf is fluttering in the air-conditioning. He’s beautiful in the way crabs are beautiful, spiky and angular, and hard to catch.

The song ends and the glam crab sidles back to his pals. To a girlfriend who watches him with a predatory glint.

“Taken,” I yell into Rain’s ear. “And straight.”

Rain sees the couple glued together at their shiny hips, and grimaces. “Dammit.”

“The night is young.” Although, being the possessive little cow I am—yes I can admit it to myself at least—I’m really hoping that his pickings are slim. I snap my fingers in front of his face. “Water.” I nod at him. “Don’t pass out.”

His eyes clear a little, and Rain sets off to go get himself a glass of water from the bar.

While he’s gone I scan the room. A girl squeezed into a red corset tracks his movements along the edge of the dance floor. She’s pretty in a china-doll way, the white of her foundation powdered flat and smooth, and long sweeps of liquid liner give her a Cleopatra look. She’s dyed her hair an electric red, the colour of liquorice strings. For a moment, I’m jealous of her and her girlish perfection, pissed that I’ve thrown my hair away; that it’s too late to do anything about that now.

Not that I could ever be her. I could never show myself off like that; white peach tits spilling from the top of her corset like an offering.Who’d want to see eczema girl and her amazing collection of gross skin conditions? I send a spike of envy in the doll’s direction. Her velvet and lace skirt sits low, revealing a perfect curve of belly and hip. She’s untouchable. The only thing that consoles me is that Rain will pay her about as much attention as he’d pay a hag.

Or me.

Rain’s white halo of cherubim surfer hair appears out of the gloom. Amongst all the dye and darkness, he stands out in a solitary, skinny beacon. He’s holding two glasses of water, although he almost spills both when he stumbles by the edge of the dance floor.

“Idiot,” I say, when Rain finally makes it to our table and hands me a glass. “Thanks.”

“Why idiot?”

“Because.” It’s the extent of our conversation. The music is too loud to talk, and we can only communicate by leaning in close and shouting in one another’s ears. So close that I can smell cheap deodorant and sweat; stale cigarettes and beer on his breath.

We measure out the night in little sips, until the beer goes from cold and dry as sour apples from the crisper, to warm and flat and piss-horrible. We make our way to the goth floor, which is looking a little crowded – a feat in itself. The night batters on and I talk to random strangers. I pontificate. I’m beautiful. Rain entrances some boy in a corner and comes back to me with his mouth a sticky red, bruised and puffy. He leans against the wall, looking drunk and happy. I hate seeing him and knowing I’m not the one who makes him feel that way.

I don’t care what song the DJ is playing; I need to get away and any damn song will do. Alone in the crowd, I close my eyes and dance. Calm rushes through me, curling up my spine slow as a snake, and when the song changes and I open my eyes, the crowd parts.

There’s a boy sitting on a low couch, watching me. He has a jagged face and a hunch back, and he smiles when he sees me notice him. The stone at my neck—my mother’s little trinket—chills against my chest. It takes me a moment to realise that the hunch isn’t the boy’s back, but something he’s carrying—a bag. The predatory way he looks at me makes me shiver. He shifts, and as he stands, I realise the thing on his back is not a bag, but two stunted black wings, folded closed against his shoulder blades.

Not again. I thought this shit stopped when my mother died. It was her. She was the one who saw things, and then made me believe it was all real.

The boy crosses the floor towards me and my whole body feels like it just erupted, skin crawling with an itching rash that I can never scratch away. I turn and head back to Rain as fast as I can, pushing my way through the crowded dance floor. “We’re going,” I shout. Even I can hear the panic in my voice.

“Now?” Confusion spreads slow across his face.

I glance back. Wing-boy’s way is blocked by a girl doing her best impression of a baobab tree caught in a gale. Then he’s rounding her, grinning, his eyes still fixed on me. His face might be human, but those long, sharp teeth sure aren’t, and neither are the claws on his hands.

“Now,” I say. The mellow drunk buzz has gone, and instead I’m filled with teeth-chattering manic fear. I’ve been here before.

#

I pay the car guard with my last ten rand and scramble with the key in the lock, checking over my shoulder that no-one has followed us out. Everything here seems so normal; the lights on in the closed shop down the road, the tarred road rainbow-slick with oil and water, the mouthwatering smell from the boerewors stand that makes shit-tons of money off every drunk leaving Zeplins. It’s all normal. No winged monster boys with shark teeth appear. Great I’m going mad, it’s hereditary and I’m going to end up killing myself or whatever it is that really happened to my mother.

Rain says nothing as I shoo him into the car, though he looks grim, frowning and confused. He stays silent as we navigate out of Pretoria, just lets the music fill up the space around us.

I hurtle the Beetle down the empty highway, my skin too tight for my body. My eyes are dry and blistering in my head. I keep watching the rear-view mirror, expecting somehow that the boy with the wings is following me. Of course there’s nothing. It was in my head. That’s it. My mother’s voice is gone, the stories she read from her book can’t scare me any more.

Rain leans forward and turns down the volume. “Do you want to tell me why we’re leaving already?” he drawls.

I shake my head. I’ve never told anyone—not even Rain, who is supposed to be my closest friend—about the people I used to see. The people she made me believe I saw. She encouraged all that crap, I realise now. Told me my imaginary friends really existed and that she could see them too. She let me talk to them like they were real. None of it was real, just like her book of changing stories was never real. It was a game. All of it.

There was no winged monster boy in that club. I was imagining it. I think. And maybe eventually I’ll convince myself.

My mother is dead.

I don’t see things.

My mother is dead.

She killed herself.

She knew her death was coming because she killed herself and you are an idiot for thinking anything else. That final thought near breaks me. A surge of hate and pity directed at my dead mother. How could she just up and leave like that—didn’t she care? I can’t help it. My eyes prickle, and I sniff deeply, blinking to stop the hot swell of tears. I will not succumb to self-pity. I’ll never claw myself out if I do. I shake my head, and concentrate on the real world. The now.

The sky is still dark, but I can make out the faint outlines of the jacaranda trees. I guess it’s about three in the morning. Rain snaps the Led Zepplin tape back in, and sings along off-key. I can’t think straight, and I tighten my hands on the steering wheel so that he won’t see them shaking.

I drop Rain off at home. The curtains flick as he gets out the car. Lily’s watching. He kisses my cheek. It’s dry and distant, sexless. I watch him as he staggers off, convinced that if I don’t stand guard like that, someone will swoop in from the shadows and snatch him away. I wait until the door is shut behind him before gunning the Beetle back to life.

Finally, I can go home and shower. As soon as I’m alone in the safety of my little flat I strip out of my smoke-and-beer-perfumed clothes and dump them on the floor. My skin is a war zone – I look like I was dragged naked through a nettle patch; great ugly swathes of raw weeping skin, with tiny little blisters everywhere. Great. Not only am I going mad, I also look like something out of a horror film. Even if I do ever manage to get a boy (read: Rain) to like me, what exactly am I planning on doing—telling him I’ve sworn a vow to never ever remove my clothes so help me god? I run through my night-time regime of moisturising, and I cover the worst bits with my steroid cream. It doesn’t matter how tired or out of it I am, this stuff is routine now. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. It’s so damn normal that it makes me almost believe that whatever I saw tonight was just my over-active imagination. It didn’t happen. I’m over-reacting. Except the stone of my mother’s evil eye pendant is still like a block of ice, so cold it feels like it’s burning a hole through my chest.

I pull the pendant away from neck and hold it for a moment in my fist as if I could somehow warm it up like that.

It stays ice-cold and I start to shiver. From fear, from exhaustion, from memory. My mother cold and dead, and me, touching the skin of her arm, wondering why she was so so cold, why she wouldn’t wake up. I make a gasping sound and let the pendant go. Allergy meds; I need to take them anyway, and they’ll help knock me out. Or else I am going to be haunted and sleepless, caught in a web of terrible moments it is too late to change.

 

#

Till Wednesday!

(and if you don’t like waiting for updates, you can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo.)

Charm 2/22

Death and Punk

My plan is to “borrow” my dad’s car, so we’re headed over to his place. Though I’m really hoping he’s out when we get there because I’m not really in the mood for requests and explanations. Technically, my dad’s house is in walking distance, but it’s taking us a ridiculously long time to walk anywhere, possibly because we’re still more than a little drunk. We’ve made it as far as Louis Botha. The main road is its usual crazy mess. It’s always packed, with everyone hooting and slamming brakes and trying to push each other off into the verge, but it’s worse than usual thanks to this freaking heat-wave we’ve been having.

Rain and I are sitting on the edge of the pavement, sharing a smoke because Rain can’t walk fifty metres without taking a smoke break, the lazy bugger. I’m bouncy and jittery, trying shake off the half-drunk wobbles while doing some mental arithmetic to see if I can actually afford going out tonight. Who needs food, right? I pass my cig over to Rain who clutches at it with a pincer grip, his hands half folded under his sleeves. Very Winona Ryder. I tell him that and he scowls at me. We draw in fiery breaths, and the heat slides down my skin and presses me into the ground.

Minibus taxis are stop-starting to cram in as many passengers as they can, and the hawkers along the pavement are selling everything from Chappies chewing gum to telephone calls and haircuts. Just a little up from us, a guy is parked in a garden chair under a plastic marquee while a barber buzzes about him, shaving his head. Uncollected rubbish has built up in the gutters—the municipal worker’s strike is in its third week. It’s so bad that people have reported rats running around in broad day light. Some toe-rag of a local paper ran a story about rats that ate a baby, but I don’t think I believe it.

“Hurry up with that,” I say. Rain is hogging my cigarette.

“You’re so controlling.” He takes an extra-long drag and blows smoke out into the already chokey air before bouncing the cig back to me. “I’m sure somewhere out there is a man desperate to be dominated by you. But it’s not me.”

“Seriously? Shut up—”

Metal squeals as someone hits the brakes, the tyres smearing rubber all over the gravelly tar. A rather robust woman on the side of the road screams and drops the bag of mielie-meal she’s been carrying on her head. Course white flour spills over the cracked concrete pavement.

“Christ,” says Rain, and draws his feet back out of the gutter. “That’s not cool.”

There’s nothing slow-motion about car-accidents. One moment there’s noise, then a single empty space where everyone takes a breath, and then the vultures crowd in. They’re already gathering, jabbering and shouting at each other as they shove their way closer to get a good look at the poor bugger who just kicked the proverbial.

A mini-bus taxi is parked half on the pavement—white and square as a loaf of cheap bread—and all around it the crowd swarms as the passengers clamber over each other to get out. There’s screaming and wailing, although I can’t understand a word that anyone is saying; I don’t speak Sotho or Zulu. Generic Joburg White Girl, that’s me. I know, like, three words in Zulu. Very useful.

The barber and his customer—head only half-shaved—are just behind us. The barber has a cell-phone pressed to his ear and he’s shouting over the noise of traffic and people.

For a minute everything feels stalled and sticky, like I’m trying to walk through luke-warm Jungle Oats. Sound is muffled, and the air is a giant powerful hand flattening me right down into the tar. The oat-porridge moment snaps, and a sudden buzzing begins in my head. A strange slow build-up, teeth-grinding. It grows louder, higher, until a tinnitus whine is drilling through my skull.

I lurch to my feet.

“Irene?” says Rain, uncertainly.

The buzzing is in my teeth now, an ache, a drilling pain, and it drags me forward like an iron filing.

I’m not normally one of the ghouls who gets their kicks from car-crashes and stuff, but that hurt is tugging me there.

“Ah, Irene. I don’t think I want to see this,” Rain says as I weave through the stalled traffic and make my way toward the taxi.

I shake my head—I don’t want to either. Against my chest, my mother’s little evil eye goes icy, and I shiver despite the beating summer sun.

In the distance, ambulance sirens wail. The crowd begins to slip away. No-one wants to be caught hanging around here and have to answer uncomfortable questions. Blood stains the grey dirt, dark and sticky-looking as spilled paint. Flies are already buzzing around us and coming down to feed at the edges of the blood. There’s not much else to see because too many people are still knotted tight around the body.

A coil of long black hair makes a bizarre loop in the puddle of blood. Like an esoteric symbol, or a message in another language. People are backing away and I get my first clear glimpse of the victim. It’s an older man with a Roman nose and skin too pale for this country. I wonder if he’s a tourist. Or maybe he just never sees the sun. His thin mouth is half-open. Deep seams crease from his the corners of his mouth. His brow is lined. Not a man who smiled much when he was alive.

Rain pulls me back.

The buzz stops, and I feel immediately deflated. Hollow.

“God,” I say. “He’s dead.” No-one spills that much blood and tells stories about it later.

A woman with a ZCC star pinned to her breast, and loaded with plastic shopping bags moves out of my way so I get another view. He’s definitely a corpse; his eyes already glazing over in the heat. The blank open eyes stare up at me, and there’s a moment of recognition, like I met him somewhere before.

Bile rises in my throat and I shudder once, trying to shake off the sick horror. My first dead body. Wonderful.

Flies settle on his face, light as dancers; one crawls into the corner of an eye, and for a moment, the movement makes it look like the corpse is winking at me.

I jerk back, my heart hammering. I swear his eyes did move that time, that he’s still alive. Around him the air thickens; it has that horrible electric itch that I normally only get from being near Lily. Like there’s something terribly wrong with him.

Well, of course there is. He’s dead.

Rain clamps a hand on my arm. “Irene, lets just go, right?” Death and blood frighten him. With reason. He’s been inside enough hospitals because of Lily and her sick need to be noticed, to be the centre of attention. I’m only too glad to turn away. The two of us walk from the dead man and his gathering of ghouls. My skin is itching all over. Damn eczema playing up in the heat.

“Why did you even want to see that, Reen?” Rain says, as he scuffs his shoes along the gutter edge.

I don’t answer him. “What’s that?” I point. A few feet from the accident, something is lying in the gutter. It looks very much like a cowboy hat—the kind you’d see in the movies. I pick it up between my fore-finger and thumb. It’s all black, and softer, more battered than I’d expect. There’s no ornamentation. “What the hell? Someone lose a hat?” I wonder if it belongs to Mr Unlucky back there.

“It’s a nice hat,” Rain says.

I drop the cowboy hat back onto the road. It’s creeping me out.

A cop car blasts past us, sirens screaming, flashing red and blue light over our faces. Just behind it, an ambulance is weaving through the uncooperative traffic.

“Let’s move,” I say. “Leave it alone.”

Rain doesn’t make us waste any more time on impromptu cigarette breaks. Death will do that.

#

Only one car is sitting in my dad’s driveway when we get there. Good. It’s the Volksie; a ’76 Beetle in the most obnoxious shade of mustard yellow possible. Despite the rather hideous paint job, the Beetle remains my father’s one true love. I still remember the endless weekends after my mom died, sitting barefoot in the sun and watching him lose himself in endless tinkering.

“Dale?” The side door’s unlocked—a pretty good sign that my idiot younger brother is home. No-one else is dumb enough to leave the security gate open in Norwood. “So where’s dad gone?” Inside the house is deliciously cool after that stagnant stinking heat. I grab us ice-water from the fridge and drink mine in three gulps. I also steal some polony and cheese. Rain and I could probably use something to line our stomachs, anyway. “Dale?” I yell again as I head towards the lounge. “Dad?”

“Out.” Dale looks up from where he’s stretched out on a couch, flicking through a copy of Blunt. He’s bigger than me these days, but I remember when he was in Grade One and just a skinny little runt and I beat the crap out of some of his classmates for being typical snotty little meat-heads. I was a hardcore ten-year old and I lived by Kerry rules—no-one beats up my brother but me.

“Dad says to tell you that you’re to pick up your crap.” My brother sits up long enough to squint at me. Dale looks like a shaggy-headed sun, all Irish wild-boy. Definitely more dad’s side than mom’s “What the hell happened to your hair?”

“What crap?”

He nods at a small pile of dusty, brown-taped boxes, the corners battered.

Oh god, Mom’s stuff. I told him I didn’t want it. One hand strays up to touch my hair and I ruffle it. I am not my mother. I don’t look like her, and I sure as hell don’t want her weird rubbing off on me like some kind of skin disease. “Why does he want them gone now?” They’ve been sitting in my old room for the better part of two months.

Dale raises an eyebrow in answer and I groan. So dad’s new girlfriend has been staying over—terrific.

“Yeah, tell him I’ll get them some other time.” Like never. I grab the car keys from the Welsh dresser. “And tell him I’ve got the car.”

“Oh yeah, right.” He snorts as he flips over another page. “I wasn’t here. I saw nothing. Now, run like all the hounds of hell are on your tail.”

My brother is not a comic genius.

Neither Rain nor I actually have a valid driver’s licence, so it really doesn’t matter which of us takes the wheel, but I’ll be damned if I let Rain drive my father’s car. Besides, I have my learner’s, even if it has probably expired by now.

It takes nerves of steel to take this floating coffin into Joburg traffic. Next to me, Rain is hanging onto the ceiling strap and I’m barely going fifty. “Music,” I say. “We need dulcet tones to soothe us on our journey.”

“Good luck with that,” Rain mumbles.

My dad’s car is so ancient that the radio only takes tapes. It’ll be a while before we’re close enough to pick up Tuks clearly, and no-one could pay me enough to listen to that crap they play on Five, so I snap one of Dad’s Led Zeppelin tapes in and Black Dog drums us down down the highway, Robert Plant’s animal shriek shimmying from the ratty speakers.

Rain winds down the window and leans his head back. The blast of stale summer air almost drowns out the music so I have to turn up the volume until the speakers are a buzz of distortion. At least with the open window the hot air almost feels like it’s doing some kind of good. Drying my sweat. I sneak a glance at Rain; he’s laughing, the wind blowing his hair back, the late afternoon sun bathing his face in gold and red. It’s little things like these that remind me why being in love sucks so much. How can anyone be so perfectly pretty on the outside, and such a ruin under it all. A question for our times. Anyway, I’m the idiot, because I keep falling for it.

We pull up outside the hole in the wall affectionately known as the Pink Fairy thanks to a Froud-ish squashed fairy someone’s painted behind the bar. Rain loves this place because it’s owned by this ancient punk who tends to put The Clash on repeat, in between all the Placebo and Blur and White Stripes. Long live old people, I guess.

I lean against the bar and wait for the dread-headed hipster who is supposedly working to look up long enough from the bong he’s busy carving to notice us. “Beer?” I say to Rain.

“What else?”

We drink Black Labels and tequila shots, and play pool while the sun sets and the poky little bar gets more and more crowded.

So I’m kinda non compos mentis when the dead guy from the accident walks into the bar and orders a double Jameson on the rocks. I look up blearily from my shot and freeze. I’m pretty damn sure it’s him. There are not many pale, ancient weirdos wandering around in this heat wearing a black leather trench-coat and a cowboy hat. His hair is long and dark and too shiny. Like an oil spill. The ends look tacky. Dried blood, I think, then shake my head.

It’s not him. You’re being weird, Irene. You’re being like Mom. Next thing I’ll be seeing little pink elephants or something. It’s just a guy who looks a lot like a guy who might have been dead.

Not-Actually-Dead Guy sees me looking at him and touches his fingers to his hat and nods.

I shiver.

“Reen, just play the shot already,” Rain says lazily from where he’s sitting on a long-legged bar stool and rolling his cue between his palms. “What?” He looks over to where the walking corpse is throwing back his whiskey like it’s water.

“Another one, Caleb?” The dread-head stops carving long enough to pour the previously-dead weirdo another whiskey.

Caleb doesn’t sit down. He stands at the bar watching me and Rain, his arms crossed over his chest, hat brim pulled low. All I can really make out of his face is the triangular jut of his chin. I’m getting that uncomfortable tightening to my skin, just like I did at the scene of the accident. The itch.

Dear Irene, stop going mad. You have eczema. You are not having some weird physical reaction to a walking corpse. You really, really aren’t. Also, totally not a dead man, standing at the bar. Calm down. “Rain,” I call over the music. “Time to split, man.”

His brow furrows. “It’s early, the doors will only have just opened.”

I thunk my cue down on the table and tug Rain’s sleeve. “Seriously. Grab that white ball and get my deposit. We’re going. Come on.”

Outside the air is a little cooler, just barely.

“God, Irene. Why are you so freaked out?” He shrugs out of my grip. “Ever since the cowboy came in you’ve gone insane—” Rain breaks off to stare at the car parked next to us in the gravel driveway. “You reckon that’s his?”

Sure as hell can’t be anyone else’s. Only a (dead) goth in a cowboy hat would be driving that around. The car’s paint is scraped down to shining metal along the sides, and it’s been in a fair few accidents. One of the front lights is bashed in, the plastic cracked in jagged teeth. He’s wired a bloody skull to the front bumper of his low car. The skull is gen-u-wine cow. Or bull, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it had huge spiraling horns.

“Kudu,” says Rain. Like he’s reading my mind.

Oh yeah, kudu. “Is that even legal?” I ask.

“You worry about the weirdest things.” Rain laughs at me. “You really want to go Zeps now?”

I unlock the Beetle in answer, and hold the door open for him.

“Well then,” he says. “What you waiting for? Drive this piece of crap—”

“Hey, only I can diss this car.”

“Drive this shining example of German precision engineering. Onward, James, and don’t spare the horses.”

“It’s ‘Home, James.'”

“Whatever.” He laughs.

The engine chugs to life, and I back the car out onto the road. The sky is indigo-dark now, and I glance back at the parking lot. Under the orange glow of the flickering street lights, Caleb walks out the Pink Fairy’s door, his silhouette unmistakable. He’s not following us.

Nope. that would be weird. And I have decided I’ve had enough weird for the day.

#

Till Wednesday!

(and if you don’t like waiting for updates, you can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo.)