Apocalypse Now Now (7 page)

‘What happened?’ I ask.

‘Crows happened,’ he spits out viciously, gripping the neck of the bottle like it’s the hilt of a sword. ‘And when Crows happen there’s not much you can do to stop it.’

That cold, uneasy feeling slides down my neck again but I try to shake it off. My grandfather’s delusions are the result of a decaying brain. Nothing to get worked up about.

The old man squeezes my hand absently. ‘Before I met your grandmother I was in love with another woman. A girl, really, with pale white skin, slanted green eyes and the strangest ears you’ve ever seen.’ He smiles wistfully at the memory. ‘She was beautiful, like a strange animal, and just as skittish. She said she was the last of her kind, the last of a lineage of royalty that had been hunted down. We fell in love.’

‘You’re not screwing with me again, are you, Grandpa?’ I say.

‘I know it sounds ridiculous,’ he says. ‘Like a fairy tale. Sometimes I do think I just made the whole thing up.’

‘So what happened. To you and the … princess?’

‘
They
came for her.’ He looks at me and his eyes are wide, almost hysterical. ‘Terrible, Baxter, like nothing you’ve ever seen before.’ He fumbles for the edge of his shirt and pulls it up to show me
his wrinkled, hairy old torso. ‘I tried to fight them,’ he says pleadingly. ‘But there were too many of them. I couldn’t have stopped them, I couldn’t have saved her.’ His finger absently traces a thick, jagged scar that runs from his left nipple down to his belly button. ‘Promise me, Baxter,’ he says, wheezing now, and clutching at my hand.

‘Promise you what, Grandpa?’ I say softly.

‘Promise me that if you love someone like I loved her, you’ll fight for them. Promise me.’

‘I promise, Grandpa,’ I say.

He nods. ‘I regret what’s happened with my family but I can’t pretend I didn’t see what I saw.’ He sighs and the weight of the world seems to slip from his shoulders. ‘You ever get caught by Crows, kid, this is what you do …’

Stilted dialogue, bedroom eyes and werewolves, goblins and vampires; when you start watching a Glamorex film you may be forgiven for thinking you’re watching the latest teenage supernatural romance.

It’s only when the hot and heavy action begins that you realise this is no chaste foray into the paranormal. Hollywood has been doing big business with franchises involving wizards, angels and vampires, and the porn industry has been quick to follow suit.

With titles such as
Tokoloshe Money Shot
,
Anansi Zombie Chamber
and
Dwarven Ass Patrol
, Glamorex Films has shot to the forefront of this eldritch porn revolution, combining cutting-edge special effects and high production values with the top names in pornography to create films that go way beyond the average pool boy and bored housewife routines.

‘There definitely is a trend toward the supernatural,’ says Toni McBain, Head of Marketing at Glamorex Films. ‘Glamorex was the first to realise that people wanted to see vampires and werewolves swapping more than just smouldering looks.’ This realisation has led to Glamorex transforming from a backyard porn outfit into a multimillion-dollar business – all in the space of three years. This rise has partly been fuelled by conspiracy websites claiming that the weird and wonderful monsters in Glamorex’s cinematic orgies are the real deal.

McBain laughs at the suggestion. ‘Sure they’re real. We’ve got real dwarves, faeries and goblins going at it 24/7. It’s a real circus.’

They may not be hiding a menagerie of supernatural porn stars but Glamorex’s business is notoriously secretive. Their performers are not be real monsters but the company trades on the aura of authenticity, never revealing the true identities of the porn stars beneath the elaborate costumes. The whereabouts of the Flesh Palace, the location where most of their movies are shot, is known only to a select few, those lucky enough to be invited when the establishment opens its doors to offer the city’s elite a taste of its delights.

The mysterious Flesh Palace has become the Playboy mansion of the Cape, and the parties thrown for Cape Town’s VIPs are rumoured to include strange and forbidden pleasures.

McBain says all the secrecy is just a precaution. ‘We’ve had to keep everything secret to protect our performers. If it’s not obsessed fans, it’s religious protesters; they’re prime targets for crazies.’

However, not everybody is enamoured by this new wave of pornography. The Cape Feminist League is vehement in their criticism of Glamorex’s business. ‘Creature porn represents a new step in the systematic dehumanisation of those involved in the sex industry,’ says Claire Fulton, media liaison officer for the League. ‘How can “creatures” be afforded any kind of respect?’

Glamorex’s reputation is not helped by the involvement of an alleged member of an organised crime syndicate. Yuri ‘the Russian’ Belkin is a part-owner of Glamorex and is currently under investigation over allegations that he has kidnapped underage girls to appear in his movies.

Sexual revolutionaries or sickos, whatever your take on Glamorex’s business, one thing is for certain: supernatural romance has never been this NSFW.

MY DAD DROPS
me back at school later that afternoon and tries to give me an awkward hug which I manage to dodge. I don’t know what it is about school gates that brings out the emotional sides of parents. It’s like the gates elicit some kind of Pavlovian response for inappropriate emotional gestures. Thankfully, he didn’t want to know much about my conversation with Grandpa Zev. Because I wouldn’t even know where to begin to explain the crazy stuff the old man was talking about.

Back in class we’re learning about the reproductive system of the earthworm for a third straight week. Mr Roddick relishes each detail, almost pleading with us to see the beauty, the complexity and the elegance of Nature’s most unappreciated dirt-dweller. It’s like a guitar enthusiast trying to share his passion for Steve Vai with a group of deaf people.

There’s an air of chaos in the class, as if the NPCs can smell the trouble that’s brewing at the top of the food chain. Denton de Jaager sits at the back of the class and confers with some of his lieutenants. He glances over in my direction every now and again,
as if to remind me that I’m not forgotten. That’s a good thing. I’m just about to casually move over to his desk when the Bearded One appears in the classroom doorway and stands fidgeting while Mr Roddick finishes a particularly dull anecdote about how his enthusiasm for earthworms was first ignited.

The story concludes and the Bearded One leans over to whisper in Mr Roddick’s ear. Roddick turns to look directly at me and my heart doesn’t just skip a beat, it hurdles over it. Roddick listens carefully to the Bearded One for a few seconds and then nods.

‘Baxter Zevcenko,’ he says grimly. ‘The headmaster wishes to speak to you privately.’

The entire class turns as a single entity to look at me. I stand and make my way to the front of the class. I feel strangely calm, as if I’m in a car crash and I’m watching the glass and metal explode around me. They’ve linked porn back to me. My mind immediately goes to the worst-case scenario: Dennis Brown, the school’s only Jehovah’s Witness, plagued by a fit of guilt at the
Big Latino Mamma’s Compilation
I sold him, told his real mamma about the porn and where he got it from. Mrs Brown’s religious zeal is terrifying and when she decides that something is the work of the Devil she’ll destroy it completely. I have no doubt that Mrs Brown thinks I’m the spawn of Satan. I’m going to be expelled. Maybe Mrs Brown will force the school to call the cops. Maybe they’ll comply. Maybe they won’t. Whatever happens, it’s out of my hands now.

‘Baxter,’ the Bearded One says in the corridor outside the class, ‘I’m afraid I have some very bad news. Esmé van der Westhuizen has been missing since last night.’ The car crash pauses in mid-air and I blink furiously trying to make sense of it.

‘Esmé?’ I say. ‘She’s probably at her dad’s. Or at a friend’s.’

The Bearded One shakes his head. ‘She’s not, Baxter. I don’t mean to alarm you but the police believe she may have been taken by the Mountain Killer.’

The car crash unpauses and turns in a nuclear conflagration. Things explode in my head. Whole cities vanish.

‘But I saw her two nights ago,’ I say dumbly.

‘I’m sorry, Baxter,’ the Bearded One says, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘The police are doing everything they can.’

I stumble back into class. The class-herd tries to elicit information from me but I barely register their presence.

‘What’s up?’ Kyle whispers. ‘Bax?’

I ignore him. All I can see is the image of Esmé with her throat cut and an eye carved on her forehead.

I walk the hallways in a daze. It seems everybody now knows about Esmé’s disappearance and I have to dodge well-wishers and gloaters in equal amounts. I lean against the cool granite wall in the quad and take a few deep breaths. I have a searing headache and my breathing is shallow and ragged. I feel like I can’t draw in enough oxygen to survive.

Then something bizarre happens. I can’t exactly explain it so I’m going to try and express it in an equation. If I were to mathematically express what is going on in my head it would look a little like: (d)reams + (g)eneral weirdness + (k)idnapped girlfriend = (m)ultiple personalities. I’m not exactly Jekyll and Hyde but two distinct voices emerge within my head, battling it out for ultimate supremacy of my cranium.

First there’s the logical, clinical, businessman me. This is the me that creates plans, devises schemes and shifts pawns around like Kasparov. This me would drink neat vodka while stealing candy from babies and life savings from old people. This Donald Trump of the cerebellum I immediately dub BizBax.

The other is a personality I didn’t even know I had. This is the me that feels. Gross, I know. This me probably attends crystal healing sessions in my cerebral cortex, believes people are important and almost certainly likes piña colada and getting caught in the rain. He is a flaming metrosexual. I call him MetroBax.

Perhaps these two parts of me have always been there, their chatter a subtle murmur beneath my conscious mind, but since hearing about Esmé’s disappearance, they’ve become seriously talkative:

BizBax:
It sucks, but the truth is that Esmé is just a pawn like anyone else. A valuable pawn, one that comes with unique intimacies and affections; a pawn with benefits. But a pawn nonetheless.

MetroBax:
This is Esmé we’re talking about. Esmé. She introduced us to Nerdcore rap and banana, peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

BizBax:
And that information was gratefully assimilated but we can’t get nostalgic about it. Besides, what can we do?

MetroBax:
We need to help find her. I believe that working together we can achieve anything. After all, it’s not our darkness we’re afraid of. It’s our light …

BizBax:
You know what’s dark? Geriatric amputee bestiality.

MetroBax:
That’s disgusting. Why would you even say that?

BizBax:
Because I’m who I am. I’m the real Baxter, you’re just an afterbirth of the psyche.

Insanity; it always seemed like so much more fun on TV. I clutch my head and try to make the voices stop. The businessman part of me is right. I can’t let this distract me. A calm comes over me as I ruthlessly shove the emotions back down.

Love? You’re an idiot, Zevcenko. Think of all the pathetic love songs ever sung. Think about all that wasted time and effort for something that is now evolutionarily irrelevant. You’re programmed to love so that you can secure the perpetuation of your genes. You know what else will secure the perpetuation of your genes? A sperm bank.

The real legacy that I should be thinking about is the Spider. We have the opportunity to create something great and your brain splattering oxytocin around is just getting in the way. Forget your adolescent dreams. Forget Esmé.

The next morning, it’s Whitney Houston that does it. Not content with ruining her life with crack she’s taken to ruining mine with the emotional knuckleduster that is ‘I Will Always Love You’. The radio switches on at 7.13 a.m. and sends Whitney’s high-pitched wailing to kick my ass.

There’s a sharp pain in my chest and I feel short of breath. The walls of the room lurch and spin like I’m on an out-of-control fairground ride. I gasp for air. ‘Mom,’ I shout. ‘MOM!’ There’s a thud of footsteps coming up the steps and then my mother sticks her curl-framed face into my room.

‘What’s the matter?’ she says with a worried look.

‘I think I’m having a heart attack,’ I gasp, clutching my chest. She sits on my bed and puts her hand on my chest, checks my pulse, feels my head and then smiles at me.

‘Baxter,’ she says, ‘you never were a very emotional boy. You’re like your father that way.’