Mindf**k (3 page)
Authors: Fanie Viljoen
It was Saturday night. Kerbs and I were on our second beer. We were at the Mystic Boer in Kellner Street. The place was jam packed. Bodies rubbing up against each other. One of Muse’s songs was playing. I tried figuring out which one it was, but the name eluded me. I saw Kerb’s leg moving with the beat of the music. He probably didn’t even notice it; he only checked out the girls strolling past to the restroom, the bar or on their way outside.
We slouched on the red couch in front of the wall with the silver corrugated iron sheet. Nice spot. Close to the bar. Further off guys were playing pool. Every once in a
while you could hear the crack of the pool balls over the music. The Voortrekker lads on the wall at the back stood watch over us. I sometimes wondered what they would have done if they were here now. Would they have joined us for a beer? They looked so emaciated; maybe they’d rather like a slice of Mystic pizza.
Sky Eyes found us in the dusky club. Sky is my other buddy. If you’re a girl and you had to choose between myself, Kerbs and Sky, you would probably choose Sky. He’s the most presentable of the three of us. Someone you could introduce to your mother. And he has the looks – blond hair, blue eyes. It’s weird that he’s still single.
‘I almost floored a car watch just now,’ said Sky, sinking down on the couch next to me. ‘Fucking old timer tells me that I shouldn’t drink too hard.’
Kerbs and I laughed, but we knew that was all talk. Sky wouldn’t do something like that. He has a soft heart.
‘Did you tell him you only drink Red Bull? To give you wings!’
‘Fuck you.’ Sky got up. ‘I’m gonna get a beer.’ He ambled over to the bar.
Sky tried getting one of the barmen’s attention. Eyes cast down they scrambled from the Coke machine, over to the booze bottles, to the till. Only then did they make eye contact with another customer.
A poster was stuck to one of the walls of Mystic:
And that was where we were going. What we needed cash for. Why Kerbs and I broke into my mom’s car.
Kerbs was going to sell off the stuff. He had his contacts for scaly ventures like that. They wouldn’t screw him over.
‘I’ve done this kinda thing a million times, bru, don’t worry.’
But somehow I was still worried. What if things went wrong?
Sky Eyes came back with his beer.
‘Hey, fuck, where’s ours?’
‘Get your own. Do I look like a beer brewery?’ Again, he fell down between us.
‘All right,’ said Kerbs. ‘I’ll get my own. I don’t even drink that crap. I drink Black Label and piss Castle.’
Kerbs wanted to demonstrate and almost fell of the couch. Not only was he
drunk, but he was high as well. Sky and I laughed as he tried straightening up only to lose his balance. Sky gave him a kick on the ass and he stumbled onward to the bar.
‘How’re things moneywise for you, Sky?’ I asked when Kerbs left.
Sky had to provide for himself. The radio and other stuff only covered my and Kerbs’ MindFuck expenses.
‘I’ll come up with the money, no worries. My old-timer will provide, as always.’
Sky was a lucky son of bitch. I reckoned his parents stuffed him with the money just so that he would stay the hell away from home. Even though he was more presentable than Kerbs or me, he remained a social embarrassment for his parents. As soon as he finished Matric that year, there would already be a flat nearby the university standing at the ready for him. No worries anymore for his mommy and daddy, because he would be out of their house and out of sight permanently. (Then we are going to
party like there’s no tomorrow.)
‘I’ll bring the meat. And beer,’ said Sky.
‘Will they let us in with beer? Don’t you have to buy it there?’
‘Shit, I hope not. We’ll take some along just in case.’
‘And some reefer.’
Sky started smiling. ‘It’s going to be an insane party, Burns.’
Then I noticed Sky’s smile disappearing in an instant. It was as if his face went numb. Shit, no, not here. Not now. His eyes turned inwards. His body started shaking. The beer bottle slipped from his hand and rolled across the floor.
‘Kerbs!’ I shouted over the noise of the people and the music. ‘Fuck, Kerbs!’
The people crowded around us. Kerbs broke through them.
Sky lay on the floor. His body shook. I held him down. Kerbs grabbed his head, opened up his mouth. Pressed down his tongue.
‘Is he alright? Should we get a doctor?’ someone asked.
‘No, he’ll be fine,’ said Kerbs.
‘Sky, can you hear me?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer me.
His shuddering body calmed down.
Like spent waves subsiding after crashing on the beach.
His eyes slowly opened up. I got frightened when I saw the terror filled look in his eyes. And I knew it had happened again.
It wasn’t just an attack. There was something else.
We helped Sky straighten up. He rubbed his face. His neck. He still looked a bit dazed, a bit off balance. I wrapped my arm around his neck to keep him on his feet. He touched the back of his trousers. They were wet. From the beer on the floor, I hoped.
The nosy crowd moved away, talking, turning around a few times to catch a final glimpse of us.
‘Let’s just fuck off,’ said Sky. We passed through the people. Sky opened and closed his mouth, as if tasting something bitter on his tongue. Then he said: ‘Shit, Kerbs, when did you last wash your hands?’
It was Tuesday. Kerbs, Sky and I were in Mimosa Mall. Kerbs only came along to check out the girls’ tits. Bloem has some lovely girls. And the lovely girls have even lovelier tits. Kerbs had a keen eye for things like these and he wasn’t ashamed of expressing his admiration.
‘You’re going to smack right into a trashcan or something if you keep staring around like that,’ Sky said to Kerbs.
‘Yeah, or tumble over a railing somewhere,’ I added.
Sky laughed. He also knew that anything
was possible with Kerbs.
‘Every sport has its injuries,’ Kerbs just grinned.
We strolled around for a while on the ground floor of the mall and then took the escalator to the first floor, past Exclusive Books, straight to Musica with its industrial look. Immediately, someone approached us, a black girl.
‘Can I help you with anything?’
‘Yes, a blowjob,’ Kerbs tuned her. She quickly marched off, furious.
‘Fuck, Kerbs, why do you say things like that?’ I asked.
Kerbs shrugged. ‘What does she know about Green Day, anyway?’
I noticed her keeping an eye on us. I was used to that. Places like these always have their scallywag scouts. Come to think of it, everywhere you go, there are people
watching you – some of them without you even knowing it. Like in a movie theatre. You think you’re sitting there in the dark and nobody can see you, but you are wrong, my bru. They keep their eyes on you even in the dark. Check it out next time you’re at the movies. There’s always a little red light shining, up on the ceiling. It’s a camera, and it’s watching you munching your popcorn and gulping down your Coke. Every single move you make …
Sky found the Green Day CD which he came for. 21st Century Breakdown.
‘Are you going to listen to it first?’
‘Of course. It’s too bloody expensive to just buy it. Did you notice, Burns? When the rand was so weak a few years ago, the price of CDs skyrocketed. And when the rand got stronger, the prices stayed the same. Somewhere there’s a fucker pocketing our money. And they think we don’t know it.”
‘Shit, Sky, you should just download the stuff from the internet, man. Much cheaper,’
I said while flipping through a stack of Pink Floyd CDs. (Classic stuff.)
‘No, hell, I want the originals.’ Sky made his way to the counter. ‘Can I listen to this?’ He gave the CD to the guy behind the counter, who removed the sticky tape from the sides. (Can you fucking believe it – the store tries stopping theft with sticky tape?)
Sky put the headphones on. I shuddered, thinking of the millions of crawling head lice, other people’s filthy oily ears and the things that might have already started living on those headphones. Gross!
Kerbs came sauntering closer. ‘I’ll wait outside,’ he said. ‘Don’t take forever.’
Sky pressed the volume button on the counter to max. I knew why. The shitty rap music that played in the store was so loud that you could barely hear the music in the headphones.
Sky pressed the next track button.
He listened for a while. Then suddenly he removed the headphones.
‘We shouldn’t go anymore,’ he said.
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘MindFuck. We should stay away.’ He looked scared.
‘Why?’ I asked cautiously. And as soon as I said it I knew that I should have kept my mouth shut.
‘I saw blood. The other night in Mystic. You know, when …’
‘Yes …’
‘Blood, Burns. Bad shit is gonna happen if we go.’
‘Fuck, Sky, why are you telling me this? I hate it when you come up with this crap.’
He put the headphones back on again. Chose the next track. But he was still
looking at me. With those blue eyes that could see things before they happened. His Sky Eyes.
And he looked concerned. Fucking concerned.
An alarm suddenly went off at the store entrance. Sky and I both swung around. We knew it was Kerbs.
‘Blood, Burns,’ said Sky in my dream that night. We were floating in a boat on the water. I couldn’t see the land at all. I somehow knew it was out there, but I just couldn’t see it. I heard music rolling in from far away. I think it was ‘Night falls like a grand piano’ by Wonderboom.
‘Blood, Burns,’ Sky repeated, lifting his arms, his palms facing up. He extended his hands to me. The stretched skin turned pale and then blood slowly started oozing to the surface. It formed a small arch in the palm of his hand. He turned his hand over. The blood dripped into the boat.
Drip, drip, drip.
The red lines ran down against the Perspex inside of the boat.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m performing magic,’ Sky said.
‘What kinda magic?’
‘Mind magic. And you’re my volunteer.’
I didn’t know what he meant. In a way it probably made sense. No, it meant nothing. Sky couldn’t do magic. I wanted to ask him what he meant, but something stopped me. Perhaps it was his eyes that had suddenly turned black. Like black holes one should stay away from.
‘Where’s Kerbs?’ I asked.
‘He’s getting rid of her. Making sure that they don’t find her.’
‘Who?’
‘You know.’
Sky pointed to the water with a bloody finger. A drop of blood ran down the shaft of his finger, clinging to the tip for a while and then dropping into the pitch-black water.
The water became clear.
I saw Kerbs’ face staring up from out of the water.
He laughed at me.
Then it seemed as if he wanted to tell me something. I held my ear closer to the water to listen. His arms suddenly shot out, grabbing my head and pulling me from the boat.
The water was deadly cold. Kerbs’ fingers pressed hard against my temples, his legs intertwining with mine. I tried kicking to get to the surface. It didn’t help. Kerbs was amazingly strong. I was running out of breath. I tried freeing myself from his grip. I thought I heard him laughing. It was
a weird sound, like a dog being run over. We sank even deeper. My heart stopped …
And I knew that somewhere there was land. Even though I couldn’t see it.
I knew it was only a dream.
Everything.
Sky couldn’t perform magic.
‘Dude, fuck Sky. I’m fed up with his Nostradamus-shit.’
I was in Kerbs’ flat. A pigsty of dirty dishes, dirty underwear, dirty everything. It didn’t bother him at all. He said that someday he would bang a girl real good and then ask her to clean up his place. Sort of as compensation. Yeah right, as if that’s ever going to happen, but that’s the way Kerbs’ mind operated. He lived in a world of his own, like an ant on a sugar high inside a sugar pot.
Kerbs sat opposite me on the bed, his back against the wall. He took another sip of his beer. I told him what Sky had said. But I kept my mouth shut about my dream. He didn’t like that sort of thing. Neither did I. I hated it when people told me about their dreams. As if it had some or other deeper meaning.
I don’t believe in dreams.
But why did this one concern me so much?
‘If he wants to stay, let him. We’ll manage fine without him. Check this out, I got the money.’ He removed a roll of money from his pocket.
‘How much?’
‘Seven hundred bucks.’
‘Is that enough?’
‘Who knows? By the way, I hope you don’t mind. I gave your ID number to the
guys at the pawn shop.’
It was like a brick hitting you in the nuts. ‘My what?!’
‘You’re in this thing too, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but … Shit, Kerbs, how could you do that? And how do you know my ID number?’
‘You shouldn’t leave your stuff lying around.’
‘If I get into shit, Kerbs, I’ll rat you out.’
‘Come on, buddy, that’s not the way things work. Guys like us – we cover for each other.’ He fell back on the bed again. He had a dodgy grin on his pie-hole. He knew just which buttons to push. He pressed the beer bottle against his lips, but didn’t drink. ‘I pawned that CD I stole as well. Bad vibes.’
‘How did you get past security?’
‘Ways and means, brother.’
