kagablog

Language, to Man: “Do not take me literally..”

FIFTEEN

Maid in Johannesburg! that is how the caption reads when he Deepface opens the Sunday Sun gossip page. His very own maid! In full uniform sitting on a kitchen sink with her legs wide open to reveal her underwear and crotch. The buttons of her top are open and there is water running behind her on the tap and down her wet cleavage and a flimsy bra. When he takes a closer look he realizes the picture was taken in his very own kitchen. And the kitchen looks hot! It is true, the camera always lies. The camera is a tool of deception. The lighting and the grading has transformed what normally looks like a cold kitchen into a warm and a cozy place. And the maid looks so glamorous she conjures up images of raw sex. The kitchen looks so hot it creates the impression the maid was trying to cool down with the running tap water. And the pictures are by Zinger!

His own maid and kitchen are starring in some sick media fiction. Things no longer happen, they run, it’s a grand prix. She does not pitch up for work that week and the following Sunday she appears on another newspaper under the headline: EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH! On Monday Deep and Trish arrive at the flat to find a framed photograph of the maid with EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH in the sitting room. When Deep asks what is going on she explains in some work environments they display these kind of photos, and she wants to do the same.
Trish is livid.
“That’s it bitch, you are fired! She thunders
But she wont go down without a fight.
“You can’t fire me, you are just a mistress, you are not a madam.
Trish goes ballistic. She throws a punch at the maid but Deep catches her before it can land. The two women circle each other menacingly with Deep in the middle.

“You are just jealous because your boyfriend bought me a vibrator as a gift” she counters.
Trish turns to Deep in rage.
“You gave her my vibrator?
“It was no longer yours technically baby” Deep tries to defend himself.
I do not believe this betrayal, especially coming from you Deep” she screams
You gave me her present? A second hand gift? The maid does not believe it. People are obsessed with this idea second hand gifts
“Shut up will you, you have just been fired, why are you still here? He tries to turn back to Trish who is pacing the room in frustration.
“You can’t fire me, I resign” she retorts as she gathers her stuff preparing to leave. When she is at the door she turns back and looks at Trish as if she has forgotten something.
“Did you ever use that vibrator?
The idea of using a previously used vibrator does not sit well with the maid. She feels like she has engaged in unprotected sex. She has standards.
“You people are all sick, you know what, I resign, I do not need this job anyway, I am going to become famous” she announces.

When the maid leaves, Trish breaks down and cries, because the maid called her a mistress, and not a madam.

***************

The maid does become famous, for being a maid. A celebrity maid. She becomes a contestant in a reality television show about madams and maids. Six maids and six madams are locked under one roof in reversed roles. They engage in screaming matches and throw food and plates in each other. The show is hugely popular. Viewers vote off one member every week. The maid becomes popular because it is suspected she is bisexual. This attracts members of both sexes to her unbelievable stunts, like cooking in the nude. She receives a huge payout at the end of the show as the viewers choice.

Mediocrity takes centre stage. MADE TO MADAM, the headlines read. She joins the fast paced world of celebrity culture where people are famous for everything including nothing. Some appear in the right pictures with the right people while others are famous for their sexuality and dancing up a storm at parties. Some are idolized for being failed idols. It is the microwave celebrity culture. The media is the assembly line which turns them in and out with every edition. There is always a new flavour every month. The media destroys them just as quickly as they have created them. Cartoon gods and statues of clay.

Politicians, actors, soccer stars, musical artists, pastors and businessmen all jostle each other for prominent positions on the gossip pages. And the hungry public consume them with insatiable greed. People are desperate for heroes and celebrity culture allows readers to escape the pressures of daily life, the media insists. The consumers chew these stories instantly and spit them out just as instantly like bubblegum. Popcorn idols, fast and easy made but still leave you hungry for more.

The maid quickly discards her newly found soccer star boyfriend who has lost form for a rich businessman who had recently landed on some millions by trading on the colour of his skin. She is quickly rumoured to be pregnant and the birth is recorded on camera where they sell the film to the highest bidder.

While others criticize the maid for her vanity others idolize her for being an inspiration to working class women. She epitomizes the South African miracle of how one can rise from scrubbing floors to being a madam who employs other maids.

SIXTEEN

Nandi has a powerful aura about her which grabs you by the throat the minute you come across it and leaves you choking for more. She is aptly named. She is named after the mother of Shaka Zulu and she looks royal and elegant. She is a queen. She looks like she is fit to give birth to princes and princesses. Legend has it that after the death of his mother King Shaka almost destroyed his kingdom by issuing a decree that anyone who was found not mourning the death of his mother should be put to death. The nation mourned until they could mourn no more. So thousands and thousands of subjects were killed in one of the darkest periods in the Zulu empire. It took one brave man to bring King Shaka to his senses. And now Nandi looks fit to be celebrated and mourned with passion even in her own lifetime.

She has a sunny disposition about her that makes people want to bask around her vicinity. Her skin is soft and bronze. Her tender neck is thin and finely chiseled as if it had been inserted much later after creation to enjoin her head and body. Her body is thin and light as if it is too tiny to carry the power of her enormous spirit. She has an aura of antiquity about her that reminds one of Queen Nerfetiti.

She is dressed in a flowing fine linen dress that goes up to the hem of her knees courtesy of Trish. Her sandals which display her delicate tiny feet are made up of fine leather. She has a light denim bag wrapped around her shoulders. She wont take it off even at a table, it is part of her look. She reminds Graphit of the words he once had to recite on a stage play from the proverbs of Solomon:

“She makes herself coverings
Her clothing is fine linen and purple
Her husband is known in the city gates
Taking his seat among the elders of the land
She makes linen garments and sells them
She supplies the merchant with sashes
Strength and dignity are her clothing

Graphit has never felt this way, he is overwhelmed by her. He wants to get married to her and take his seat among the elders of the land and be known in the city gates.
He sits mesmerized on the carpet with Trish and Deep listening to Nandi read from Deep’s manuscript. Graphit watches Nandi like a star-struck kid seeing a movie star for the first time. Never in his entire life had he been taken by a woman, he is convinced. She had been reading undisturbed for a full thirty minutes. They sit on the carpet leaning on the walls.
“All the characters have no names” Trish observes.
Nandi stops and looked around the table as if to remind herself of their names.
“Its because Johannesburg has a way of stripping you of your identity” she responds “people become descriptions, mere labels”

Graphit is amazed. The woman knows the book better than the author. It was as if she had read the manuscript in a previous life. He tries to guess her star sign. His work as a stage performer had required him reading a lot of star signs to get an insight into characters and their behaviour.
“And all the characters are so dysfunctional” Trish persists with her critique.
“The whole world is dysfunctional; does it cease to be real? Nandi asks.

“Johannesburg is sick” Nandi suddenly declared. “What Johannesburg needs is a health shop”
“A vegetarian shop? Trish asked and seemed to be thinking of something. “A vegetarian shop, of course that’s brilliant, you will feed Johannesburg and I will clothe her”

Deep is skeptical about the number of vegetarians to be found in Johannesburg. But Nandi is adamant it is better to cater for a few vegetarians who would live longer than feed millions of meat eaters who would die earlier.
“People need to be taught how to eat again” she maintains.
“Lets change the world into wine” Graphit suggests as if to himself.
“What was that about wine? Deep asked.
“Its something I read, no it’s something I heard from one of my directors, he said it was a line from some Nigerian writer, Ben something where they are talking about changing the world into wine or something” he explains.
“Do you know the name of the book? Nandi is curious.
“I remember the book because I liked the title, the book is called Dangerous Love” he searches her face a bit as if scrutinizing it for some untold clues, “ you are a virgo right? he asks his face beaming with new found revelation.

“How did you know? She is obviously impressed. Her whole sunshine turns to shield Graphit who basks under her glory. Trish smiles knowingly at Deep who just sighs in relief, hoping Graphit would finally stop sleeping with his maids. Graphit rises up and takes Nandi by the hand leading her to the balcony. She follows like a docile horse being led to water.
“I read that most Virgo’s are vegetarians, that they are tiny and intelligent, that they love reading and writing. But there is something else they did not mention about virgos”
“What is that? Nandi asks eagerly.
They are now standing on the balcony holding hands and facing each other. They are so close to each other they could feel each other’s breath.
“That they are beautiful beyond measure” Graphit says searching her eyes. Nandi is bowled over and feeling weak in the knees. She wishes he could pick her up and take her to the sunset.
“There is also another line from that book by Ben something, the line goes like this: “something has been stolen from all of us”
Deep and Trish, who had followed them halfway through the balcony watch in fascination. Deep feels like an intruder in his own flat.

SEVENTEEN

Trish is surprised Deep had gone to church.
“What on earth did you go to church for?
“I don’t know, I guess I was bored”
“I find Sundays boring too, next time you go to church you must take me” Trish says.
Deep does not take only Trish. He takes with him also Graphit and Nandi. They are all in their best clothes. They all enjoy the church proceedings. Deep had warned them to carry notes for donation. At the end of the service the pastor stands at the door with his wife where he is shaking hands with everyone.

When he comes to Deep he recognizes him. He seems to have a strange sense of humor.
“I remember you” the pastor says “you ran away with my donation money last week, but I forgive you” he says to much laughter.

He takes a particular interest in all of them. He enquires about everything concerning them. They also find out a lot about the pastor. They find out he was engaged in a number of community projects. He ran a soup kitchen that fed street kids in Hillbrow. He also collected old clothes that were donated to the poor. He tells them he was interested in saving people in their lifetime. He was also a rich man who drove an SLK Mercedes Benz and a 4*4 Cayenne. He informs them they were also going to be blessed with wealth. He encouraged his congregation to get rich. If it was only the pastor who was rich, it ceased to be a church, it became a cult he said.

The next Sunday he has a business proposition for each of them. From Deep he wants a slot at the station. He could come in once a week where people would phone in about their various spiritual problems. Deep has to propose the slot to the management and he would be paid personally for the slot.

From Graphit he wants a novel way of attracting more flock to his church. He wants Graphit to advertise his sermons through graffiti on the walls outside the church. He would paint bible verses outside the church walls at a certain fee. He would give Trish a contract of designing uniform for the church choir. The uniform would have the face of the pastor in front with the church logo. The pastor was to have a share in their profits. He was also going to give Nandi a contract of catering for all the church functions where he was also going to have a share in the profits. The soup kitchen was to be made of vegetables only because a proper diet was necessary for the nourishment of the soul.

“And behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, and every tree bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, to you it shall be for meat” Nandi quotes from the bible
“Exactly, that is man’s original diet, people need to go back to genesis”. They need to understand that man is created from the minerals of the earth. And for him to live he needs to go back to the source of his own origins, which is vegetables that come from the belly of the earth” the pastor explains.
“I did not know the pastor is also a vegetarian” Graphit says.
The pastor takes him by the hand and places another on top his shoulder.
“Son, don’t do as I do, do as I tell you” he says with a firmness in his voice.
Everyone is happy with the pastor’s ideas except Deep. He feels there is something fundamentally wrong with the whole business.

“And where is the place for God in all this? He asks.
“You seem to confuse the building structure with the church son” the pastor explains. “People don’t come to this building to worship, they come here to escape. They come here for the music, to show off their latest clothes, to ease their guilty feelings and to socialize with friends. Sometimes they come to donate their ill gotten gains. They come here so that they can get buried when they die. They come here so they can have a pastor who can tie them into holy matrimony when they get married. They want their children to be baptized when they are born. People do not need to come to church to find God. The church is much bigger than this building. It is a way of thinking, a collection of ideas that govern this world. It is about money, power and influence”

Deep thinks about a movie he had seen once called the Godfather. In the movie a catholic bishop talks about a stone that has stayed in the water for a long time but remains dry on the inside. He had compared the stone to the people in Europe. They had been surrounded by Christianity for centuries and yet Christianity had not penetrated their hearts.
“Enough of this talk about God, lets get back to business” the pastor says to much laughter.
So they all happily agreed to go into business with the pastor. As he slept in his flat Deep dreamed he was a very rich man. He was sitting inside the church in Hillbrow and he was a moneylender. People came and bowed down at his feet. They borrowed money from him so that they could donate to the church coffers. He was loaning them money at a high interest rate and the pastor was happy. He lifted up his head to look at Graphit. His friend had grown in influence.

The church was littered in a graffiti of bible verses. But the one that stood out from the others was not a bible verse. It was written: “BORROW DEEP TO PAY PASTOR”. The pastor was a picture of bling bling in expensive jewellery designed by Trish. While he was busy preaching in the pulpit a cellphone rang. Everyone including the pastor went quiet. Finally he reached into his coat pocket to take out the ringing cellphone. Deep woke up to find it was his phone ringing. He was glad the cellphone had saved him from a nightmarish dream. It is Graphit calling. He had received a business offer from the mayor. His party wanted to use popular culture for their election campaign and had decided to use a series of graffiti to reach the people. It was a big campaign and he wanted Deep to help him with the business and financial side.
“I don’t know Graphit, artists and politics, not a very good combination” Deep says.
“Some time the artist has to eat”.
“Eat at the feet of politicians? I would rather eat the politicians themselves” Deep says. They agree they would take up the offer on condition Graphit wrote in one of Deep’s t-shirts : AND GOD CREATED POLITICIAN, HE SAW THAT IT WAS BAD.

Graphit has other big news, they are getting married with Nandi and he wants Deep to be his best man. Trish does not take kindly to the news. She should have got married before Graphit and Nandi, after all she is the one who brought them together. The wedding is a sweet small affair and the dinner takes place at the new vegetarian restaurant they co-own in Newtown called Divinity Diet.

EIGHTEEN

WE ABORT BABIES CHEAPLY CALL 011 443 7566 BETWEEN SIX AND NINE EVENINGS” is the first sign that goes up in the Deep, pastor and graphit partnership. Callers are shocked to find the number is that of Newtown FM. Curious callers want to know things like “Do you kill grown up babies? Other callers are not amused. They think it is a perfectly legitimate question. They argue life begins in conception, if it can be terminated at birth it can also be terminated after birth. The pastor serves as a counselor to those who want to abort life. The debate shifts to condoms and contraceptions, others maintain these are also forms of abortion aimed at the termination of life. People who oppose abortion should also oppose condoms and contraception. They call this hypocrisy.

Others talk about the spirituality of sex whose consequences should be accepted. “WHAT IF ADAM WORE A CONDOM? A grafitti by Graphit heats up the debate. Others feel it is blasphemy while others argue it stretches the limits of the freedom of speech. It becomes a hot topic in the newspapers drawing in more listeners for Deep and raising the profile of the pastor and Graphit. Others call Graphit a criminal who vandalises property and who should be arrested. Undeterred, he puts up another grafitti that asks “What if Jesus was aborted? Listeners are interested in knowing if they would have been saved had Jesus been aborted.
“Jesus was not aborted, so let us not speculate what might have happened or might not have happened if he was aborted, he was part of the plan of salvation” the pastor responds.
“The question is misplaced, because Jesus was not a product of sex, he was conceived of the holy spirit, you cannot abort the holy spirit” another listener argues.
“ABSTAIN FROM SEX, CONCEIVE FROM THE HOLY SPIRIT” goes another comment by Graphit. Some Christian groups are outraged. They consider this statement sacrilege and a direct attack on their faith. Others lodge a complaint with ICASA. Icasa upholds the right to freedom of expression. The FXI and the Human Rights Commission also defends his right to freedom of speech.

Christian groupings hold a protest match outside the Newtown FM studios. The station apologises while protecting their DJ. Bad publicity is good for business as the listener ship figures grow. Deepface is headhunted by national radio stations who want to offer him a breakfast or an evening shows. Graphit is subcontracted by a big advertising agency that wants to incorporate grafitti into mainstream advertising. The pastor builds a bigger church in the suburbs where he holds three fully packed sermons every Sunday. Societal problems pay handsomely for everyone.

Pangs of sadness overcome Deep. He feels somewhere they have all lost their moral compass, if they ever had one. Visions of the future begin taking shape in front of him. Money would ultimately taint all their dreams.

Graphit’s farm in the northern suburbs would be raided by the police in cowboy style and they would confiscate tons of marijuana. The lawyers would breed him dry as he struggled to stay out of prison. Nandi would remain beautiful and an uncrowned queen in appearance and in spirit, she would stick by Graphit to the bitter end. Their children would not become vegetarians, they would deviate from the path of their parents and they would struggle with obesity. He would forever wonder where did the rot begin, the rot would look back at him with a sympathetic eye and say “I know where you come from brother, I am there”

The pastor would build a franchise of a church, he would record an award winning gospel album with these words on the cover: pastor dressed by In Flew Enza and fed by Divinity Diet. He would form his own political party and take a second wife in addition to his trophy wife. He would save many but he would fail to save himself.

The maid would act in that famous soapie and in silence she would cry out for help but no one would listen. She would end up in an acrimonious divorce and would die in a cocaine overdose after an orgy of drugs with her celebrity friends.

The mayor would be indicted on a corruption scandal. He would win it and make a huge political comeback. He will never believe wrestling is fake and he shall be buried with so many in the grave of lies. The nephew would never become a rap artist, he would struggle with alcoholism at varsity and would come back to be a loyal servant of the public in the civil service. The patience of the years would tone down his anger. He would stop being a cynic and would finally join that massive cult of the believers.

Manchild would permanently wear his perpetual sad smile as his trademark. Because, like the smell of death, sadness has a way of rubbing off on all of us. He would record a jazz hit called, “the years, oh how they have overtaken us”. It would not make him rich. He would be respected but not particularly adored. Record companies would demand he sings more commercial music and he would lose the spark in his voice.

Zinger would continue making people famous while he himself would not become famous. He would never leave Newtown.

The pimp would never know he had a son who would become a famous deejay and who would reinvent himself with another stage name to completely cut off ties with his past.

Deep himself would become a famous talkshow host and his wife Trish would edit a glossy fashion magazine. He would become normal and hold shares in a regional radio station.

He would drift away from Graphit and he from him. He would forever wonder what happened to the caller called Chris and his voice would always linger on his mind. He would look at his own image in the mirror and see the man. The man he had spent his early years trying to spit on his face, the man would embrace him from the mirror and taunt him with his cocky smile and a heart that says “I always win in the end”.

He would finally launch his long awaited book “Blood Sex” All the people that had touched his life would come back to unwittingly insert themselves on the book. The book will begin like this:

CHAPTER ONE

The pimp had smiled gleefully after killing his first man at nineteen. The killing was a fulfillment of a lifetime dream. He had dreamed of killing his landlord when he was ten years. He had rehearsed the murder repeatedly in his mind with the skill and passion of a dedicated actor. From a tender age, killing the landlord had not only become his obsession but his sole objective. When other children dreamed of getting a new soccer ball or new shoes for Christmas he dreamed of killing the landlord.

He had first resolved to kill the landlord after walking in unexpectedly into the kitchen to find his elder sister sucking the landlord’s penis. This was shortly after the death of their mother from tuberculosis and the disappearance of their father leaving him with her eighteen year old sister to fend for themselves.

They had not seen him. His sister had sucked the man until he had sprayed all over her face what looked like milky mucus. That night his sister had cried herself to sleep. She slept with the landlord so they could have a roof over their heads. It was around that time that she developed headaches and would use her last money to buy aspirin. The nightmares had started shortly after their father had left.

“That boy is always staring at me with those dead eyes, one day he would bore a hole through me with his eyes” complained the landlord. He never knew himself why he was always staring at people with a fixed gaze.

His sister had tried to defend him meekly saying “he is just a kid”
One day the landlord had shooed him away with his hands “Go away, I don’t like your eyes. So at the age of twelve he ran away to stay in the streets of Hillbrow where he survived by sniffing glue and pick-pocketing. At the age of seventeen he had impregnated one of the girls on the street and ran away. The girl had dumped the one week baby outside an orphanage where the young baby boy had been christened Jacob.

On the neck of Jacob had been tied a locket with the picture of his father with the tormenting eyes. He was to locate his father but never disclose who he was after dropping out of university in Hillbrow where he was a resident deejay. He would later change his name from Jacob into DJ Deepface…

THE END

Gasp eighteen: Where the fevers grow

“You will become a woman of rich complexity..” Lillith honed in on the eloquent slur of his words, did her blessed best to blot out the tepid grotesquity emitting them. “Could you, erm, push your posterior farther out?” Lillith grimaces, indulgently, and proceeds to voluptuate her Gluteus maximally. She was enjoying the somewhat sociopathic compartmentalization of the whole experiment. Her upper body sheathed in cool darkness, where her thoughts, appropriately, were scampering about, making mischief… and then, all the while, that fond heat that spoke of the concentrated illumination basking, cupping, her ass.. with the old man yammering on in the backdrop, the world’s most grateful audience of one.
Unless the video-cassette recording device counts as audience.

In a sense, Lillith now realised, that machine of his was much more than an audience - it was a box containing several wormholes snapping into alignment with tactile future audiences.. the sinister magic box of Dr. White. “Aah yess. Perfect. You are a gorgeous specimen.”

**

“For Academic purposes,” he continued. “A selection of shots of various parts of the female body, for the purposes of examination by students of psychology specializing in sexual behaviour in human males and females. It will, of course be ‘moving’ images, as I explained - like the documentaries in the Bioscope. But strictly for Academic use.”
She agreed to it because she knew he was lying. She enjoyed the idea of unknown persons admiring her form while she, conveniently, was absent.

Lillith blinked her eyes, the pale rambling was much closer now.. “Please..”, she snatched the key word from the others that got away. Out of the darkness she flashes him a look that could sink a thousand ships. Dr. White stammers back, falling through the burning gold planes of light, hits the table, actually clutching at his heart. Lillith responds with a gentle smile. Turns over, exaggerating her movements, slowly spreads her legs while White struggles with consciousness.
This is all interrupted by the fact that creepy Dr. White doesn’t snap out of his gurgling spell, forcing Lillith to jump up and establish whether he would live to see Tuesday.
“Sorry, yes I’m.. errh..” She hands him the glass of water. Neutrally feminine now, sub-maternal.

“Alright Dr. White, call me when you want to continue your documentary.” She shuts his front door and skips down the corridor - This one she’ll have to share with Jill - strictly in the interest of intellectual dispute.

Gasp thirty-three: Know thyself.

Lillith was emancipated, her skin purring at the gift of bright freedom, wide kinky space. Not that she had been trapped, not at all. But, for the first time in her sexual life, Lillith became an agent of her own sexuality. Previously her sexuality had been confined to orbit around localized lovers - the spaces between were silent until charged by some new protagonist. If Henry had heaved sex from the bed down the blushing corridor sprawling over the sofa crashing through the door and into the streets, the outside was neutered in his absence; the trills she had felt when she and Jill brushed hands and grazed waists and snatched skimming kisses in public were mute when she shopped alone. Until now.

Lillith was claiming the world for herself, was inventing new species of attraction and eros.. even the masculine pull was democratized (if perversely) - the ever-present teenage gawking was no longer just a neutral, vague irritant, but intriguing.. the fat man studying her with unexpected brashness, was he a secret keeper of incongruous vigour? But it was the females who presented a richest new plethora for Lillith’s subtle new hungers.

Lillith arched into herself at these images. She was rediscovering her auto-anatomy; not in the innocent melancholy that had directed her teenage fingers - but in an expansive thrill of agency. Lillith was creating sex, charging atmospheres with burning self. No-one would be safe.. (Lillith’s eyes fluttering dangerously)

Gasp twenty-five: A perfect storm

Brooding skies made Lillith wet, the simplicity of the mechanism was almost Pavlovian. Storms meant cock. She had no idea why. If she happened to be at Jill’s when her body smelled the skies collecting, she explained that she had to leave, Jill’s face already tilting woefully. She could imagine Henry’s grin when he looked up at the gathering, knowing that somewhere she was sliding through traffic, drawn inexorably to his flat. When he arrived (for, unless he happened already to be home, she was always already there, waiting), and he made sure to add a touch of dramatic masculinity - slamming the door open, and such - she would be huddled on the sofa, fingernails disappearing into working mouth, eyes intent on the window. She would not greet him with a smile, she would climb out of her jeans, or, if frocked, slip off her panties, and walk over to the windowsill, throwing him a single glance - always the same one.

And they would howl with the thunder. Lillith displaced to some place of primacy, a place of crashes and booms and wild, flashing dark.

Gasp twenty-six: Footsie.

Mr. Green became a mute beast moving in some other zone of sentience, some ether of pre-consciousness. Lillith’s physical soul reacted with instant, primitive recognition to his slow, concentrated trance; her skin already sheening. Let us, for a moment, consider the brute’s throbbing, swaying perspective: The moment he saw Lillith slip her shoes off - those sharp, inquisitorial eyes of hers flashing across his features to spy the transformation, the becoming - a new he took shape out of he; his musculature twitched; his throat swelled shut (he dumbly, distractedly scratched at it), and all of his arteries began swelling with gush.
>From a scientific point of view, from Dr. White’s frame then, the effect was essentially a crippling one. Were Green to be placed, in his present stupor, in any other social or functional context, he would blindly collapse about like some moon-shone zombie. Imagine, as Dr. White does, expecting of this sub-human form to execute some childishly simple task - like making Milo, or tying his shoes (see the porceline smash into the wall, the shoes torn in tway, gutted; dead).

Mr. Green gasped hoarsely, sending a flutterby through Lillith’s tummy-tum, and staggered forward through gelatinous air - all of his radia of sense trained on three mistily beating loci: her slow twirling feet, trailing maroon tails of warmth (upon her now, his face was already deeply buried - paraplegically nourished - by the complex valley of her left instep; soon he is slow gorging on her toes, Lillith flailing), and beyond them - demoniacally linked to these twin hearts, her shimmering centre.. the cradle of profound release.
But first he has to consume her feet. The process was strict - agonizingly ritualistic in ascension.
Lillith, hyper-sympathetic erotic being that she was, had long slipped along and was gasping and slashing in the same tumultous air as he, kicking him involuntarily, harshly, to deeper access his hunger, her feet tingling like the extensions of clitori they had become..

When (pausing alarmingly to sup on her calves, from where he wielded her like a quaint doll,) at last, he plunged forward and applied his delirium to her wet heat, she flickered in and out of consciousness.
Her reality - sober and crisp no more than three minutes earlier - a liquid crush of colour.

Gasp four: Piel innie Keel.

‘Deep Throat’. She was watching it with Jill, who was waxing apoplectic next to her… Baudrillard this, De Bouvoir the other.
All things considered, Lillith decided, it must be - at the very least - incredibly awkward having a clitoris for an uvula. The poor girl probably can’t bring herself to chew her food. Swallows everything whole (”Don’t you Dare trim those crusts!”) - then does a Meg Ryan in the middle of the restaurant, or worse, in the once-quiet corner.
“…ideological inversion of the entire - previously negative - structure, leading…”

Lillith slipped her two favourite fingers into her lilly-whites.

Gasp fifteen: Shimmer

Lillith found it to be quite wonderful. Unexpectedly, there was no politics - she’d secretly thought, due to Jill’s retrospectively gleaned crush on her, that she would be able to manipulate her; just, you know, in small ways. But that dynamic was entirely absent. And she enjoyed it. They were two lovely mirrors appreciating oneother in distinct light - as if they were the same reflection spun into unique presence.. Their relating was a dance. Jill would still occasionally go off on her passionate missives about Masculine ideology, while Lillith no longer purred her tales of sexual pounce and pounced-upon - it was an unwritten law, do not let the outside in. Their erogenous relating was entirely liquid, there were no distinct levels of inter-appreciation: From the moment Jill lilted “Hii” out of the intercom, they were stroking each other - it was as if the shifts in intensity were gracefully smoothed out to mediate their entire interaction. Orgasm was reflected in the eyes passing tea, and the gleaming lower lip onto which that sugary crumb had crumbled.

She loved watching Jill’s face as she explored her interia with slender, loving finger.. adored the way her face would shimmer.

Each issue of this magazine has been in some way a unique object with some home-made aspect to its construction. This issue has been painstakingly cut and pasted (yes, with scissors and glue, folks!) into a spiral bound notebook–it’s a truly lovely little object, decorated with some neat little geometrical studies by Tray Drumhann and Andrew Abbot.

So what of the fiction and poetry inside?

“Hufhaus” by Derek John, sandwiches the collection. Written in two parts, it’s a study of voyeurism and high versus low culture. A group of teenagers spy on the occupant of an arty house made of glass. It’s hilarious, gratingly true-to-life and with a raw energy. I loved it.

Mark Vincenz’s poem “Building a Japanese Butterfly” is a perfectly constructed miniature cogitation leading into Phil Doran’s “Staatliches Express”, a delightful, slightly potty story in which an aging Bela Lugosi tries to enrol in the Staatliches Bauhaus, leaving the director, Gropius, rather non-plussed in interview with an entrant who lies on the floor uttering such non-sequiturs as: “Existence is highly contingent for the commercially undead.”

Ellaraine Lockie’s exquisite dissection of literary tastes, “Bookworm” slots neatly into the gap before Marc Lowe’s rather wonderful, if inconclusive, ramble around the fantastic city of Beaujardin. In “Excerpted from a Tour of Beaujardin” we travel with a guide who seems like a cross between Conan Doyle and the Brothers Quay. There are copious references to a civilisation existing in a state of anarchy and suppression but our guide is too busy to linger long.

“A Conversation Between My Father and His Uncle, Regarding the Appropriate Use of a Block Plane” by Thane Thompson is one of the shortest stories in the volume but packs quite a punch. It begins in didactic mode but there is clearly something sinister beneath the skin of this woodwork lesson. Stephen Muret’s “The Cold River Boy” is a metaphor disguised as a fable or vice versa. With a tendency to long-windedness it strives towards a grand theme but it’s the intricate fantasy setting the author creates which works best.

“Code Name Vorkurs”, a prose poem by John Allen, touches on the closure of the Bauhaus by the Nazis and an abortive assassination attempt on Hitler–a tiny and penetrating history lesson which precedes: “A Few Leaves from the Travelogue of Doctor Julius Jonsson, Cryptobotanist and Hylesoprotolist: Bay Ridge, or, the Belief in the Undead Still Exists in New York” by Erik T. Johnson–another extract from something longer. It seems to be set in a weird composite future. The eponymous hero arrives in town on horseback in search of botanical specimens but finds himself caught up in a vampire hunt outside a shopping mart, in the course of which he becomes the hunted. It’s a chaotic romp of a story with not so much as a Bauhaus teapot in sight but breathlessly entertaining nonetheless.

“Dimensions of an Interior” by Martin Heavisides is an enigmatic description a room, executed with forensic thoroughness–another story which hints at events tantalisingly outside the narrative frame. “In Memory of Dad” by Willie Smith is one of the stories I wish were longer but, that said, it fills its three minuscule panels with admirable skill. The title says it all but the writing is funny, sharp and compelling.

Finally, we reach the conclusion of “Hufhaus”, Derek John’s two part clash of cultures. A change of perspective reveals the interior of the glass house and the bleak world of a celebrity art entrepreneur. Superbly written: you’ll have to read the story for yourself to discover what “BOMBFUCK” is but I swear it’ll be worth the money.

This is a bravura performance by a talented bunch of writers and edited and handmade by the scarily creative imagination of Rachel Kendall. Beg, borrow or preferably buy a copy of this issue of Sein und Werden but hands off my copy, I’m keeping it for posterity and the whiff of glue.

this review first appeared on neonmagazine.com.uk

Gasp seven: A disagreeable conclusion.

Lilly’s best friends were Saartjie, Annie, and Janneman. Janneman was part of a gang, ‘Die Stroppers’, but, exasperatingly, Lillith was always forbidden access to their games, and gang den, the contents and goings-on of which were the only - and frequent - topics to disrupt the conspirational girls’ endless doll scenarios. The youngest Stropper, Daantjie, stayed in a house neighbouring Lillith’s home, and would sometimes hop over the wall for an illicit (or, when apprehended, sanctioned) swim in their pool. His uniform was always the same - a tired red Speedo. Hers was always different. After gravely nodding and assenting, “Ja, Daantjie, jy mag maar swem”, Daantjie’s eyes rolling dramatically at being busted - again, Lillith would slowly walk into the house, and then hurry into her room and pick out the least recently seen bathing costume. Outside again, she would carefully lay out her towel (she tanned, he swam).

“Puts it in your mouth,” Daantjie said (God knows where he’d gotten that idea). They were standing behind the big Protea bush, and, as was tradition, one of them showed the other their publicly veiled anatomy. But this was new. “Hoekom,” she stated. Daantjie insisted on speaking to her in attempted English, even though he knew she was fluent in both his and her tongue. “Ek weet nie.” A telling, unprecedented slip of code. Lillith knelt down and, still unsure of exactly how to proceed and why, put her mouth around his penis. And so they waited. Lillith, though her overriding sensation was confusion, was mildly alarmed - some archetypal structure was crunching into place - when her mouth presently erupted in stinging urine. Daantjie backed away, horrified, and scrambled back over the wall, his right foot trailing a red Speedo.
Lillith sat there, quite still, for several moments. Before wandering, shocked, into the house.

For some perverse reason I am awake at 4am. But worse than this, the metallic grey false dawn light is tainted with the soundtrack of maudlin 70’s love song, “The Day Before You Came”. It’s ricocheting around my skull. Some woman is warbling it over and over in precisely the overly sentimental way that two years of singledom has resulted in me hating. I stare resentfully at the monochrome beige curtains until I subside into the last hour or so of sleep, dreading the technicolor immediacy of the dreams I know it must bring. My last waking thought is, ‘Well maybe it is.’

When the alarm rings at 6am, I am waist deep in amorphous green/blue goo, wielding a strangely light-filled broad sword and baying at the top of my lungs while joyfully cleaving heads from the bodies of weird alien beasts. It takes several bleats from the cellphone alarm to calm my racing heart. I open my eyes slowly. The familiar dimensions of the bedroom assert themselves upon my unwilling consciousness. It might have been crazy, but slaughtering those beasts was fun. Do I want to return to the mundanity of my four, somewhat dirty white walls, beige curtains and hideously mis-matched bedding? I am groggy from the sudden intensity of the hour or so’s sleep. It takes me ten minutes to remember waking up previously. It is only in the shower that I recall the song, and sing, ‘This is the first day of the rest of my life’ ironically under my breath to myself. I soap my pits, my balls, my arse; vigorously scrub my leg, chest and back surfaces and my arms, before hosing myself off in the pungently chemical city water supply. Invigorated I step from the shower, whip a razor across my chops and look to don my armour for a day in the world.

Popular wisdom would have one live each day as if it was your last. And while I relate to the sentiment, I cannot see that having sex all day every day is really going to make for much of a life. But the idea of noting the exact nature of every passing mote of time and detail registers a harmonic in me. To make every detail important and to celebrate it. A series of tiny, static nows that are examined and remembered, as opposed to bundled into minutes and hours which are devoured by the processes of being alive and making plans to live. My Buddhist under-mind smiles as my reptilian mind recoils and I am left smiling humourlessly at the idea of holding down a job while making every moment of life holy. But I feel that if this is the last day of life as I know it, because it is the day before she arrives into my existence, maybe I should be recording it. Maybe I will need it later to remember what it was that I left behind. One always needs to know where one came from.Primarily to stop you from heading back there I feel, but mainly in order to have some sense of progression. Nature tends towards inertia, decay, but consciousness strives for change. My body and mind war with each other over these drives while I hold down the job that buys us the luxury of time to have the debate. It would be nice to have some other source of meaning in the ritualised actions of my days.

None the less, I am mindful as I drink my fruit juice and chew my banana. I count every stroke of my toothbrush as I clean my teeth. The sun feels comfortingly warm on my back as I close the door to my flat and walk to my car. In fact, the sky is a clear crisp blue that looks like brand new tissue paper, begging to be wrinkled. The sun is bright and my shoes make a musical scrunching on the concrete. Bird song drowns out the traffic noises from the main road. I press my remote control and with a smart chirp, the car springs open, deactivating the alarm and the immobiliser. I reflect for a second that, on the last day of my life as I have known it, it would be so much more perfect if I didn’t have to think about the mundanities of actually staying alive.

When the day is the last , the sky takes on a whole other texture. Trees stand out in stark relief, more like sculptures than paintings against a background. Cars shine and gleam as they pass by in the road. By the time I have driven to work I am aware of two things. One I am very, very wide awake. And conversely, interestingly, I am tired. My head feels like an over-full letterbox. The combination of the two sensations is like an effervescent multi vitamin going off in my heart. I am elated, I am clear headed. The fatigue feels GOOD. I sit at my desk wallowing in this for a few minutes while my machine boots up, the virus scan runs and the updates download. Every single day begins like this. I have not altered my routine; I have merely paid attention to it. What an interesting world I live in. I haven’t spoken to another living soul, and already I feel more at home in the tiny corner of the world I have carved myself. I don’t feel like I an peeping out from between curtains at a parade anymore, I feel like I am handing out cookies from my front door as the participants file by, smiling. Ridiculous, I think.

If I was to die tomorrow, this day would have been wonderful. I haven’t had sex, I haven’t got high, and I haven’t bought any toys. I just started taking mental note of everything. Looking right at things instead of through. It’s not possible to live like this everyday, is it? You’d take so long to do anything. You’d be sidetracked and unfocussed. Right now though, I am not sure I care much about those side effects. I decide to make a cup of coffee while my email downloads. My day is ordinary. I have two or so hours now to write some reports, to reply to emails, answering queries and so on. Then I have a couple of calls to make, quotes to chase, information to gather. Then I have a lunch with a client, and the afternoon has been cleared for admin. I need to catch up on paperwork. I look at my to-do list as I sip my coffee. I know most of the people I am about to call. My client is male. I know all the staff here. If this is the day before she comes, I am not sure where she is coming from. Realising my mistake, I look at tomorrow’s diary. Pretty much more of the same. I am not doing anything after hours on either night. I am just living this life. This life that until today I had thought was mundane. If tomorrow she is in my life, what is she going to see? My boredom and repetitions of the same actions and ideas? Or my new excitement at the colour and depth around what I do with my time? What would I like her to see? If today is the day before she comes, isn’t there a good chance that I already know her, I muse. I mean, my dairy shows no opportunity for meeting anyone new. Will I bump into her in the check out queue at Pick ‘n Pay? At the ATM? Will we do the strangers tango in some public place, each starting in the same direction as the other until we laugh and look into each others eyes? Will one of my phone calls result in an unexpected meeting, and it’s her? Will… Ah. Ja, whatever.

The time until lunch flies by. And even though I am focussed on my work, I am conscious of writing my emails differently, I am conscious of patience; of perspective of the time I have to do things. Before I know it, my outlook calendar pops up my 30 minute reminder to go to lunch. I stand; pick up my folder and notes for the meeting. I look around my office, straighten papers on my desk, push the chair in, walk out and close the door. Its autumn and the crispness of seasonal change has crept into the highveld air. It’s not cold, but I am not moving in a pool of heat and oil like two weeks ago. I note the sensation of cooler air across my lungs. My chest seems to expand easier, I suck in more oxygen, my eye sight sharpens, as if the water content of the air has dropped and my vision tweaked accordingly. The short walk to the car is full of sensations: the feel of things through my shoes, concrete, stones, cracking of dry leaves. I look around the car park but I am the only one here. A Hadeda squawks by in the sky, calling for its mate. The car alarm pips twice. I open one door and slide back inside its familiar cocooning.

I am early for the meeting, having left too much time to get to the restaurant. As I walk in, I note the hostess. She is tall, brunette, beautiful. I think for ten seconds. I am 40 years old. She must be 25. I shrug and approach the front desk. She smiles at me.
“Good afternoon sir. Do you have a reservation?”
The smile is perfect, but her eyes maintain the same constant glow. There is nothing in front of her that she is waiting for. “Yes, for 1pm,” I reply and give her the client name. She picks up 3 menus and escorts me to the table.
“Would you like something to drink while you wait?” she asks.
I order a glass of water, lemon, no ice, and she leaves to relay my order to our waiter. I look around. The joint is half full and there are women dotted around the room at various tables. I tally up how many fall into the right age bracket and so on before stopping myself. If this is the last day of my life before she comes, isn’t it true to say that she is a factor about which I don’t know? Again, is it someone I know or not? I just don’t know. Then she is just as likely to be 21 as 45 and therefore any sectioning of the women I see might be to begat the process. I sigh and sip my water. I’ll just talk to everyone.

Ten minutes later a woman approaches my table. She is about 30-ish, attractive, and smartly dressed. I was engrossed in my cell phone and didn’t notice until her body cast a shadow over my table. I look up, see her and smile.
“Hi.” She says
“Hi.” I reply, wondering what this is about.
“Um, you’re not Victor are you?” she asks, realising that I am clearly not expecting to meet someone I don’t recognise.
“No.” I reply, but realising her predicament, I add, “But I get mistaken for him all the time.”
She smiles, clearly uncomfortable, but grateful, “Oh, I am so sorry, thank you,” and heads off to the table a few down from me where another man sits alone. This one is right, she sits.
The client arrives and all chance to observe the world around me is obliterated. The meeting proceeds.

As we are wrapping up, another woman approaches our table, an ex colleague of my client’s assistant, they talk, hurried introductions are made. Our eyes meet, she looks away. 2 minutes later she is gone and the bill is paid and we are walking out the restaurant. At the door, we part and I turn and bump into another patron on the way in. It’s a woman. We both apologise, pat each other reassuringly, hurry off away from the scene as quickly as possible. Back in my car, I tally up four new faces. Some I considered, some I did not. There was no electricity and no-one seemed to want to stay to find out more, and I felt compelled to detain no-one. I shrug, start the car, head back to the office.

The building is quiet. It is nearly 4pm, and I have an hour to get on with some admin. The brighter ones have set up 4 o clock meetings so as to be able to go straight home. I pull the tray of paper towards me and start to process. At five thirty, one of the PA’s on the floor pops her head in to say she is leaving and I am the last one left. I start, looking at the time.
“Oh,” I remark inanely to her smiling face, “lost track of the time! I will be leaving now too then.”
“OK” she smiles; “I’ll start turning the lights and things off then.”
I smile back and start to shut down my machine. Once that is complete, I grab my jacket and car keys, lock my door behind me and fall instep with the PA as we leave the office. She’s been here a while, but I don’t know her name. She nice though. Not that one is ever interested in colleagues, way more trouble than it is worth. I smile at the thought. My last working day before she came is now over and I am walking out the office ticking women off an imaginary list. She catches me smiling.
“What’s so funny then?” she asks with a smile of her own.
I laugh, “Oh nothing really, I just feel a bit silly for losing track of the time there.” I reply, putting any words into the spot between inverted comma’s so as not to have to say what I am thinking.
She laughs, “Well, don’t worry, my lift is often late for the same reasons!”
We reach the exit to the building, and there is no car outside for her. “Like today,” she adds, “No lift yet.”
It’s getting dark, and we don’t work in a very nice part of town. I volunteer to stay until her lift arrives.
She looks at me as if gauging my reasons. “You really don’t have to you know.” She says soberly, “I can stay inside the building until she arrives.”
“I know,” I say, “But at least this way you’ll have some company.”
We wait together for a companionable 15 minutes, exchanging inane small talk until a blue Honda Civic pulls up. We push through the doors into the street, and she opens the door, hops smartly in and winds down the window, “Thank you for waiting with me, it was kind of you!”
“And I am sorry you had to,” chirps another voice from the driver’s side.
I bend over so as to be able to see in through the window.
“I…” I manage.
The driver blushes
“It was my pleasure.” I choke out.
“Sorry,” says the driver, still blushing and looking up and down fast. Then our eyes lock.
“I’ll be early tomorrow, just to be sure,” she says to me.
Her sister laughs
“I’ll be out here waiting.” I say
She smiles and bites her lip slightly.
“I’ll be here,” I repeat.
She throws her head back and laughs, engages gear and drives off. Both women wave.
here? There seem to be a few too many words for such a punchy ending - DONE]

Tomorrow, I think, what am I doing tomorrow?

order the book here

Sunnyside Sal is the story of an unusual friendship between two boys growing up in Pretoria. It’s a jauntily narrated novella set in the tumultuous early 1990s, when a whole generation was discovering that everything they’d been taught to believe was wrong. Fuelled by his reckless bravado and post-punk philosophy, Sal plunges into extreme situations, but his innocent experimentations in rebellion lead him increasingly into hazardous realms. Although ultimately a tragic tale, Sunnyside Sal is borne up throughout by an exuberant humour.

Anton Krueger teaches drama at Rhodes University. His award-winning plays have been performed in nine countries. He has published poems, short stories, reviews, academic articles and song lyrics. Sunnyside Sal is his first novel.

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The sun is shining, I can see glimpses of it when I look up at his blinds.

It casts thin white stripes across his sheet creased face. His clutching a corner of the blanket close to his cheek. He looks like a five year old, the blanket balled up in his fist.

Looking at his hands brings it all back.

I think of those thick fingers deep inside me, two at a time.

Suddenly I’m having a hard time breathing.

I keep rubbing my eyes. I wish I could look him, and this apartment, and think this is my life, and feel comfortable.

There are tequila bottles, some half empty, one broken on the counters and floor. The kitchen floor is covered with salt. It feels course and strange under my feet. I found one of my socks, purple with a blood stain on one toe from a blister I had from wearing heels, but I can’t find the other one. I find my tank top and my panties under my shoes, but I don’t know where my bra is.

There are mascara stains under my eyes, I see them when I look in the bathroom mirror.

There is a cut on my arm, just under my elbow.

I trace it with my finger.

He’s still asleep. The apartment is a studio, I can see him from the bathroom.

He has the sheet wrapped around him, tangled through his legs. His chest is bare, and it looks like he’s not wearing underwear.

It starts coming back, like vomit rising in the back of my throat. I met him at the bar. He’s Australian. He’s an artist. His name is Joe. He asked me to come to his house party when I got off work, and I came.

I knew what I was getting myself into and I told myself that it was ok. My first time didn’t really count.

I was almost twenty two. I needed to get over it. He was attractive. I needed to have sex.

His friends and I quietly and openly judged each other. He pulled me close to him around 1:30 am. He said we should dance. They were playing that song Frontier Psychiatrist by the Avalanches. The chorus, the words, ‘that boy needs therapy, over over’ while he kissed me. I pulled away, leaned against the open window, half considered jumping out.

He told me he always thought I was hot, hotter than the other girls there, he had to drink a lot to make a move, he said. He thought about it all the time, when he came into the bar, didn’t think he was good enough to try. I tried not to laugh, it was ridiculous. He was beautiful, blonde hair, tribal armband tattoo on perfect tanned biceps. He had no trouble getting women. It sounded like a line, but I wanted it to be true. You’re too suspicious of men, I told myself. He could be a nice guy. He leaned forward, brushed a piece of hair out of my face. You don’t know how hard it is, he said, to find someone you’re attracted to that you also find interesting. You’re an interesting girl, you know. I like your accent. I looked at him, stood there swaying from snorting too much coke, trying to act like I did it all the time, like I was cool.

He took me to his bedroom, kissing me, gently pushing me into the wall behind me. He

is a little rough when he takes off my clothes.

I bit my lip. I like him, I told myself, over and over. I know him, enough anyway. I wanted this.

It started to feel good. I found myself moaning, not wanting it to be over. I felt free for the first time in a long time. I closed my eyes, heart pounding in my ears, blood pumping below my waist, tears falling that I didn’t notice until after. He didn’t notice at all, or didn’t act like he did. That was intense, was all he said when we were finished.

His apartment is on the twelfth floor, the top floor of the building. He has a balcony that’s on the roof, that had space for everyone. He took me downstairs, to the bedroom, closed the door. I didn’t know how to act so I improvised. He asked me to stay the night. I didn’t have enough money to take a cab so I did. This morning, I’ll walk then take the streetcar home.

I find my pants on the floor near foot of the bed, find my jacket on the pile near the door, put my shoes on even though I only have one sock.

He doesn’t wake up as I close the door and a part of me feels relieved. In the living room, there is a massive canvas that all his guests were encouraged to draw on all night. I grab a black marker and write the word vryheid in the corner in capital letters. Freedom. Then underneath it, in smaller letters, I write dankie vir alles. Thanks for everything. I don’t need to sign it.

I find myself smiling as the sun hits my face when I step outside, onto the street.

I didn’t leave him because it hurt, because I was scared he’d do it again, or because I couldn’t defend myself against him.

I didn’t do it because of the anger that twisted his features, that burned in his retinas, that shot with little balls of spit from his mouth, that bent his fingers into a fist when he punched my face.

I didn’t do it because in that moment he didn’t seem human, or because in that moment or the ones leading up to it, he was deaf to anything I said, snarling, jumping down my throat.

I didn’t fight back, because I wanted him to hurt me. I wanted it to be over.

That was the easy part, does that make sense?

I wanted him to hurt me, to do his worst, so that we were both sure it was over. Because for a few weeks, that’s what I’d known without a shadow of a doubt.

I didn’t love him anymore. I wasn’t sure I ever had.

I was just waiting, waiting for the right time to get out.

Waiting for the right moment to re evaluate my life. Trying to figure out what my next move should be, where I should go.

It wasn’t a question of if, but when. Does that sound cold? I know I cared about him, of course. But I’d been slowly detaching for weeks, slowly getting my life back. I knew what he was capable of. He’d hit me before, and I tried, tried so hard to say it was ok, to understand it.

For the first time in a long time the future looked too wide open, too full of possibility.

I didn’t know what to do so for a month I did nothing.

I moved in to a backpackers hostel at Spadina and King to get away from him. I didn’t have a lot of stuff- just clothes and cds, a few books, my camera, canvas, art supplies. I never had any furniture.

I took sleeping pills at night to help me fall asleep.

I used an internet cafe nearby to contact friends. I went to work, but I changed my shift hours so he couldn’t find me. I went for walks by myself, or with Anika, the girl I work with. If we got off work at a decent hour, we’d take the streetcar east on Queen and go for walks down by Cherry Beach.

We make jokes about it- about the water you can’t actually swim in, the lack of waves, the e coli, the tons of sand the bulldozers must have brought in to make it look like a real beach.

It’s beautiful though. We’d take our shoes off, sink our feet into the sand, listen to the water softly hit the rocks, the seagulls cawing.

It’s the closest thing to nature, to the beaches near our hometowns that we can get here. It’s both of our favourite places in this city.

She’d bring vodka or whiskey in a metal flask. She taught me how to drink the hard stuff.

It turns out that she’s been dating our boss, Dez, for almost a year. It was kind of a secret for a long time, then they broke up but now they’re thinking of getting back together.

It’s amazing how little you know sometimes about people you see every day.

Do you trust him, I asked her one night. She looked down at her hands. I guess I have to, she said.

No, but I mean, in your heart, do you really believe he’ll never cheat on you?

Her eyes were focused on the water. Honestly? I don’t know. I want to believe that I can trust him. I really do.

I mean, she looked at me- you remember what he was like when we first started working there? All the girls at work he’d hook up with? I nodded. Yeah, I said, of course. Everyone knew about that. I think girls would come to the bar just try to sleep with him. There were so many of them, and some of them were young, younger than us for sure.

I thought about it for a second. But then he just kind of stopped, I said.

Right, she interrupted, and smiled. Since we got really involved all those months ago.

That, or he got more discreet about it, I said. You have to admit that it’s possible.

I mean, she paused. Of course. Of course it’s possible. She sighed.

I didn’t want to hurt her. But we were friends now. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t being deceived.

It’d be hard for anyone to break a pattern of that many years, I said. I mean, I’m sure he didn’t just start doing that a year ago. I hate to say it, An. He probably did it to other women too.

Her grey eyes looked soft and watery.

I wish I could explain it to you, or even to myself in a way that made sense. It just feels like one of those things I have to do. It’s a risk I have to take. There’s something I feel for him that’s special. Something I’ve never felt before. I went through this terrible thing, this attack that took me out of myself for so long. I was so afraid of everything, especially of guys. Something in my gut told me it was ok to trust him. So I did. That has to count for something right? There’s something unique about the way we connect, she said. There’s something comfortable about it, I can talk to him in a way I’ve never been able to talk to anyone else. I can be myself, and it’s ok.

Do you know what I mean, she asked me. I did, but I didn’t say anything.

She continued. It’s worth it to hope against hope sometimes, you know? If I’m right, if he’s trustworthy, he could be the love of my life. If I’m wrong, and he cheats on me, at least I’ll know I tried. I really love him, Nicki- I have to try.

I held her hands as they shook. She was so brave.

I mean, I’ll only know if I survive jumping off the cliff if I actually jump, right? And that’s the thing Nicki, that’s the thing I realized after all this time apart. Maybe I will get hurt, but I’m not going to die.

Maybe it won’t work out, but at least I won’t have missed out on anything. I’m done living my life in fear of everything bad. It doesn’t protect you. It just stops you from living.

I told her how much I admired her.

She laughed. You could do it, too, she said. I hadn’t told her about Nir yet, and I didn’t want to until I spoke to him. When I got home that night I used the internet cafe to email him.

I didn’t have a subject line, and just wrote one line in the body. Ani Mitgaga’at eilecha. I wrote. I miss you. He wrote back two hours later, just one line.

Gam Ani, it said. Me too.

We’re lying in bed. What’s it like, I ask him, where you’re from? It’s nice, he says. It’s got a lot of bars.

I smile. Like CDRR? He laughs. No, not as cool. He runs his fingers along my stomach. The heat is on full blast in the apartment, and it’s as hot as Cape Town in February. I can’t stop sweating. I’m just wearing my bra and underwear. I pull off his t shirt so he’s just wearing white boxer briefs. I’m lying on his chest.

I don’t know, he says. It’s nice. We a couple of soccer stadiums, and our team is pretty good.

I mean, some people in Brazil call us zebras, but I don’t know, we’ve been doing really well these last few seasons. Zebras, I ask. Oh, yeah. It’s what we call a team that we’re sure is going to lose. Deu zebra.

I have no idea why, actually. I laugh. I like it when you speak Portuguese, I tell him. It’s kind of hot.

He kisses me. Você é belo e sexy, he says. You’re beautiful and sexy. I try to repeat the words, the sounds, try to look him in the eye, because he is both of those things.

That’s good, he says. That’s really good. He kisses my neck.

No, tell me more about your city, I say. We have to have conversations, sometimes, I tell him. I want to really get to know you.

He grins. Ok, conversation first, then sex. I laugh, and nod.

Ok, he says. We have a lot of universities and parks. There’s a national park not too far away called Mata do Jambreiro. It’s one of my favourite places in the world. You drive through it. It’s the biggest forest I’ve ever seen, full of Rosewood and Cedar trees, I used to like to roll the windows down, and just sniff. It smelled like perfume. There were squirrels and monkeys swinging from trees. I saw an anteater there once, have you ever seen one in real life?

I try to think if I have.

They really snort ants, tons of them at once, like the most hardcore cokeheads I’ve ever seen. It’s so funny. My mom and dad used to take us there when we were little kids. I wish you could see it, he says. His tone is dreamy. I nod. Me too, I say.

My city’s surrounded by mountains on all sides. It’s kind of weird for me, how flat Toronto is, you know? Yeah, I say. I do know. The layout of this city is too clean and easy, it’s boring. All you have to do is memorize the names of intersections and you never get lost. He nods. Which is good, if you’re afraid of getting lost, like me. I look up at him and grin. Seriously? You’re afraid of getting lost?

He sighs. Ok. I got lost in a mall once, when I was a kid. It was like, childhood trauma or something.

I start to laugh, then realize he’s serious. What, it was scary, he says, and I touch his face. How old were you, I ask? Five, he says, staring off, away from me. It took my mom two hours to find me, and the first thing she did was slap me. I look up at him, take his hand. Shame, skat, I say.

He asks me what skat means, and I tell him it’s what you call someone you care about, like sweetheart or honey. I like it, he says.

I feel shy all of a sudden, so I change the subject.

Cape Town’s got a lot of mountains too. I tell him about Table Mountain, how deeply carved the stone is, how the top is so flat you could eat on it, how on overcast days the white clouds swirl over, like a table cloth. I tell him about the game reserves, how you can see lions and their cubs up close. I tell him about Kloof St, the main street downtown, that’s full of boutiques bursting with local designer stuff, and little restaurants, and bars, so many bars. I tell him about Evol, the dance club on Hope Street I used to go to with my sister that played indie rock and alternative stuff. I tell him how the regulars dress there, I describe the skin tight jeans, the thick eye liner. I never felt cool enough when I went, so I stopped. I told him about playing pool with my friends at Stones, how no one ever asked you for ID if you were a girl. I told him about the bergies, the homeless people who sit around, waiting to steal your cigarettes out of your hands, always asking me for money I never had. I smile. I love how you always try to give money to homeless people, I tell him. The other night, we were walking down the street, and he stopped and gave a guy ten dollars. He spent ten minutes listening to the guy rant, before he realized we had to go.

I pull myself up, closer to him, trace his heart with my fingertips. He doesn’t know how kind he is.

I tell him about the beach, how clear and salty the water was, how deep the green or blue, how some had the Atlantic and some had the Indian ocean, how cold the Atlantic was. I told him how my friends and I would go at night, take a bottle of red wine and sit talking, on the sand. I told him about fire throwing shows that went on one of the beaches at night, how magical it felt to watch them when you were a little drunk, how the oranges and reds blurred into the black sky, into the tiny glittering stars.

I tell him about the crime, the men who stand around waiting to rob people who use the ATM near the supermarket near my old house. I tell him how many security systems we had, how we had walls and barbed wire and a dog, how it wasn’t enough. I don’t realize it but I’m crying. I tell him how much I miss my sister, my mother, how I never talk to my dad, and when I do, he’s vacant, vague. I tell him how I feel like I’ve lost him too. I miss my old life sometimes, I find myself saying. I miss what it was, what it could’ve been. I miss being able to dance, knowing what my future was going to be, knowing exactly what I was good at. I miss feeling like a kid, feeling like I didn’t have to be responsible for every choice and decision I made. I miss having a home. He puts both arms around me, he’s holding me close. Sometimes I wish you could protect me if I go back, I tell him. I’m too afraid to go alone. But I miss it.

I will, he tells me, over and over, stroking my hair, til I fall asleep.

He has a way, of making me feel like I’m not alone, even when I’m sure I am.

Goodnight skat, he says, before I drift off.

He makes me feel like he’s really with me. He makes me feel like I can trust him.

Dr Dali surprised her by rigging her spacesuit to interface with the old tape walkman she carried around everywhere. When she found out that she was able to play tapes in space and adjust the controls through her wrist module, she ascended to a new plateau of happiness and self-sufficiency, which she had not dreamed possible. Although she was unable to change tapes whilst actually inside the suit, it was enough for her just to be able to listen to music in outer space. They had finally let Devoid out, after attaching a long leash to it. The leash, which was a tacky fuchsia and covered in cartoon bones, turned into a length of junkyard chain a hundred meters long. The heavy chain ended in a stout ring, sunk into the walls outside the control booth. The contraption enabled the entire temple to be trawled along by the pint-sized god, like some gargantuan carnival balloon. Devoid was out on the road of souls, running to the moon, happy as a clam and couldn’t care less what was attached to its neck. The ghosts beneath held each other tirelessly by their wrists and ankles, watching as the god scampered from body to body like a household cat, heading unerringly for the great, golden coin which hung suspended in the darkness ahead. Taty was skipping along, some distance behind her celestial pet, listening to Scott Mackenzie’s ‘San Francisco’ and belting out the chorus’s in a cheerful little monotone, as she did everyday now. The ghostly humanoid hammock stretched out before them, still and strange, receding to the faraway lunar satellite while each ghost wordlessly performed its service to the pedestrians. Once traversed, the ghosts would wait until the pair had reached the center of their highway. They would then unclasp their spectral hands and flit, fast as swallows, toward the distant head of the highway. There they would rejoin one another, as before, perpetuating the distance, reaching ever outward toward the moon. Ghostly forms were wisping overhead and underfoot constantly, shooting like forlorn comets down the highway, while Taty sang along and Devoid pounced energetically onward. At one point Taty stopped, balancing on the thigh of a jungle warrior, looking back at the great beehive of the castle. The flurry of ghosts above and below dwindled and then ceased altogether, as the chorus of suspension waited for her to continue. She was gazing back at the large bubble windows of the control booth, where she could just make out Dr Dali at his wall of monitors. Number Nun hovered beside him, now complete with long flesh-tone legs and arms. They both noticed her watching and waved. She lifted her arm and waved back across the gulf– a dysfunctional nuclear family photograph, she thought in amusement.

“Hi Mom! Hi Dad!” she cackled to herself.

She returned to the activity of bouncing dreamily from body to body and the flow of ghosts resumed overhead, figures flashing ever onward, toward that faraway apex point. Some instinct made her stop again after a few meters though, and she realized that she was standing atop the chest of Alphonse Guava. He lay, spread-eagled beneath her, regarding her with a world-weary expression upon his translucent face. She switched off the tape with trembling fingers and began to rewind it, gazing down at his almond eyes with a surge of mixed emotions. The entire universe was behind him and below her boots, but somehow the vista gave her a peculiar sense of smallness. He said something then and she heard the words in her head - a far off voice, speaking in a locked room, a tiny room, in the deepest basement of a haunted castle.

“I see said the blind man. How can it be? My eyes are blind but I can see…”

She smiled softly down at the ghost of the imp while he sort of, shrugged casually, as though to say ‘c’est la vie’. After a moment or two, she stepped lightly off his chest, continuing after the receding god with a strange, new sense of liberation. She pressed play as she glided from shape to shape, starting the song from the beginning again.

FIN

My parents called me today from Israel to tell me that my sister is having a baby.

She’s four years younger than me and has been married for less than a year.

The conversation is short, and typical. My dad talks for two minutes, asks me how I am, if I’m making enough money, what my plans are. My mom starts out friendly but soon is angry, hyperventilates, cries and screams. I do not want to go back for the birth, or if it’s a boy, for the bris.

I do not want to hear how superior my sister is to me in every way. I do not want anything to do with any of it.

If I had to describe each of my parents in one word, I would say that my dad is distant and my mom is hysterical.

Both of them are controlling and rigid in their views.

My parents owned the apartment I grew up in, which in Israel, where everyone is in the red, is a big deal. Our apartment was a penthouse. It was so huge it took up half a floor, despite the fact that we were only four people. It could’ve comfortably housed at least eight.

Our balcony looped all the way around our apartment, and in the summer, when it was thirty five or thirty seven degrees during the day, and about thirty at night, I’d fall asleep on one of our loungers, surrounded by white marble floors and walls, staring out at the grass and trees behind the parking lot below, the sounds of neighbours talking, stray cats hissing. We had a stray cat problem on our street, even by Israeli standards. An old man in my building, he must have at least eighty, shrivelled hanging skin on his face, narrow brown eyes, thin strands of remaining grey hair, only two or three visible teeth, wizened hands. He used to collect fish heads, scraps of bread, half containers of yogurt or milk, and he’d feed them every single day at 3:00. Sometimes on Fridays he’d buy them discount cat food at the supermarket on the corner of our street. We had at least twenty of them- fat ginger ones, thin calicos, mangy matted tabbies, ones that were missing eyes, or parts of paws, scratched to shit for stepping on other cat’s territory or trying to eat its food. They slept on or under people’s cars, staring at you lazily in the sun, glaring when you make eye contact, daring you to kick them off. My dad hated them- a cat on his windshield in the mornings made him fly into a rage.

Neither of my parents cared much for animals. There’s a home video of my dad kicking someone in the family’s dog as he walked down the aisle at a wedding. My mom didn’t want anything that would make the house dirty- I have enough to do as it is, she would always tell us. Ein Li Coah, she would say, I don’t have the strength.

Our apartment was once actually two apartments- my parents bought them both, knocked one down and combined them. My dad made his fortune in what we call High Tech in Israel, but what everyone else in the world calls I.T. He designed software, and created a mapping system for the army to use that they say revolutionized their ability to do tracking. Not only did it give him a reputation for being a genius, it gave him a salary and a title to match, as he loves to tell people. Now he’s a boss, telling programmers what to do. He works for Amdocs, a huge company on the border of my town and the next city. He still works at least sixty hours a week, so even when I lived at home, I hardly ever saw him.

My mom works part time in Ramat Hasharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, as a florist. She likes exotic flowers, oranges and reds and purples, shipped in from outside of Israel, the kind that cost a fortune. Israeli’s pride themselves on getting a good deal, so it’s a hard sell. She comes home frustrated and complaining, picking me apart, yelling, slamming things. On her days off, she cries and had panic attacks.

My mom does not believe in long term therapy, on in taking medication.

I’ve given up trying to help her but I’ve also given up on hearing what a disappointment I am.

My sister Noa is twenty. Her husband, Reuven, is a rabbi. They live in B’nei Brak, a city full of people so Orthodox they seem Amish.

My parents are modern orthodox, but they’re at least five rungs closer to heaven on the ladder.

I mean, they keep the Sabbath, more or less, and they keep to the laws of being kosher, at least when they’re eating at home. They dress like regular people too. My mom wears jeans, my dad wears shorts and t shirts, even to work. Israel’s pretty casual compared to Canada.

My sister wears a wig to cover her hair, floor length denim skirts and long sleeved shirts even in the summer. She won’t sit alone in a room with a man who isn’t her husband, or see a male doctor or dentist, or shake hands or touch any other man. When they go on vacation, he goes to men’s only, and she goes to women’s only beaches so they won’t be exposed to anyone of the opposite sex. When she has her period, she’s not allowed to touch her husband in any way, not even accidentally, like if she brushes his arm when she passes him the milk at breakfast. They’re not even allowed to sleep in the same bed at that time, and she has to take a ritual bath once a month, called a Mikvah, to clean herself. I didn’t want to get involved, I didn’t want to say anything, but how could I not feel angry when she told me about it and then asked me what I thought? God wants you to hate your body, I asked her. God wants you to feel uncomfortable and unclean during a time that’s totally natural? God wants you to be a fucking leper?

She shook her head at me. You don’t understand, she said, looking away, and I guess I don’t.

I guess I don’t even want to.

Her husband, who walks around in a black coat, white shirt, black pants, and a long beard every day, aside from working in the synagogue, doing Rabbi stuff on Friday nights and Saturdays, professionally studies the old testament. He goes to a yeshiva, a place where holy men get together to sit and study the Torah up close, all day. Women can’t even go inside.

My dad used to call guys like him a drain on our economy- he’d get so angry, claiming his taxes were being spent on supporting people who were too lazy to get real jobs. His favourite example was Rashi, a famous Rabbi in Jewish history who wrote biblical commentary. Even he had a job as a winemaker, he’d snap, banging his hands down on the table as he talked.

Now all he can do is sing Reuven’s praises. He’s happy to support them, he says. They’re performing a mitzvah, a holy deed. They are continuing the Jewish race, protecting Israelis by increasing our population. Gotta keep our numbers up, he says, and he’s serious.

How do you argue with that kind of logic? You can’t. I’d lose, so I don’t even bother.

Reuven didn’t have to go to the army, because yeshiva guys like him often get a free pass. Neither did my sister, who did national service, where she volunteered at a hospital in Jerusalem for a year instead.

I don’t bother to give my opinion on the unfairness of that either. I keep it to myself, try not to think about it in case it actually kills me.

I started breaking the laws of Shabbat, the Sabbath, when I was fourteen. I’d skip Friday night dinners to go to dance parties in Tel Aviv, sneak out by saying I was staying over at a friend’s, someone who lived down the street. When I got my first car, before the army, when I was eighteen, I’d have to park it around the corner on Friday nights or Saturdays so they’d think I walked home from wherever I came from. According to the Sabbath laws, any work activity, including driving, was strictly forbidden.

I broke the rules, but I started out small. The first time I did it, I remember expecting a bolt of lightning to shoot out of the sky and kill me, and then, when it didn’t, I wanted to test it. I wanted to see how far I could go before God or my parents would smite me, wanted to see how hard I could push. There was no joy in my house growing up and I was determined to find some, somewhere. I’d stumble in on a Friday night, hair smelling like weed, jacket or t shirt like cigarette smoke, lips and tongue red wine soaked.

Nothing bad ever really happened. I got good at tuning out the yelling.

Satlan, my sister used to hiss at me, when I passed her door. Stoner.

My sister never rebelled, not even once. She never wanted to be anything except a more extreme version of what my parents wanted her to be.

I got my first tattoo after the army. It’s a kivsa shchora, a black sheep, on my right hip. I try to wear it proudly. My first boyfriend came with me to get it. He let me squeeze his hand when the needle went in, and kick his foot every time I thought the pain would kill me. I didn’t bruise him though. I didn’t leave a mark. After we broke up I backpacked through Europe for eight months, and ended up in the UK. I was staying with an Israeli friend in a council flat, living on 10 pence instant noodles when my dad called. He offered to pay for a ticket home, and when I said no, he offered to send me to Toronto, to stay with a cousin of his. He thought his cousins could set me straight, but I only lasted two months at Bathurst and Lawrence before moving to Queen St. I didn’t know a place could have so much personality- from the artists to the street punks who offer to squeegee your car, to the wooden poles covered with thousands of stapled flyers of underground bands, to the musicians, to the Saturday street performers, bizarro puppets and mimes, to the crystal ball and palm readers to street painters selling their art on the sidewalks to the record stores and tourists and teenage kids seeing downtown for the first time- I had no idea one street could be so full of arts and culture and individuality. I’ve always loved it here.

From the moment I saw it for the first time, I knew I’d finally found it. I was home.

Dr Dali sat buckled into his pilot’s chair. He was wearing his Captain Nemo uniform and consulting various holographic schematics of the planet below. He had used the rocket thrusters affixed to the outer walls to take them out of their stationary orbit and into the area above one of the poles. Gradients flickered onscreen, tracking the massive structure as it crawled slowly through the glowing void. A green target light pulsed on one of the maps and a small counter ticked down the diminishing distance between it and the yellow blip of the flying temple. When the lights had aligned, Dr Dali pulled down the brass horn of the intercom.

“Are you in position?” he asked.

Taty perked up when she heard and leaned over to the button console intercom of the shower sphere.

“Aye aye Captain!” she shouted with enthusiasm.

She was in her spacesuit, minus helmet and gauntlets, hovering over the red button and waiting for the command to push it. The Doctor could have of course activated the mechanism from his control booth, but recognized that Taty would need to play some vital part in the rescue operation to avoid getting in the way. To avoid tantrums, he assigned her the role for which she had been rehearsing all month: that of button pusher. Needless to say, she was pleased as punch with her job description.

“Wait for my signal,” his voice boomed back commandingly.

“Roger!” she shouted excitedly.

Back in the command booth, he raised the heavily accessorized walkie-talkie to his cubist face and cleared his multi-form throat.

“Calling Number Nun,” he radioed.

Number Nun, who was adrift in a haunting seascape of shattered ice, received something of a fright at the sound of the strange voice in her head.

“Who is this?” she demanded. “What have you done with the girl?”

“This is Doctor Dali, perhaps you have heard of me? In any case, I can assure you that I have done nothing sinister to the young lady.”

“You are the one responsible for the destruction of all those sinners aren’t you?”

“Why, yes I am as a matter of fact.”

Number Nun nodded to herself, processing this information.

“A most effective purging,” she conceded.

“A compliment?”

“My morality circuitry is still in debate.”

“Well, I’ll just have to do something about that circuitry. Forgive my curtness, but the young lady has asked that I bring you aboard. Are you in favour?”

“Thank you for the invitation. That would be lovely, yes.”

“Top notch. Look over to your right would you…”

Number Nun turned her sensor sweep starboard and detected the enormous tube falling from the skies. It was some miles distant and fell like a great silver snake, crashing into the distant waters. She observed as it began to approach at great speed, trawling through the air like a badly scribbled ballpoint line. Icebergs battered against the machine, as its persistent grinding grew steadily louder. She zoomed in closer to find that the head was dragging some meters above the water, sucking up sea spray. Its suction tube hung too high to draw in water and the waves became distorted into vortices as it passed.

“I have your device in my sights,” she reported.

“As an Excelsior Missionary Model, I assume that you come equipped with standard retractable chest-mounted catch-line?” Dr Dali enquired.

“Of course.”

“Well then, fire your line when the suction device is within range and catch a ride up the tube. I have deactivated the post-atmospheric heating coils, so it should be a relatively smooth trip.”

Ice fractured between the glass breasts of Number Nun. A portal along her sternum opened as a tiny, transparent torpedo extruded, protected by a sliver of casing.

“See you on the other side Dr Dali,” she signed off, readying herself.

The pipe was by now almost upon her, towering into the turbulent sky like the trunk of some endless elephant. She fired her torpedo at the appropriate moment and watched as a glassy line unspooled from her inner core like a glistening spider’s web. It pierced the weathered, metal casing of the vacuum pump at an oblique angle and extruded grappling claws, which held fast. She locked the spool and was then instantly dredged from the surge. Seaweed trailed from her flying form like ragged wings, as she curved above the churning water, smacking through the tops of waves. The pulled in the line and managed to maneuver herself perfectly into the yawning mouth of the encrusted pipe. She disengaged the torpedo head as the powerful inrush caught her, sucking her quickly up the undulating subway to the sky. Above her the dark pipe receded like an endless, flexible train tunnel which whipped about with violent grace. She rode the artificial wind with a rather smug look upon her face, almost as if she had known all along that something like this would happen.

When Dr Dali was certain that the android Madonna was in the tube, he pulled down the tube and sent word to Taty.

“Alright, you can retract it,” he called. “I’ll keep the suction going till she’s aboard.”

Taty slammed the red button in triumph, knocking herself horizontal with the force of the blow.

“You can go meet her in the chamber I showed you on the map,” Dr Dali sad, signing off.

Taty squealed with delight, pulling on her helmet and gauntlets before launching herself up the corridor. She flustered maniacally through the lounge and control booth, rushing out of the airlock before the Doctor had time to turn. She purged the passage and entered the icicle blasted passages of the haunted castle in a fizz of joy. Light strips along her gauntlets, helm and chest console illuminated her like a deep-sea jellyfish, while she passed through the massive honeycomb of desolation, dodging tables, chairs and other weightless obstacles. When she finally emerged into the sunken lot, the pump site was gushing out a majestic plume of frozen air. This geyser fluffed out into the yawning, floodlit space in a ceaseless detonation of glittery vapour crystals. The pipe was evidently still in the process of clearing the atmosphere and frozen gasses gushed steadily, knocking about the weighty boulders of sea ice as though they were nothing more than soap bubbles. Taty soared down from the ceiling trap and swirled happily into the twinkling mist, searching this way and that for a sign of her long lost friend. The silver plume abruptly died as the pipe left the atmosphere, venting its last dregs of shimmering effluvium into the clutter of ice. When the torso of Number Nun eventually sailed from the hole, trailing fluid dynamics and frozen seaweed, Taty was waiting above like a candy coloured angel. She caught the limbless torso of the robot and hugged her helmet against the translucent collarbone as they both twirled into a spin, pin-balling off the various glacial masses. Number Nun scanned for frequency and all of a sudden could hear Taty crying out in her head.

“Mother Superior!” she was shouting, clinging to the nun as though she were the raft of salvation itself.

“Oh Childbride,” Number Nun tut-tutted down at her with a smile. “No need for formalities.”

“I’m so happy now,” Taty sobbed, as they spun slower and slower, drifting through the sparkling fields and ice blocks, finally en-route to the moon.

Dr Dali was at his monitors, watching images of the pair turning in the mist. He switched camera angles, as though at the ballet, before finally losing interest. He flicked a switch and killed the engines of the suction device, steepling his white gloves in deep thought. He turned to Devoid who was playing with a bundle of wires.

“We have plenty of sex-droids down in storage which I can cannibalize for parts,” he mused rhetorically to the god. “Get some arms and legs for this nun.”

Devoid finally managed to un-snag the wires and a series of monitors went blank. It twittered to itself, clawing away at something else, utterly oblivious to the Doctor’s prattling. Dr Dali turned happily to the little god and regarded it with academic seriousness.

“Soon we will let you out my little friend,” he confided grandly. “Soon you will be fulfilling your great and sacred quest – all those centuries you waited in the dark! Soon it will all be over…”

Devoid fell off the table, fighting with a paper clip.

Our next door neighbour is from Nova Scotia. I thought I could hear it when she talked, the way she said somewheres, as in, if you’ve got somewheres else to be, the way she said down home about her hometown. Where you from, I finally asked her this morning. Bridgewater, she said, you know, Lunenburg County. No shit, I said. Beautiful up there. She nodded.

My mom is crazy about the South Shore. She always wanted to get rich and have a cottage up on Mahone Bay. Gorgeous. Yeah, she said, it really is. Boring though, when you’re a teenager.

Yeah, I hear that, I said. I’m from the Valley, from Kentville, in King’s County. Oh I know Kentville, she said. I love the Apple Blossom Festival. You sound like a tourist, I teased her. What are you, a fan of the parade or something? I always hated that stuff growing up, so cheesy. She slapped my arm, but gently. Yeah, but it’s fun. The Valley is beautiful in the fall. Yeah, I guess so, I said.

Holy Shit, you know, I think you’re the first person I’ve met out here from home. She smiled. You too.

She had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen. She kind of looked like she was from the country. She was curvy, with big blue eyes and blond hair. She had big breasts and wore a tight shirt and jean shirts that looked like cut offs, all ripped and worn. She kind of looked like a sexy farmer’s daughter or something, the kind of girl I never would’ve looked at twice growing up, who suddenly seemed so hot to me right then. I leaned in towards her. She had shiny lip glossy lips.

I gotta go soon, she said. My husband is picking me up soon.

Husband? My voice actually squeaked a little as I said the word.

Yeah. I met him when I was living out west, in Calgary. He’s from Ontario. He wanted to try our luck in an even bigger city. I hate it here.

I sighed. Me too, I find myself saying. I really hate it here sometimes too.

Is the girl you live with, the one with the flowing skirts, your wife?

I shuddered. No, God, no, I said, before I could stop myself.

She laughed. She touched the side of my face with her rough fingers. You’ll meet the right person someday, she said.

Yeah, I said to her, thanks. Nice talking to you.

The thing is, I do love Nicki. But can you really love someone you’re always fighting with, that’s always infuriating you, and driving you crazy?

I want to tell her about my past so badly, want to tell her what happened, how the beat the shit out of a guy I barely knew, how I broke his back and put him in a chair, and ruined his life. I want to tell her how I wake up sweating at night about it, ten years later. I want to tell her how badly I want it to be ok, how I want the guy to forgive me, even though he shouldn’t, how I want to forgive myself most of all.

I want to tell her how I can’t travel with her, like she wants. She talks about travel all the time, and I can’t leave the country. Sometimes, when things are good, I want to take her back home with me,

to see my town, and the other towns around it. I want to show her where I came from, how beautiful it is. I want to show her everything, and really tell her the stuff that matters about me.

I miss Nova Scotia really bad sometimes, the open spaces, the pines and spruces, the ocean.

I miss seeing apples in the fall, rows of trees with tiny flashes of red and yellow peeking through leaves. I miss the glacial beauty in winter- frozen streams and brooks with ice frozen in cracked ovals that looks like agate. Even the animals are in your face in Toronto- the raccoons are huge and aggressive, totally not afraid of you. They look you in the eye and hiss, like they know they’re the ones in control. It’s fucked up, I’ve never seen anything like it. The squirrels are big and black or grey, and mangy.

I miss camping and seeing water everywhere I look and knowing where I’m going all the time, when I drive.

There’s things I love about Toronto-the way everything is open twenty four hours, the way if there’s anything you want in the world, you can find it, the way you can just grab a cab or buy a cd or dvd or jewellery or clothes or anything off the street, from some vendor who’s always there, the way everything is cheaper here. In so many ways, life is easier and more exciting.

But if I’m honest, what I like the most about Toronto is the anonymity. I love the way people don’t know me here, I love the fact that I can walk down the street or into my building or onto the subway with no one hassling me, or thinking I’m being rude for not making eye contact or saying hi. I like that I do whatever I feel like doing here- that I can be whoever I want, and no one really cares.

That’s the hardest part about being with Nicki- she always wants to know what I think or feel about everything- she wants to know me, things about me that I don’t feel comfortable or just don’t feel like sharing. I want to be with her, but I want to be able to take my space when I feel like it. She doesn’t know it, but I’m doing it to protect her. I know her, and there’s no way she’d be able to deal with what I’d have to tell her. She doesn’t know it, but I’m doing it for her own good, for both of our good.

It’s better this way, trust me. In every way, it’s easier.