Why You Were Taken

12. Corpse Fingers Stroke Her Neck

Johannesburg, 2021

Kirsten watches Keke pull into her building's entrance in a wide arc and is reminded why she has so many suitors of both genders: her punk hairstyles, roaring bike, deep, easy laugh and fuck-you fashion. It's a hot little package.

'Sorry I'm late,' she says. She deflates her helmet and hugs Kirsten. She smells like leather and something more feminine. Hair product? Little violet shiny balls float in the air around them.

'No problem. It's probably my punctuality karma finally burning my ass.' Kirsten had, herself, been twenty minutes late.

'There was a breaking story and I was five minutes away so I had to pop in.'

'Anything interesting?'

'Not really. Just a little shoot-out between the AfriNazis and the Panthers. Some scratches, some crocodile tears, no fatalities.'

'Oh my God, racism. It's so 2016.'

The two groups were extreme right and left wings, white and black respectively. No one took them too seriously; in a nation that is now indifferent to skin colour, their bizarre antics leave everyone shaking their frowns.

'Just some punks looking for an excuse to spill blood.'

'Too many video games.'

'I blame Hip Hop. No, marabi.'

'I blame sugar. And processed food.'

'Hyperconnectivity.'

'The Net.'

'GMO produce.'

'ADHD.'

'Neglectful parental units.'

'Lack of corporal punishment in schools.'

'Boredom. There's nothing to rebel against anymore! We're a nanny state and it's a very gentle, easy-going nanny, with no tattoos or inappropriate piercings.'

'Although she must have a very high libido.'

'Ha!' laughs Keke, 'This nanny likes to screw!'

'And get screwed,' adds Kirsten. 'It's a mutual arrangement. And also: polyamorous.'

'Hey,' says Keke. 'Don't knock polyamory. It's the way of the future.'

Inside Kekeletso's Braamfontein apartment, the door automatically locks behind them.

'Too early for wine?' asks Keke, looking at the clock on the wall. 12:55. A giant Elvis Presley poster looks down at them.

'I don't understand the question,' says Kirsten.

Keke smiles and grabs a bottle of Coffeeberry Verdant-Pino. Two glasses. Kirsten instinctively reaches for a nearby empty Tethys bottle, fills it up with grey water from the waterbank (Liquid Smoke), and goes around watering Keke's sad-looking houseplants. Using her father's pocketknife, which she now always keeps handy, she snips a few dead leaves off the aspidistra on the lounge coffee table and sends them down the communal compost chute.

'It's not that I don't love them, you know.' (That's what she always says.) 'It's just that I'm never home.'

After binning a long-dead and crumbling plant a year before, Kirsten had suggested keeping succulents instead as they wouldn't need as much care, but Keke said she had read somewhere that thorns were bad for your sex life. 'Feng Shui or some shit. What is it with you and plants, anyway?'