The Handler - Muse
The news just kept getting worse. The ambulance only managed to come after about 15 minutes. 15 minutes. She literally could have died; she had almost did in fact.
She'd hit her head pretty hard and had fallen rather awkwardly. The regular Toni would have been unfazed by the fall, but she wasn't the regular Toni, she was the pregnant Toni.
She had a concussion, and slipped off into a coma where she spent three days asleep. She lost the baby. It was a pity too. The baby had really grown on her. She'd even named the baby; baby Sid, short for Sydney. She never intended to find out the sex of the baby so she gave the baby a unisex name.
I remembered jokingly teasing her that the baby deserved a more 'African' sounding name. She didn't even give me a second glance.
She gave me some advice, to go to a party or do something to make me forget about her. She didn't want me to spend all my time thinking about her in the hospital, she didn't even want to think about it. Suddenly it was her turn to spend an afternoon coaxing me to do something. She coaxed me up until visiting hours were over and wouldn't let me leave until I promised her I'd do something. Something to get her off my mind at her request.
So I went to one of Siba's parties. It wasn't hard to find them; they were thrown weekly, at the same time, in the same place. I didn't feel like getting dressed or going home, so I took a bus straight from the hospital to the party. Because of peak hours and the fact that the buses are unreliable, it took me about two hours to actually get there.
I had to walk about thirty minutes until I got to the house, even if I hadn't known the address it was obvious which house was his. All the cars were parked outside a large house at the end of the street. The lawn was littered with people already drunk off their ass at only seven in the evening.
But there was something different about the house this time. It was no longer a house party. I had to pay to get in, it wasn't much, R50, but it didn't exactly break the bank. On the bright side, paying that R50 also meant that I got about five shots for free.
The interior was just as I'd remembered, dark and filled with bodies grinding on each other, trance playing in the background and the whiff of weed in the air. The party brought back unpleasant memories, but it had taken Toni off my mind and that was the whole reason why I was there.
The noise was at an all time high. The party was pumping, but all I wanted to do was sit down and rest. I couldn't find a chair for sometime so when I did I was determined not to get up unless I needed to relieve myself. I probably wouldn't have used the toilets in the house anyways, they were probably teeming with STDs and I wasn't going to be a virgin with an STD.
After sitting for a while I saw a large figure come towards the place I'd been sitting. I couldn't see who it was so I didn't react, but the moment he sat down I realized exactly who it was.
I'd been forced to sit with Alec and I really couldn't have escaped because I had nowhere to go. I was a little surprised that I hadn't recognised him, but he had me? Of course he had, because he looked over at me and smirked. Something told me he knew who I was, but he wasn't drunk anymore.
He'd spotted me alright which was unusual. I had a natural gift for hiding and the chair wasn't exactly in plain view. I was small and didn't draw much attention to myself and it was dark. I couldn't see anyone else, so I just assumed that that was the case for everyone else.
He sat down and was noticeably definitely sober, more than usual. I really couldn't say that though, I barely knew him. I'd only met him once, but that one time he was stone cold drunk and deprived.
