Why You Were Taken

SHINING & SLIPPERY WITH SWEAT ₁₀

Johannesburg, 2021

Seth saunters into the Yellow printer room.

‘Oh, hi Fiona,’ he smiles at the curly-haired woman. He acts surprised, as if he didn’t know she was in there. She blushes at him knowing her name. He brushes skilfully past her.

‘Hi,’ she smiles, holding her locket to her lips, warming the silver with her breath. They both watch the printer for a few seconds, as if willing it to print faster, but in fact both wanting it to take its time. She unconsciously pumps her high heels up and down, as if warming up for a race.

‘Our printer’s being repaired,’ he says. ‘It’s a dinosaur of a thing: still uses toner. That’s why I’m in Yellow.’

‘Okey-dokey,’ she says, her mind scrabbling desperately for something interesting/intriguing/funny to say. ‘Bummer.’

Fail. She has to stop herself from facepalming.

‘Not all bad, though,’ he says, ‘getting to see you.’

She guffaws. After a while she says: ‘This won’t do, you know,’ hand on hip. ‘I know what you’re trying to do.’ Her freckles fade against the rose of her cheeks.

‘Really?’ he says, ‘and what is that?’

‘Trying to find out Yellow’s secrets.’

He moves closer to her.

‘Ah, so you do have secrets.’

‘We do,’ she says, ‘and we’re going to win this quarter.’ Her large breasts rise and fall under her unfashionable paisley blouse.

‘You don’t have a chance,’ he says, rubbing his hands together. ‘Red is so far ahead, there’s no way Yellow can catch up.’

‘But you’re wrong,’ she says in mock-seriousness. ‘We were just saving ourselves. We’ve got something massive planned. It’ll sell thousands of units.’

‘It’ll need to,’ says Seth. The printer stops then, as if to flag the end of their conversation. She pulls herself away, gathering up the A4 prints and holds them to her chest, pretending they are top-secret documents, even though they are just her latest holiday snaps: Bali. She backs – grudgingly – away.

‘Are you coming to the teambuilding on Friday?’ she asks. ‘I heard that we’re going to go on a 4D-maze tetrick treasure hunt.’

I’d rather stick a fork in my eye, he thinks.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Well, if you’re going.’

‘Yes!’ she fizzes. ‘Yes, I’m going.’

‘Then I’ll be there,’ he says.

‘Great,’ she says.

‘Great,’ he says, smiling, almost winking.

He turns to face the printer and presses PRINT on his Tile. The printer hums, then starts spitting out pages. She gives him a royal wave and walks away. He waits for a few moments, reading the moronic posters on the wall, then heads back to his office, leaving the blank pages in the printer tray.

Betty checks the locks on her door for the fifth time. She knows they’re locked, but checking them makes her feel safer. She has to do things that make her feel safer.

She sits in front of her blank homescreen but realises the remote isn’t working. She shakes the remote around a little, tries again. Then she opens up the back and makes sure the batteries are in place. Takes them out, puts them back in. Still the glass stays clear. Betty gets up to check its connections and sees that it’s unplugged. She picks up the plug and moves it towards the wall but stops when she reads an orange sticker covering the electricity outlet and switch: ‘Don’t watch TV.’ It’s in her handwriting.

Yes, she remembers, television is not good for me. She should really get rid of the screen, but it was expensive and she abhors waste. The voices are the reason she can’t watch any more. They tell her to do things. Soap opera stars, talk show hosts, newsreaders. They tell her that creeps are trying to kill her, blow up her building, decimate the country. They make her write letters to people, telling them that they are in danger. Politicians, local celebrities, airlines.

The police have been here before. They were rough until she showed them the doctor’s note she keeps in her bra. The paper is leathery, now. The voices speak directly to her. ‘Barbara,’ (for they had recently taken to calling her Barbara), ‘the next bus you take will be wired with a car-bomb with your name on it.’ That’s when she had stopped taking the bus. The communal taxi and individual cab drivers were also not to be trusted. They could take you anywhere and you’d never be seen again.

Disappear, she clicks her fingers, just like that. Click, click. She had started walking, then running everywhere. She’d get to the grind shining and slippery with sweat. She was losing a lot of weight. The running did it.

Also, food was a problem. She couldn’t run with all her groceries so she has to shop every day. She didn’t like shopping: too many people. Her psychologist said to try online shopping. Everyone’s doing it, she had said. But that would mean giving strangers her address and the hours she would be home. Even if the shop people were harmless, the information could be intercepted.

When she finally built up supplies she would end up throwing them away. The fridge door would look suspicious: like it had been opened by someone else. An intruder. She would try to work out exactly which food they had contaminated but could never stop at one item. Once the pineberry yoghurt had been binned, the cheddar looked suspect, after that, the pawpaw, the black bread, the SoySpread, the feta. The precious innocent-looking eggs, the vegetarian hotdogs, the green mango atchar, the leftover basmati, until it was all discarded and sealed tightly in a black plastic bag. The dumping of each individual item causes her pain, she so hates to fritter. This happens once a week.

Sometimes she needs to check the cupboards, too. Sometimes it’s not just the open things in the fridge that may have been tainted. She’ll get an idea, a name, in her head, and those things will have to go, too. Last week it was Bilchen. Pictures in her head of factorybots polluting the processed food and then sealing them in neat little parcels, ready to eat. It was as if someone was shouting at her: Bilchen! Bilchen! Like a branded panic attack. And then she had to check every box and packet in her cupboard and toss everything with the Bilchen logo. There wasn’t a lot left over.

She chooses a lonely tin of chickpeas, checks the label, and eases it open with an old appliance. She polishes a fork with her tracksuit top and eats directly out of the can. Canned food is relatively safe. She reaches for the kosher salt pebbles, but before she starts grinding it she sees the top is loose. She pictures arsenic, cyanide, a sprinkling of a strain of deadly virus, and puts it back without using it. Washes her hands twice and sprays them with hand sanitiser.

She takes the chickpea can with her and walks around her flat, checking all the windows. She touches the locks as she goes, counting them. Mid-count she hears a noise. A scraping, a whirring. Is someone trying to get in? Is the front door locked? Icy sweat.

There is a high-pitched squeal at her heels and Betty jumps in fright. Her beagle scurries away from her with hurt in her eyes.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says out loud, moving to hug and pet her. ‘I’m so sorry my girl. There’s a good girl, there’s a good girl.’ She finds herself soothed by the words.

Sometimes if she talks loudly enough to herself she can drown out the voices. Not in public, though. She shouldn’t talk to herself in public. She doesn’t like being in public any more. Sometimes she has to show people the note; she doesn’t like that, the look in their eyes.

Squatting on the ground, she feeds the dog some chickpeas. She’ll start the counting again.

Outside the door to her apartment, there is humming. A large man in overalls is polishing the parquet corridor.