Why You Were Taken

A BIG RED BLOOM OVER HIS HEART ₄

Johannesburg, 2021

Kirsten gasps, clutches her chest.

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘I’ve been called worse,’ says the dark figure. The overhead lights flicker back on.

‘The fuck are you doing here?’

‘Hai wena. Is that the way you would greet the son of God Almighty?’

‘As far as I know, the son of God doesn’t skulk in dark corridors with inflatable motorbike helmets.’

‘And how would you know, being the infidel that you are?’ asks Kekeletso, arms akimbo. ‘And, bless you, sista, still such a filthy mouth.’

She holds up a black bag. ‘Is it okay if I shoot up in your place?’

Kirsten leans forward and hugs her, smells nutmeg in her cornrows, and warm leather. She loves the way Keke dresses. She seems to pull off a look that is sexy, hardcore, and feminine, all at the same time. Kirsten always feels like a tomboy in her company, in her uniform of tee, denim and kicks. She swipes her card and opens the door.

While Keke is dosing herself with insulin in the lounge, Kirsten opens the door of her antique aqua Smeg and roots around for a couple of craft beers. The idea of needles makes her gril, so she’s never been able to watch Keke do it. Just hearing the beeping of Keke’s SugarApp on her superphone makes her shudder. There is the zip of the black bag (Squid Sable), which means she’s finished, and when Keke comes through to the kitchen her nano-ink tattoo is already fading. The white ink is sensitive to blood sugar: when Keke’s level is normal the tattoo is a faded grey; antique-looking. When she needs a shot it turns white, and the dramatic contrast with her dark skin quite unsettling.

Kirsten twists off a cap with a hiss and hands the bottle to Keke, who looks like she needs to say something.

‘So,’ says Kirsten, ‘never known you to be lost for words.’

Keke: ‘I think you’re going to need something stronger.’

She opens her black leather jacket and slides out a folder, laying it on the kitchen table. Kirsten puts her hand on it. It’s warm. Keke moves it away from her.

‘Drinks first.’

‘At least you’ve got your priorities straight,’ Kirsten says, forcing a smile. The folder burns a slow hole in the kitchen table. Finally, she thinks: finally some explanation, some kind of way forward. She grabs a bottle of Japanese Whiskey by its neck, and hooks two crystal tumblers with her fingers. With her free hand she gets some transparent silicone ice cubes from the freezer.

‘Do you ever miss real ice?’ she asks, ‘I mean old-fashioned ice, made out of frozen, you know, water?’ She sits down, across from Keke, across from the folder.

‘Nope,’ says Keke. ‘That’s like saying you miss coal-powered electricity. Or cables. Or teleconferencing. Or hashtags. Or church. Or Pro-Lifers.’

‘Or condoms. Or tanning,’ adds Kirsten.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ says Keke.

‘I hope you’re referring to tanning.’

Keke laughs.

Kirsten says: ‘You know what I don’t miss? Handshakes. I always hated shaking people’s hands. I found it bizarre even before the Bug, before people stopped doing it. It’s too… intimate… to do with a stranger. Which is when you usually had to do it. I’m no germophobe, but…’

‘I know! You’re taught as a kid to catch your sneeze with your hand—’

‘—and cover your mouth when you cough—’

‘And then the next moment you’re shaking everyone in the room’s hands.’

They both pull faces at each other.

‘Some people still do it, you know.’

‘Ja, well, bad habits die hard.’

They drink.

‘So,’ she says, ‘how’re you doing?’

It made Kirsten squirm to talk about herself when she wasn’t in a good place, when her Black Hole was gaping, trying to swallow her. Who wants to hear about her hollowness? Who wants to be bored with her First World Problems when they had enough of their own? When someone asked her how she was when she was feeling like this she was always tempted to yell ‘Fine!’ and change the subject as quickly as possible. But Keke knew her better than that.

The Black Hole is Kirsten’s name for the empty space she has always felt deep within herself. She had never known a time without it, only that it shrinks and expands depending on what was happens in her life. When she fell for Marmalade James, for example, it was pocket-sized: a small blushing apricot. When it sunk in that her parents were dead: a brittle plastic vacuum cleaner, emphasis on the vacuum. Not being able to get pregnant is the size of a tightly formed fist, which free-floats around inside her body but is mostly lodged between her ribcage and her heart. Sometimes the hole grows or narrows inexplicably, and makes her wonder if there is another version of her walking around, falling in and out of love and otherwise experiencing the rollercoaster of (a parallel) life. She has always had The Black Hole, it is part of who she is, and it hurts her insides just thinking that she will most likely carry it to her grave.

Keke, sensing her discomfort, says: ‘Your plants are doing well.’

‘Yes,’ says Kirsten, looking around as if she had forgotten they were there. ‘They’re happy.’

‘Happy may be an understatement. Your flat is a veritable jungle.’

Kirsten laughs. ‘It’s not.’

‘It is! There’s a lot of fucking oxygen in here. Do you even remember what colour the walls are?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘If I ever run out of news stories I’m going to come back here and do an ultra-reality segment on you. The crazy plant lady. Living in a Jozi Jungle. Madame Green Fingers.’

‘Ha,’ says Kirsten.

Keke puts on her important-news-headline voice: ‘Most lonely women get cats, but Kirsten Lovell is a fan of… flora.’

‘Ha. Ha.’

‘Most hoarders are content with keeping mountains of old take-away containers, but this woman can’t get enough of The Green Stuff.’

‘That makes me sound like a weed-vaper.’

‘Her neighbours called the authorities when the vines began creeping through the walls and into their kitchens… it was clear: time for an intervention.’

‘Okay, hilarious. You can stop now.’

‘Really? I was having fun.’

‘I could tell.’

‘It started off innocently, you know. A fern here, an orchid there.’

‘Ah, yes, those orchids. Gateway plants.’

They smile at each other. Kirsten is surprised at how grateful she is for the company.

‘Earl Grey.’

‘Er, what?’

‘The colour of the walls,’ says Kirsten. ‘Earl Grey. The colour you get in your head when you taste bergamot.’

‘You’d better not say that on camera. They’ll cart you off to somewhere you can’t hurt yourself.’

‘Hm. That doesn’t sound too bad.’

Keke leans forward again. Business time.

‘So. Is there any news from your side about the… burglary – from the cops? Any leads?’

Kirsten shakes her head.

‘Niks nie.’

God, she hates talking about it, thinking about it. Pictures, unbidden, flash in on her mind. The broken glass and splinters on the floor, the up-ended furniture. Pillows ripped apart. The hungry-looking safe wrenched open and plundered.

The blood was the worst. There wasn’t a lot of it – in a kind of detached way she had noticed how little actual blood was spilt – but the vividness of the colour (Fresh Crimson), like leaked oil paint – it was as if it had come alive and advanced on her, misting her vision and strangling her: and that unforgettable assailing metallic smell. An avalanche of a thousand copper spheres.

‘Nothing? Not one lead?’ presses Keke.

‘If they have one, they’re not sharing it. All I know is what they said upfront, that it looks like it was a house robbery gone wrong. Looks like it was two guys who broke in. Something about bullet trajectories and blood spatter.’

Keke frowns at her. She knows it must sound bizarre to hear someone talk so technically about the murder of her own parents. But Keke knows that Kirsten doesn’t cry. She describes Kirsten as ‘immune to face-melting.’

‘There will definitely be some kind of… forensic evidence. Crime scenes of botched burglaries are usually teeming with the stuff.’

The bodies had looked like jointed paper dolls, the vintage ones you dress with paper clothes, 2D. Her father’s body drawn as if he were a runner in a comic book. A big red bloom over his heart. Her mother, unusually pious, hands secured in prayer position with a bracelet of black cable-tie (Salted Liquorice). A small hole in her head. Both lying on their sides, their waxen faces resting on the dull, dirty carpet.

There is a cool palm on Kirsten’s arm and she flinches, looks up and blinks past the pictures in her head.

‘Are you okay? I’m sure you’re still very shaken up, it hasn’t even been—’

‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine.’

‘You shouldn’t be alone. Where’s Marmalade?’

‘It’s been long enough.’

‘Long enough? It hasn’t even a month, Kitty Cat. The last time I saw you was at the funeral, for God’s sake.’

They sit in silence. The funeral: twin coffins and the cloying scent of lilies. Pollen stains on white tablecloths. Clammy hugs.

‘Zim,’ says Kirsten. ‘James is in Zimbabwe, at that new clinic.’

‘Then who is all this healthy food for?’ she asks, motioning at the toppling fruit bowl and vegetable stand.

For thirteen years James has tried to stud Kirsten’s junk food diet with healthy alternatives. If she was going to eat that CaraCrunch, then she should have a low-fruc Minneola, too. Slap chips? The mitigating snack was a handful of edamame. He would tempt her with fresh chilli gazpachos, honeyed veg-juices spiked with galangal, wild salmon salami. He ate as if he could reverse the diseases he saw in the world.

‘He always stocks up the house before he goes, hoping I’ll run out of junk and resort to eating some kind of plant matter. He says we should buy shares in Bilchen and then at least we’ll have money for the double bypass surgery I’ll need one day.’

Bilchen is the Swiss-owned megacorp that produces the majority of processed food in the world: cheap, tasty, and full of unpronounceable ingredients. In addition to their plants in China and Indonesia they own hundreds of factories in SA, producing mountains of consumables, from food to hygiene products to pet snacks.

When James sees her eating something like her staple Tato-Mato crispheres he would say to her: ‘You know that there is no actual food in there, right?’ and she would laugh her fake laugh to annoy him, and lick her fingers. Point at the pictures on the foil packet and say: ‘Tato-Mato, Doctor Killjoy. It’s made out of potatoes and tomatoes. A vegetable and a fruit. You heard it here first,’ and he would shake his head as if Kirsten was beyond help.

Bilchen was perennially in the news for one scandal or another. Anti-freeze contamination in their iguana food, horse-DNA in their schmeat rolls, sweat-shopping kids in Sri Lanka, big bad GMO. They owned so many brands that they could just kill whichever had caused the controversy and re-label their product, market it as ‘new’ to hook the early adopters, and deep-discount it to the couponers. The leftovers would feed the freegans. Et Voila, a new brand is born. P-banners and virtual stickers plead with you to ‘vote with your feet’ and ‘consume consciously’: ‘Boycott Bilchen’ is the new ‘Save the Rhino.’

Keke sighs theatrically. ‘How lucky does a girl get?’

‘Ja, yum, look at all those… shiny green apples.’

‘No, I meant Marmalade. Kind, generous, god-like in appearance, saves little children, AND does the grocery shopping!’

‘Well, he gets cars loaned to him all the time, for his job, so it’s easier for him.’

‘Pssh. There is a Man-Lotto and you won. uLula.’

‘He also has his faults, you know.’

‘Ha! Not likely.’

Kirsten hides her smile.

‘Seriously though,’ says Keke, ‘his parental units did an amazing job.’

‘They didn’t, actually,’ says Kirsten.

‘Hai, stoppit.’

‘I’m not kidding. His mother was never around and his father is a real nutcase. Horrible guy.’

‘I can’t imagine that.’

‘He left home at fifteen. He just couldn’t live with his dad any more. He won’t even talk about him. Cut all ties.’

‘An evil father… so is that why he keeps trying to save the world?’

‘Probably. Good premise for a superhero story, anyway,’ says Kirsten.

‘It’s been done before.’

‘What hasn’t?’

‘Funny you should say that,’ says Keke.

‘Huh?’

‘I have a… story for you.’

‘You found something? About my parents?’ Kirsten turns the ring on her finger.

‘I tried to get something out of the cops, anything, but they completely closed ranks. Even my contact there, in profiling, said only certain creeps are allowed access to the case. Who’s that inspector?’

‘The thug? Mouton. Marius Mouton.’

‘Yes, Mouton is handling the thing, doesn’t want too many other creeps involved. Can’t have any leaks jeopardising the investigation. Apparently this happens sometimes on high profile cases, according to my guy, but it’s not like your parents were, like, diplomats or anything? But then he said it could be that the criminal is high profile, you know, like a serial killer, or in this case, maybe a terror gang. So maybe they’re close to getting someone, and they want the case to be really tight.’

‘Ack. We’ll never get anything out of Mouton.’

‘Ja, we’d have better luck asking a gorilla.’

‘The gorilla would have more manners.’

‘A better vocabulary.’

‘Better teeth. And smell better. A gorilla would smell better.’

‘More sex appeal?’

‘Okay, I think you just crossed a line there,’ laughs Kirsten, ‘as in, a legal one.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway, I don’t see us getting much out of them, so I asked my FWB, Hackerboy Genius, to see what he could find, under the radar.’

‘Remind me?’

‘Friend With Benefits. Marko. The hacktivist.’

Keke was the only person Kirsten knew who went bi-curious speed-dating to gather work contacts. The fact that they came in useful for her journalistic grind didn’t mean that there was no sex on the table. From Keke’s cryptic hints Kirsten gathered that there was, indeed, a great deal – and variety – of sex on the table. As well as being ‘a raging bisexual,’ (‘Isn’t everyone bi these days?’) she was what she liked to call ‘ambisextrous.’

‘Marko is a very – talented – individual,’ she sparkles, sitting up a little straighter.

Uh-huh, Kirsten thinks.

‘Speed dating?’

‘Yawn! Speed dating is so last season, old lady. How ancient are you? Now it’s DNA dating. Very New York.’

Kirsten was glad she didn’t have to date anymore. The dating pool in Jo’burg made her think of a tank of Piranhas; Keke loved it.

‘Chemically compatible couples, what’s not to love? And boy, are we… compatible. You’d never believe it if you met him. Anyway, so he’s actually the one who found this for me,’ she says, putting her hand on the folder.

‘It’s big. Really big. Cosmic. You ready for a mind-fuck?’

Kirsten’s fingers tingle. Keke slides it over to her, and she opens it.