Why You Were Taken

TOMMYKNOCKERS ₅

Johannesburg, 2021

The TommyKnockers club is underground. You have to know a person who knows a person to get in. There isn’t any secret code-word to gain access; the club is so difficult to find, you either know where it is or you don’t. That, and a giant Yoruba bouncer called Rolo, ensured that only the right kind of people got in. As he approaches the nondescript front door Rolo steps into the grey frame and tips his invisible hat to him. Diamond fingers catch the light.

‘Mister Denicker,’ he says in a voice as deep as a platinum mineshaft.

‘Rolo,’ Seth nods back.

On the other side of the door is another world. You step from the bleak and broken inner city street into a gaudy 40s Parisian-style steampunk bordello, replete with scarlet velvet bolted in gold, chain tassels, and oiled men and women wearing very few clothes and too much eye make-up. The twist comes later: as you move from room to room, and deeper underground, the imagery becomes more exaggerated, bizarre, sinister, as if someone had decided to cross a brothel with a spooky amusement ride. As if TommyKnockers was the representation of someone’s erotic dream turning into a nightmare.

The deeper you go, the less mainstream the dancers become, catering to more exotic tastes: a voluptuous woman with three breasts, a freakishly well-endowed man, a heavily-inked hermaphrodite with a clock etched into her back. The art on the walls changes from chat noir and Marmorhaus prints to surreal landscapes, obscured faces, bizarre vintage pornography, disturbing portraits hung at strange angles. Luminous sex toys alongside hallucinogenic shooters at the spinning bars, lit by deranged copper pipe chandeliers. Sex shows featuring Dali-esque hardcore fuckbots.

Seth didn’t usually go further than the first few rooms. He was no prude, enjoyed a bit of kink, but his insomnia didn’t need encouraging. He had enough to keep him up at night.

This evening, as soon as he crosses the threshold, he heads directly to an attractive blonde standing against a wall. It’s an old tactic, one that frequently paid off. None of that seedy languishing at the bar, surveying all the available meat on offer and later trying to hook up.

This technique is cleaner. It shows you are a man who knows what he wants. The woman, caught off-guard, invariably accepts the offer of a drink, and from then on it’s usually green lights all the way to the bedroom. Or club restroom. Or taxi. Or White Lobster den. Or wherever else they would happen to find themselves.

This particular blonde was wearing a belt for a skirt and black boots with heels so high he wondered how she managed to stay vertical. Masses of teased hair, powdered with fine glitter.

‘Hello there,’ says Seth. Not too friendly, not too distant.

‘Er,’ she says. Where did he come from?

He looks at the glass in her metallic-taloned hand: ‘Campari?’

The rose-coloured sequins above her eyes blink in the uneven light. He has a coldness in his eyes. A hardness. She tries to size him up. A drug dealer? A psychopath? A rufer? Does she, after her countless drinks, even care? She looks him up and down, nods. He leads her to the bar and orders her a double, vodka for himself, and two ShadowShots, which are not, strictly speaking, legal.

The Campari comes on the rocks – it’s one of the few clubs that still offer actual ice in drinks – despite the cost, instead of frozen silicone shapes. He grinds a block between his molars; he likes real ice. She purses her lips at the shooters, as if to say he’s naughty. He presses one into her hand; they touch glasses and down the drinks. Both feel the rush of the warm spirit as it washes through them.

She blinks at him; sighs as her pupils dilate. With a cool and gentle hand he propels her by her lower back to a more private area, with brocade curtains and oversized couches. An oil painting of a man with a patchwork blazer and rivets for eyes watches over them.

‘Let’s get you out of those dreadful shoes.’

Kirsten opens the folder while Kekeletso watches her. Inside: her parents’ autopsy reports. Keke had removed the photos that had been taken by the forensic team in situ. It was enough that Kirsten had been the one to find them dead, without having to see their death-grimaces again. Not that it made much difference to Kirsten: a picture on glossy paper wouldn’t be much more vivid than the images in her head.

The reports weren’t long. Kirsten skimmed a few pages describing what she already knew: bullet in brain, bullet in heart. .22 calibre Remingtons: one to stop thinking, one to stop feeling. Fired at arm’s length distance for her mom, half a room for her dad. Her mother had most likely been kneeling there when the killer squeezed a round into her head. Execution style, but face-to-face. The police say it was a botched burglary, but this creep wasn’t a stranger to murder.

Kirsten scans the medical jargon: entry wound of the mid-forehead; collapsed calvarium with multiple fractures; exit wound of occipital region. Official cause of death: Massive craniocerebral trauma due to gunshot wound.

On one of the final pages there were diagrams. Similar to what you would find in a biology textbook: line drawings of people dissected lengthways so that you could see their bones and organs. Kirsten was always better with pictures. She strokes the diagrams with her finger, following the coroner’s notes and asides. When she finishes with her father’s she starts on her mother’s. Immediately something looks wrong.

‘Do you see it?’ asks Kekeletso. Kirsten had been so absorbed she had almost forgotten Keke was there. She looks up, her finger glued to the illustration of her mother’s abdomen. The ceiling rains cerise spirals down on them.

‘She had a… hysterectomy?’

‘Yes.’

‘How come I didn’t know that? Did she do it when I was too young to remember?’ This was entirely possible given her sketchy childhood memories.

‘Turn to the last page. I found it in her private medical file.’

Without hesitating, Kirsten locates the last page in the folder and holds it up, pushing the others away. It was a record of an elective surgical procedure undergone by her mother in 1982. A full hysterectomy, five years before Kirsten had been born.