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Sunday, 14 July
The rain pelted against the window. It was strange weather for this time of year. Winters in Pretoria were usually brown and dry but then again, nothing about the last five weeks had been normal. Nico watched the lightning split the sky from the safety of the lounge window in his seventh-floor flat in Weavind Park. Another Sunday night was upon him. He turned his back on the deluge outside and tried to get the storm raging inside under control.
He watched Janet’s rhythmic breathing as she slept curled up on his old couch. His gaze turned to the framed photo hanging on the wall opposite him. It had Police College class of 1989 written in white letters on a blackboard at the feet of the two young men sitting in the front row. Actually, they weren’t men, they were still boys. Boys sent out to do a man’s job. He had been eighteen and had believed he could change things. He had believed he would be able to catch the man who had brutally murdered his mother. Instead, he'd ended up in Unit 19, the riot squad, towards the end of the Apartheid era. The things he'd seen and done still haunted him. No teenager should be given an R1 rifle and told to kill people because of the colour of their skin. He was one of the few in his unit to use the R1 rifle which had been copied from the FN FAL, the Belgian Assault Rifle, by the Apartheid regime after the arms embargo was enforced. The weight of it depended on how far he had to carry it: either fucking heavy or Oh Shit! I'm out of ammo.
The thought of his mother and his time in the townships brought the unpleasant memories from his childhood back like a tidal wave. He was sixteen and in standard eight or what was now referred to as the tenth grade. The new school system still confused him. He had been in detention for smoking behind the school hall and as a result got home later than usual. When he arrived home, he opened the garage to put his bicycle inside, next to his mother’s car. He switched on the garage light. Her bare feet dangled in front of his face. A dining room chair stood next to her car in the corner of the garage. The man who'd raped and murdered her had hanged her from the rafter closest to the garage door. Her torn dress only just covered her abused body, thanks to a thin strap that clung to her shoulder and refused to drop.
He froze and couldn’t comprehend what was happening. He screamed. The next thing he knew a policeman stood over him and asked if he was all right. Of course, he wasn’t all right. His mother was dead. The police left her body hanging from the rafter while they took photographs of her and poked around inside their home. The policeman who asked him if he was okay dragged him to a police car and told him to wait there. He fell asleep in that hot, stinking police car and woke up, an hour later, thinking he’d had the worst nightmare of his life only to find out that it hadn’t been a dream at all. He woke up just in time to watch them take her body down.
They drove him to the Silverton Police station where they asked him questions about his mother and her friends. They asked him if she had a boyfriend or if she ever had any men over. He couldn’t remember any men. There hadn’t been a man in his mother’s life since his father died. Her neck had broken when the rapist removed the chair she had been standing on. Having that as the final image of his mother in his mind had scarred him far worse than anything he'd seen and done during his time in Unit 19.
Janet let out a little grunt in her sleep and kindly brought him back to the present. His mother’s death was something he tried not to dwell on. He never talked about it and had not told Janet about it. The police had never found her rapist and executioner. He decided, that day in the police car, that he would put murderers and rapists behind bars for as long as possible. But, since then, he’d learnt that things didn’t always work out that way. It was a losing battle. The criminals were winning the war on crime.
He found himself in the picture and didn’t recognise himself in the boy sitting in the third row. He didn’t look like that eighteen-year-old, and he didn’t remember who that young boy was anymore. So much had happened in the last twenty or so years. The boy in the picture was innocent. He, on the other hand, had seen too much death and had blood on his hands.
Janet let out another grunt, rolled over on to her back and almost fell off the couch in the process. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, stretched and smothered a yawn. A smile crept across his face as he watched her.
“How long was I out?” she asked through another yawn.
“A while.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I enjoyed watching you sleep. I especially enjoyed the orchestra.”
“Huh? What orchestra?”
“Who knew that such a loud noise could come out of such a small body?”
“You lie! I don’t snore.” She picked up one of the brown cushions her head had been snuggled into just moments before and flung it at him. It missed its target, bounced off the window and landed at his feet. He picked it up and threw it at her. She managed to catch it millimetres from the tip of her nose.
“Good reflexes. Too bad about that throwing arm,” Nico said, with mock surprise in his voice.
“What can I say? When you’re good, you’re good, and as for the arm ... well ... who needs that when you look like me?” A smile beamed across her face and crinkled the lines left by the rough fabric of the cushions. She stifled another yawn. The joy Janet gave him was only a temporary escape from his pain and guilt. He turned around and started watching the storm again. He felt helpless. The knowledge that another woman would die tonight made him want to smash the window in front of him. But the next time he wouldn’t fail. He made a solemn promise to himself the bastard would pay for each and every one of the lives he had taken.
He felt Janet come up behind him and wrap her arms around his ample stomach.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, propping her chin on his shoulder.
“Ja! I’m fine,” he said staring out of the window.
“No, you’re not.” She turned him around so that he faced her. “Talk to me.”
“Honestly. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to enjoy being with you,” he said and kissed her first on her lips, then the tip of her nose which the cushion had so narrowly missed. He kissed her eyelids and worked his way back to her mouth. He wanted to forget the job and all the shit that went with it. He wanted to be inside her. He needed her to distract him from the ghosts of the dead women he'd failed to protect. But even as his lips were working their way along her face, his mind kept turning to a faceless woman floating in a bathtub.
*
TONIGHT WAS THE NIGHT. He had to do it. He had to end it tonight.
His feet were heavy and felt as though they were dragging on the floor as he walked to her door. Her mongrel dog nuzzled his crotch in greeting. The dog was the only thing that was happy to see him whenever he came here. He took the keys to the front door out of his pocket with shaky hands. Her laughter bounced around inside his head.
“You’re pathetic!” Her laughter punctuated every word. “Look at you, shaking in your boots like the chicken shit you are.”
He cupped his hands over his ears, trying to shut her out. He had tried to get her out of his head so many times and in so many ways, but it never worked. The only way he could get her voice out of his head was to shut her up permanently.
He remembered finding Natalie lying on the bathroom floor. Her blood spread around her on the white tiles like red silk. He could still see her looking at him with her strange hazel and gold eyes. There had been so much pain in them. That fucking Bitch had known what it would do to Natalie, and she had done it just to hurt him. The front door opened.
“What are you doing standing outside looking like a lost fart?” his mother asked him.
“I just got here, Ma,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse, the house keys rattling in his shaking hands. He could smell the same old reek of whisky on her breath. But why wouldn’t he? It had been the same ever since he was a small boy.
Every Sunday she would drink herself into a stupor, beat him and lock him in the bathroom. While he lay on the cold floor, she thumped on the piano until she was bored. She would finish the bottle of whisky or whatever alcohol she could get her claws on and would open the bathroom door. It was at this point that the real horror would start.
It only became a horror when he was old enough to know that it was wrong. When he had been a boy, it had been the only way that his mother had shown him that she loved him. It had been a welcome change to being beaten, and he'd always thought that it was her way of saying she was sorry for what she'd done.
“How’s that pathetic little whore of yours?” His mother’s voice jolted him out of his memory.
“She’s not a whore, Ma.”
“Yes, she is. You’re not married. You are living in sin. No decent woman would live with a man who isn’t her husband.”
“Ma, stop it. I’m the only man she has ever been with and just because a pastor hasn’t married us, doesn’t mean she isn’t my wife in every other sense of the word. She’s the only woman I want.”
“But she isn’t the only woman you’ve had now, is she?”
“Stop it, Ma.”
“Why? Does the memory turn you on? You pathetic excuse for a man. You probably don’t satisfy that whore of yours, either.”
Her laughter floated all around him. The room started to turn, slowly. He tried to block out her voice, but it just kept coming at him.
“You should have been there when I told that pathetic little slut of yours that she wasn’t the only woman you’d had ... that when you were still in high school, and she wouldn’t put out, you would come home after being with her, all hot under the collar, and I would be here ... waiting. And let’s not forget about little Janet. You two have been going at it behind her scrawny little back for years.”
He lost it. All he could see was Natalie lying in her own blood, accusing him.
His fist flew out and hit her. Her head hit the coffee table with a thunk. He kicked her the way she had kicked him for so many years. She tried to get up, but he struck a blow to the back of her head sending her sprawling to the floor at his feet once again.
Taking the piano wire out of his pocket, he pulled it tight between his hands. A groan escaped from her split and bloodied lips. He looked down at his mother curled up in pain at his feet and kicked her again. His foot connected with her stomach. She gasped for breath. In her struggle to breathe she started throwing up. The bottle of whisky she had finished moments before he arrived rebelled against the beating. With every breath she tried to take, fresh bile and blood appeared in her mouth.
“You're the Bathroom Strangler, aren't you?” Droplets of blood sprayed out of her mouth as she asked the inevitable question. Fear rising in the sound of her voice. The fear she felt was intoxicating for him. It pushed him onwards.
“Please,” she begged. “Don't. I'm your mother. I love you.” The words came between blood-spattered gasps for air.
“No Ma, you don't love me. You never have. The only thing you know how to do is hate. You've taught me to hate you, and now you're going to die the way you deserve.”
He smiled as he watched her struggle to get on to her hands and knees. Being on her hands and knees made his task easier: it meant he didn’t have to move her overweight body into position. She did all the work for him. That’s what mothers are for he reflected. He straddled her as though he were riding a horse. The garrotte was already pulled tightly between his fists. He crossed his wrists, looped it over her head and under her chin and pulled her up into a kneeling position between his legs.
She tried to pull the wire away from her throat, but her fingers couldn’t get a grip on it. Pleading and incoherent words escaped from her lips while she struggled against him.
“What’s the matter, Ma? I thought you liked being on your knees in front of me,” he said as he jerked the wire through her throat. Blood gurgled out of the slit in her neck as the wire severed her artery. He was almost disappointed when she stopped struggling, and her body went limp. It took about fourteen seconds for her to die.
“You always were a tough old bird,” he said between breaths. He slipped the wire out of the gash in her throat. Blood ran down the front of her dress turning the pink floral pattern on her dress red.
*
AT HOME, AFTER HIS Sunday night visit to his mother, he went straight to the kitchen. He took his uniform out of his backpack and shoved it into the washing machine. He watched the round window in front of the machine fill with water. He heard Natalie’s feet padding down the passage towards him and walked out of the kitchen, turned off the light and intercepted her at the door. She was wearing a white nightshirt. Her hair hung loosely over her shoulders and was slightly tousled from lying in bed waiting for him.
“Why do you do that?” she asked him.
“Do what?”
“Change out of your uniform after you’ve been to your mother’s. Why do you have clean clothes on before you get home?” she said, counting the questions off on her hand. “Why don’t you let me wash your uniform with the rest of your clothes and finally, why do you shove it into the machine the moment you get home?”
“Slow down. Too many questions and it’s too late in the evening to be worrying about that kind of shit. I need a shower.”
“Why?”
“I need to wash all that filth off me after being at my mother’s. Now, go to bed. I’ll see you just now.”
“But ...” Louis put up his hand to silence her and walked past her into the bathroom. Closing the door behind him, he turned on the shower taps. The hot water pounded against his body. He couldn’t believe it. He was finally free of the woman he'd called mother. He could start afresh with Natalie. He could make her happy. He knew he could, especially now that the evil bitch was out of the way. Nothing stood in his way. Except for one little thing; that bloody woman had seen to that.
The cat was scratching and mewing outside the shower. She was disturbing his moment of reflection. He stepped out of the shower, tripped over the cat and bashed his shin on the toilet bowl.
“Fucking cat,” he growled and kicked it, sending her reeling across the tiles. She smacked headfirst into the closed bathroom door. He gripped the cat by the scruff of her neck opened the bathroom door, threw her out and slammed the door behind her. He hated cats. Dogs he could handle, but cats were disgusting creatures. The memory of drowning the next door neighbour’s kitty in the pool put a smile on his face.
The fucking thing had scratched him. After that it had all happened quickly and as though he was watching from a distance. Before he knew what he was doing the cat was under water, struggling for its pathetic life, but he'd had the power over it. He was stronger. After a while, he didn't feel its claws scratching at him. He just held it down and kept holding it down. He didn't know when it stopped fighting for its life, but it did. He buried it at the bottom of the garden as a reminder of his own strength.
He was still smiling as he pulled a clean, green towel off the rack and dried himself. It was a pleasure rubbing himself, hard, with the towel. It made his skin tingle. Afterwards, he felt as though he had scrubbed all the blood and dirt away.
He opened the bathroom door and walked out wearing the towel wrapped around his waist. Natalie stirred in the bedroom. He leaned against the doorframe and watched her lying in bed reading.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, looking up from her book.
“You’re full of questions tonight, aren’t you?”
“Well, call me curious if you like.”
“Okay, curious. So ... would you like to get married?”
“What did you just say?”
“I said ... would you like to marry me?”
“Marry you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you kidding? Is this some sick joke?”
“You know what? Fuck you, then. That’ll teach me to ask the woman I love to marry me. What was I thinking?” He grabbed a pillow off the bed. His movement towards the bed was fast and made her flinch.
“I’ll sleep on the couch tonight. The thought of being in the same bed as you makes me want to throw up,” he said and skulked out of the room
“Louis, wait,” she said, struggling to get out of the bed.
He slammed the door behind him. Natalie managed to untangle her feet from the duvet and stumbled off the bed towards the door. She opened it and followed him into the lounge where Louis was throwing the pillow on one end of the couch and pounding it with his fist.
“What’s really going on?” she asked him, staring at his clenched fists.
“It’s something my mother said tonight.”
“What did that evil witch say that would prompt a marriage proposal?”
“She called you a whore.”
“I see.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “So you want to marry a whore, is that it?”
“No! That’s not it, you stupid bloody woman.” He watched the tears running down her face and enjoyed the same sense of power he'd felt a short while ago, slitting his mother’s throat. “I wanted to prove her wrong and make an honest woman out of you.”
“I am an honest woman. I don’t need some wedding ring on my finger to prove it.” She sniffed between her words. The sniffs became sobs. “And who is that bitch to say what makes an honest woman. She sure as hell isn’t one.”
“Well, she isn’t the problem. The fact is that you don’t love me enough to marry me.”
“I do love you, and I’ve proved that. Remember? I wanted to die when I found out what she did to you. But as long as she’s in our lives, it’ll be impossible for us to get married. Living together has been hard enough with all her interfering. I don’t want our kids to be exposed to that woman.”
“She’s not a problem anymore.”
“The only way she won’t be a problem is if she’s six feet under and pushing up daisies.”
He crooked his left-hand forefinger over his mouth to cover his smile.
“Just trust me when I say she’s out of our lives for good,” he said as he walked across the room towards her. “Okay?”
“What did you do to get her out of our lives? We’ve tried before, and it’s never worked. Why now?”
“Just trust me. She’s out of our lives. That’s all there is to it. Okay?”
She nodded her head, tears running down her cheeks. He cupped her face in his hands and used his thumbs to wipe away her tears.
“So, can we please just get married now?” he asked.
“There’s another problem,” she said pushing him away.
“What other problem could there possibly be?”
“How can I ever trust you after ... you and Janet ...” she turned away from him. “Oh god, I can’t even say it.”
“What did that fucking-interfering-bitch-of-a-friend say happened between us?” Grabbing her by the shoulders, he flung her around to face him. This revelation threw him, and he knew he had to make sure that Janet couldn’t fuck up any of his plans.
“Janet didn’t say anything. Your mother took great pleasure in telling me everything.”
“She lied, baby. I promise nothing happened between Janet and me.” He tipped up her chin using his index finger, forcing her to look at him. “Do you believe me?”
She nodded her head but didn’t meet his eyes.
“So marry me. Don’t let my mother screw this up for us with her lies.”
“Okay, I’ll marry you,” she croaked while nodding her head and sobbing.