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Mia Arderne
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Vivian could see no future from here. When she imagined herself getting older, she drew a blank. She could not see herself, her life, or her hometown. There was nothing. All her life, she’d been plagued by a fear of the pending. And then it happened. The drought. The heat. The debauchery. The one-world government. The chaos. And the end. With this grim vision in mind, she’d become increasingly alienated from the people around her.
The men who approached her at work always asked her the same thing. And they always ended up engaging in some variant of the same dialogue:
“So... are you single, hey?”
“Wow, that was subtle.”
“Don’t get so defensive.”
“Then don’t be so interrogative.”
“Just give me five minutes of your presence.”
“How about you give me five minutes of your absence?”
While Vivian was mildly tempted by the prospect of real sex, she just couldn’t bring herself to entertain the idea in conversation with another person. She’d forgotten how to flirt. Vivian would do her job, purchase her essentials and drive home in the crackling heat, cooled by her air-conditioned, hydrogen-powered BMW. Vivian herself had no idea how it worked, and she never bothered to find out. What she cared about was that she would never break a sweat inside her BMW. Outside her window was a new kind of squalor. People lay on the streets, intoxicated, frothing, or fatigued with sunstroke. She needed to re-tint her windows, she thought. She didn’t want to see them and she didn’t want them to see her. She put on her Ray-Bans and drove on by.
Global warming had drowned most of Africa in a sea of sunshine. The sunshine itself had long ceased to be pleasant. The effects of the 2117 drought had radically altered the local economic system. A dire shortage of water left taps bone-dry and people were desperate. South Africa’s wealthy fled to Cape Town’s CBD, where any drop of dwindling reservoir water found its way first. About 30kms away from the city bowl is the neglected town of Bellville in the less posh, northern suburbs. While the rich Capetonians happily hydrated themselves and their children, Bellville had spiralled into a modern implementation of the dop system.
Every day, the jaded people of Bellville dragged themselves to work and back. They each suffered from a different degree of foetal alcohol syndrome. Every citizen was born into addiction. No one left the womb sober because no mother could abstain from alcohol for nine months. This was enough for Vivian to ensure she never had kids. Labourers were paid in crates of brandy. At the onset of the drought, surplus liquor became an alternate currency. With a lack of water, it made sense that the lower class be paid by the drop. The system gave Bellville the nickname, Brandy City.
Vivian’s shopping list usually comprised of seemingly unrelated items of necessities and luxuries such as gin, sex enhancement drugs, tampons, and a thirty-pack of cigarettes. You’d think that by now, people would have switched to electronic cigarettes—which have no tar and have finally become affordable—but the Marlboro Empire still reigned supreme. And Ray-Ban was one of the most successful enterprises in the world.
She completed her shopping in one quick trip down Voortrekker Road. She visited the liquor store for the gin, a drink the masses could no longer afford. She stopped by Adult World for their range of designer sex drugs used to enhance one’s experience. What used to be a tiny row of R80.00 bottles of poppers had expanded into an annexed back-section dedicated to various relaxants, sensory manipulators, and chemical stimulators.
Finally, she pulled up at the chemist for the tampons. As she picked them up, Vivian noticed a single box of contraceptive pills on sale for nearly nothing, no prescription needed. They were taking it off the shelves because nobody used them anymore. Sex between couples was becoming outdated; it had been outshone by ideal, customised virtual sex. For those who’d grown weary of virtual erotica, there was a new wave of improved prostitution services. Yet Vivian couldn’t help but wonder how it would be to indulge in something so physical and personal again. She hadn’t touched a man since her late husband. Yet towards the end, the couple had grown to prefer the machines to each other.
The thought was a futile one though. Vivian knew she wouldn’t find a man in Bellville sober enough to get it up, let alone keep it up. And real people were so full of disease and dirt, their blood pumping with unknown infections; streaming with the dregs of substandard brandy. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to touch a real man again. Not only was the virtual alternative customised to your ideal, it was safer too.
She arrived home at her late husband’s house—a man who’d amassed more life-insurance than she knew how to spend. Vivian was sitting on old money in a mansion in Plattekloof—the haughtier part of town overlooking Bellville from the hills.
Frustrated, she poured a G&T, lit the latest brand of cherry-tinted Marlboro and popped open a cylinder of thin, chemically-enhanced wafers designed to deepen sense reactions. She placed one tiny translucent strip on her tongue. The drug eased her into the furthest corner of her big twirling chair as she plugged herself into her fully-fledged sex simulator. The multiple attached massaging devices were customised to fit her body: the soles of her feet, the curve of her back, the parameters of her neck, even the contours of her vagina. She turned up the volume on her 3-metre speakers and increased the light saturation on the hologram visual settings.
She gave herself over to the complete sensory-co-ordinated programme with advanced audio-visuals calibrated with heat-sensitive vibratory response: the dildo of the year 2117.
Before expectant eyes, Vivian’s customised hologram-lover entered the room. He lifted her up against the wall and greeted her with his lips at her neck. With his tongue, he carved a bright spreading love-bite into her skin and it grew in heat and size to expand across her body and conquer her. The bite engulfed her in fever and covered her in shades of red. Then, with his big hands on her hips, he lifted her effortlessly onto a chair and traced his lips down her body. She gasped as she felt that his tongue was split. The power of the split-tongue, of course, is that one half slides inside her while the other lightly massages the surface. Her nails pierced him and she screamed, shaking from unparalleled contractions. When she finally steadied in his arms, he put her down and walked away, leaving her lying on a soft virtual floor covered in shrivelled rose petals and cigarette stompies. After her short dip into an ideal world, Vivian unplugged herself, turned off the programme and switched on the coffee machine. Satisfied, she understood why nobody bothered with the contraceptive pill anymore, and she turned on the news.
Vivian’s eyes stayed glued to a wall-sized plasma screen as she watched the American president being introduced as the leader of the Free World. She cringed. Put your hands together for the President of the USA, now the President of the Free World—some asshole, she thought, and sighed. She realised suddenly, that she was being represented by a bigoted Illuminati-puppet. The man’s face was white and smooth, laser-sculpted and gene-spliced, to fill the lines of third-world debt and centuries of colonial raping. Vivian knew that Tanya and her other colleagues would be drunk in a club somewhere celebrating. Her post-orgasm thoughts drifted to Tanya, ever-ignorant and consumed in her own tiny world, happy where she is. She thought of the rest of her colleagues who wanna be American, who feel American, who identify with the Yankee Nation. Well, now they have it, a one-world government. One nation unified under the White House. Tonight they will celebrate. Ignorance is bliss and that’s why they’re so happy all the time. But what would they celebrate? Partying and drinking, thinking they’ve won. Living for Fridays and thinking they’re free. Vivian lit another Marlboro and contemplated:
The most effective slave is the one who thinks he is free.
The rest of the globe had seen the New World Order begin in earnest, the dawn of the Age of Excess. Long after conspiracy theories and documentaries of historical occults had gone viral, the omniscient elite gained virtual control of the world through economic, political, and media domination.
In the beginning, there was Twitter. Twitter put @DrizzyDrake right next to @DalaiLama on your Who to Follow list. Twitter told you to choose your enlightenment. And, just like that, nothing was sacred anymore. YMCMBuddha. It had been crystallised. The general consensus that everybody felt with their fingers on a steaming world’s pulse, was one simple sentiment: do as thou wilt. The body of Christ—with cheese?
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Vivian worked in the sex industry, as a product-manager not a product. The commoditisation of sex had reached new heights in South Africa. Kenny Kunene, the infamous businessman and icon of excess, may have died decades before but his ideals lived on. No longer were rich BEE men licking sushi off naked bodies. That incident became an industry. Now, wealthy men were seen sucking brandy-soaked thighs like lollipops. Women were prepared like culinary delights by a franchise that ran from Observatory through to Bellville. The ladies were prepared beforehand and customised according to each client’s specifications to epitomise every man’s personal deluxe. This was where Vivian worked.
She walked in past the stripper pole, past the bar, and through the velvet curtain that concealed the sex room at the back. Behind the drapery, she waited for her girl. Tanya, the glamour slut, walked in without knocking. She was a popular choice among customers. She liked posing in her panties and stockings on social media networks. Hot, supple, and talentless, she was perfect for her purpose. “Okay, I’m ready,” Tanya declared.
Vivian nodded and took a moment to recall the recipe:
Disrobe the woman.
Vivian undressed Tanya and removed her excessive makeup. Gently, she wiped her glitter-smeared face, like the mother the whore never had. Then she instructed her to get on the table.
Artfully drape her over the table.
Vivian placed each of Tanya’s limbs so as to exact a statuesque pose of delicate recline atop the red velvet.
Crush the roses.
In previous years, she would snatch up a few freshly picked roses and squeeze the petal blood onto the glamour slut’s wrists. It was always a nice touch. But with the drought, flowers were in short supply.
Marinade in wine.
With a bottle of the most mature brand of dry red, she stained Tanya’s lips; drenched them in flavour and colour. Then she left the room for a few minutes to allow Tanya to simmer.
Dip the nipples.
Vivian returned with a hot pot of melted Swiss chocolate. She leaned Tanya forward to dip the tip of each breast into the dark lava. Tanya gave two drawn out sighs as Vivian neglected to wait for the boiling chocolate to cool before dipping. There was no time.
Soak in brandy.
She poured the heated spirit onto Tanya’s firm thighs and allowed it to soak into her skin. She rubbed it in patiently, deep enough to ensure that the taste would last the whole night. She was on top in this market because she knew how to cater to her clients.
The peach.
Vivian smeared a sliver of a peach in warm honey and parted Tanya’s brandy-soaked thighs. She carefully placed the sliver in between. This was her favourite part. It was the most intimate she ever was with anyone these days. Finally, she sprinkled some cinnamon on her tongue.
If her first client didn’t walk in soon, Vivian knew this could all be disastrous. Tanya’s thighs would go cold, the candles would drip wax onto the velvet cloth and the honey would drip right off the peach. But Vivian didn’t fret. She didn’t break a sweat. Two minutes later, an old Afrikaner with abysmal eyes arrived; Vivian knew this man must have money like dust. She presented her creation, and got paid. “Bon Appétit,” she said, sounding both exotic and kitsch.
Vivian left work early to get her car’s windows re-tinted. There was a new tinting product on the market and the cheapest place she knew of was Viresh’s workshop in Bellville South. Initially, she’d heard about Viresh through Tanya, who had assured her of his excellence, “Ja, he lives next door to me hey, and he’s amazing—I’ve been going there for years! Such a sweet guy also.” Vivian had been there a couple of times to replace a tyre or repair an oil leak.
Standing outside Viresh’s garage, Vivian tilted her head to read the sign board advertising his services:
Basic mechanical restoration
Fuel cell modifications
Upholstery work
Specialist tuning
Alternative fuel cell implementation
Aesthetic enhancements
Nano-particle paint jobs
Performance modifications
Body customisation
Acetone and propane replacements
She was interrupted by Viresh, who greeted her with a smile and proceeded to explain the meaning of the services advertised. Most of them catered to a single phenomenon: people, particularly the people of Bellville, wanted to make their low-end cars perform like high-end cars. In this regard, Bellville had remained largely unchanged.
“Nano-particle paint jobs,” Viresh ventured, “change the colour of your car according to energy input—your speed and so on, you understand, ma’am? A lovely thing to have if you can afford it. I must recommend it to you-”
“I’m perfectly happy with just black, thank you Viresh,” said Vivian.
“I don’t think you’d perhaps be interested in a faster, lighter, propane-operated fuel cell for your engine, ma’am?”
Viresh waited a response. Vivian didn’t give one.
“No, I didn’t think so, hey, you’re much too sophisticated for those kinds of modifications, well ok then—it’s a brown way of making money, this business, you see? But ja, like I said, anything along those lines, I can sort out for you at a much cheaper rate than the bigger motor-mechanics stores in this area.”
Vivian nodded at him, looked at his oil-stained fingers and beyond into his garage. The place was riddled with car parts, fenders, panels, seats, carburettors.
“I just want my windows re-tinted.”
Viresh beamed at her. “No problem. Window tinting should take a couple of hours, maybe three. That will be R900 for our newest smash-and-grab tints—guaranteed protection from break-ins and extra protection from the sun’s glare. And, I can assure you I only use top-of-range tints—this new Titanium-oxide range works so professionally that when the light hits your window, the energy input instantly makes your window darker. Ideal for these unbearably hot days, is it not? So there you go, complete protection, extra glare sensitivity, light-reactive tints—for you Ma’am. They’ve just been imported you know? Makes it a lot easier to drive with that terrible sun in your eyes...”
“Yes, thank you.”
“One can never be too careful these days, hey?”
“Quite right.”
“Now if you could just fill in your details here on the form please Ma’am. Your car will be done by five at the latest. I will give you a call as soon as I’ve finished—there we go. Ok, do you have a lift from here? Oh, I see you do-”
They turned to look at the taxi pulling up the driveway. Viresh strained his neck to make out the driver’s face. Then, astonished, he noticed that there wasn’t one. No driver in that car. Vivian could almost hear his thoughts: this lady must be loaded to afford one those taxis! For a second, they both stared at the contact-sensitive, road-smart taxi as it accurately parked itself, waiting for its passenger to enter.
Viresh stammered for words, “Uh, that’s quite uhm, a phenomenon hey? Technological genius right there. I’ve never seen one of those in this area.”
“Indeed it is,” Vivian sighed, thinking about the phenomenon of the driverless taxi: what an advanced world we live in where only those of wealth can afford to use the best technology. She shuddered at the injury awaiting her wallet and walked to the driverless car abandoning her BMW to a stunned Viresh and his garage. The mechanic visibly reeled at the luxury living of Cape Town’s other half.
It had been a long day when Vivian, reclining on her spacious bed, heard the street racers’ engines roar from her room upstairs. She thought about Tanya who would only get home after nine when her session with the Afrikaans client had ended. That man had looked like he may take longer to satisfy than the usual clients. She couldn’t get the thought of Tanya out of her mind. The only human being she ever got close to, however platonic the context. Vivian could place that sliver of a peach between her thighs a hundred times over and would never tire of the task.
The symphony of acetone-efficient engines kept her up now. Vivian battled to sleep with the noise from the streets below and her thoughts of Tanya leaving work late, having to slip in through the back of her house so that she wouldn’t wake her boyfriend, Graeme.
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Graeme, however, wasn’t inside sleeping at all. With a bottle of brandy between his legs he couldn’t get up. He couldn’t go inside yet. He knew that he needed to calm down first. He needed to have another dop. Breathe. Light another smoke. He had seen the pictures of Tanya posing half-naked on the Internet, advertising herself as a culinary delight to be enjoyed by men for cash.
Graeme felt his face distorting as though weeping but he refused to let himself cry. He took off his Diesel spectacles and watched the streetlights blur and the colours bleed into obscurity. My lady, being enjoyed by a million other men, Graeme thought, and spat on the ground. The bitch! He downed the last of the brandy clean from the bottle and stood up, smashing the bottle on the pavement. He walked into the night holding the glass neck in his hand as if he was trying to find someone to slash.
Glass neck in hand, Graeme saw Viresh drive past. He knew that Viresh was coming home after watching the street races at Sacks Circle, but Graeme didn’t want to talk. He didn’t greet Viresh as he pulled into the driveway with a Nissan Sylvia S13; a 1989 ultra-vintage model with a deteriorating body and an engine replaced by a propane-acetone fuel cell. Graeme walked past the car and on down the street with the broken bottle in his hand. Viresh bolted out the car and ran to Graeme, grabbing the broken bottle and ripping it from his hand. “Calm down, my broe—hey!—calm down!”
Viresh slung Graeme’s arm around his shoulder and took him inside. At Graeme’s demand, Viresh poured him another brandy—a single, with coke this time, and a stack of ice blocks. Viresh ventured, “Kykie, you wanna tell me what’s going on here or what?”
Graeme mumbled something and passed out.
When Graeme woke up on Viresh’s couch the next morning, his head throbbed and the sunlight felt like cigarette burns in his irises. He stumbled around looking for his glasses. He found them on the floor, put them on and slunk into his own house, defeated. In pain, he made his way into the kitchen and saw Tanya ironing his clothes on the kitchen counter. At the sight of her, his anger sparked again. He sat down at the table to eat, and asked, “Where’s the toast, ek sê?”
He waited for a response but Tanya carried on ironing without looking at him. Graeme was twitching in fury but he couldn’t bring himself to confront her. Where was she last night?
“Toaster’s broken, Graeme. I told you, we need a new one.”
“Ja, next month. Make a plan so long, I’m hungry.”
“You stink like brandy! Nou’s jy babbelas and you want me to make you toast out of thin air?”
Graeme held his head and sighed, “Tanya just make me some fucking breakfast please,” he slammed his elbow on the table, managing to retain everything he couldn’t bring himself to say.
Tanya finally looked up with eyes that made Graeme shudder. She picked up a stale piece of bread. Holding the hot iron in one hand and the slice of stale bread in the other, she walked towards him. She put the bread down in front of him, slammed the hot iron down onto the bread and held it there until it scorched. “There’s your fucking toast.”
Graeme stopped talking. Fumes of burnt wheat filled his nostrils. He pondered the object in front of him and took a bite.
Tanya’s voice pierced his hangover, “Graeme, I switched off the fridge because we running out of electricity.”
“Ja Tanya.”
“Graeme, you know the toilet don’t wanna flush anymore, ne?”
“Ja Tanya.”
“Graeme, are you listening to me?!”
Graeme held his throbbing head in his hands, defeated by the yelling. “Ja Tanya.”
Graeme drove to work in a century-old green Nissan Micra modified and tuned by Viresh. On his way to the company, he drove past Vivian on Voortrekker Road. The mooi white lady in the black BMW. Graeme thought about sleeping with her every time he drove past her on his way to work. He had never slept with a white lady before but he knew that white women have pink nipples. He had seen it in movies. Pink, must taste better than brown, he thought. How he would love to see just how pink Vivian is underneath those thin clothes she wears... He screeched to a halt just behind a truck in front of him. Jassis! Focus, Graeme. Vivian sped away in her sleek eco-friendly unmodified vehicle.
Graeme walked into the building on time; he needed to hold on to this job. He sat down and waited for the meeting to commence. An executive got up and stood in front. Graeme listened to him rant on about sustainability and comment vaguely on the political situation. His partner mentioned a statistic about the economy and the executive responded with appropriate agitation.
This went on for half an hour without a smoke break. It was incomprehensible to Graeme that the speaker was still spewing out shit about the stock exchange. The executive’s lips started to move faster. His teeth seemed to be getting whiter with every word. Periodically, the executive rubbed his lips and brushed his hand across his face—always very briefly, still professional. His mouth started swelling. He kept on nodding to his subordinates in affirmation, and the words just kept on coming faster and faster like an auctioneer and then suddenly, his mouth fell off. It dropped to the floor, quite naturally, no blood, like plastic. This didn’t faze the executive at all. He just carried on without a mouth. Where his mouth used to be, the skin closed up quite normally. His head still bobbed in affirmation.
“Graeme?” his colleague intervened, looking concerned.
“Ja?”
“The meeting’s over.”
“Oh—ja.”
“Smoke break?”
“Sure.”
Graeme went outside with his colleague. The tiny headache pill he popped this morning tasted like iced caramel. He had no idea what was in there, but it worked for the pain and it cooled him down—marvellous for hangovers. He wondered if the sugar-encrusted chemicals had reacted with the alcohol in his blood. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just too hot today; perhaps he was coming down with sunstroke. At least it was Friday.
At five, Graeme went to the huge store-room at the back of the office block and the executive handed over his crate of brandy for the month.
After work, Graeme received a call from Viresh, “Bra, there’s races tonight, are you coming?”
“No bra, you know on weekends there’s just laaities on the street racing their daddy’s cars and I don’t smaak for the police.”
A few minutes later, Viresh called again. “Yoh, my broe, they busy taking people for guppies here! Just come check this out.”
“Ja, maybe. I’ll see.”
A couple of roads down the BP garage on Frans Conradie Road bustled with Golfs idling, revving, and burning out. German and Japanese cars ruled the road. Most countries had long abandoned the combustion automobile industry with their tails between their legs. These racers had transformed their engines from the conventional green fuel cells to propane-acetone fuel cells—fresh on the black market, and much more efficient, faster, and lighter, than conventional engines. The acetone improved conversion efficiency, but the resulting catalytic reactions were terrible for the environment, making the engines illegal and driving the street racers further away from Cape Town’s centre. But in Bellville, they owned the road.
Graeme’s phone rang a third time. It was Viresh. Again. Graeme didn’t answer. He got up off the couch, key in hand and cruised through to Bellville central. Five minutes later, he pulled up at the obsolete BP garage. On the surface, his car looked like an ancient 1600. But once you heard it rev, you knew it wasn’t. The Micra was adorned for deception by Viresh for Graeme.
Graeme floated out of the car, confidence brimming, and asked the crowd, “Wie gat nou ry?”
The racers and spectators went silent. Everyone stared at him. Graeme trembled in his neon-green takkies, their oversized tongues stuck out beneath his tracksuit pants. He took a second to survey the staring faces from behind his Diesel glasses. “Ok, for you guys here who only speak English—is anyone here gonna race tonight?”
Still nothing. Pissed off, Graeme got back into his Micra. Reversed, dropped the car into first, and spun the tyres before parking next to Viresh.
Speaking to Viresh through the window he ranted: “These people are then wasting our time.”
“You should’ve come 10 minutes ago. I dunno what kine now.”
In the heat of conversation, they neglected to see the police snaking towards them having heard the burn-out.
Mid-sentence, another racer cut them off with the proverbial, “Boys, maartz!”
“Why? What kine?” asked Graeme.
“Dis die boere!”
Cars flooded out the garage. Graeme glanced at the blue lights in his rear-view mirror. He panicked and entered the maze of streets in Bellville Industrial, unlit at night. He got stuck behind an old man driving a Mazda on a narrow road. Knowing he couldn’t overtake, Graeme thought, if you go right, I’m gonna go left and if you go left, I’m gonna go right—either way, I’m not driving behind this doos. The Mazda turned right and, as Graeme took the left bend, he switched off his headlights on a pitch-black block of roads where people seldom stop at Stop signs. Road-users in Bellville at one a.m. consider oncoming headlights a signal to wait and darkness, a signal to go. Graeme’s car was camouflaged into the night as he gunned down the residential streets with one hand on the wheel. The other hand phoned Viresh. “Where we going now?”
“Let’s go have a dop at smokkie,” replied Viresh.
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Parties always have been a ritualistic forgetting of one’s circumstances, but now they had become more honestly recognised as such. The Illuminati’s most important tool was to offer its slaves a reprieve so sweet that they would labour willingly for the intermission. The slaves called it Friday.
Everyone was at the Smokkelhuis on Fridays. The owner, Ballie, twisted around in his wheelchair with violent alacrity—he’d been shot twice and his wheelchair wasn’t conventional, it was a feat of engineering. The plateau of Ballie’s chair’s surface was expanded to accommodate his weight. It had a cup-holder for his brandy, and a mini turbo-charger to force more air into the tiny engine of his chair for added mobility that he could activate at the push of a button. Around his neck were two gold chains thick enough to whack someone to death with. He was so portly, these chains didn’t hang; they sat cushioned, much like his wife who lazed around in the cosy, living room with her gold tooth, surrounded by pictures of all their kids in school uniform. Behind her, near the paper-thin plasma screen, was a brandy vending machine.
Entrance to the Smokkelhuis was complicated. The gate was opened only slightly, leaving a narrow gap for those willing to squeeze in under a heavy brown chain with a massive rusted lock dangling above.
Spinning around with expert skill, Ballie’s presence was immediate despite his physical level. Surrounding him, loyal junkies moved crates and toolboxes so that he could move in his chair with absolute freedom. At the back, in his unpainted transit room he sat, arms crossed on his potbelly, watching the screen, tuned in to the various cameras on his property. His establishment was devoted to the distribution of cheap brandy, which most of his customers drank clean, as Coke was fast becoming a luxury—he expanded the Smokkelhuis every year.
Vivian sat at the bar inside feeling dumbed-down by the surrounding conversations. She lit a cherry-tinted Marlboro and watched Tanya. It was a Friday night and all Vivian wanted to do was look at her. Be near her—even if that meant drinking substandard brandy without coke in Bellville’s oldest shithole. Vivian had nowhere better to be. Her Plattekloof mansion was too big and lonely. She longingly watched her employee through the plumes of smoke. She felt shy and alone, like an alienated teenager. She wanted to approach her. But Tanya and the other girls were chatting about the clients and the awkward difficulties they had recently encountered. On the adjacent makeshift dance-floor, a local DJ satisfied his crowd of revellers with deliberately transcendental music. As the dancers reached a drunken climax, the DJ made the infamous Illuminati triangle with his hands. Nobody perceived this gesture with any measure of seriousness. They raised their glasses to him, spilling little puddles of brandy on the already splattered wooden floor.
Vivian watched one of the paper-thin plasma screens in the corner. The news was on. There was a severe tornado somewhere in America. The footage emphasised the wreckage: houses demolished, pieces of broken cars smashing into walls, trees uprooted. It looks quite serious, Vivian thought, pondering about how many lives were lost in the storm. Noticing the sunset behind the wreckage, Tanya remarked at the top of her voice, “Look at the pretty sunset on the screen. That sky is so pretty, ne? All those reds and oranges!”
Some of the colleagues burst out laughing, others agreed with her. Vivian grimaced, confused by her attraction to this woman. Tanya was trying too hard to look good tonight, she thought. But then, so was everyone else. Once again, Vivian felt an intense fear of the pending. They were all so superficial, she thought, so superficial, so entirely dictated by the sway of aesthetics. It was all everyone strived for these days. But Vivian knew that beauty, in its transience, was always a precursor to devastation. She stared at Tanya’s hair extensions and ordered another brandy.
Viresh and Graeme arrived at last, bursting through the narrow slit at the door, desperate for a drink. Vivian greeted Viresh and they started chatting about her new window tint. Throughout the conversation, Vivian slipped glances at Tanya, who was now in the grip of her boyfriend’s company. Vivian felt desolate.
She heard Graeme say to Tanya, “So, we drinking brandy tonight—it’s on you.”
Tanya raised her eyebrows, “Ok...?”
“No, literally, on you.”
Vivian watched Tanya freeze, as she realised that Graeme knew. Tanya slowly brought her drink to her lips. Graeme waited for her to say something but Tanya faltered and spilt her words all over the place, “Graeme, we can’t just survive on brandy. That’s why I took the job. Cause it still pays money, you know? Because we have rich clients there, you see? I did it for you... So that we could live. I didn’t wanna struggle anymore...”
Vivian felt a deep urge to take Tanya away from him, put her in the Plattekloof mansion and make Tanya her very own trophy wife. She restrained herself. Instead, she watched Tanya order her boyfriend a drink; that she kept topping up, rationalising, explaining and feeding him brandy with her arms around his neck. She knows this is all he really needs.
“I love you,” Graeme surrendered.
“I love you too.”
Vivian walked to the dance-floor and started swaying. She thought of her dead husband and remembered a time when it rained and the world still dripped with beauty.
When she slipped another glance at Tanya, she could see that Graeme was drunk and full of forgiveness as he stared gleefully at Tanya. Tanya would laugh so loudly that it became awkward. Nobody minded, all so drunk that awkwardness belonged to another world entirely. In the middle of one of Tanya’s laughing fits, she paused breathlessly and said, “This is the stage where I start crying,”—and she did, inconsolably. For just a second, and then carried on laughing without cease. Graeme, Viresh, and her colleagues, found it contagious. Vivian found it both compelling and exhausting just watching her, but she couldn’t stop.
Every time Graeme tried to light his cigarette, Tanya blew out the flame of his match. Graeme knew she firmly believed that smoking was bad for you. He thought it was cute of her, maybe a bit annoying, but he didn’t care. He carried on trying to light his cigarette. Vivian watched this game of theirs, intrigued and wanton. Each time Graeme lit a match, she’d blow it out mischievously before he could light his cigarette. The girls watching this burst out laughing as if it was the cutest thing they’d ever seen. Graeme kissed her and lit another match. She blew out the flame. He lit another match. She blew out the flame. He lit yet another match. She tried to blow out the flame, but this time, he was too fast for her. Smiling, he jerked the match away from her in one swift movement to light his cigarette. But he moved too fast for his inebriated state. Caught off-balance, Graeme dropped the match into a brandy puddle on the wooden floor.
Instantly, the brandy soared into a thin wall of fire. Fuelled by the wood and the heat it grew quickly. Vivian’s eyes went wide as she watched the commotion: Viresh and a few other men tried to it put out with their clothes but the fire was too big. They tried to get out of the building, but the narrow entrance was already blocked with bodies.
Then, like ice in the pit of her stomach, the truth dawned on Vivian: there was no water.
The taps hadn’t worked for weeks. Vivian gazed at Tanya through the flames. Tanya was panicking. She had realised what she’d caused. The flames climbed up her hair extensions and she soon realised her hair was in flames. In a state of shock, Tanya’s glass dropped from her grasp and into the fire exacerbating the flames.
In disbelief, Graeme poured his drink down his throat with reckless abandon. Vivian stared as the brandy streamed down his chin and neck and dripped down his chest, while, all around him, the flames danced and people screamed. Drunk, he swayed dangerously close to the flames. A raging flame caught the wet brandy gleaming and streaming down his skin and the fire spread to meet his lips and neck, forming a little river of flames from Graeme’s chest to his jaw. He had blindly managed to set himself alight. Vivian still hadn’t moved. The desperate crowd was fighting to get out of the blocked building. She knew there was no point.
The fire continued to rage through Bellville, reducing Voortrekker Road to ash, burning down everything from the Smokkelhuis through to Adult World.
As Vivian burnt on the dance-floor, she no longer felt a fear of the pending. She was watching it. She was watching Brandy City burn to the ground in its own excess and stupidity. Like many old souls before her, she was to perish at the hands of a silly and beautiful girl.
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Mia Arderne is a fiction writer and artist. Her subject matter, in the visual and literary fields, interfaces the erotic and the magical. She is currently studying towards a Masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. Her dissertation will take the form of a murder-mystery novel. She has further qualifications in Philosophy and Theatre. ‘Brandy City’ is her first published short story.
