Janita Lawrence - Why You Were Taken

Every word of this novel is dedicated to my writing mentor & very dear friend, Laurence Cramer, who taught me to never walk slowly.

Mister L, you packed more sap and spirit into your short time on earth than most people do in a lifetime. Ill never forget feeling my baby boy kicking inside me at your funeral; asserting the cycle of life. Easing my devastation.

How I ached to see your sons struck fatherless. How it burned to see how much you were loved by so many.

A lifetime lesson in your passing, too: Grab Life by the Balls, I can hear you say, late at night when the darkness pulls at my sleeves.

I see your light, Mister L.

Thank you for the writing. To me, youll live forever.

Johannesburg, August 2021

She is holding the pale plastic object in her hand as she has done so many times before. She puts it down alongside her on the bay window where she sits, cocooned in billowing curtains, and picks it up again. Puts it down, picks it up. Its a nervous but practised movement, a dance she has rehearsed for years but never quite mastered.

She tries to quiet the hot hammering of her heart; she tells herself that she isnt excited but still she feels the purple pulsing of blood through her veins. There is the hum of white static behind her eyes, as if the room is a screen of a vintage television.

Outside: a determined downpour, with the occasional shock of lightning scratching silver into the sky. When the thunder rolls into the room it paints the walls midnight blue. Water streams down the outside of the window: Cops and Robbers. Goodies and Baddies. Kirsten always expects the rain to be perfumed by the data in The Cloud. She imagines all the pictures there, all the poetry and music. Surely the rain should taste of something?

She looks at her Snakewatch: 21:36. One crawling minute to go. She pictures it as a fat green caterpillar (Spring Lawn) inching along the windowsill.

Across town a hooded shadow walks in the rain. Thunder in winter, he thinks: they must be playing with the weather again. He is eager to get home hes expecting an important message. His superblack jacket renders him almost invisible, and his silver-tipped umbrella shields his face from the unseasonal shower. The city street is dark and slick, highlighted only occasionally by pops of lightning and the reflection of neon shop signs on the tars uneven surface. Algaetrees, green streetlights, flicker on and off as he moves beneath them. There is some jubilant shouting in the distance; a wave of music; a car backfires. A buildings clockologram blinks 21:36.

The mans usually elegant stride is interrupted by the jutting edges of the pavement: missing bricks, gaping manholes, roots of trees smashing their way through crumbling concrete. Undulating and decorated by shimmering litter, the walkway seems to take on a life of its own.

A group of people are up ahead, he sees them walking in his direction. Coal-skinned men dressed in oiled leathers and animal skins. Sandals and scarred faces. He sees their determined foreheads in blasts of light as they pass under the streetlights. Gadawan Kura. Ivory bracelets click as they walk.

When they get closer he lifts his chin at the leader. He doesnt step aside, as most people would. Instead he brushes an arm and keeps moving. Once they are clear, one of the men starts shrieking, imitating the hyenas they are known for keeping, and the rest of the men cackle. Our man adjusts his hood and walks on.

Suddenly a stranger in rags steps out of a side alley and into his path. A hobo? Impossible. There were no more homeless creeps in the city: they had all been enrolled in the Penal Labour Colonies. A CrimCol graduate? The faint whiff of matches and booze. Our mans hand tightens around the gun in his pocket, snicks the safety off.

What do you want? he asks, his voice even, as if this was a safe neighbourhood and the sun was shining. Water droplets glisten on the ragmans dark skin and hair; he pats himself down with twirling hands and a gap-toothed smile to show his tattered pockets are empty. He smells like the street.

Jog on, says our hooded man. Scram.

Jus asking for a smoke, bra. One of his eyes is black, bottomless. The other is overcast.

A cigarette? our man thinks. Youve got to be kidding. Its 2021 nobody smokes anymore.

He closes his umbrella.

Get out of my way.

There is a spark of defiance; the obstacle opens his mouth to speak. The man in the hooded jacket starts walking around him but is blocked. There is a glint of a blade. Instinctively he knees the stranger in the crotch, and when he is off-balance, raps him sideways on the jaw with the handle of the umbrella. The ragman falls backwards onto the shining road, his trench knife clattering on the pavement beside him. He reaches out for it, but freezes when he sees our mans gun: steady and aimed at his skull.

In the apartment the woman checks her watch again: 21:37. Its time. Her breathing is shallow as she lifts the object and studies it. She reads the result immediately but keeps looking at it, as if for clues, or in case it changes, which she knows will not happen. When she gives up it is a split-second flare of emotion and she hurls the thing across the room. A sharp crack of neon pink as it hits the wall. It doesnt break, although she wanted it to.

Disappointment cools her bones. Her mind is awash with red: 36 moons of sorrow. On top of that or beneath - the shock of the stained carpet in her family home: two comet-shaped splashes of crimson. Mom and Dad. The violence of still-fresh double-grief. She hears their voices. The forever-feeling of loss, like the leaching of warm blood. Her breastbone aches. Blood everywhere: she can smell the copper. She feels very near the edge. So near that it becomes tempting to fall, or jump. It would be a relief. Who would miss her?

She looks around at her plants the apartment is green with them perhaps they would miss her. When you are deeply happy or sad, she thinks, the ache makes it seem as if you are more connected to the earth. Things shimmer. Plants tell you that you are not alone. Random birds on road signs nod at you. Song lyrics speak directly to you.

There is a muffled sound, movement: someone at the door. She stays in the dark. Gives in to the emptiness, the vacuum in her heart: her all-too-familiar Black Hole. She feels the full bloom of her heartbreak. She doesnt cry.

The hooded man is a street away from his flat at 21:37 when he gets a sharp twinge of something in his chest. Not pain, not quite pain, but a hollow spasm that, if he didnt know better, would be something close to regret. Or sadness. Its not the first time. He absent-mindedly blames it on the state of the city, the state of the country, then briefly wonders if its the drugs hes been taking.

He reaches his block. The microchip in his ID card automatically opens the main access gate. A new biomorphic building, cool with smoked emerald glass and metal; glittering charcoal porcelain tiles. Smog-eating exterior paint and a solar Cool Roof with water catchment tanks. Its the ultimate lock-up-and-go: wholescale security, self-regulating, pet-free. He ignores the open mouth of the elevator and runs up the stairs, punches in his code 52Hz and has his retina scanned to open his front door. The entry panel blinks and the door unlocks. A womans voice purrs from the speaker above the door in a neutral accent: Welcome home, Seth.

The main lights automatically come on; the temperature is set to 24 degrees. Now that he is safe, he pops a pill, locks his gun away and checks his Tile for messages. Just as hed hoped, he sees the green rabbit blinking on his screen. He has a new job to do. Anxiety tugs at his guts. Its his most important post yet. Dangerous. He cant wait to get started.