The Down Days

by Ilze Hugo

  “Say, you said you do this pro bono, right?” she asked as she waited for the kettle to fill up.

  “Right.”

  “Are all your cases like that? Free, I mean.”

  “Most of them, yes.”

  “What’s your day job, then? How do you eat?” She put the kettle onto the element and switched it on.

  “I’m a dead collector.”

  Tomorrow turned her head, looked Faith up and down like she was trying to get a handle on her, like she wasn’t quite believing what she’d just heard. Faith was used to this exact look—she’d seen it more times than she cared to remember. There weren’t a lot of women in her line of business. “You don’t look like a dead collector,” Tomorrow finally said.

  “What’s a dead collector supposed to look like, then?”

  “I don’t know. Just not like you, I guess.”

  “Well, truth is, I wasn’t always a dead collector. Or a taxi driver, either, for that matter.”

  “What, then?”

  “I designed jewelry.”

  “That’s a leap. What kind of jewelry?”

  “Puzzle rings, or gimmal rings, were my specialty. You ever seen a puzzle ring?”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s kind of what it sounds like. A ring and a puzzle in one. I’d design all these separate bands—the most complicated ring I ever made had seven separate bands—that you could fit together to form one ring. I’d inscribe secret messages or images on the hidden sections, that the wearer would only be able to see if they took the whole ring apart. People used to love that kind of stuff. The secret stuff.”

  “Sounds cool. Why did you stop?”

  “Something happened. Made me real angry for a while. I couldn’t think, couldn’t work. Just woke up one day and didn’t care for it all anymore. Couldn’t be bothered. So I got a job as a taxi driver.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I wanted to do something where I wouldn’t have to think too much for a while. Something that would take my mind off things. To just do, you know? Just drive. Not think. The speed was good, too. The crazy driving, the road rage, the mad rush to load enough passengers to pay off the company quota and still make enough money to eat.”

  “Sounds kind of stressful to me.”

  “Stressful, yes, but a different kind of stress, a different kind of challenge than before. And different was good. But then the Laughter started revving up, changing things for good, and with all the fuel hikes and shortages, the taxi companies changed strategy and moved into dead collecting. Don’t know if you know—you’re probably too young—but they made a deal with the government where the guys up top paid the fuel, which meant the taxi companies could stay in business. With the new deal in place, their yields were much higher, so it was a no-brainer for them. And that was it. Here I am.”

  “But what about all that stuff they say in the news? About all the bloody faction wars that happened after the handover? And all the muthi-jacking that’s going on right now? The papers say the market for magical body parts is through the roof and that dead collector vans are hijacked all the time now. Aren’t you scared? Do you have to carry a gun?”

  “It’s regulation, yes. Taxi association rules. But I don’t use mine. I’m not one for guns.”

  “You’re not carrying yours now?”

  “I keep it locked up in the cubby hole.”

  “But what if you get jacked?”

  “My guardjie handles that side of things. He’s pretty good with a gun. Lucky for us it’s only happened once.”

  “And what about the faction wars? Back then? Did you have to fight? Did you shoot anyone?”

  “What’s with the Twenty Questions?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I told you last time I talk too much when I’m nervous.”

  “No worries.”

  The kettle clicked. The girl turned her head towards it, reached out her hand.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you think the police are saying those things about Elliot?”

  “The police, the police. Who knows about them? Why do they say or do anything these days? They’re just there to cart people off to the sanatoriums, aren’t they? They don’t help anyone. They’re just uniforms with their hands cut off, the whole lot of them. Why do they even exist anymore anyway?”

  “I hear you. I understand your frustration. But I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here to help.”

  “Yes. You are.” Her voice was soft, her face still turned towards the counter.

  “Tomorrow.”

  The girl didn’t say anything.

  “Look at me, please.”

  The girl turned around. But her eyes still trailed the floor.

  “Please. I’m here. I’m sitting right here. I’m not going anywhere. And I want to help. Do you believe me?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Okay, good, that’s good. That’s a start. But I can’t help if I don’t understand. You get that, right?”

  The girl kept quiet but her eyes swiveled up to meet Faith’s.

  “So I need to know. Why are the police saying Elliot is dead?”

  “Dead.” The girl’s voice sounded numb.

  “Succumbed, I mean. The police are saying that Elliot caught the Joke and passed away two months ago.”

  Tomorrow thumped her fist against the counter and Faith jumped, her nerves jangling. Spoons clanged. A cereal box shivered. A plastic cup toppled to the floor, spilling onto the frayed white rug underneath Faith’s feet. Yellow liquid branched out between the rug threads in winding rivulets. The pattern the spill was forming reminded Faith of one of those clips in nature documentaries of trees growing in fast-forward. Tomorrow lunged for the cup and swore to herself as her fingers fumbled with the plastic. “I’m not making this up, dammit! I’m not! Elliot really was taken! It’s just that . . .” She scooped up the plastic cup and threw it into the sink. Started tinkering with the dirty dishes.

  “It’s just what?”

  “Nothing. They’re talking crap, that’s all.” She started stacking and unstacking cereal bowls like Lego blocks. “You know how they are, don’t you? Always making excuses about why they can’t seem to help.” Her fingers swept over the Lego towers as she spoke. The skinny digits moved through the air in an unsure staccato, as if they couldn’t quite figure out what or where to touch first.

  “But the records,” Faith tried again. “They don’t lie. And the records say Elliot is dead. That he succumbed to the Laughter. Months ago.”

  “Well . . . there’s that word again. Dead. Died. Deceased. Got the Joke. Caught the Joke. Succumbed, if you want to be politically correct. I mean, what does it mean, really? It’s all relative, isn’t it?” A spoon teetered and slipped from the top of one Lego stack, hitting the edge of the sink with a thunk. Tomorrow shuddered.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m following you,” said Faith.

  “I mean . . . just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you don’t exist, right?”

  “What are you saying? Are you admitting that it’s true? That your brother is dead? But then why—”

  “Dead, dead, dead. I really hate that word, don’t you?” Tomorrow scooped up the renegade spoon and plunged it into the dishwater. “In one way, depending on how you look at it, for lack of a better word, I guess, then yes. He’s dead.”

  “Depending on how you look at it?”

  “In the way that his body, or what was left of it, succumbed, then was burned and turned into black, black smoke.”

  “So what is left then, Tomorrow? You’re going on in circles. Are we talking about heaven? The afterlife? And what does that have to do with the price of glue? I mean, your brother is dead. So he can’t possibly have been stolen.”

  “ ’Course he was! Do you think I’m some kind of liar? My baby brother, he’s all alone somewhere, scared out of his wits, and you’re just sitting here in my kitchen asking stupid question
s, not even trying to help!”

  “I’m sorry. I’m trying to help. I know how it feels, Tomorrow. I suppose most of us do these days, don’t we? Grief. Reality. The truth. The way it twists you up like a dirty dishcloth and wrings you out to dry. How it makes you numb and cold and dead inside. But in so much pain at the same time. Like the pins and needles you feel after sitting on your foot for too long. Numb, but in pain. And you find yourself floating somewhere between pain and nothingness, with nothing to hold on to. And the only way to keep walking, keep breathing, is to find something to hold on to, even if it’s something small, something crazy, something impossible.”

  The girl pulled her fingers out of the dishwater, wiped them on her wrinkled skirt, and sat down across the table from Faith. “That’s a real good speech. And I get it. I do. But that’s not what’s going on here.” She sighed. Combed her fingers through her wayward hair. “But you seem to care. You seem to want to help. So I’ll try to spell it out. If it means so darn much to you.”

  “Yes. Yes, please. I really do want to help.”

  “That woman. The one in the market. With the tattoo. She didn’t take Elliot’s body. Yes. If you really have to know, if you have to make it your business, then yes, yes, yes. That particular part of him has been gone a while already. But the rest of him, the real him, is still here. Was here, at least. With me. And that woman—she took him. She stole my brother’s ghost.”

  - 39 - PIPER

  The boy. The boy, the boy, the boy.

  He was killing her.

  He was all she could think about now. When she closed her eyes, she saw his face. When she looked in the mirror, she heard him scream.

  Truth is . . . The truth is, she didn’t even remember him. Holding his hand.

  Truth is, she held so many hands. Back when she was perfect. Did everything. Gave everything. Perfectly. Perfect little Piper. She’d hold their hands. All their hands. She’d give her all. Always.

  And sometimes. Sometimes. When it got too much. She’d take something to take the edge off.

  But she kept it safe, responsible. Paced herself real well. She was an expert, after all. A professional. Not a junkie. No way. Not her. With her perfect grades and perfect smile and need to please, please, please everyone.

  And now.

  Well, now she’d be anyone.

  Anyone she could get.

  If it meant one more hit. Of that sweet, sweet taste. In a patch or a tablet or a lollipop, ground up and snorted or smoked in a pipe, who cared. As long as it kept coming. As long as it meant one more stretch of slow, sweet bliss. As long as it made the shame and the fear and the pins and needles in her brain, white light shooting across her vision, heart-in-her-throat fear fade. Away. Away . . . to that blank-slate place. That nothing zone. Where none of it mattered. And nobody cared.

  Sure, it made her vomit. It made her itch. Made her fall asleep on her feet at work, which got her fired twenty times over until she couldn’t get a job changing bedpans. But so worth it. Wasn’t it?

  Until.

  Until.

  Until her man disappeared.

  Who knew where Denny went, but he was gone. Maybe he finally worked up enough cash to skip town. Enough to buy a condo in one of those armed quarantine-within-a-quarantine gated communities for the super-rich in Hout Bay or Simon’s Town. Where everything was safe and Colgate happy and the supermarket shelves were stacked to the max with olive oil and Camembert and real coffee beans—not that chicory shit she’d been making do with for the last four years. Or maybe Denny had finally caught the Joke and laughed himself to death. Thing was, she didn’t know. And it didn’t matter anyhow. All she knew was that he wouldn’t answer his phone, wasn’t responding to her texts, and she was vomiting and itching and scratching herself raw and all she saw when she closed her eyes was that boy.

  So she’d settled on plan B, gone around to see man number two, walked all the way to the top of blasted Kloof Street, because the guy didn’t have a phone. Knocked her knuckles raw on his door to find out he wasn’t home. She was sitting outside his flat now; it had been three hours, and she was still waiting for him. There was only one thing left that she could do. Man number three, plan C. But he wasn’t answering his phone, either, and his place was all the way in Bantry Bay, and she didn’t want to waste money on a taxi, so she’d have to walk. Because she couldn’t sit here any longer, in this concrete hallway with its face-brick walls and slam-lock security doors, she just couldn’t. She was desperate. She was nauseous. Her nose was a faucet, her joints were aching, her stomach was cramping up. She was shaking with chills. And all she could see when she closed her eyes was that boy. That boy. That boy. That screaming boy.

  Worst of all, she was starting to realize. Starting to know. Who the kid really was.

  The devil.

  He was the devil.

  In disguise.

  Finally come to claim her soul for what she did. For what she was doing. And for what she was going to do.

  For all of it.

  - 40 - SANS

  A manhole cover.

  He was standing in the middle of a dirt parking lot in the middle of the night, next to a crazy guy, staring down at a manhole cover. What had the fat man said about a nightmare?

  Fred grinned at him. “How low can you go, hey, boet? Help me lift this, will you? My back isn’t what it used to be. Old rugby injury.”

  The cover yielded beneath Sans’s grip with a dull clunk. The sin-eater procured a small purple flashlight from inside his windbreaker. He laid the light on the ground and rolled up his pants legs. “Better do the same. It gets quite wet down there.” He picked up the light again and gestured towards the hole with one palm.

  “After you.”

  * * *

  The walls of the tunnel were moving. At first Sans thought it was just another hallucination, but it wasn’t. Roaches, hundreds of them, caked the cement like thick, live brushstrokes. Sans shifted his eyes to follow the sin-eater’s hunched back, one foot in the water, the other on a dry patch of wall for balance. Above their heads a car swished past the open grate, making the discarded plastic bags blooming under the grate’s belly sway like kelp.

  “Piss. I’m walking in someone else’s piss right now, aren’t I?”

  “Nope, boet. This isn’t a sewer. You’ve been watching too many movies, haven’t you? This here’s water, just plain water. No piss. No evil clowns, either, hehe. This used to be a stream, you know, before the Dutch, homesick for Europe, converted it into a canal. It used to be the lifeblood of the city back in the day, before the bastards polluted it so much they had to cover it all up. Now it’s nothing but a tar-covered trickle forgotten by history. As we all are eventually, I suppose.”

  The sin-eater turned his head to look back at Sans, as if expecting a response, but Sans wasn’t in the mood; just kept his head down and his hands away from the crawling walls.

  “This little stream might be innocent,” continued the sin-eater, “but it killed a lot of people back in 1713. A group of the Dutch East India Company’s slaves who were working as washerwomen washed a bunch of clothes from a Dutch ship infected with smallpox in a stream just above that parking lot you and I stood on. The virus trickled down here and infected the city. Ended up totally decimating the local Khoisan population—it’s said that not even ten percent of them survived. Pretty hectic, hey, boet? Later, this stream here also played a role in spreading the bubonic plague. Funny to think a little stream could be so bloodthirsty; that something so small could alter the past in such a big way.

  “Anyway, just to give you a heads-up,” continued the sin-eater as he plunged ahead, “this oke we’re about to see is a bit unusual.”

  “No kidding,” muttered Sans as a tiny crab scuttled past along the bottom of the tunnel wall. His sneakers and the bottoms of his pants, even though he’d rolled them up, were sopping wet, and more than a few times he’d almost slipped.

  Up ahead, the fat man had come to a halt. “Hey
, what’s wrong with your voet, boet?” he asked, while waiting for Sans to catch up.

  “Huh?”

  “Your leg, man, your leg.”

  “Long story.” Sans sighed. “Roller-coaster accident. I was ten. My mom tried to sue the carnival, but it didn’t stick—someone lost the incident report,” he added, his hands drawing imaginary quotation marks around the word lost. They continued wading through the muck. His Nikes were getting seriously fucked.

  The ceiling lifted and the tunnel became wider as they came to a fork, one end opening up into a roomy cavern. In the far corner, a shack, balancing on a makeshift stage, rested against the wall. “Helloo! Anybody home?” called the sin-eater, his voice reverberating as it bounced off the walls. “Mickey?”

  Nothing at first. Then something. A sound, a kind of splutter, and the door to the shack creaked open. “That you, Fred, my man?” A scant, skinny, bald man squinted into the beam of the sin-eater’s flashlight.

  “Mickey!” said the fat man. “Long time, no see, neef. How are things in the data trade?”

  “Never better, Fred, my man. Never better. Like my new pad?”

  “Yes, sure, but why the move, neef?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Mickey lifted a finger towards the ceiling. “I moved because of what’s up there, neef.”

  “What’s up there?” asked Sans.

  “Why, the castle, of course. Don’t you guys know anything? This little den of mine is right beneath the Castle of Good Hope. Yes. I can see your little brains working it out now. We’re currently sitting right in the heart of Sick City’s military headquarters. The only place in the city with twenty-four-seven power, high-speed internet, and no censorship firewall. That’s why I moved down here, built myself this fine abode, and persuaded one of the military engineers to jack me into their line. This way I can download like a boss and my customers get their fix on time without fail every week. Impressive, né?”

  “You’re him!” said Sans, as what he was hearing finally fell into place. “Mickey. The Mouse. You’re Mickey Mouse! You’re a legend, man! A total legend!”