Extract: With The Safety Off
It’s Yeoville in the mid-1990s. Enter Fig, a copywriter with a penchant for living on the edge — staying up all night, having casual sex and snorting cocaine. Drifting from seedy club to grotty flat, Fig continues his aimless odyssey . . . until the day he falls asleep in a client presentation and is fired. Nine months later Fig is hooked on heroin and has turned to drug dealing for survival. If he has skirted close to the danger zone before, it’s now gloves off as he drops all pretence of respectability and descends into a world of syndicates and violence. Fig is living with the safety off — no matter where it leads him.
Below is an extract.
The lesson of the second disappointment
“Nooit, that’s kak. But where was I again?”
Ali either hasn’t heard Fig or is ignoring him, whatever the case ... “But
oh, my dear Ali, my first true, really true experience of disappointment was
at my sixth birthday and it’s still there, I mean still filed somewhere deep in
the back of my unconscious, subconscious, superconscious, supraconscious
… fuck, there I go again ...” Fig takes a sip from his quadruple Jack, “Oh ja,
my first lived-structure exposure to disappointment was that of a girl at my
sixth birthday party at Cannon Hill ... the park was called Cannon Hill and
was on Cannon Hill because there was an old colonial-type cannon there ‒
wheels sunk in a cemented platform, unbudgeable as its supposed place in
history ‒ and a plaque of some or other English king or queen’s visit with
commensurate heraldry, probably a unicorn on one side and … some buck or
other beast on the other with flapping scarf-like material set in stone, set for
time immemorial but obviously not, hey? ... anyways, I remember it vividly
like it was yesterday, hey Ali.”
Ali turns to look over Fig’s shoulder like there’s a tidal wave behind him.
Fig skiems maybe it’s all in his head.
Fig’s, not Ali’s.
Prolly it’s all just the product of his own corpus collosum.
But still Ali pats his hair that’s already in place into place in case it’s not in
place with what can only be described as a series of nervous little tics.
Fig glances quickly over his shoulder, but there’s nothing there, so he
continues: “Okey dokey, so check me n my family were living in this railway
house. Obviously roof over our head, running water, red brick-face place, that
kinda thing, way beyond the Grim that is shantytowns but still white trash.
Ag, you know as small as this place ...” Fig windmills both arms in a wax-on,
wax-off style while turning on his butt on the stool to take in the largish room.
The place is petering out like the end of a pool game and KuKlopsKlan
of One is still there and of course it’s obvious that he’s just waiting there for
some or other unjust purpose.
Something injurious to Fig, no doubt.
Because Fig is not sober it doesn’t matter.
Not at all. The phantom boat of sobriety left these here docks a good while
back.
Anyways, as he scritch-scratches his itchy scalp, Fig tunes: “Ja, tell you
what. So I was skieming … ja, skiem the point is we were poor for that Slegs
Blankes town called Uitenhage and I mention that because my mother had
made just the right amount of toffee apples for my cousins and friends from
my pre-primary school that were there at my birthday party. That means there
was just one for each kid … just one. That’s important for reasons that will
soon become apparent. Oh yes, my dear Ali.”
Fig swivels on the barstool that’s somehow got less grimey.
To continue: “To continue. Just one. That’s important. One toffee apple.
Each.”
And turns back to the front, wiggling his bum like it’s got too big for the
stool.
Ali turns his head, clocks a look at Fig outside of time, before Jehovah,
Jesus, Allah ... long before G-hyphen-d, long before San rock paintings, way
before the fire in the cave to ward off sabre-toothed tigers while public fucking
on mammoth pelts and ... like before what can be construed as primordial
slime and yet cannily right now, right here in the present.
Yes, that is entirely not possible but appears to be how Ali is looking at Fig.
Ali’s expression’s one of a being that is desperately trying to show that he’s
not being hunted.
Maybe that’s Ali, maybe Ali is being paranoid, then again maybe Ali is
skieming fuck all, maybe Fig is projecting paranoia onto Ali ...
Anyways, right now, right here Fig feels he is in a downward spiral.
Jack can do that and, in time, will. Will grip you.
And coke dissipates. That’s what it does.
“Anyways, so there was this lil’ girl who’s name I can’t remember ... and
we were all playing on the swings and the seesaws and the what have you.
Remember being on the roundabouts, me and my friend Jimmy, who was
later decapitated in a motorbike accident, were pushing the roundabout faster
and faster to scare the girls like boys do the world round and then this one lil’
girl dropped her toffee apple ... it’s like I can still see it now ...”
Fig slurps his Jack like he’s holding back the tears that he’s not.
“I can still see it clearly, lying there cracked, the glazing cracked open and
kinda infiltrated by the sand from the grassless area round the roundabout
irrevocably sullying the toffee apple ... irrevocable … like there was nothing
to be done ... and ... and that was true ... there was nothing to be done ... her
toffee apple was kaput, klaar, finished … no longer, nicht, nyet, not.”
Fig goes suddenly quiet, staring at his quadruple Jack as if lost.
He hears how noisy the joint is for the first time that night.
WHOO-WAH-BLAH merges with WHOO-HOO-BLAH on compressed
reverb.
When he looks up who knows how much longer later, Ali is staring at him
as though concerned.
But Fig can’t make out for whom.
Ali either hasn’t heard Fig or is ignoring him, whatever the case ... “But
oh, my dear Ali, my first true, really true experience of disappointment was
at my sixth birthday and it’s still there, I mean still filed somewhere deep in
the back of my unconscious, subconscious, superconscious, supraconscious
… fuck, there I go again ...” Fig takes a sip from his quadruple Jack, “Oh ja,
my first lived-structure exposure to disappointment was that of a girl at my
sixth birthday party at Cannon Hill ... the park was called Cannon Hill and
was on Cannon Hill because there was an old colonial-type cannon there ‒
wheels sunk in a cemented platform, unbudgeable as its supposed place in
history ‒ and a plaque of some or other English king or queen’s visit with
commensurate heraldry, probably a unicorn on one side and … some buck or
other beast on the other with flapping scarf-like material set in stone, set for
time immemorial but obviously not, hey? ... anyways, I remember it vividly
like it was yesterday, hey Ali.”
Ali turns to look over Fig’s shoulder like there’s a tidal wave behind him.
Fig skiems maybe it’s all in his head.
Fig’s, not Ali’s.
Prolly it’s all just the product of his own corpus collosum.
But still Ali pats his hair that’s already in place into place in case it’s not in
place with what can only be described as a series of nervous little tics.
Fig glances quickly over his shoulder, but there’s nothing there, so he
continues: “Okey dokey, so check me n my family were living in this railway
house. Obviously roof over our head, running water, red brick-face place, that
kinda thing, way beyond the Grim that is shantytowns but still white trash.
Ag, you know as small as this place ...” Fig windmills both arms in a wax-on,
wax-off style while turning on his butt on the stool to take in the largish room.
The place is petering out like the end of a pool game and KuKlopsKlan
of One is still there and of course it’s obvious that he’s just waiting there for
some or other unjust purpose.
Something injurious to Fig, no doubt.
Because Fig is not sober it doesn’t matter.
Not at all. The phantom boat of sobriety left these here docks a good while
back.
Anyways, as he scritch-scratches his itchy scalp, Fig tunes: “Ja, tell you
what. So I was skieming … ja, skiem the point is we were poor for that Slegs
Blankes town called Uitenhage and I mention that because my mother had
made just the right amount of toffee apples for my cousins and friends from
my pre-primary school that were there at my birthday party. That means there
was just one for each kid … just one. That’s important for reasons that will
soon become apparent. Oh yes, my dear Ali.”
Fig swivels on the barstool that’s somehow got less grimey.
To continue: “To continue. Just one. That’s important. One toffee apple.
Each.”
And turns back to the front, wiggling his bum like it’s got too big for the
stool.
Ali turns his head, clocks a look at Fig outside of time, before Jehovah,
Jesus, Allah ... long before G-hyphen-d, long before San rock paintings, way
before the fire in the cave to ward off sabre-toothed tigers while public fucking
on mammoth pelts and ... like before what can be construed as primordial
slime and yet cannily right now, right here in the present.
Yes, that is entirely not possible but appears to be how Ali is looking at Fig.
Ali’s expression’s one of a being that is desperately trying to show that he’s
not being hunted.
Maybe that’s Ali, maybe Ali is being paranoid, then again maybe Ali is
skieming fuck all, maybe Fig is projecting paranoia onto Ali ...
Anyways, right now, right here Fig feels he is in a downward spiral.
Jack can do that and, in time, will. Will grip you.
And coke dissipates. That’s what it does.
“Anyways, so there was this lil’ girl who’s name I can’t remember ... and
we were all playing on the swings and the seesaws and the what have you.
Remember being on the roundabouts, me and my friend Jimmy, who was
later decapitated in a motorbike accident, were pushing the roundabout faster
and faster to scare the girls like boys do the world round and then this one lil’
girl dropped her toffee apple ... it’s like I can still see it now ...”
Fig slurps his Jack like he’s holding back the tears that he’s not.
“I can still see it clearly, lying there cracked, the glazing cracked open and
kinda infiltrated by the sand from the grassless area round the roundabout
irrevocably sullying the toffee apple ... irrevocable … like there was nothing
to be done ... and ... and that was true ... there was nothing to be done ... her
toffee apple was kaput, klaar, finished … no longer, nicht, nyet, not.”
Fig goes suddenly quiet, staring at his quadruple Jack as if lost.
He hears how noisy the joint is for the first time that night.
WHOO-WAH-BLAH merges with WHOO-HOO-BLAH on compressed
reverb.
When he looks up who knows how much longer later, Ali is staring at him
as though concerned.
But Fig can’t make out for whom.
