Zero five hundred hours. It was time. In a matter of
minutes, a white BMW X5 would come down this way, as it did yesterday, and
every morning before that. Jacob had been promised twenty thousand rand in cash
for such a car. It was the highest offer he had received for a car yet.
The BMW came into view up the road. As it neared, Jacob and
his two partners readied themselves. The BMW stopped at the stop street. The
men pulled out of the bush with their car and stopped in front of the BMW,
blocking it off from passing through the intersection. Jacob hopped out of the
passenger side. He looked through the windscreen into the face of a terrified
woman. She was young, pretty and from a different social class. A woman like
her would never look twice at man like him. She’d look down on him. Ignore his
presence. Grip her bag tightly and quicken her step, like he was some filthy, thieving
sickness that needed to be avoided at all costs. All at once, he was filled
with anger and resentment. What made this woman
better than him? What made her think that he were any less human?
Jacob came round the car and opened the driver’s door. He
grabbed the woman by the arm and attempted to yank her out of the car, only her
seat-belt was buckled which prevented him from getting her out quick enough. A
set of lights could be seen coming up the road. Without thinking twice, Jacob
got into the back seat and put a gun to the woman’s head; “follow the car”.
The car that Jacob and his colleagues were driving moved out
of the way and started to drive down the road. The woman, moaning in fear, did
as Jacob said and followed.
They finally reached an industrial area. They pulled into a warehouse
that appeared to be abandoned from the outside. It was dark inside. Jacob
ordered the woman to stop, turn the car off, and get out. He could see that the
poor woman was petrified. Her fear angered him. It was a clear indication of
her discrimination toward him. He was sick and tired of being treated like the
scum of the earth by these rich bitches. He was sick and tired of feeling like
a second class citizen in his own damn country.
Jacob handed the lady over to his two colleagues.
He disappeared
into the darkness. He was going to meet the man
and collect payment. Jacob returned from the darkness after about a half an
hour. He was pissed off, and the look on his face made the woman whimper. Out of
shear frustration and anger, Jacob backhanded the woman; “give me a reason” he
threatened.
He was angry because the twenty thousand rand that he was
promised had turned into ten thousand rand. He’d promised his colleagues each
two thousand rand, but that was when he was expecting to keep sixteen thousand
rand for himself. Now he was getting six! Jacob grabbed the woman and threw her
into the trunk of their car. He ordered the guys to get him, before spinning
away.
Jacob’s colleagues were in the dark about the money. They only
knew what they were getting so they were dead happy. They stopped at the shebeen
to celebrate their earnings. Jacob drank more than the other two. He had more
money to splash on beer also, he was feeling really angry and was looking for a
release. By noon, the trio had to be kicked out for being disorderly. They got
into their car and drove to a liquor store to buy more beer, before going to an
abandoned plot to drink it.
After a good few beers at the plot, one of the men waltzed
into the house with the kidnapped woman. She’d been in the trunk the entire
time. She was scared and dehydrated. Jacob relived his colleague of the woman
and forced her to have a seat next to him. Again he could feel the anger rise
up in him; she was trembling with fear, tears welling up in her eyes and
begging him for mercy. Mercy? He
thought. He hadn't even done anything to her that could warrant her plea for mercy. Just then and there Jacob decided
to show this rich bitch who was boss around here. He grabbed a fist full of
blonde hair and started dragging her down the passageway. She was kicking and
screaming, protesting to the fullest. Jacob’s colleagues laughed at the silly
little woman and made a point of letting Jacob know that it would be their turn next.
Jacob threw the woman onto a rotten mattress in one of the
rooms. She was not ignorant and knew exactly what was coming. Jacob took the
last gulp of beer and then smashed the end of the bottle on the wall. He knelt
down, grabbed her hair again, this time with his left hand, while using his
right to shove the edge of the glass bottle into her throat; “Now I show you”
he said. Jacob placed the bottle at the side of her head, keeping it within
reach so that he could continue to strike fear into the woman as a source of
control. He started to remove her pants. They were a formal pair of work pants;
black with a fine white pin stripe. He noted the quality of the fabric and
started to mentally calculate how much the pants must have cost, and if he
could resell it, when he suddenly saw a blinding white light.
Carol wasn't about to be raped. She would rather die than be
violated like this. She had grabbed the beer bottle with her left hand and hit
Jacob on the temple with it as hard as she possibly could. He fell over, but
she could see that he wasn't completely unconscious. She had seconds to get out
of there. She jumped up, pants dangling round her ankles. After a split second
to calculate how much time she had to get out alive, she decided to step out of
the pants and climb through the window bear bottomed. The window was broken and
filthy. She jumped right through it. A shard of glass hooked into her thigh,
but she didn't care. Carol started to run through the veld as fast as her legs
could carry her. She could hear Jacob screaming from the house. They were going
to come after her, and then who knew what they would do. Carol was running
toward the house next door. It too appeared to be abandoned, but she had
nowhere else to go.
When Carol got to the house, she banged on the front door.
Before giving anyone a chance to respond, she opened the door and let herself
in. By now it was late afternoon. Through the yellowish orange afternoon light
shining in, Carol could see that the old farm house was abandoned. There were a
few rusted items on the kitchen floor though and one of the items was a garden
pick. Carol grabbed the pick and ran deeper into the house to find a place to
hide.
One of the rooms had a lot of abandoned items in it; some rotten
furniture, a piss soaked mattress, a few empty cans of food, faeces on a
newspaper in the corner and a lot of maggots on a pile of wet flattened boxes. Carol
lifted the maggot infested boxes and climbed under.
Within seconds the trio had invaded the house. Carol could
hear them shouting and searching through the rooms. Someone entered the room
that she was in and opened the cupboards. When he found nothing he moved on. It
felt like a lifetime. The men knew for a fact that she was in the house and continued
to search till sunset. They had been in and out of the room that she was in a dozen
times. They had thrown the items out of the cupboard, lifted the mattress and
flung the rotten furniture around. To her amazement, they never once looked
under the pile of soggy boxes.
Darkness started to consume the house. Silence too descended.
None the less, Carol decided to stay put. It wasn't until she could feel the
maggots wriggling inside her shirt that she decided that she couldn't take it
anymore and got up.
Shrieking in disgust, Carol jumped around till she was satisfied
that she was maggot free. Just then, the sound of rustling caught her
attention. She was not alone. They had
not left the house. She bent down and reached for the pick. Carol then stood
behind the bedroom door. She was loud enough that they would know exactly which
room to find her in. It was too dark, and Carol couldn't see, but she could
hear someone entering the room. She swung the pick right at him. She could feel
the pick inter the person, like a spade being shoved into soft, moist earth.
She tried to pull the pick back, but it was too hard; it was stuck. The millimetre
that she managed to dislodge it by generated a sound that would give her
nightmares for life. It was the sound of squishy suction, blood no doubt. It gave Carol the mental image of the pick lodged
in the man’s throat and exiting through the back of his head.
Carol didn't want to wait for the other two to follow. She
didn't know how much noise she’d made now, it was as if all her senses had died
and all her focus was in that moment of survival. A bomb could have gone off
and she wouldn't have noticed. She found her way out of the house. It was pitch
black outside, but in the distance, Carol could see street lights.
She started to run toward the street lights as fast as
humanly possible. If she couldn't see anything, surely they couldn't see her.
About four hundred metres from the road, Carol stepped into a hole and lost her
footing, sending her tumbling forward. As fast as she went down, she was up and
running again. She wondered if she’d hurt herself, but perhaps could not feel
it with the adrenaline pumping through her body.
When Carol reached the road, she saw a set of car lights
coming toward her. Without hesitation, Carol ran into the middle of the road
and started doing star jumps to catch the driver’s attention. The car came to a
screeching halt in front of her. Blinded by the car’s headlights, Carol feared
that one of the two men might be right behind her. She started to run toward
the passenger door. Carol hopped in; “DRIVE! DRIVE! DRIVE!” She shouted. The
driver didn’t react. Carol turned to look at him so that she could urge him to
drive once more, only, when she saw him, all words failed her.
Jacob started the car, did a u-turn, and headed back toward
the house.
