Madness: Chapter 1

Madness

1

It had been seconds since I had moved and even longer since I had noticed people were screaming. The fine mist of my guide's blood remained stuck in the scorching and humid African air of the Songimvelo game reserve where I stood, emotionally and physically unmoved, as something furry and ugly and mean cracked his ribs in its teeth like Kit Kat wafers. I hadn't intended to write about our guide through Songimvelo at all, but now I had to. Not out of respect for his passing, but to give some sort of name to the monster's food. T'challa? Mofongo? I resolved to just see if it was in the paperwork I had back in my email and if not, I decided, I'd just Google common South African names and use it when I wrote my article.

The monster's fur was spotted so maybe it was a leopard? I turned to ask my photographer, another South African named something else unpronouncible, but he was gone. I threw my hands up in frustration. This would have been a good photograph for National Geographic if my own employer, Vice, didn't buy it. This motion alerted the beast to my presence. I reasoned in the moment before it attacked me, that I must have been so still for so long that the spotted bloody cat thing had dismissed me as a threat or a meal he needed to kill before focusing on our guide. I wondered the reserve's refund policy as the cat pounced on me. I threw up an arm and it sunk its teeth between my radius and ulna bones and twisted its head, dropping me to the ground with lightning shooting up my left side. Spotted cat thing had a circle on its forehead between its eyes the size and damage you'd expect from someone grinding a hot car cigarette lighter into furry flesh. I reached up to put my dirty right thumb in the beast's glassy left eye when it disappeared, vanished in a blue blur.

I looked around and saw my salvation. To my left, kneeling on the grass was a white lady superhero type. She was dressed in all navy denim. Jeans, vest (with tasteful neckline), and even the cape was denim, though it was in strips that hung to her ankles. I could only see the back of her head and the dirty, twig filled ebony hair that curled and swayed on her shoulders, but I could tell she was staring down the cat she had tossed that stood its ground a few feet away, growling. She glowed and for a flash her skin took on that spotted leopardish coloration before returning to a Midwestern American pale skin. How did she maintain that color in Africa? She was gone. So was cat thing. I started digging through our guide's soiled pockets and bloody gear for a satellite phone. No luck.

I was repacking the gear and preparing for a walk when the denim queen returned to check on me. I handed her a business card.

"Levi Rucker, Vice Magazine. Thanks for saving me."

She hesitated and asked if I was hurt in an accent I wanted to place as Kansas. I showed her the sabretooth marks in my arm, which she healed with a wave of her hands.

"Flight, strength, healing, and whatever that glowing was? You got a lot of powers, Miss...?" I trailed off in that way that prompts the other person to say their name, but she didn't bite at it. She said I was acting too calm for someone who was almost killed, covered in blood, lost in an African jungle.

"You're not the only one with powers. I'm a bonafide metahuman."

She looked at me and her eyes went white and I swear I was looking at myself for a moment when she glowed.

"Oh, that's terrible," she said.

I laughed and told her if she copies powers, mine is one she'd want to throw away.

"We don't all get to fly around and play God. Some of us just get brain damage."

We talked for a few minutes. I think she pitied my "power" in contrast to her own. She claimed to be Amelia Earhart, crash landed on Gardner Island in the Phoenix Islands in 1937. Said she found a cave and an ancient guy that gave her the power to copy other plants and animals and elements and metahumans and so on with a doomsday prophecy (which ancient wise men typically have), pressing her to preserve the information of our world in herself. I called her a back up drive, but I guess there's no computers in ancient magic caves because she didn't know what I meant. I didn't believe her, but I believed that she believed it. Smart money's on the ancient wise one stealing her collection of powers and trying to take over the world. She asked me not to write any of this down as her mission was a secret one, but I had slipped my recorder to the on position way before she said this and she'll never read this in her cave. I was brainstorming proper superhero names for her as she flew me out of the game reserve towards Swaziland. Decided on Blue Ribbon.

"Was there someone else with you?" she asked.

I hadn't forgotten about the photographer. I just assumed he was lost or dead. Blue Ribbon spotted him though, running in the jungle, lost, but at least headed to the east like us. Blue Ribbon swooped down and snatched him up and I caught him up to speed while we flew through the air above the reserve, each under the superstrong arm of a goddess, copping a feel through denim and pretending I was just holding on.

She dropped us a half mile from the Swaziland border. I tried to persuade her for a full interview, but she turned invisible and left. Or was still standing there. She was invisible after all, so I held my tongue and didn't comment on her cleavage to my photographer until we had walked to the Josefdal port of entry, passing a rusted and failing trailer the border guards lived in.

My South Africa photographer tugged at my khaki safari shirt when I started pushing my way to the front of the line since he wasn't used to working with real press, resigned as he was to the silly South African rag that loaned him to me. The other Africans said things, but they all sounded like "Swati swazi swazi swati" to me and I couldn't tell what they were trying to communicate in those noises. I held out my passport to the armed officials checking papers and showed them my impressive credentials, stamped as they were with marks from countries around the world, wherever there was an opportunity to expose my readers to the grimy underbelly of the back alleyways of planet Earth.

A stamp from Singapore from a visit to a transgender slave market. A stamp from Afghanistan where I pretended to be an arms dealer and a little village showed me from start to finish how they craft guns by hand in under a week. A stamp from Japan where I took my readers to "cuddle cafes". I was proud of a stamp from Czechoslavacia (back when it was a country). It was a long time ago, but I think they were selling girls into sex farms or sex houses or sex something. The dim looking guard in the admittedly well-laundered uniform didn't smile or raise his eyebrows impressed as he was showing my press pass and passport and letter from the office of King Mswati III inviting me to extoll the virtues of Swaziland tourism to his equally dim looking partner who was sitting at a small fold up table with a stack of papers and the rubber stamp that I required for entry.

"My photographer is back there," I said and pointed to the back where Mofongo or whatever was being meek. They didn't respond so I asked, "Do you speak English?"

The standing guard turned back to me. His name tag said, "Ntombi". I remember it because I spent a few seconds trying to pronounce it in my head while he was talking to me, saying that he spoke English and they were calling it in and yada yada. En-tom-bi? Nit-om-bi? En-tomb-i? Maybe the T was silent. Or maybe the N. It took all too long for them to call me in and get verified, but at least it gave Mofongo time to grow a pair and push passed the Africans and catch up with me.

Finally, the stamp. Thump. I was allowed to leave the South African side line by the game reserve and enter the Swaziland side of the line. They were explaining, more to my photographer than to me, that we were entering as a pair and must leave as a pair and he was only being allowed into Swaziland because he was with yours truly. For a second, I entertained a joke of renegotiating his fee once inside the hellhole since he couldn't escape without me. He didn't find it amusing. Swaziland sucks.

The Kingdom of Swaziland is a tiny ink stain of a "country" (and the quotations are very appropriate as it lacks just about everything that defines a nation-state). It's situated inside of South Africa, surrounded on all sides. How they've managed to exist in the 21st century is beyond me. Most people live on less than a buck twenty-five per day. Everyone's a farmer. Most farm food, the rest drugs. Highest incidence of AIDS in the world. Lowest life expectency in the world. The dumb ones speak siSwati/Swati/Swazi. It's one of those. I think they're interchangable. The smart ones at least know some English. Not that the guards who closed the gate behind us were smart. They probably had to learn enough English to interact with civilization since they were on the border. I had hoped to find a car rental or scooter rental shop once the road went from ugly dirt road to ugly paved road, but no such luck.

We walked a mile on the cracked and failing road and the hills got larger and the grass turned from yellow to green. Ecologically, it's less of a hellhole than you'd imagine and I had Mofongo (I called him that in my head even though I know that's a food. Out loud I never said a name and just said, "Take a picture of those hills" but as it was only us within talking distance, I figured he wouldn't notice.) snap pictures of the more scenic views. In the town of Belembu, I stopped and assessed my surroundings. A better choice of paint colors, some roadwork, and some blue checked window treatments and a picture of Belembu could have been mistaken for a rustic village in France where I did a piece on anti-freeze laden wine.

Mofongo talked to the clerk-owner of the Belembu Lodge while I looked around.

"Swati swati swazi swazi."

"Swazi swati?"

"Levi Rucker, Vice Magazine. Swati."

"Swazi swazi swazi swati."

"Siswati swati?"

"Swazi."

"Swati."

I ate my murdered guide's sandwich without guilt. Whether this was due to the calicification of my amygdala brought on my "superpower" or the logical conclusion that he wasn't going to eat it and I enjoyed roast beef on home baked bread, I don't know. If I rationed the supplies from my own backpack and the scavenged food from the backpack of the deceased, I could go two more days without eating Swazi cooking. Three if I conserved it, but the bottled water wouldn't last that long.

Mofongo wouldn't leave me alone that night. I could tell the monster and the whole bloody scene had gotten to him and it was annoying. I took his hand into mind and pretended to care. I've had a lot of practice pretending to care, pretending to be interested, pretending to be in grief. People look at you strange if you don't seem sad at a funeral. Sunglasses are the key there. Doesn't work at weddings though unless they're out doors, but faking a smile is much easier than faking grief. I rubbed the back of my sweaty hands against his skin as inconspicuously as I could and my secretion started to work right away. He calmed down and decided it wasn't that traumatic after all and said good night. I knew that my calming secretion was weak and short-lived though, so I locked the door after he left and immediately turned out the lights. I could hear him pacing less than five minutes later in his own room. The results of a low dose. Just a passing hand. It's a footnote as far as superpowers go, but it's been helpful in my role as journalist, lowering the inhibitions of people guarding secrets. Works on women guarding their chastity. It's not like it would make someone do something they didn't want to do.

The night was sticky and hot and there was no air conditioner. I know I made it worse putting up my mosquito netting, but Africa is covered in mosquitos that would enjoy nothing else than my juicy American blood. I feel asleep finally after adding half a fifth of Canadian Mist to my hemoglobins. A banging in the night woke me up and I looked in the direction of the noise, the wall between my confining, sparsely furnished room and Mofongo's, which I assumed was just as badly supplied with furniture. The banging was loud and I reasoned that if it continued much longer it would be worth the effort to get up and put on my pants and talk to him. There was a crash and I made out the clerk-owner's voice, so I rested my head again and left him to it. There was some talking for a few more minutes and then silence and I went back to sleep.

I should have gone to see what was the matter because when I awoke, it was to the clerk-owner knocking at my door and informing me that my photographer had left. I didn't have to worry about paying the check. Vice took care of that. But I did have to find a new photographer. Mofongo's mysterious and violent disappearance was especially tragic to me as I was a terrible photographer. I had a camera, but my sense of framing and composition was nowhere near magazine quality.

"Not leaving the country without me," I said to myself, packing my backpack with Mofongo's travel papers that he had left. The other option was to leave them at the shack of a hotel with the shifty clerk-owner. His hands would twitch at the sight of money and I had no reservations in mentally accusing him of the hypothetical sale of Mofongo's papers to aid some Swazi's escape from their totalitarian regime. Better to have Mofongo's papers with me. He knew my itenerary. If he wanted them, he could catch up with me.

The clerk-owner-asshole's English suddenly dried up when it came to the subject of a refund for Mofongo's room, which I felt entitled to. He likewise stonewalled my attempts to rent anything with wheels in the squallor surrounding his establishment. So I began to walk, reminiscing the seats of the game reserve guide's jeep that the monsterous leopard-thing had rendered unsteerable when it lept through the windshield of the moving steel, bending the steering wheel into an unturnable mess when the teeth of its bottom jaw had come up through the guide's bottom jaw and the teeth of its top jawn had pulled great gashes from the guide's forehead through his eyes and nose to meet the bottom teeth, leading to the crash that further made its driving ability a lost cause. At the time I had thought the seats were uncomfortable, but now I compared them to my Timberlands boots and thought I would trade the two to stop this forced death march. I drank my bottled water quickly, hoping to lessen the weight of my pack.

It was a calculated risk to consume my Voss and possibly fall to the mercies of the disease ridden well water that coursed beneath my feet. Piggs Peak, the next settlement, promised a full city. This filled me with little hope given what I had come to realize of the African definition of the word "city". However, a casino is a casino is a casino and Piggs Peak Hotel and Casino was featured in the packet of information sent to my magazine by the Swaziland department of tourism (who I imagined to be one guy name Zimbimbim or something desparately trying to get tourists to come under threat of execution). The casino had a pool and gambling, so there must be some civilization and where there is civility, there is internet access, bottled water, and white people speaking English.

It was the only thing that was going to keep me putting one foot after the other on the thin, one lane road that twisted like a crooked vein through tin roofed huts, punctuated with the occasional tin roofed shack (Is that considered the rich family in town?). A suite awaited my tired and abused feet, maybe even a hot tub. It was too hot to actually get in, but if it was next to the pool, I could lounge in the pool and drink with my feet soaking in the hot tub. After two miles, I got curious and walked into one of these villages. There were seven homes. Not ugly. No shop. No cars. I knocked on one of the doors and a woman answered. It was one of those situations where I was unsure of how a normal person would react. Her melted face was by all accounts horrific. I had seen victims of acid attacks in other parts of the world and the results never stop being gross. That's the idea. Woman messes with you, you throw acid in her face and she can't get married because no one wants her. Acceptable behavior in a lot of countries like Swaziland where women have the same legal rights as an eight-year-old.

Still I had to weigh my options. Do I recoil in horror as this woman must be used to? That would be the normal response. Even I know that would be a negative experience for the woman. Besides, it would take less effort to indulge my apathy at her condition.

"Hello. Do you know where I can rent a car?"

"Swati swati?" or it was "Swazi swazi?" because her upper lip had fused to her bottom on the left side and she slurred and spit.

"Does anyone here speak English?" I shouted over her shoulder into the crowded little house full of Swazis. Six children were upon me like spiders bursting out of a egg ball chanting "English! English!" over and over.

"Do you know where I rent a car?"

Some of them pointed back to Bulembu and shouted that name, which would mean I wasted my time. Some of them pointed towards Piggs Peak and shouted that name, which didn't help me.

"Do any of you have a bicycle?"

None of them did.

"Who wants to carry my backpack to Piggs Peak?"

They all cheered and I started to walk off with the children. The acid scarred woman yelled "Swati swati" back into the house and another woman came out. Looking back at them was a strange sight. Before and After pictures of an acid attack, obviously a sister and the mother of at least some of these children.

"They're showing me the way to Piggs Peak," I said.

"Swati swazi swazi!" she said to me and then to her children, "Swati swati!"

The children started to go back inside, but a note for 100 emalangeni changed her mind. In a world where a person lives off E12 a day, E100 can change minds. And thanks to the exchange rate, it only cost me as much as a McCombo Deal. I only needed one of the Swazilings to carry my bag, but they all came along. Swaziland can be a dangerous place for a kid. It's a place where there are PSA billboards every few miles warning "Are you thinking of raping a child today? Think twice of the consequences." Obviously, the consequences are little deterent in the poor country where over half the children lose their virginity as rapers or rapees of the violent variety.

So I imagined I was as Gandalf, walking with his hobbits through the greenery of the Middle Earth of the Lower Poverty Class. And while Samwise Gamgee, the name I gave to one of the tykes who was really named Chihuahua or something, kept pestering me to teach him English, I evaluated the differences between our childhoods to their happiness.

"Now I'm not saying that I grew up in a better home than you, in a better neighborhood, full of better appliances, filled with better food, maintained by better housekeeping staff than your pea-brained mom and your melted sister. But I'm also not saying that I didn't.

I'm not saying that I watched satellite and enjoyed indie rock while you watched snaked dance around your feed and enjoyed, well, rocks. I'm not saying I had a fat phase and you had a my-parents-had-another-kid-because-I-was-probably-going-to-die phase. I'm not saying that while your first sexual experience will be a rough teenager bending you over and making your anus bleed, I corn-holed the most coquettish call girls. But I'm also not saying that I didn't.

I'm not saying that my dad used the money he saved by not donating to charities that would feed your family and have saved the lives of how ever many of your family and neighbors to get me a car that I turned around and wrecked while high two weeks later. I'm also not saying I didn't."

They understood every other word it seemed and I knelt down and pinched Mofongo II's cheek (I felt it was a fitting tribute to name one after my disappeared photographer) and I told her, "Oh, who am I kidding? I AM saying all of these things. But c'mon, sweetie! You can see it in my eyes. I'm better than you. My smug look clearly shows that no individual has EVER questioned my abilities or merit or the possibilities for my future. It was all chance, I understand. I've had certain opportunities that you, in your well water, improverished, for the price of a cup of a coffee you can save the life of this child life will never understand. So when I walked into your house like I owned it, saw the gooey, frozen, and unresponsive face of your family members, I knew it was my God-given right as an American to buy your entire sub-human family for less than a car wash without an ounce of negotiation needed. And I did."

I stood up and continued my trek down the dirty road in my Timberlands.

"Every bit of dust you kick around your bare feet while carrying my $500 backpack is a reminder that while I will wrap up experiencing this 'adventure' that you call your 'life', I will fly back, first class, to my $3000 studio in an old industrial district just because it's hip and trendy while maintaining a car, ordering food, and bar hopping every day. You, on the other hand, will say poor. Haha... loser."

I assumed the uneducated wretches had never read the classics and continued to borrow from Bret Easton Ellis.

"Oh yeah, remember how your dad was killed by civil unrest or the oppressive regime of your totalitarian dictator? Well, your mom sold you all so quick, I'm betting she's hurting for stiff American money and I'm looking to use my unearned wealth. When I'm riding back in my rental, hopefully a closed top so I can ignore your poverty more, I might stop by. How much do you think your mom charges for an around the world? Just kidding, of course. Your mom probably has AIDS and will die in a year."

The smiles on their faces throughout this horribly offensive expression of the English language had fueled me on to make it more offensive, waiting for the moment when they would gather I was insulting them, but the moment never happened. I had said the whole lot of words in a sing-song voice and they might have thought I was espousing on the designated hitter rule's impact on the game. When stuck on the road, it's important to entertain yourself with little games to pass the time. The sound of a car behind us interrupted more of my inane self-agrandizing.

"And I'm a ninja. Make that king of the ninjas. With a couple wives. Not all at once. Some were ninja wives."

The car's engine was deep and low and impressive, making me stop in my tracks to admire it, not just to try to hitch a ride behind it and the air conditioning unit. I turned and looked at the cloud of dust with the flat and low metal shark that helmed the dirt storm and rumbled quickly towards me. The hobbits had already moved to the side. They knew the shark, painted purple, and respected its power, understanding that at least. It drove as if no man or child would possibly slow its travel and the shark would consume all pedistrians or lesser vehicles without slowing to taste them. I moved to the side of the road and jutted out my thumb, but the Swazilings grabbed my arm and pulled it down, repeating and yelling "No" at different volumes. Loud enough to impart the urgency, hush enough that the shark wouldn't hear them.

The shark slowed and my hobbits abandoned Gandalf the White, dropping my pack, as they scattered. The shark stopped in front of me and the dust cloud overtook it and me, sending me into a coughing fit as the tinted window lowered with a whir. I couldn't see through the dust into the darkness of the tinted car, but I coughed out something resembling, "How about a lift to Piggs Peak Casino?" and the window whirred back up. I thought I was out of luck and was about to rap on the window with my knuckles and give the driver some good old fashioned "How dare you? Do you know who I am?" when I heard the cha-chunk of the door lock. I grabbed my bag and opened the door, but a voice from the darkness stopped me. It was a soft voice, but it sounded crisp and cut and hard edged. It sounded like a small man puffing out his chest at a club when confronted by a tough guy.

"Put da bag in da trunk, not in da lab."

I didn't know what "da lab" was, but I figured "da trunk" when it popped open. I walked to the back of the four door and hefted up my sack, taking a moment to appreciate the contents of the trunk. A box of guns, suspicious worn plastic containers with mystery liquids still settling from the stop, two gallon size ziplocs of marijuana, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, chemistry textbooks, three machetes and suits in dry cleaner bags, folded over with care. This was a man to treat with respect and I laided my pack down as carefully as I could, trying not to disturb the contents of this hell on wheels.

I returned to the front passenger side door and sat down in the seat, ass first, with my feet out the side and clapped them together, knocking off dirt and hoping my host would appreciate the gesture to keep his car clean and to keep the Swaziland on the outside of the shark. Then I turned and shut the door.

"Thanks for picking me up. My name's Levi Rucker. I'm a magazine writer from America."

I turned and shook the hand of my host.

"Lindiwe Dyuba."

This was a man whose name you learned and remembered.