Saturday, December 21, 2013

EMBERS




Two of my best childhood memories (and there were but few) should have remained in a recessed state, asleep in my history only to be revived with moderate pining or intense yearning. One thing I have learned as an adult, is to let places you loved slip into the deep of your reminiscence and to not go and seek them out again, because things change. And when they change, they become other things entirely and they shun you for being naïve enough to think that you were as special to them as they had been to you. But we forge that, to places, we are but insignificant phantoms, fleeting shadows in their eternal steadfastness and they move on or they wither, selfish in their way, to become nightmares, spoiled leftovers of a once magnificent feast and leave you nauseated in their decay.
Some places should not be sought out in an attempt to relive fond encounters. They tarnish pristine memories…but sometimes it is not their fault, but the error of their keepers.

One such place is President Park in Vereeniging, South Africa.
Since my first memories it had been part of my life. My grandfather, Oupa Ronnie, was the caretaker/ superintendent of this compound in the center of the large town and since my parents could not afford daycare for me, I was dropped off at my grandparents’ place every morning at 6.30am and all I, quite literally, did all day…was swim.

Now let me explain the structure of this wondrous, kingdom of my Grandfather and the Municipality he used to tend it for.
In the center of it all was a double story house, so old that its balustrades were laid in stone and cement and my grandfather being a perfectionist as a landscaper and handyman in general, he painted all the walls white and the roof, gutters and window panes black. 

The house always reminded me of a chess board, either you’re one or the other. As one entered the front door of the enormous house – and it is in fact a cozy 3-bedroom, but I was six years old! – one would be in direct line with the double glass doors that led out of the house on the other side…my Shangri La lay beyond those doors. 

Stretched majestically on the perfectly groomed rolling lawns, was the “Olympic Pool”, light blue with black stripes marking ten lanes for gala’s and provincial competition. This was also where Oupa Ronnie trained life guards for certification and I recall them being a ludus of delectable muscular gladiators in their late teens, sporting Speedo’s the way Speedo’s were intended to fit and their playful majesty as my grandfather’s henchmen.  

Next to the pool was a compact pavilion and behind this, where the lawn mounded, were the built-in trampolines, to the south. To the west was the house towering as nerve center and to the east was the “public entrance”, comprising of two heavy wooden doors reminiscent of those used by castle citadels in the times of medieval siege. The entire compound was walled and fenced in. Between the Olympic pool and the entrance, stood a beautiful light blue cement fountain, spewing crystal water endlessly.

To the north, past its heaving lawn, was a division wall with locked gates to the two football fields on the other side! On the other side of the house, by the front door’s side, was a rugby field with a massive constructed pavilion which played host to the Rugby Club Hall which used to be a perfect venue for wedding receptions and piss-ups of a corporate nature.

But back to the trampolines…past them was another division wall like the football fields’ and if you walked through the narrow gate between the pump house and the wall, you would enter the magical play park where I spent all my time when I was not allowed in the big pool.
And it was magical.

It had four cement pools of varying depth and from one ran a canal (all built and laid in blue painted cement) just big enough for a child to fit in and I used to swim along the winding man-made rivulet, moving myself along on my hands and gliding all the way to a splash pool which ended in a seven foot rock face with a waterfall that worked as diligently as the fountain at the entrance.

The entire park was lawn and trees amongst the light blue ponds and canal. On the other side of the park, hidden in a stunning overgrowth of ivy and creepers, lay Aunty Hopkins’ domain. A small office with an FM/AM radio playing British news casts and 70’s music all day is where she poured her tea in the most peculiar apricot glass tea set. She oversaw the park and the children who played there. Just outside her office were more change rooms and a combined slash stone stoep, completely possessed by potted plants and Delicious Monsters so big that they dwarfed my mother when she stood there.

From Aunty Hopkins’ vigil one could see the other extreme of the fence that bordered the aforementioned rugby field. There was a petting zoo and a park with see-saws and roundabouts and a slide that would scare the life out of me. If you peeked through the wrought iron fence you could see the rugby field and the far reach of the club house.

This was the magnitude of my childhood home during the day. It was my place. I was the princess of King Ronnie’s Realm. He allowed me to assist him at 7am when he taught kids to swim and after that, the Olympic pool and its surrounding pleasures were mine to have. This is where I cultivated my underwater Dolphin speech (don’t ask) and challenged myself each day to try and touch the bottom of the deep end, where my ears would sting and the black stripes would vanish in the murky blue depths, rendering me a coward.
On Christmas and New Years we’d be closed to the public and my father’s seven siblings, their wives, husbands and children would all congregate. 

At night my braggart grandfather would pack out amplifiers and the whole family would sit outside on the lawn with electric guitars and play Boeremusiek (traditional Afrikaner music) for all the surrounding buildings and houses to hear. People in the 20-floor building across the street would come out and lean on the balconies and at the end of each song we could hear them clap and cheer. Sometimes they’d call out requests, and, being an entire family of musicians, we’d usually be able to oblige with some Pussycat, CCR, Johnny Cash, etc.

Everybody knew “Baas Ronnie”, as the Blacks called him. They adored him, because he spoke fluent Sotho and although he was as powerful, loud, stern and robust as his voice, he was loved by everyone. He was the big old soldier who took nobody’s shit, an old bar fighting, tattooed, dark tanned, super-fit fifty-something tyrant who ruled his large family with a boisterous voice (which, in song, could rival Pavarotti himself) and a regal fairness. I remember always watching him storm at the Black workers and say something ferocious in their language, waiting for trouble, when suddenly they’d scream with laughter with him. He loved telling them dirty jokes and playing with them.


A heart attack silenced him in 1995, and since then it seems his absent spirit had left President Park in peril.
In the hands of the new ANC government everything has fallen to corruption and the municipality and whomever was entrusted to the care of this majestic  and magical playpen for social gathering and fitness had failed miserably….if they even tried. This is what I found on satellite pictures and, not normally being a nostalgic martyr, found it hard not to cry.

The fountain, the splash pools had gone dry and bleached to white in the sun. The iconic gala pool is now a glorified scum pond. The sports fields are overgrown with weeds, and dehydrated, found themselves at the mercy of the blistering sun and heat – burnt to crisp. No more animals in the petting zoo, because all this ridiculous maintenance costs money, funds from taxes that could be put to better use for bigger cars and houses for officials. 

The street view of the once well kept grounds behind the pavilion and rugby hall.



Of course children don’t need parks. They don’t need to learn to swim. And teenagers don’t need a place to hang out in summer, they have clubs and drug alleys. Mrs Hopkins is long gone, her potted plants smashed and withered and the town does not have a swimming league anymore. What for? Who needs any other sport than soccer, right?

This used to be a perfectly groomed sidewalk which led into the rugby hall.



The laughing and teasing with the workers had gone quiet, some of whom taught me some solid insults in good cheer so I can swear at my cousins. The chickens and pigeons my grandpa kept no longer roam amongst the sunbathers, because there are none. The place is closed. And the house is painted and ugly blue to discern it from the disrepair of the fences and the creeping assault of an unkempt garden and weeds. 

Where the blue posts are, is where the massive castle doors are hidden.



The uncut grass of the rugby field, overgrown with weeds, where it used to look like a golf course!

The house is now a horrid BLUE (???!!!) and the rugby field in disuse.

Aerial view of the whole place. Look at the decay and abuse of what was once a paradise for all the locals.



Wednesday, April 17, 2013

"Vreemd"


I am making another short film soon!
 

 

 
It is called “VREEMD”.
And yes, it is an unprecedented idea that I myself had never before seen in any film....and to top it all, it will be shot in my mother tongue, AFRIKAANS (with English subtitles)

Now, I need your help with this.....
Would you mind sending out this link to friends you think would like to help us fund the making of this short film for this year’s annual South African Horrorfest? Tell them they can contribute as little as $5 and we have about 30 days left to reach our goal. Every bit helps! So even if you just contribute $5, I will give you a personal THANK YOU on Facebook!

It would be great if we can make this monster happen! And feel free to join us at the VREEMD page too….in fact, I insist ;-)


The Indiegogo site has all the details, including the Youtube video of the pitch! Also, it has a synopsis of the film and believe me, more than two people were thoroughly surprized by the odd sort of horror I am writing for this one!

Things are about to get HAIRY!!!!



Thursday, February 28, 2013

SEDUCTION IN THE GARDEN OF DEATH

RITE OF PASSAGE (Fin Bheara encountered) :
THE FAERY KING

A brisk caress, then comes the reason.
Breathing deeply, slow panting the march of lust, comes upon mine ear. The grasp of anticipation, welling the heat up inside me. Oh, how my cheeks flush, like a young virgin touched by amour. They flush in heat of a different kind. My eyes roll back, escaping my control and it is then that I hear the breathing cease.
Cease.
Rest. Whereto the sound?

To my new found vision, there it is, beheld that I am strolling in the Garden of Death. The Yew tree, ready for the hangman, dances in the evil dusk. It has no leaves. Among the beckoning flowers of Luna I helplessly stroll. The petals brush my skin, bare as one who enters their creation. The portal of birth denied, I fall to the soft grass and the stems curl around my legs and pry them apart. Here in the darkness of serene night and timid breeze, wrapped in a veil of chill. My breasts taught with cold, peaked by hungry nipples, reaching for release. How the vines coil. How the vines coil around my body, constricting and brushing hard on wanton skin. Between my legs, in a rush of surprise, the vines crawl through my crevices, rubbing and licking at skin, draped in moist. Not for lack of resistance, I writhe at once for the strange lovers I’m surrounded by.

 The moon paints my body with pale blue and she blesses the earth with arcane secrets, not revealed by any conscious soul. Secrets of sensuality, the moon whispers to her children, the trees. The trees and the plants of a paradise once ruled, now untamed and free-willed. They bend down to kiss my face and force my eyes shut, my knees open to receive their primal gifts. At once I feel that caress again, the breath continues in my neck. The grasses whisper his name, but I don’t comprehend and thus, lie in willing sacrifice, awaiting the sting that only pleasure of this magnitude can bring.
“Feel me. Feel me.”
I feel lips, slightly agape, cover the taught peak on my breast, quenching it’s desire. The hot breath emanating on it, scorching my groin. Attentions given to my breasts, echoing in the halls of my womb. Fingers invade inside, in submission I allow these alien sensations. My hair swept by faeries, away from his voice, now in sound, elevated by passion.
“Feel me.”
Penetration full and hard, overcomes my judgment and skewers my shivering body. Tongues from the four corners, lap upon my belly and thighs, promising a deep delight. They crawl too, they crawl toward the softer skin where the tiny little hairs invite them. Over hips and curves of femininity, they find their way. Wet. So wet. Saliva meets sexual succulence in a wave of nocturnal sin and the very earth screams with joy as he bites into me.

All the (under)world stand in silence, awaiting his command. The Goddess in the night sky, whimpers, jealous and ripe with envy for my significance. She weeps at her denial, listening to my ecstatic death. They surround my figure in awe and bow to the One who rapes my squirming carcass and eats my desire. The night beasts cry out and the faeries cheer. I am home. I walk no more in this trivial world, but roam in spirit where the moon weeps and the Yew tree dons her victims, swaying in a howling wind.
I am Home. I am home.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

SKULLDUGGERY

A page or two from my first Crime Thriller, written for a competition last year. (I had to Google exactly what a "Crime Thriller" is, as I only knew brute horror. LOL!) I received great news this very evening, that this story was selected for the Competition, and, as it is to be published in the anthology BLOODY SATISFIED! to be launched at this year's annual GRAHAMSTOWN ARTS FESTIVAL, I am not allowed to post the whole thing, due to contractual restrictions and all that shit.
But this way, you can let your own mind fabricate the befores and afters herein, children!

Here's a bite of WHITE MAN'S HAND.....



A sickening smell choked Geraldine with every little gasp of putrid air she sucked into her burning lungs. Her shivering whimpers bounced off the empty walls of the coffin she imagined her cage to be. No matter how wide she stretched her eyes, there was only a veil of coal black despair, her emotion taking the colour of her surroundings. The room was cold, dank and big around her shaking body and the restraints on her ankles burned into her skin every time she even breathed deeply. The headache she endured split her skull and she realised that she would die soon if she spent much longer hanging upside down. However, not knowing what lay beneath her in the dark was the bigger concern, much like not knowing at what distance she would hit the floor if she could break loose at all.
The silence was deafening. Sensory deprivation was no solace and she strained her ears to try and identify her whereabouts, but the only unsettling thing Geraldine could hear was her own heart beating. Alone. Suspended in the oblivion of her captor's den, her thoughts carried to the events that landed her in this trap, but the only blame assigned was that of circumstance, not ineptitude. The pounding of her heart slammed in her ears with every throb, shooting a meteor storm of pain into her capillaries and for a moment, Geraldine was convinced she could see the flooding vessels behind her eyelids flower in pallid red. She felt her bloodless leg muscles twitch in spasm and almost wished her predator would show himself, if only to substitute the unknown with the uninvited.

No sooner had this grotesque notion birthed itself in her head, when somewhere in the dark she heard something other than her spiteful heart. Daylight stung her eyes but she soon realised, as her sight accepted its new condition, that it was merely the white death of the fluorescent tubes on the concrete ceiling illuminating her new hell. Like a mirage his massive frame glimmered into view, out of the dark he slithered from, side to side and with deliberate intimidation. Geraldine decided not to cry, but her tormentor would test that resolve before the day was over. 
Ignorant of her unveiled surroundings, she watched him pull his thick black leather belt from his jeans and she closed her eyes, pinching off a rebel tear before the first lash bit across her back, leaving a prominent welt in its wake almost instantaneously. Geraldine held her urge to scream, but her body jerked from the shock and her ankle slipped out of joint just a little as she did so. Another lash left an impressive cut that smiled across her stomach and a bit of her breast. Blow after blow he groaned as he lay the wales on her, his strokes falling harder and harder to provoke a scream from the worthless bitch in his power, but she remained silent, save for a wailing grunt she kept inside her clenched teeth. The criss-cross stripes lay red and swollen on her sweating body and it exhilarated him to a point of madness, so fiercely that he collapsed to his knees for a minute. His victim took the opportunity to look around the dismal room she sought an escape from, should she survive his onslaught long enough.

The room had an arched stone roof, much like those she had seen before in the Good Hope Castle and other historical buildings she had visited. It was painted white; a dreadful, careless white that held no mercy in its hue and seemed as dead as the women who's blood decorated the floor where it met the wall in a rusty dry residue. Just inside the dark area he had appeared from a few minutes before, she noticed a small corridor with cement steps leading up to a hatch-type door. Through her stinging eyes she discerned a disturbing image. The roof of the little arched corridor was lined with broken bones, painted as white as the chalky bunker she was held in. Then she realised that they had a distinctive shape. They were human skulls, their broken teeth still shimmering in the half light of the luminescence of his torture chamber. For the first time in her captivity, Geraldine could not rein in her panic. Her lungs swollen with fear, she expelled a dire screech so loud that it repelled her captor back to the opposite wall. He simply stared, waiting for her to finish. As her breath rattled into silence, he smiled.
" You can scream until your throat bleeds, sweetheart, " he grunted in a strong Afrikaans accent, "...but no living soul can hear you. Only they can. " He pointed to the mounted skulls like a little boy would point to an ice cream stall at a carnival. " But they can't help you. " He shook his head in mock-pity and selected a railroad spike from his bag of tricks. Playfully he shoved it between his thighs while he lit a Marlboro. Geraldine closed her eyes once more as he swaggered toward her, loosening his pants. A bite sank into her flesh, his teeth clenching the nerves in her breast and she screamed shamelessly, but she would not look in his eyes. 
She would not gift him that might. 
The hot coal from his cigarette settled into her left eyelid, catching her off-guard. Geraldine watched the bright orange penetrate her lid and fall effortlessly into her eyeball, leaving her eye socket wet and excruciating in her skull. She could scream no more. Her jerking body evoked a pretty chiming from the chains she hung by and the Afrikaans demon deduced that she wanted to come down to him. He obliged. She felt him unlocking the chain and roughly clawing at her until her back found the floor where he laid her down on the blood and fluid of her burst eye.
" Please, " she murmured inaudibly to herself, "...just let it end. Please...make it stop."

He said nothing. What she said did not matter. Lourens busied himself with the task at hand, aroused by her helplessness and his hand tightened around the iron spike as he kicked her legs apart. Only the silent caverns of his blind victims bore witness to the atrocious act he lived out and only the underground things could hear her scream in the subterranean commando bunker that was concealed from the outside wilderness.....

Friday, February 1, 2013

THAT VOODOO THAT YOU DO...



  Maybe it is my love for a good cigar or the fact that my poison is Stroh Rum, but I find myself quite affectionate toward this Voodoo Loa. My adoration for this religion has imparted upon me great respect for the Dead as well as inspired me to write my first novel, QUERCUS, in 2011.
And thus, without further ado, let me share with you the Loa, Baron Samedi and his footfalls in my new Anthology, BEDEVILMENT, to be released appropriately on June 6th!!


The Baron Digger

He stands towering, fixed.

He beguiles with breath like the pirate’s pant and some rotten essence ‘tween death and un-death and woman and wood.


By the tip of his hat and a hearty laugh strides the tallman in suave guise of raven’s chest and he looks about in wonder of the fire in frenzied yellow dance, yielding the bodies he so adores. Locked on a rolled cigar the putrid pearl that decorates his grin, whiter than the virgin and dove wing, symbolic, and it glistens for corruption.

Howling, the chants of the lesser --- writhing, the sinew of mortality.
Thumping, the skin on the wooden drum binds in spell.
Empty sockets laugh with glee

The Baron’s  gloat below the hangtree

Give him woman, give him fire

Let him copulate upon the pyre


Voodoo kisses, a snake bequeath’d and lied under the top hat; the seat of the soul. He has no face but for bone and yet his pleasure gleams, his rod firmly in hand and off to the gravesite dances he in the moonlight and Death shakes beside him.

Dig, Samedi --- your shovel makes my road for me

Dig, Samedi --- your labour my labour completes.

For in life I am but walking dead and in death will I only come to life.

Dance, Samedi --- my noble lord of heathen’s gate.

Dance, Samedi --- my Vodun king to seal my fate.


My body be praised for its erotic thrall and my soul to roam to the Loa’s call.

I have found my place. I have found my place. Dahomey.
 

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

CROSSROADS

And here I found myself conjuring poetry when I did not mean to. Could it be that another, inside hiding, could have chosen my own quill to reveal the uncanny events in my life to be kin to that of a lost soul at the base of a crossroads at dusk? Nevertheless, here is a poem wrought in innocence of the age old hoodoo ritual of the Black Cat Bone and its summonings, until I found the meaning behind the theme only months later....imagine my surprise.
The words are for your eyes to revel in.
The audio clip is for your skin to crawl.
Enjoy!

CROSSROADS

 I came one night to my dismay
Upon the time of final ray
The sun had died and darkness fell;
Knew I not this path to Hell.

There it stood majestic, wise
The Yew tree in its fav'rite guise
The wind stirred not, the dust lay still,
Yet felt I twinge of writhing chill.

Swaying quietly, to and then fro,
Barely moving, branches low
I stopped in my wonder and wandering no
My yearning to walk on, not being so.

Branches and twigs all twisted and dry
Giant the fingers all crooked and high
Bowing its bark to meet with mine eyes
Questioned my senses for, did I hear cries?

Sanity bade me run to the East
Here at the crossroads, gate of the Beast
Limbs want not movement, lest I be caught
It was my soul, my essence was sought.

Fell from my stance and sat on the ground
I saw among roots, the burial mound.
What lay beneath me, asked I the Tree
Replied it that it was not my place to see.

On wings of the ravens, saw I the souls,
The corpses of badmen plucked full of holes.
Rode they the Blackbird as beckoned by Tree
To swing in the breeze and laughed they at me!

Unholy, the Yew tree with blood on its bark
I prayed for the refuge of sun, killed by dark.
Hearing the shrieks from the criminals, hung
Losing my temper, my swansong was sung.

Into the night and onto the West
Fled I with angels, my deeds confessed,
But Sin held my ankles and Guilt rode my back
The tree held me ransom for faith that I lacked.


And under the moon and glittering stars,
Nursing my freshly gained blisters and scars,
The tree told me stories of horrors, so foul
Amidst all the tales, 'twas the wolf's howl that scowled.

My blood fed the Yew tree, the tree of the Dead
The Hangman had grown it, with malice being wed.
Slowly I crawled, but the dead heard me go
They summoned me back on the wings of the crow.

Inside of me felt I the rise of the gloom
My eyes were the cage, my body the tomb
And moonlight had painted my blood into pitch
Too late were my prayers, the trust of a witch.

No angel would come here, the crossroads are damned
No light for the darkest, no hope from the Lamb.
No blessing, no help, deliv'rence denied
The Devil's my outcome, reluctant his bride.

The wind was my refuge, it cooled now my thought
My tongue was on fire for lies I had wrought
The searing of skin and ligaments torn,
The tree held me fast, on nightmares I's borne.

I begged for forgiveness ; the road that I chose
Repented the hate for my fellows and foes,
But naught was the symp'thy, compassion was nil
My pleading was now like the ones I had killed.

The hangman did smite me for wages I owed
And mark of the cursed upon me bestowed
The crossroads eternally I would call home
The night be my maze, my soul in to roam.

So leave ye, my friends, make haste to the Light
The crossing road meets, be not here for Night!
Choose not to waste all the choice you possess
The wrong road at night will result you far less.

Pray, see me this night in the Yew tree on high
I sway and I rock to the withering sky
Please do not linger, the crossroad's to fear,
Beseech I you, leave, for the Devil is here!