A SOFT WHITE CLOUD ~ CHAPTER FIVE
The girl, with a
strength that surprised Nokwazi, pushed them into a room leading off the entrance
hall. It was hot and dirty and in
semi-darkness because of some torn newspapers that covered the window. Narrow
shafts of light seeped in through the slits in the newspapers. In the middle of the room was a wooden crate
on which stood a lamp, a syringe, two dirty cups and saucers and a few spoons.
Lying on the floor, on hessian bags, were two
teenage girls and a young man in his early twenties. One of the girls, who had a small round face, was staring
unseeingly at the ceiling. She had a
fixed, vacant smile and was waving her arms slowly up and down like a bird in
flight.
Instinct told Nokwazi that she was on a ‘trip’. The boys at school often discussed the effects
of drugs and glue sniffing. ‘Hallucination’
was the word they used.
Impuku once told them that certain drugs made
people believe they were an animal or a bird.
They also believed they could hear colours and see sounds. His eldest brother, Abraham, had told him,
Impuku said.
Impuku was one of a family of eleven children. Once he had told Nokwazi that his mother and
father both drank heavily and the children often had to fend for
themselves. One or other of the older
boys regularly spent time in jail for stealing. All these thoughts flitted through Nokwazi’s mind as he stood
looking at the people lying on the floor.
The girl came up to Impuku and grabbed him by
the collar of his jacket. ‘Who’s got
the dope?’ she demanded.
Impuku stared at her, too terrified to answer.
Nokwazi’s tongue became dry and his throat
tight. He licked his lips and said shakily, ‘No…no one.’
The words had hardly died in his throat when
the girl, far from being convinced, hit him hard across the face. The sudden impact was like a hammer
blow. Nokwazi winced but said nothing.
The young man on the floor began to moan. There was a twitching round his mouth. His eyelids flickered and opened. For a moment Nokwazi looked into his
reddened eyes. Then the man sat up and
blinked. He rose unsteadily to his
feet. Nokwazi noticed that he was tall
and very thin. His trousers and jersey
were too large for him.
‘What’s going on, Mabel?’ he asked in an
unsteady voice, scratching his short-clipped hair.
Nokwazi caught his breath as the man came towards
them.
‘Louis, these boys are hiding the dope,’ the
girl said in a shrill, nervous wail.
‘You gone crazy?’ he yelled and slapped her
hard across the mouth.
She fell whimpering to the floor, a trickle
of blood running down her chin. He
kicked her in the ribs. She shrieked
and remained lying on the floor.
‘Please give me a fix, Louis,’ she pleaded, ‘only
one more time.’
‘You’re getting no more fixes until you pay
for them. Get out of here!’ he shouted.
The girl staggered to her feet and searched
in her jean’s pocket. She took out the
key, inserted it with shaking fingers into the keyhole of the door and turned
it.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ she promised as she
opened the door. ‘My sister has a
brand-new radio which should fetch a good price.’
‘Get out!’
Louis threatened, his booming voice in striking contrast with his thin
body.
She went out and slammed the door. It banged with such violence that the window
panes rattled. Louis gave a deep
humourless laugh and turned to the boys.
His eyes were dark, cold and unblinking.
‘You from Samuel?’ he asked, quietly.
The boys nodded.
‘Well? What are you waiting for?
Give me the dope!’ he demanded between clenched teeth.
Shaking almost uncontrollably, Impuku
unzipped his inside jacket pocket, took out the package and handed it to him.
Feverishly, Louis tore it open. Inside were two small bottles of white
tablets and six dagga cigarettes wrapped in brown paper. Nokwazi knew that brown paper burnt much
more slowly than white paper and made the cigarettes last longer.
‘Louis!’ called a small voice.
It was the girl lying on the floor.
‘Sophia!’ he replied, ‘it’s come!’
She sat up expectantly. Louis put a white tablet into her shaking
hand. She jumped to her feet and
eagerly ran to the wooden crate. She
couldn’t be more than fourteen years old, thought Nokwazi.
He and Impuku watched in awe as, with trembling
hands, the girl ground the tablet into a powder between two metal spoons. Then, after pouring some leftover coffee
from one of the cups into the spoon, she mixed it with the powder. Next she took the syringe and siphoned up
the liquid. She looked around, picked up
a piece of rag on the floor and tied it tightly around her left arm. When she made a fist, a blood vessel in her
forearm swelled up.
Nokwazi stifled a gasp when he saw the ugly
festering sores on her arm. The girl
took the syringe and pressed the needle into the vein. As the liquid entered the vein her eyes dulled
and her breath came long and slow. Removing
the needle, she replaced it on the crate and, swaying from side to side,
without uttering a sound, dropped backwards and crumpled down on a hessian
bag. She did not seem aware of her
surroundings.
No one bothered about Impuku and Nokwazi any
longer. Impuku, who had been as
paralysed with horror as Nokwazi, nudged him and inclined his head towards the
door.
Then they ran to the door, opened it and hurried
down the stairs, three at a time.
They heard Louis’s footsteps following them.
‘Come back!’ he insisted, but the boys
carried on running without looking back.
Once outside the building they didn’t stop
running until they arrived at the bus terminus. A number five bus was about to leave. Breathless and panting, they hurried up the steps, paid their
fare, and thankfully sank into a seat near the back of the bus.
They hardly said a word as the bus moved off
and rumbled along the road. Nokwazi’s
mind was a jumble of thoughts. This
drug business was nothing to play with!
The bus drew up at a stop. As several people entered, Nokwazi’s eyes
caught those of a man wearing and old felt hat pulled down low over his
forehead. He stared incredulously at
the man while he paid his fare and sat down in a seat in the front of the
bus. With a dull shock Nokwazi recognised
him as the man who had attacked him the previous day.
Seeing no possible means of escape, Nokwazi
sank back into his seat, his heart beating furiously from fear. What was he to do?
Crime, Thrillers & Horror