Visions - In my Minds Eye. by ARTHUR HOWE (books to get back into reading .TXT) 📖

VISIONS (IN MY MINDS EYE)


A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES


BY ARTHUR HOWE

CAPE TOWN

SOUTH AFRICA


CONTENTS

1. LIFTING SIPHO

2. TICKETS

3. THE SUCCESSOR

4. THE PICK UP

5. SURVIVOR

6. FREE EARTH DAY

7. VISIONS - IN MY MINDS EYE

8. THE FART


LIFTING SIPHO

You never can be too careful when it comes to hitchhiking. Paranoia could take control!


I wouldn’t normally stop to pick up a hitchhiker even though, as a teenager, this was just about my only mode of transport. My road to independence.

My Folks didn’t have a car, not that they couldn’t afford one, it was just that my Mom was too nervous to drive and my Dad had always preferred to take public transport or taxi’s to get around. I also think he was too proud to admit that he was also nervous. I’ve also become very nervous lately, particularly when you hear of all the car-jacking and murders that happen just about every day, here in South Africa. You never can be too careful, I say. I’d lost a friend to a car-jacking in Johannesburg and had heard numerous stories from friends of friends who’d had similar experiences.

Things had changed so much in this Country, I thought. As a kid, if I needed to get somewhere, I either cadged a lift from someone whose parents had wheels or I’d hit the road with my thumb wagging.

I’d taken hundreds of short hitches getting in and around the suburbs of Cape Town and on two occasions, even been adventurous enough to hitch hike from Cape Town to Johannesburg and Cape Town to Durban and back. In those days, it was fairly safe to hitchhike and we thought nothing of it.

Around Cape Town, I’d mostly hitchhike with my surfboard tucked under my arm, as I’d found that people tended to stop for surfers more than just some luggage-less stranger on the side of the road. It was as if people believed surfers didn’t have the time for psychotic thoughts, and that robbers, serial killers, and rapists didn’t spend their time chasing waves.

Maybe it was that image, somewhere deep in my subconscious mind. The image of me standing there, surfboard tucked under my arm, desperately waiting for a lift, that made me slow down and stop for the tall, well dressed man who’d shown me the thumb as I came around a bend in the N2 highway headed towards my mid-week retreat in Bot River.

As I drove past him, and before consciously deciding to give him a lift, I caught the flash of something tucked under his arm. A book maybe?, A Bible?, I thought as I sped past him. Maybe that’s his Surfboard, I thought, smiling to myself.

The object was about the size of a small shoebox, maybe six inches wide and twelve inches long, a little flatter than a shoebox but roughly the same shape. The noticeable thing about it was its colour which came from being wrapped in some matt black paper that showed small, parallel, shiny spots where the sticky tape held it together.
Whatever was in that black, shoebox sized parcel tucked under his arm, it triggered my curiosity, and I hit the brakes and turned onto the gravel shoulder, a cloud of red dust overtaking me as I stopped for my hitchhiker.

I looked back in the rear-view mirror and saw that he had started walking slowly towards the car, black package gripped tightly under his arm.

I almost put the car into gear and sped off again as a wave of fear hit me. What are you doing? I asked myself. Stopping for a complete stranger with some suspicious looking package under his arm? It could contain a gun or a knife, or the tools of his trade as an axe-murderer or body mutilator, I thought in another panic attack.

I was about to slip the handbrake and speed off when I glanced over my left shoulder and saw that he’d disappeared from view. Maybe he’d taken another ride or just slipped away quietly into the bushes?

A sharp rap on my driver’s window made me jump in my seat.

He stooped to the window level where I could see his almost toothless mouth miming off words without sounds. I dropped the window a few inches. He was well dressed, I must admit with his black suit and neatly folded handkerchief in his top pocket.

Almost like he’d come from a wedding I thought.

And big! I estimated that he must be at least six and a half foot as he had to almost bend double to look into the car. I must say that in my 53 years, I haven’t seen too many Black South Africans of that size.

“Good morning Sir,” he said smiling. A good start I thought. I always liked manners in men and his regal greeting allowed me to drop the window another few inches.

“May I ask how far you’re going Sir?” he continued, still smiling his patchy, broken-toothed smile. I could smell his breath coming in through the window and I half turned away from the musty, almost compost like smells that were wafting in to the car.

“I’m going as far as exit 92, the Bot River turn off,” I replied.

“ I don’t mind that at all Sir,” he said brightly and darted, most deliberately around the front of the car and before you could say “Mary Martha”, he was seated next to me in the passenger seat, the Black shoebox now perched proudly on his lap.

I think that if he’d gone round the back of the car, I might have slipped the hand brake and floored the accelerator and got out of there pretty damn quickly.

It was the “Yes-No’s” that were making me nervous. I hated indecision and people who pussyfooted around. I saw black and I saw white. I saw full or I saw empty. I hated anything in between. As someone once said to me, you either push or you pull, you never mess around in between.

And here I was, messing around in between.

Yes, I stopped.

No, he has a black box and might use whatever’s inside it to kill me, or worse.

Yes, he’s smartly dressed.

No, he’s coming towards the car.

Yes, he’s gone and run off into the bush.

No, He’s at the window.

Yes, he greeted me nicely.

No, his breath smelled like something had crawled in there and died.

Whatever happened now, it had to be positive; I’d offered a lift, he’d accepted and had firmly planted himself in the passenger seat next to me. Now all I had to do was get him to where he needed to be, drop him off, and remember never to pick up hitchhikers ever again.

I heard his seatbelt click into place.

“How far are you going?” I asked as I pulled away from the gravel onto the tarmac.
“As far as Sir would like to go”. He replied, looking straight ahead and gripping tightly onto the black box, now neatly tucked inside the seatbelt straps. Obviously, whatever was inside his box was fragile and he didn’t want a sudden jerk or swerve to send it flying onto the floor.

That made me feel a little more comfortable, after all, what could be so fragile that could also be used as a murder weapon? I thought to myself, smiling somewhat nervously.

A Bottle?

That’s it! A bottle.

A bottle of poison maybe, or ……. acid?

Yes, sulphuric acid to throw in my eyes and blind me whilst he tied me down and poured the rest slowly into every orifice in my body. When he’d used up my orifices, he’d probably use the acid to carve out a new one! My God! That’s exactly what he’s got, I thought, looking ahead to see if there were any other motorists pulled over on the side of the road who could help me get away from this maniac.

It could also be chloroform? I panicked. Yes, as I stop the car he’ll turn his back towards me and soak his neatly folded white hanky with the stuff and then, using his sheer size, hold me down with the hanky over my nose until I lost consciousness!

What he’d do next wouldn’t bother me if I was unconscious but I had this feeling that he’d bring me round and I’d find myself tied to some farm gate or fence as he slowly and carefully peeled the skin off my entire body!

Oh my God!, what have I got myself into this time?

“Would Sir mind if I rested a while. I haven’t really slept these last few days Sir, what with everything that’s been going on Sir.” He interrupted my thoughts.

“If Sir wouldn’t mind nudging me about ten minutes before your turn off, I’d appreciate that Sir.” He continued before reaching out for the lever and reclining the seat to the maximum. His hand rested firmly on top of the black box.

I felt really uncomfortable now, specially as his head was out of my line of sight, behind my back. I glanced back at the hitchhiker to find his eyes wide open and staring at me.

“Sir would do better to keep his eyes on the road Sir would,” he said quietly. “Nasty accidents can happen like that. Before you know it, you’re lying dead on the side of the road, all for the sake of taking your eyes off the road for no more than a second.” He said firmly.

“My Uncle Sipho went that way, he did. Travelling in his pick up from Caledon to Cape Town and he just took his eyes off the road for a second. Next thing, he’s being ground into mince underneath a big logging truck and trailer. Yes Sir, a split second is all it takes to snuff the life out of you.”

My eyes locked onto the road in front of the car as I sat frozen with fear trying to interpret and understand what he’d just said to me. “A split second to snuff the life out of me!” He was obviously trying to get me to stop looking at him so that he could get to work inside that little black box of his, uncovering whatever it was he was going to use to “Snuff the life out of me!”

Maybe he was studying the back of my head or my neck, looking for the perfect pressure points to immobilise me before doing his dirty deeds?

I could feel his eyes burning into the back of my neck, smell his breath as he salivated, deep in thought over the brief moments of sadistic pleasure he was soon to experience.

Maybe it’s a syringe? A glass phial of some potent anaesthetic, which would leave me conscious but unable to move or scream out for help!

I glanced back at my most unwelcome passenger only to see that he had indeed closed his eyes and his mouth hung open, expelling a foul, shit like odour.

Maybe he’s bluffing, I thought. Maybe he’s just trying me out to see what I’m going to do now that I’ve worked