Escape Africa (6)

 

6: Pinkie – Pinkie

I have never been afraid of anything. Even when my
friends told me the stories I laughed; the legend of the toilet bogeyman
sounded like a practical joke, a monster waiting behind the bathroom stall to
reach out and grab unsuspecting children when they entered sound ridiculous.
Soweto was as crazy as it got with urban legends. Everything was changing
around with excitement and apprehension; traditional culture collided with
modern lifestyle creating new age paranoia and silly urban legends. Pinkie-Pinkie
was the first to enter the social conscience. The toilet demon terrorizing school
children everywhere; victims claiming a pink monster would attack them in the
bathroom and try to eat them. The common description of Pinkie-Pinkie being a
short pink man with red or blue eyes, sharp yellow teeth and a hideous chuckle
but you could only see him in a mirror. The police reports turned the matter
serious when children started disappearing and the half eaten body of a school
girl was discovered near an abandoned junior school. I’m Nathaniel; a strange
man in town investigating strange crimes involving children, nothing strange
about that, every lead I followed connected back to the black shadow. The
missing girl Anna Maria last saw was named Inkhosi Samantha Gumede, a third
grader curious about urban legends in South Africa, an oddball chasing her
interest in the growing urban legend craze sweeping through her neighbourhood
of Soweto.  The more I read the more I
realized Pinkie-Pinkie embodied every bad thing happening in the world. I was
determined to debunk this one, the hysteria of Pinkie-Pinkie expanded to multiple
murders that seemed more like witchcraft than monstrous malice. Witchcraft is
the traditional culture lumbering along into the modern world but I never took
much notice of it, sitting in a dark room that smelled of burnt herbs while the
Sangoma through old chicken bones around a grass mat was silly to me. Many
weren’t so quick to dismiss the concept; Pinkie-Pinkie was somehow responsible
for countless children disappearing. New accounts of Pinkie-Pinkie spread, this
time survivors recalled seeing the pink man reflected in a mirror, running for
their lives then falling seriously ill shortly escape; the resurgence of
Pinkie-Pinkie gripped me more this time. I saw less of the superstition and
more of the truth. I went after Pinkie-Pinkie; I went in search of the monster.
Weeks passed before the dreams came. They were the same thing every night; a
dark shadow in a bathroom mirror, laughing at me, pointing at me. I’ll never
forget those horrible eyes, sometimes white, sometimes red glaring from above
yellow teeth.  I woke up sweating and
afraid, the more I dreamt the more I saw the dark shadow growing. Children were
disappearing, mangled remains were being discovered and tormenting me in sleep
was Pinkie-Pinkie.

 

‘Are you Nathaniel?’

 A young boy, a junior in my school I didn’t
know asked me. ‘I am,’ I knew not to ignore the unusual. This boy stood before
me with something to say judging by the mouth full of words he was holding in.

‘What is it?’

Impatiently pressing
him for answers but all that came out were garbled words pushing over each
other. He pointed to the East then turned to walk away. My presence of mind
returned; the words didn’t matter, I was at school and just east of me were the
school bathrooms. I walked up the courtyard ridge, the closer I got to the
buildings the fewer children I passed. Something was calling to me, the closer
I got the clearer I heard it, ‘Nathaniel,’ A tiny voice crawled out of the
bathroom, ‘Nathaniel,’ I heard it in my mind as I heard it in my ears, ‘NATHANIEL!’
The sound hit me as I stepped inside, a clear bolt coming from an empty space.
I passed the first stall, the door banged shut. ‘Nathaniel,’ each stall
repeated before shutting the door, I was approaching the last stall on the row.
‘NATHANIEL!!’ A voice so loud and so closed to my ear startled me enough I lost
all balance and tumbled forward to the floor. There it was, in reflection, as I
had dreamt it the dark evil shape staring at me with eyes that turned red then
white then read as it gnashed those terrible yellow teeth together. I stared
into the mirror, frozen to the floor by the sudden onset panic. ‘Nathaniel,’ my
name slithered out between that horrid grin as it approached me. I recalled my
dreams and true enough I saw the second shape moving. It charged forward to
attack. I rolled aside, bursting through the stall door. A struggle ensued between
the emerging figure of Pinkie-Pinkie, a short fat little man was pink skin and
long fingers and as I live and breathe. He looked at me, smiled slightly and
whispered, ‘Throw it.’ My hand reached into my pocket, clasped the small heavy
something and threw it as hard as I could at the mirror.

 

Crack, CRACK!

The last thing I remember was a scream. Awake in my bed,
the sheets soaked with dark sweat. My hands were bleeding, I’d cut my palms
open with my fingernails. The room was empty and cold, I felt the darkness was
gone, taking what it wanted from me.  A
month has gone by, the disappearances have stopped in Soweto and the legend of
Pinkie-Pinkie is laid to rest. I still carry around a small heavy something in
my pocket, just in case and I need to check a mirror twice in passing.