The Elder Goth - Christine

Your first car should always be a bomb, petrol head lore, the proud tradition a father passes to the teenage student driver the day they pass their driving test. I am devoted to German cars since my first car, my first real car was a 1979 VW Golf. White, two-door with what remained of an 1100cc motor. I paid cash for an absolute shit box requiring constant and costly repair when you’re a young adult in the real world earning minimum wage to support your vices. I called her Christine, she drove short distances like a dream, the rest of her story reads like the Stephen King novel but she was my first car. She broke down a lot and I pushed her more than I drove her. Barely anything worked correctly on her but I persevered enough to pass her roadworthy and tax disc, the start of a lifelong mutual dislike between me and the licensing office. I fixed what I could on my beg, borrow or steal budget. With a garage full of tools, a wallet full of nothing and a head full of cotton fluff I lovingly tinkered the old girl to barely running, there was a lot more wrong than right mechanically but she was mine. My freedom, my adult independence, my social burden. Christine was inconsistent. She would refuse to start at inopportune moments, stall for no reason, surrender random parts operational but by the racing gods could go like hell when the lights changed green. I pushed her a lot. One morning as I drove home from work Christine decided to stall on me roughly three blocks from home. I’m sitting behind the steering wheel cursing, I’m tired and not in the mood to struggle-shoot with her. It was close to 04h00 and I figured leaving her where she was meant walking home to sleep then walking back to get her home and my tired mind wasn’t computing it. I figured what the hell, it's only a few blocks, the streets are quiet, I’ll push her home. What strapping young lads think is a good idea. Half an hour later I’d moved half a block, remembering at the end of the street where we stalled out was a slight incline curve in the road. It was brutal exertion; my heart was pumping hard to keep my burning muscles in motion. It was nearly an hour later when I cleared the bend onto the straight road leading to my driveway, I was exhausted, sweat soaked and breathing heavier than an iron lung yet spurred on to push on. My pace quickened, Christine started rolling a little easier, we were finally in the zone and I was pumped. I looked up for a moment to see a jogger approaching; he looked speechless as we neared to pass each other in the street. From the blank space of random floating around in my head the words escaped my mouth the moment we met eyes; ‘you have your training, I have mine.’ 

Try pushing a small motor vehicle several blocks to make good time, one hell of a workout. 

Ghost Story: A Study in Ghost.

I was in high school and privileged as a senior to sit at home studying for my upcoming exam finals. I was alone at home, sitting quietly in my room concentrating on my study books. I was oblivious to everything around me, sitting at my desk. The house was quiet, no background noise of any kind. The windows and doors were closed, no wind of any kind passing through. As I am sitting in my chair at my desk I hear and feel a sudden blowing of air into my right ear, as if someone had moved into real close next to me and blew a short sharp gust of air into my ear. I freaked the fuck out and ran from my room through to the opposite end of the house, out the patio door which opened onto the pool and across the yard to scale the fence. I stood in the street for a moment trying to figure out what the hell just happened, was someone trying to scare me, as was the family habit we often scared each other with. I walked around the street corner to the front of the house to go back inside. Expecting to find someone had returned home I walked up the driveway but saw no cars parked as nobody else was home yet, just me. I went to the front door but it was locked, I rang the bell just to be sure. Remembering I’d run out the side door by the patio I walked around the pool and went back in. I searched through the whole house, room by room calling out for whoever thought it was funny to scare the crap out of me. Turns out I was the only person at home. It was a one time thing since nothing like that happened again, I still laugh about it. My folks still live in that house to this day; it’s had its fair share of strange occurrences over the years but lately all is calm.

Ghost Story: Thomas O’Malley, O'Malley The Alley Cat.

I had a pet cat named Thomas, a big jet black tomcat I had adopted from the animal rescue shelter when I was about six years old, literally adopted him on the day the shelter had scheduled to put him down. My mother recalls me throwing a massive tantrum and refusing to leave the shelter until I had my Thomas safely in my arms on the back seat of the car. We were near inseparable as Thomas enjoyed roughly twenty more years being the toughest SOB you’d ever met, he would disappear for weeks sometimes months at a time and just as we felt he had finally run out of lives his serious black face would peak in through an open window, regularly returning home nursing a new scar or missing a patch of fur from his mysterious adventures somewhere in the neighbourhood. Every time he came home at night, he would come through my bedroom window, leap down to the floor, walk across to the edge of my bed then jump on to curl up next to me for a head scratch. Thomas was a big heavy cat that made a distinct impression on the bed when lying down as he pushed the top of his head into the palm of my hand for some affection. When I moved out of my folk’s house I traveled a lot so Thomas remained in residence, I missed him especially at night when he wasn’t there to curl up on my bed for a head scratch before going to sleep. I would ask my mom about Thomas and she would tell me he’d either been gone for a while or he’d just returned home. Then the inevitable happened, Thomas never came home. I was heartbroken when my mom told me over the phone, Thomas was finally gone. A couple of weeks after hearing about Thomas I returned home to visit my folks. I was asleep in my old room, it was pretty late and the house was quiet when I woke up to hear something leap down to the floor of my bedroom from the open window, walk across to the foot of my bed and jump up. It had jumped onto my bed, took a few steps forward then curled up and lay down. I reached my hand down on top the covers, thinking Thomas may have come home, to scratch his head where I clearly felt pressure push up into the palm of my hand but when I moved my fingers to scratch they didn’t make contact with anything. I looked up to see absolutely nothing in the dark but a distinct impression on my bed where I held my empty outstretched hand; I heard a soft familiar purr for a few seconds then nothing. When I switched on the bedside lamp to see if Thomas had returned but there was nothing on the bed with me, I thought about Thomas for a moment then went back to sleep. My folks had no other pets living in the house at the time so I believe Thomas in spirit form came home one last time to say goodbye to me.     

Ja-nee Frikkie - Five Words Only

There are exactly five words in the entire African dialect. Each word an expression of an emoji.The rest of the language structure is anglicized through the inception of European languages brought to the continent with colonization.

Joh 😱

Haibo 🫢

Eish 🤦

Amandla ✊️

Click 🤬