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| LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf. |
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The NetFiction Horror Feature
is brought to you by 
Button's for Gaia - The Dark Side Of Sunny South Africa*
Hagen Engler
Extract from cult writer Hagen Engler's new novel Button's
for Gaia.
We enter the spacious lift. It's decorated in the retro style, with a black steel grille that slides across the door. The lift goes directly to Hanro's apartment, which occupies a whole floor. The lighting is dim, the curtains drawn, and red candles are meant to provide the only illumination, but the scalding morning sunlight pierces the slits in the blinds regardless. Beams of grey-white light lash the darkness. The fear is tightening in my gut and making me want to laugh. Adrenalin always does this to me, but Hanro's décor also reminds me as much of an occult den as of a clumsy attempt at a home satanism venue. The table in the centre of the room even resembles a three quarter-size budget altar…
"What's up, guy? You gonna sacrifice us now? The old sex torture not good enough for you any more?"
"Shut up!" Hanro screams so abruptly that his vocal chords don't engage and his voice makes no sound, just a dry, whispering hiss. "Ahem. Shut up… Right!" Hanro seems urgently energised now, asserting himself. "Let the service begin. You two," he indicates me and Louise. "We've saved you a place in the front pew."
We're forced onto a pair of high-backed antique chairs and Dieter quickly goes to work lashing us to them with packing tape.
"Now you, my pretty," says He, for He is becoming bigger. He advances on Alexandra. "Are you sure you're not a virgin? You seem not half as filthy as the rest of the bloody fucking slut bitches we see around here," and he glares at Louise, who remains pale and silent. But strangely defiant, which gives me some hope.
"The strange boy you find yourself with, he has a habit of not defiling his females, did you know that? The last two he brought me were still unspoilt. Did you even realise that, Wax?"
"I…" I look at Louise, and without her having to open her mouth, I know it's true. Oh god. Was that hell, that black month of captivity, was that her first time? In the name of all that's sacred…
Hanro seems to flinch.
"No! You stop that!" He advances on me and smashes me a backhand through the face with his fist. "I will tell you what to think, you fucking piece of shit. You will sit and watch. You will not speak, you will not think. You will sit and you will watch. Now let me inspect the sacrificial virgin."
Lowering his gun for a moment, Dieter removes the cloth from the altar and, predictably, reveals a pentagram. It's circumscribed with gothic script I can't make out. Hanro roughly shoves his hand down the front of Alexandra's pullover and tears it off in one movement.
"Mmmmm. The unsuckled breasts of the girl-child."
His gun in his right hand, he presses it into her throat, forcing her head back. She makes a small sound as he makes her stand on tiptoe and bites into her left breast. She cries out and tries to force him off her, but she's like a rag doll, enveloped by his grotesque physique. "Please," for the first time she seems on the verge of tears. "I don't know what you want. Please let us go."
"No, my dear. I'm afraid I cannot do that. You see, I need what you have. Think of it as fuel. Your unspoilt body will allow me to live stronger. And help me counteract certain other spells being cast around this city tonight."
"I don't understand…"
"He's a fucking evil murderer." My cautious restraint deserts me completely. "He wants to kill all of us," I can't help shouting. "Alex, don't let him…"
This time he hits me with the butt of his pistol.
"That's enough! I said you watch and shut the fuck up. Understood? Although your assessment is fairly accurate." He raises his hands, seeming to feed off my hatred for him. I glance at Louise. She's expressionless.
"And now!" Hanro slips back into his black ceremonial ecstasy. He raises his arms to the ceiling, like some wideboy kind of priest in a black leather overcoat instead of a robe. "Let the service begin…"
Suddenly Dieter's at my neck. Ah! He cuts my ear with something and the blood flows warm and sticky. Has he cut off my earlobe? Oh sweet Jesus help us…"
"No, you fuck!" Again Hanro reacts. "Stop that! Don't fucking spoil it with your pathetic begging." He's throwing a tantrum in the middle of the black mass. "The only reason you disgusting cunts still have heads on your necks is because I need your blood warm. Now just clear your minds and we'll tap you gently. It won't even hurt."
Sure enough, Dieter is holding a silver goblet beneath my severed earlobe and I feel sick to my soul, like I've never felt in my life.
Hanro throws Alexandra onto the little slate altar. She lands hard and smacks her head. The corner of her mouth shows a little of that same black blood - same as Mike's from earlier this morning. It's approaching noon now and the first piercing light of another grey-white day reaches earth. The day's light lashes the room. Hanro flexes his arms, like he's trying to gauge his strength. Or is he getting stronger?
"The sacraments please, Deacon."
"In a minute…"
Dieter throws down the roll of packing tape and the knife, still concentrating on catching all of my flowing blood in the goblet. Alex moans gently as Hanro, the filthy, deranged pig, straps her spreadeagled across the altar, her head and limbs matching the points of the pentagram. She's closed her eyes now, trying to go to a faraway place…
"No, no no… Wake up, my pretty. I want to see you," says Hanro, as sticks the knife down the front of her training pants and slashes them off her, from the inside out. She gives a feeble, terrified shriek, as Hanro brings himself to his full height.
"Oh Dark Lord. Accept this unsullied sacrifice as a token of our subservient allegiance. Behold our celebration of the pleasures of the flesh. Accept the blood of this virgin as a sign of our devotion…"
He slides the blade of the steel hunting knife the entire length of Alex's inner thigh. Drawing blood in places and raising a terrified whimper from her. As he reaches her crotch, he cuts the waistband and tears off her grey panties…
The girl is shivering with fear, her entire body taught and panicked like a snared deer. Hanro lowers his head into her crotch and sniffs, like a wolf on the scent, I can't help thinking. But he smells something amiss. He casts a piercing stare across at me, his black eyes like holes to eternity.
"It has been used," he says simply.
He stands and punches Alex in the face. Her head snaps back and she seems to lose consciousness immediately. He goes back down into the poor, passed-out girl's crotch, this time spreading her lips and inspecting her vulva. He shakes his head and stands. He changes his grip on the hunting knife and comes towards me.
"You have ruined my sacrifice with your selfishness," he says. As he reaches me, his cold eyes, his entire presence, it's one black cloud of hatred. I can feel it like an icy sucking, evil1 made manifest. But I feel a strange calm. In the face of true evil, hating him back only seems to amplify his power. So I remain as calm as possible. I breathe deeply and leave my eyes out of focus, so I'm not looking into his eyes, but at his aura, his presence in general. He is no longer just Hanro. He is channelling a greater force. Even his voice seems foreign.
"You may as well stop, Deacon," says Hanro, his voice of doom cracking. He smashes the bloody chalice from Dieter's hands, where he's fussing with it, holding it by my ear. It arcs across the room, leaving a parabolic, glistening stain on the black, Kashmiri carpet. "What use is the blood sacrament without the sacrifice?" he screams. My mouth falls open as he pulls himself to his full height. He seems about two metres tall, towering over me. He changes his grip on the knife once again, so it becomes a stake. The handle is in the palm of his right hand and the left holds the shaft for stability. Oh Christ, he's going to impale me through the throat!
"Your sacrifice was spoilt by love."
It's Louise, still looking pale and weak, but serene now.
"The girl's chastity was given as a tribute to the God Of Love. Forever more she will remain in the protection of the redeeming power of love. Love! Love! Love will protect her."
Each time she says it, Hanro flinches. Dieter shrinks into a corner. "The power of love, the surpassing purity of the Goddess of Nature, who ordains the path we little ants will follow. The fatal destiny written in the unchangeable, all-knowing book of Akasa… all this protects her…"
And as if the God of Love himself has summoned all his subjects to announce themselves, the music starts. We've been aware of it until now as a kind of crowd presence, like crowds walking towards a football match, or participants in a fun walk passing your balcony. The hubbub of a thousand eager voices. A bit of background noise. Anticipation.
But now it really starts, a critical mass has been reached…
Oonch-oonch-oonch-oonch. Oonch-oonch-oonch-oonch. The four-on-the-floor pulsebeat of the music style known as house. Out of time, but flowing over itself. The first beat on the third of another groove, the downbreak over the build-up of another, melody lines coalescing in a chaotic shriek of keyboard riffs, basslines trespassing over one another, but still that enormous kickdrum and high-hat beat that mirrors the very rhythm of life that courses through our veins. Here comes The Love Parade. Oonch-oonch-oonch-oonch.
"In the name of all the familiars2 and the solitaries," Louise orders him now, in a voice like a chorus of women. "In the name of the sabbat of Lugnasadh and the mothering deity who created even you, in the name of all the powers of the Wisecraft, I command you. Yield to the Power of Love."
Dirk's eyes go wide with terror. He staggers back from Louise's assault, grasping his heart. He backs into the altar, where Alex is coming round, moaning a little. He turns and sees her move. He raises the dagger again and holds it poised over Alex's torso… All of us stare at its tip, wavering above her sternum now. Lethal, but unsure of itself.
And the pulsebeat strengthens. From everywhere it seems to come. But it comes from Ernst-Reuter Platz and from the Brandenburger Tor and from the myriad radial roads surrounding the Siegessäule, the Column of Victory.
"Lay down your weapon and embrace the Way of Love."
"Uhnnn," Hanro's eyes are rolling white in his head, his tongue licking like flames from his open mouth. "No. No-o-o-o-o. Nnnng, wah?"
What is that he speaks?
"Nng kuo. Xavial aktanaten. Xavial Akshingesi. Hermes Aking. Ghala! Ghala!"
Jesus! What fucking language is that?
"Gha! Aghtenagi wami! Tenagi wameNangret! Hah! Tenagi wameNangret!"
His eyes are black holes of evil defiance, and his face is no longer his own, more a pale, pasty mask of demonic possession, dripping with grey sweat. But Louise seems equally possessed now. She's still lashed to her chair, but her aura looks so much bigger than that…
Still the light lashes the room and the red candles billow in a draught that comes from where all of a sudden?
"Faidal! Faidal," the presence that was Hanro screams in the direction of Dieter, but by now Dieter is foetal with fear in the corner, where he dropped the minute Louise started channelling.
"Akshengezi!"
But there's gonna be no akshengezi for Dieter tonight. Nor for me. This showdown is strictly for the initiates.
"Akthanul puellam libertareideth!" Louise calls out. "Axa! Axa ne mainjeni ka bona! Axa ka Bona! Axa ka Bona! Axa ka Bona!" She's chanting, or her body is. I think Louise left a while ago. It's the goddess laying down the law now. Axa ka Bona. Death or Good. And somehow you know the death the goddess speaks of is not of the ephemeral, reincarnative kind. She is threatening Hanro with total destruction. If that's even Hanro any more.
And the Love Parade parades. We feel the earth move. In this darkened flat, with its black curtains that still cannot completely keep out the fact that it is broad daylight in Berlin. We feel it.
Fifty nightclubs on wheels roll rhythmically forward. The techno army is on the move. Oonch-oonch-oonch-oonch. DJ Luna, Toxic Twin, Atb, Dj Klang, Felix da Housecat, Paul van Dyk3 and a thousand legions of comrades begin the march for love to the time of the Pulsebeat, that rhythm of life.
And in our black/white room we face each other, frozen. The beat pulses through the building, rattles the blinds, the windowpanes.
"Abseghri Akhtenaten," the Goddess demands of the Demon. "Absegh Ouisefri. Absegh Ousefri! Absegh Ouisefri!"
"Khanul!" The Demon refuses! Defiant now, "Khanul! Akhtan sefiriat! Via Pagresh kante!"
"Ha!" The Goddess scoffs! "Via pagresh ovianidos. Ama ovianidos. U-ma ovianidos, frater. Ma retikra ku va. U-ma amo. Ovianidos!"
The way of peace leads to death for you? But the way of peace is always open. The path to your mother is always open, your mother welcomes you, our son, our brother… She invites you home. The path back to your mother's love is always open.
Involuntary, nostalgic tears come to the demon's eyes. He shakes and jerks like a shivering epileptic, but still the dagger hovers over the breastbone of the pure, the almost pure Alexandra, now passed out again, merciful God be praised.
"Ha!" he screams, convulsing even further. He feels the holy thoughts. "Ha! Akhtenagi!" He's frothing at the mouth now. The goddess too.
"Aki!" she screams. "Aki-I-I-I-I-i. Lugnasadh kombriet. La corpora no narkotimento langastria ovianido I Via Sorora Kaghta. Ave I Kaghta ka Sorora! Kgha! Ha!"
Behold! On the eve of Lugnasadh the woman's undrugged body finally becomes the Way of the Power of the Sisterhood. Be gone, you!
"Kgha! Ha!"
Oonch-oonch-oonch-oonch
"Kgha! Ha!"
"Uhrnnn!" He's not going to be able to take it for much longer.
Oonch-oonch-oonch-oonch. And in my mind's eye I see a million kids on drugs of empathy scream out and dance ecstatically in the name of love, as the mobile discos move…
And the basslines coalesce…
And the riffs wail all over each other, setting off funny feedback that sounds like fire alarms as they hug those root notes…
But the beat insists. Doef! Doef! Doef! Doef!
Oonch-oonch-oonch-oonch.
The rhythm of life abides…
As we fight for our lives.
"Lugh circamo. Pa frater."
But you're surrounded by love now. There's no point in fighting, brother...
And indeed, the demon does seem to give up the body. It falls on its back, limply dropping the dagger. One final, jaw-crushing, tongue-splitting convulsion and you can see the demon leave the body in a jet of black ashes, surging out of the mouth cavity like a swarm of pure evil into... into... into me?
1 Anton Szandor Lavey, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Manson, Nelson Mandela, Hendrik Verwoerd, Ozzy Osbourne, Isaac Newton, Vexen Crabtree, Galileo Galilei, Cecil John Rhodes, Jimmy Page, Adolf Hitler, Chris Cranmer, Martin Luther, Josef Stalin, Cagliostro, Rasputin, Charles Darwin, Alice Cooper, Aleister Crowley, Basil Zaharoff, George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Blanche Barton, BJ Vorster, Robert McBride, Peter H Gilmore, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, Marilyn Manson, Giosue Carducci.
2 Joan of Navarre, Tituba, Mother Shipton, Anne Boleyn, Sarah Good, Carolin of Brunswick, Rebecca Nurse, Tamsin Blight, Mary Butters, Old Dorothy Clutterbuck, Isobel Goldie, Joan of Arc, Margaret Jones, Lady Alice Kyteler, Marie Laveau, Florence Newton, Dolly Pentreath, Elizabeth Sawyer, Joan Wytte, Sarah Osborn.
3 Armand van Helden, Blank & Jones, Carl Cox, Afrika Bambaataa, Black Baxter, Miss Djax, Chris Liebing, Paul van Dyk, Chrysler, Cle, Dero, Westbam, Disko, Dr Motte, Electric Indigo, Woody, Ella Gotman, Ellen Allien, Fonar, Sven Väth, Groove, Hardy Hard, Hell, Rush, Jack de Marseille, Klang, Lexy, Takkyu Ishino, Luke Slater, Mark Spoon, Marusha, Tom Novy, Surgeon, Monika Kruse, Azzido da Bass, Felix da Housecat, Sasha, Miss Kittin.
Hagen Engler
is an established independent voice on the South African literary
scene and an underground punk publisher with no self-censorship issues.
He has published independent ’zines, released albums and put out three volumes
of his collected writings, as well as the cult novel Greener Grass.
Engler’s work has been hailed with acclaim from the word go and he is regarded
as an accurate mirror of the scenes he reveals in his writing. With a grip
on colloquial South African English so tight that it may baffle some readers,
he reflects and reveals exactly what young South Africans are thinking and
feeling today. . |
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 *The
novel traces the story of one Wax Wilson, a Cape Town movie industry chaperone
with a reputation for being able to organise anything for his clients. His
serene life of casual sex, drugs and easy money is soon disrupted by something
so twisted and perverse he can’t even see his own hand in the events that
overtake him. Set in the underbelly of Cape Town that tourists never see,
Buttons For Gaia reveals the darker side of the Mother City and those that
visit her. It also addresses the universal themes of lust, evil, love and
redemption.
Caught up in the machinations of an evil sex cult
as he tries to work through his own bizarre handicaps, Wax finds himself
in a poignant love triangle. But he needs to get a grip on reality – he
may well die if he doesn’t. As his friends and lovers fall victim to the
cult, the action moves to dark, mysterious Berlin, where we find Wax on
a depraved vengeance mission. Now only love can save him from becoming what
he most despises.
Published by Pocket Assegaai Publications, Engler’s own DIY publishing company.
Buttons For Gaia is available exclusively online at www.hagenshouse.co.za. |
LitNet: 01 November 2005
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