Getting Lucky

Getting Lucky

by Etienne Krüger

Copyright © 2006

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FRIDAY, MIDNIGHT

Eliot burrowed deeper into the warm soggy mess. He didn’t stop even when something bit sharply into his left thigh. A bottle perhaps? he wondered briefly, hoping it wasn’t broken. He counted himself lucky that the dustbin was full because it meant he could peer safely through the narrow slit beneath its lid without fear of discovery. Now he was glad he hadn’t given in to his earlier impulse to hide underneath one of the cars in the parking area behind Pizzazz. The same cars that ten, well-dressed Zimbabweans were currently searching under with the same grim determination and thoroughness one would expect of a pack of tipped-off customs officials. But Eliot knew he was not going to get away with a mere fine if they caught him now.

One particularly disagreeable-looking Zimbo detached himself from the hunting group and started moving towards the bin. A dark wave of dread rose in the pit of Eliot’s stomach. His buttocks clenched together tightly and his heart beat loudly in his ears, accelerating wildly when a glinting belt buckle filled his view. It was holding up a pair of cargo shorts that was close enough for Eliot to read the label. Hilton Weiner. The Zimbo reached forward and pushed back the hopper’s lid. Its poorly lubricated rollers protested with a harrowing chalk-on-blackboard screech. Fear grabbed Eliot’s heart in a bouncer’s grip, paralysing his limbs completely. In his mind there was no escape. His life did not flash before his eyes. Instead a single thought occupied him: It isn’t fair! I was just trying to get lucky. Eliot was forced to consider exactly what was going to happen when the Zimbabweans got hold of him. His mind rebelled at the idea and immediately restored his capacity for action. He steeled himself to leap out as soon as the gap was wide enough. Given the fact that he was buried up to his neck in rubbish, a rapid exit, let alone a successful escape, seemed unlikely, but he closed his eyes and waited for the right moment all the same.

‘Jesus, I’m never eating another seafood pizza again,’ said the Zimbo, recoiling in disgust. He looked at the second bin. For a moment he was undecided. As he stood there his resolve waned rapidly. No one with a working sense of smell could possibly be hiding in that, he told himself. He turned on his heel to rejoin the rest of the pack. Eliot opened his eyes. He was still trying to figure out why he hadn’t been discovered when disaster struck for the third time that night.

DING! DONG! DINGALING! Eliot cringed as his watch chimed midnight with, what seemed to him, the acoustic subtlety of a set of clanging church bells. With the Zimbo barely six feet away Eliot couldn’t bear to look. So he shut his eyes tightly again. He wished he were safely back in Port Elizabeth with his parents, instead of hiding here on the hostile streets of Cape Town. After what seemed like forever, he opened his eyes and risked a peek. The Zimbo was gone. Perhaps the alcohol had affected his hearing or maybe it was simply the damping effect of so much material in the bin. Either way Eliot didn’t care. He found himself being absurdly grateful that the Far East hadn’t yet offered piercing polyphonic ring tones on cheap digital watches like the one he was wearing. There was no sign of the rest of the Zimbabweans. When nothing happened for the next five minutes, Eliot started to relax. His butt muscles had been on the verge of cramping, he realised.

The minutes oozed slowly by as a penetrating Cape Town September drizzle fell on the tar outside. Were it not for the effects of adrenaline, the fermenting compost that enveloped him and the fact that he was drunk, Eliot might have been cold. The Zimbabweans had disappeared from view and he wanted nothing more than to get into his bed and close his eyes on a truly catastrophic Friday evening. But Eliot’s instincts would not allow him out of hiding. He pressed a button on his watch, illuminating the display. Ten past. The light spilled onto a triangular slice of pizza that was disconcertingly close to his mouth. Its crusty topping resembled a regurgitated stew. Fighting a gag reflex, he pushed the offending scrap as far away from him as he could. As he waited, his physiology returned slowly to normal. His position became increasingly uncomfortable. Both of his legs were threatening to go into spasm; his head was throbbing; and, in the absence of a numbing panic, the smell was growing steadily worse. Finally, he started having difficulty breathing. That was enough for him. He didn’t care any more – even if they were waiting for him.

The sound of approaching footsteps stopped him as his hand touched the lid. He scanned the parking area nervously, seeing nothing. The steps came closer, their cadence quick and determined, like a girl walking purposefully in the dark. Eliot calmed down when his guess was proved right. She was alone, looking slightly jumpy, but not wanting to show it. He waited for her to pass. As she looked over her shoulder, Eliot realised that she was pretty. Blonde. Tight jeans and hot legs. Normally, by now, Eliot would have completed a full analysis, mentally undressed her and been halfway into a sexual fantasy, but the night’s events had greatly unnerved him. The new stimulus made Eliot temporarily forget his fear and discomfort. He recalled a program he had watched on satellite TV. ‘Every day an estimated 260,000,000 acts of sexual intercourse take place across the planet,’ the faceless documentary voice had pronounced with academic disinterest. Eliot sighed. Surely one more helping wouldn’t upset the universe. It wasn’t like he was asking for a daily ration. An equation that he had seen inscribed on a desktop in his Engineering class sprang to mind – ‘The angle of the dangle is proportional to the heat of the meat, provided the urge stays constant’. But this formula did not apply to him – he would take it hot or cold, or any temperature in between. Eighteen-year-old virgins couldn’t afford to be choosy.

***

Experience had taught Dave that people noticed very little when they were scared and in a hurry – even if their eyes were darting about. It was almost as if their fear narrowed their vision or something. The girl in the tight, low-cut jeans just passing him was no exception. Had she wanted to, she could easily have spotted him – the shadows, in the corner where the bins stood, were not that deep. But she didn’t. Beautiful legs, he thought, as his pulse quickened and a thrill surfed up his spine. He brought the pair of panties in his left hand up to his face, savouring the feeling of the frilly lace on his skin. The other hand was in his pocket, alternately turning over a small blue toy car and his trusty, matchbox-sized stun gun. The suburb of Mowbray was perfectly quiet at this time of night, except for the clip-clop of the girl’s shoes. Despite having heard nothing to suggest the presence of another soul, Dave scanned the area carefully. It had been less than fifteen minutes since he’d taken up station here, waiting for a loner or a straggler to take the shortcut. He found that he was slightly disappointed. Sometimes the waiting and the anticipation were the parts he enjoyed most. Dave rubbed the bruise on his cheekbone. Bitch! His anger rose quickly as he stepped out of the shadows and followed quietly in the girl’s path. He was hoping he’d lost Casper.

***

Eliot almost shouted in surprise when another set of legs appeared in his view without warning. One of the Zimbos must have stayed behind! Eliot thanked his lucky stars that he’d stayed quietly put. More of the figure became visible as the legs put some distance between them and the dustbin. Eliot realised that it wasn’t a Zimbo at all. It was a male, but instead of vellies it was wearing boots. And the broad, squat shoulders didn’t belong to a student, but to a powerful man of thirty years plus. The hairs stood up on Eliot’s neck as he watched the figure steal up behind the girl. As she neared the palm tree in the middle of the parking area, the man circled around it, clearly intending to use the trunk as cover. His manner was confident and calculating as he produced something from his pocket. Eliot’s instincts kicked in – the same ones that had kept him alive in some of Port Elizabeth’s seedier bars (where he and his more adventurous schoolmates could be sure no teacher would dare to go). Fu-uck! he thought as realisation dawned. This could be no other than the Toyman! The same sick fucker who stunned his victims before dragging them off into the bushes. Simultaneously, Eliot’s butt clenched again, his mind froze in fear, and his legs turned to jelly. A shouted warning emerged from his mouth, but it was a cracked wheeze that didn’t carry past the front of the bin.

***

At the same time, Casper floated limply in the shelter of the tree’s canopy. He summoned the last of his energy reserves and flitted down to stand in the girl’s path. Ignoring the stinging rain, he rose to his full towering height, but there was simply no response. She kept walking directly at him. The ghost realised he had only a second left to act. Dave was reaching out, finger on the trigger of the stun gun. The disabling blue flash would be next and then it would be too late to make a difference. Think! Think! he ordered himself. Then he remembered the boy.

***

Eight hundred short milliseconds later the lid of the dustbin clattered to the ground, ripped from its rusty tracks by the force of Eliot’s headlong leap. He flew through the air as if pursued by demons. The sensation of the ghost passing through his torso was easily the worst thing he’d ever experienced. It was both shocking and disgusting. Shocking in that it had instantly galvanised his frozen limbs into action; disgusting because it felt like his body had been invaded by the rancid contents of the bin. Later the closest thing he would be able to compare it to would be standing barefoot on a pile of lukewarm dog shit and feeling it ooze up between his toes, or more accurately in his case – between his organs. Eliot had completely forgotten about the Toyman. It was mere coincidence that he ran in the approximate direction of the girl, scattering scraps of food and pizza boxes in his wake. For a moment the girl stood riveted to the spot, wide-eyed and frantic as she contemplated the slimy monster bearing down on her. Then she started screaming loudly enough to wake the dead. At that moment a piece of mushy dough on the underside of his shoe and the slippery white paint of a parking bay bought Eliot down. As he fell in a confusion of limbs, the girl turned and ran, still screaming, in the direction of Main Road.

Eliot recovered his senses slowly. He sat up and checked his body for structural damage. Finding himself relatively intact he crabbed the remaining two metres to the tree and used it as a support to help him stand. Then, leaning against the rough, wet trunk, he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, dislodging some food that had stuck to his face. The feeling that something was wrong was unshakeable. He opened his eyes in alarm and wished he hadn’t. The Toyman had long sideburns, Elvis-style. Eliot looked into his flat, stagnant black eyes and knew he was fucked. He tried to run, but a powerful hand clamped itself around his bicep. A device like an oversized key fob, with two stubby electrodes protruding from its top, rose up slowly in front of his face. There was a buzz as the Toyman tested it. A crackling blue arc writhed from one electrode to the other and the sharp smell of ozone filled the air. The Toyman curled his lip in a mocking sneer.

‘Looks like Casper’s got a little friend. But you guys screwed up,’ he admonished with a grin that revealed a row of slightly crooked teeth. ‘Doesn’t worry me – I’ll take you in place of the girl. I promise you won’t remember a thing tomorrow. That’s how my policy works.’

Eliot tried to beg for mercy, but no words would come.

‘There he is. Catch him!’ There was a great roar as the Zimbos rounded the far corner of the pizza restaurant and sprinted towards them. Eliot used the distraction to rip his arm free. He fled in the same direction the girl had taken. Moments into his flight he skidded to a halt when he became aware that he’d been outflanked. All ten of the Zimbabweans were there, five on each side of the pincer. To his left the sheer walls of the locked building offered no means of escape; to his right, on the far side of the parking area, rose an eight-foot Vibracrete wall that looked impossible to scale. With no other choice he ran at it, barely ahead of his pursuers, leaping upwards with all of his five foot and eleven inches. Somehow he managed to get his fingers over the top. The reinforced concrete slab was only two inches thick and he was just able to hang on. Desperation pulled him up and over before the grasping fingers of the Zimbos could reach him. He fell heavily into the soft earth at the top of the railway embankment and rolled down to the tracks. Then he ran for all he was worth, determined to end this disastrous night in his own bed – even if it was alone.

Six hours earlier...

CHAPTER 1

Anyone for MucDoogles?

Eliot’s light blue 1981 Opel Kadette struggled bravely up the wet, winding and magnificent tree-lined Constantia Nek road. According to Andy a lot of old Cape Town money lived here. Eliot, who had only been in Cape Town for eight months and didn’t know his way around the peninsula very well, was quietly amazed. He couldn’t see any houses because they were all set back from the road, but if the distance between the elaborate entrance gates was anything to go by, they had to be huge.

‘So, Andy bru, why’d you reckon the okes in the East still pay big bucks for rhino horn when they’ve got stuff like Viagra now?’ he asked his navigator.

Andy was from Florida. Not the famous state, but the suburb to the west of Johannesburg – a drab and dusty place squeezed like a brake pad between Krugersdorp and the highway. First year B.Sc. Chemistry at the University. Second attempt. He had been overjoyed to escape from the shadow of the West Rand mine dumps, while his parents were enjoying the peace and quiet of his absence to the extent that they hadn’t even minded much when he’d failed.

Andy was quick to respond. ‘I suppose they scheme it makes their weenies bigger instead of just harder,’ he sniggered. ‘They’re not that bright. I mean, anyone who will pay thousands of dollars for a couple of grams of powdered nose skin …’

‘Fully,’ agreed Eliot. ‘But does it actually work?’

‘Don’t know. Never tried it.’

‘Ever tried pheromones?’ asked Eliot, who’d recently seen an advert on the Internet and had been tempted to try it out.

Andy laughed. ‘Listen china, that stuff is useless. I tested every different type years ago and none of the chicks even noticed me. Now they dig me, but it’s not because of how I smell – it’s because I’ve got what they want.’ Andy underlined his point by letting rip with a series of farts that sounded astonishingly like a flock of alarmed ducks, but had all the warm, cloying oppressiveness and substance that one would expect from a flatulent hippopotamus that had overdosed on Mexican food. With his head half out the window, Eliot rated the best in the series at 78 out of a 100. This was based on his personal scoring system that allocated ten points each for loudness, length, timbre, bouquet, radius of influence, persistence, and general artistic impression (with the first three parameters each receiving an additional weighting of 10 points because of their importance). When they’d finished laughing and it was safe to wind the window up again, Andy continued. ‘What you actually need is this stuff,’ he said producing a vial.

‘What’s that?’ Eliot took his eyes off the road to look.

‘Oxytocin. It’s a hormone. I know a guy doing post-grad work in animal bonding behaviour. They gave this hormone to a whole lot of female rats and one male. The bitches picked that same male out of a crowd six weeks later. They went googoo and chased him down. Makes sense – Oxytocin is one of the brain’s love messengers …’

‘But I want to get laid, not fall in love,’ interrupted Eliot, although he was thinking it might not be so bad to have girls chasing him for a change.

Andy’s voice had grown thick with authority. ‘Let me finish, china. They chased the poor creature down.’ He smiled as he paused for effect. ‘Then they forced him to copulate with them. All of them. Wore him out completely.’

Eliot was silent as he digested the information. ‘So how do you know it’s going to work on chicks, not just rats, bru?’ he asked.

‘Well, it’s actually a human hormone. They just tried it on rats first to see what would happen. Rats are fucking close to people genetically, you know. If it was me running the trial, I’d have gone for human testing from day one.’ Andy chuckled, trying for the mad scientist effect, but failing.

Eliot was intrigued, but he harboured strong reservations about using drugs on girls. ‘But that’s rape, if you use stuff like that,’ he said.

‘No ways, china. It’s not like Rohypnol. That’s a real drug. Basically makes people helpless. Ah, ah. With Oxytocin we’re talking about a hormone. And it’ll only work if the chick is already keen on you. It just helps loosen things up. Like alcohol or a joint. No one’s ever claimed those are rape drugs, have they?’

‘I suppose not,’ agreed Eliot, not entirely persuaded. He knew nothing about rape drugs.

Andy continued his argument. ‘It’s like hypnosis – you can’t hypnotise someone to do something they really don’t want to do.’

‘Fully.’ Eliot knew that was true because a stage hypnotist had once tried (and failed) to put him under. ‘So how do you give it to the chicks?’

‘Easy. Dilute it and apply nasally. With a sprayer. A fine mist of this stuff at night and no one will even see it. You can’t smell it either.’

‘Have you tried it, bru?’ asked Eliot.

‘Of course,’ responded Andy, a bit unconvincingly.

‘So what happened?’ asked Eliot. He’d spotted the hesitation and was wondering how much he should believe.

‘Uh, china, you know, the stuff doesn’t always work perfectly. Problem is that other hormones affect it. It works best when oestrogen levels are high – they prime the brain for the bonding effect. Too much progesterone screws up the process. You basically only have about half the month, because oestrogen peaks just before ovulation and then progesterone takes over for the rest of the time. So you have a fifty-fifty chance.’

‘Fuck, bru, you know lank about this stuff,’ applauded Eliot, genuinely impressed at Andy’s encyclopaedic knowledge on the subject. Hell, fifty-fifty was a lot better than his average success rate up till now.

‘Well, I