| COPYWRITER | STORY-TELLER | SALESMAN | | PUBLIC SPEAKER | TEACHER | MOTIVATOR |

| SALESMAN | TECHNO-GEEK | MISFIT || GINGERBEARDMAN | MINISTER |

wordsBY NICK PRINSLOO

failed narcissist“The price of being the best is having to be the

best”Terry Pratchett

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I finished school, sighed with relief, grew my hair, thought I was awesome, looked at the photos, realised I wasn't, went to the army, they cut the hair. Left the army, grew my hair again, still looked bad. Eventually shaved it. Much better. Had a ludicrous picture of a spi-der inked into the skin on my back. At least I can hide it.

Bought a guitar.

Studied computers, taught computers, worked on a bank's computer.

Fell in love with my best friend, she said ‘no’ and she said ‘yes’.

Felt a call to be a minister; I said ‘no’. Discovered that the call to be persistent; said ‘yes’. Became a minister. Lived in a township. Argued with a Bishop.

Fell in love with a 2.49kg baby boy.

Started going grey.

Started growing hair in my ears.

Lived in Port Elizabeth. Discovered that the grass isn't always greener. Fell in love with a 2.0kg premature baby, adopted her. Was kept awake for 3 months by a screaming bundle of colic. Do you know what three

“Discovered that the grass isn't always greener.”

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months of sleep deprivation feels like? Best not to ask; I may get violent. Was rescued—God bless the man—by a chiropractor with massive hands.

Moved to Cape Town. Lived on the wrong side of the railway tracks in a house with a bullet hole in the wall. Helped many people bury their loved ones.

Got my Post Graduate Degree in Theological Ethics; big words that mean, ‘You know nothing, Nick’.

Moved to the south of Johannesburg. Helped many people get married. Helped many people get buried. Needed help burying a friend.

Bought another guitar.

Didn't have enough money for a Ferrari; studied psy-chology instead. Diagnosed myself with ADHD. Was correct. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Got another Post Graduate Degree, this time in Psy-chology. Didn't go to the graduation.

Grew a beard to look older. It worked.

Moved to the north of Johannesburg. Taught Marketing Research to third year students; they did not get it. Taught Marketing Research to post-grads; they did get it.

“Helped many people get married. Helped many people get bur-ied. Needed help burying a friend.”

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Bought a ukulele, and 2 more guitars. Was given a 99-year-old banjo.

Was invited to my twenty-year school reunion. Tat-tooed my wife and children's names on my leg. They spelt ‘Alison’ ‘Aligon’. Still need to get it fixed. Got con-tact lenses. I needed the glasses to make me look intel-ligent. Threw the lenses away. Bought a scooter. Go 85 downhill. Woohoo.

The scooter was stolen. Sad face.

Asked the church to stop driving people away and they tried to crucify me. I am soooo not ready to be cruci-fied; i convened my own disciplinary hearing knowing myself to be innocent. I was exonerated. I am still bit-ter. Then one day, I saw Jesus—followed closely by the Holy Spirit—leave through the back door. I followed them. That was the day the words sought me out. That was the day the words came to my rescue.

The words are teaching me to love again; everything has changed. I failed at being a narcissist, maybe I can thrive as a servant. For that is what I am—a servant. A servant to the words.

“Was given a 99-year-old banjo.”

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making words sing“When you write, you talk on paper. When it's good,

you sing.”Mark Tredinnick

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STOP

By Nick Prinsloo

As an addict, I am always looking for positive addic-tions.

My newest barbiturate, the art of story-telling.

While feeding that gnawing hunger to narrate, I fell in love.

Yup. That's what I said. I fell in love.

I fell in love with, well this is a little embarrassing..., I fell in love with punctuation marks.

Huh?

Really?

Punctuation marks?

Yup. Please don't judge me—I'm not some dirty grammar-douche—but, yes I fell in love with punctua-tion marks. And I fell hard; real hard.

I fell in love with that schismatic comma, forcing sen-tences to separate and readers to pause and breathe.

“I fell in love with that schis-matic comma, forcing sen-tences to sepa-rate and read-ers to pause and breathe.”

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I fell in love with that authoritative and eye leading em-dash—ever encouraging readers onward.

And, of course, I fell in love with that lithe and sexy semi-colon; with her constant celebration and encour-agement of both diversity and homogeneity.

My favourite of these tiny scratches on the page, how-ever, is the full-stop. The full-stop; ending one journey and beginning another. The full-stop. So sudden and surprising. Again and again I fall in love with that tiny dot, for she brings me relief and offers me hope. She—ever so tenderly—takes my hand in hers, and with confidence, declares for all who will listen that even though one part of life may be complete another was about to begin.

And so, with the tiniest of lovers, I learnt to celebrate the past with joy while contemplating the future with hope; to remember the past with sadness while fearing the unknown of the future and I have learnt that life it-self is made of many full-stops and many new starts and that joy and hope, and sadness and fear, are merely different perspectives of the same sorry.

And...,

I am hooked.

“I have learnt that life itself is made of many full-stops and many new starts and that joy and hope, and sadness and fear, are merely differ-ent perspec-tives of the same sorry.”

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copywriter“Do not bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.”

David Ogilvy

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Radio: Carnival City Let’s Celebrate.

Radio: Win a VW Ama-rok.

Radio: Let’s Cele-brate: Sibaya.

Radio: GrandWest Let’s Celebrate.

Radio: Tremendous Triples at GrandWest.

Radio: Carnival City Happy 16th.

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story-teller“A writer is someone for

whom writing is more difficult than it is for

others.”Thomas Manne

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He heard a cracking sound, like the sound of a breaking bone.

Something shifted.

Everything changed.

The ghosts took up residence in his mind. They breathed in and out, their tiny little hearts beating with new life.

It started with one word. Then an-other. And another and another and ten-thousand more. Words became sen-tences, sentences paragraphs, para-graphs scenes, scenes plots and plots stories.

The places, the characters and the stories—they haunted him.

***

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the ghosts in his head

The People's Law in Blood was all that was available for reading these days, cour-tesy of the New People's President him-self. Cyrus had already been forced to read it once and really did not want to read it again, but what choice did he have? He was, after all, sitting in the wait-ing room of that very President's office.

Then the front door burst open.

“Where's that there new king of this dust bowl at?”

A misinformed, dirty and considera-bly drunk tanner stood in the doorway. He stank of death and poppy juice. This was not going to make the President happy, and an unhappy President was not what Cyrus needed right now.

“Hey mister, wrong place.” Cyrus was about to make mention of one or two of the new slop shops where the man could indulge his addiction, but the man stopped him with a raised grimy finger.

“Hank bloody Cyrus, you son of a steaming horse pile! I gonna soil me britches for the sight o’ ya standing there.”

Cyrus tried to place the man, but his face was smeared with grime and he couldn't. The man recognised Cyrus’ con-fusion, even through the poppy haze, and spread his hands wide. “Eb, Eb Jackson. Don't ya ’member me?”

Still nothing. The man started toward him. Cyrus clenched his fists, both of them, the good one and the brass. His

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excerpts

brass fist squealed as it opened, closed, opened closed. Damnation it needs oil, Cyrus thought.

“Cum’on man,” Eb said. “We done work together on that Lipschicht dirigible way back when. I were the one workin' them guns, ’member?”

Then, like a lead ball, it struck Cyrus between the eyes. He needed this man in his life like he needed his good hand hacked off. Oh pile of oily cattle manure. This was not good.

***

“Ga’el, you’re as useless as maggots on a three day carcass in warm weather.”

Dear dead gods, what have I done now? There’s no pleasing that woman. “What now, Witch?”

“Maggots,” said the dry voice, “at least have the courtesy to clean up after themselves. But no, not you? You’re a god‘s damned slob. ‘I’ll catch some fish for lunch,’ you says. ‘I’ll clean the fish,’ you says. And after almost five hundred

years of the sames old sames old, I still believes you. Maybe, I’m the fobbin’ fool. I still expects you to be different. I still ex-pects you to become a bettered man. I still believes that one day I’ll be a free from your curse. What a fobbin’ fool I am. What a flamin’ fobbin’ fool?"

Huh? “I’m guessing that you think I did something wrong, and that at some point in the not too distant future—which I have the rest of eternity to appreciate be-cause of you—you’re going to tell me. Yes?”

“You is a idiot. You is a slime on a frog’s tongue idiot—”

Ga’el smiled. That was a new one. She must have been waiting all day to use it. “Brilliant. I thought you were beginning to lose your touch.”

“You means it? You not just saying that to shuts me up are you? You really likes it?”

“How long have we been stuck to-gether?”

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“Four hundred and eighty-six years bah my reckonin’.”

Ga’el pursed his lips. “Let me see,” he said. “That means that I’ve been appre-ciating your insults for, well..., at least, the last four hundred and eighty-one of those.”

“Hey, what about the first five?”

“Oh those where, quite possibly, the worst five years of my life.”

“Pfft.”

“Never mind. It’s just that I thought you had exhausted every insult possible. I was starting to get bored. I like the frog one. I hope it heralds the beginning of a new age of crisp new word slaps.”

“I’ll slaps you with my fist; you is fleas on a goat’s beard.”

“Nope. Heard it. Keep working.”

That shut her up for a while.

Enjoying the quiet, Ga’el went out-side to clean up his fish mess. He was not really a slob; the witch just loved to harangue him. After he had cleaned up the blood and gore, he buried the re-mains deep in the woods. There were all sorts of unfriendly creatures that called the Shadow Woods home and he did not want to encourage them. Ga’el, the witch, and her menagerie all lived in a tiny wooden shack that Ga’el had built about eighty years ago. He had become tired of living in cities. He had seen them all and he would rather face the wild creatures of the Shadow Woods than have to be with his own kind. He had grown to dislike humans.

Ga’el longed for silence. The abso-lute silence of death would be best, but death escaped him, thanks to the hag. So he found quiet wherever he could. Of course, the Shadow Woods were never really silent—it was a noisy silence, but at least it was not man’s noise. Ga’el had moved in to the shack to escape the city, and for the last eight dec-ades it had served his need, but ‘civilisa-tion’ was beginning to impinge on his ha-

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ven. A road had recently been built right through the Shadow Woods. With it came man and his bloody noise.

“Rights you are,” said the hag, mak-ing Ga’el jump. "Hows ’bout this: You smells worse than the smog that hovers over Poor Town in Winter.”

“Heard it before.”

“Oh possum’s poo. You sure?”

“Yup. You used it in the freeze of twelve hundred. Although, I think I actu-ally did smell that bad, so technically it wasn’t an insult. All right, I’ll give it to you this time. But no more leeway; you gotta bring your best game.”

Silence.

The peace lasted all afternoon and right through supper. She must really be struggling to find something new.

It was nearly time to hit his sleeping mat when Ga’el could not handle the quiet anymore. “Where’d you go, Hag? You trying to punish me? It worked. Now,

please, say something? Anything? If we have to be stuck together we might as well keep each other company. Did I say something wrong?”

Silence.

What now?

Ga’el went to the water room where he kept a shard of reflective glass. He struck a match and lit the lantern on the wall, making the flame as bright as possi-ble. He held the shard of reflective glass so he could look over his shoulder. The tattoo was still there. He tried not to look at the hag too much; it made him remem-ber what he had done all those centuries ago. But now he was worried. Living with one’s curse for as long as he had—it inevi-tably became an addiction.

He could not remember what it had been like before the curse. The hag and her strange creatures were now his only family.

What in the lost names of the seven-teen was she up to?

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“Mistress Fern? Witch? Where did you go?”

Something must be wrong.

He checked the mirror again. Fern was still there, tattooed on his back where she always was. And she looked as she always did, hunched over, a shriv-elled crone who was perpetually smiling as if she was laughing at him. Her silver hair was tied into the same severe bun that always pulled at her eyebrows, giving the impression that she was constantly surprised by his behaviour.

Why was she so quiet? She never shuts up, not even when I’m asleep.

But now: silence.

He pulled up his pants leg and slapped the growling wolf that lived on his thigh. “Bear. Wake up, Bear, I need help.”

In response, the ink on his skin started swirling. Ga’el clenched his teeth. It felt like the skin was being peeled off his body.

“What?” asked the large black wolf that had materialised in front of him. “Are we under attack?”

“Oh, thank the gods,” breathed Ga’el. “Listen Bear, Mistress Fern has stopped speaking to me. Can you find out what’s happened?”

Bear’s lips peeled back, showing his teeth. He growled. It was a deep, rum-bling sound that made Ga’el shiver. The wolf would not hurt him as long as Mis-tress Fern lived on his skin. At least, he hoped it would not. The massive beast really knew how to scare him. “Mistress Fern is in a trance right now. She used to do this all the time be-fore you came along. Be patient human.”

With that the beast became ink on skin and nothing Ga’el tried made any dif-ference. Now Bear was ignoring him, too.

He decided to take the wolf’s advice. He lay down on his cot, closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But, sleep was eva-sive. He felt like something big was about to happen. Something big and bad.

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He began to feel a new sensation: the tattoo on his back was swirling. Mis-tress Fern had never left his skin before.

This can’t be good.

He closed his eyes and rode the pain. When the pain stopped, he could feel Mistress Fern standing in front of him.

“Open your eyes, fool,” she said.

He shook his head. He could not. Would not.

“Open. Your. Eyes. Fool.”

Ga’el opened his damned eyes. There she was—looking exactly as she had when they had first met. He, how-ever, had changed since then. His great-est transformation had been a mental one; he had come to love her. He had also learnt to respect and fear her, for Mis-tress Fern was a magic user. She was a witch who communicated with animals. A witch, whose friends and family were the

animals she spoke with. A witch, who had come home one afternoon to find a foreign soldier standing over the dead body of a large black wolf. There had been blood on the man’s sword. She had arrived in time to watch him spit on the dead beast. He could still hear her an-guish as she had cried out: “Bear. Oh my beautiful Bear.”

She had looked up from the broken animal and had fixed her gaze on the bro-ken man. The memory made him feel nau-seous.

“What dids you do?” she had asked Ga’el.

“I did what I was told.”

He had been all bluster and arro-gance—a soldier of the Ang’Qorian Em-pire—doing his job.

After that, his next memory was of waking to find that he had been cursed. His body had become a canvas. There were living tattoos everywhere. Two of the tattoos really frightened him.

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***

And there, in front of him for the first time in four hundred and eighty-six years stood the one who had cursed him. He wanted to hate her. But could not. She had also become his family. She would always be the ‘hag,’ but she was his hag.

At that moment she was scaring him. She looked dazed, as if she had just had some of that new poppy-juice that was all the craze in Byenland. She was looking directly at him, but she did not see him.

“Fern, I mean, uh, Mistress, please, stop this? You’re scaring me.”

When she finally spoke, Ga’el wished she had not.

***

I stare down at the deck where I’ve puked. I can’t see but look anyway. The warm liquid rubs against my toes making me cringe. Trying to back away into a cor-ner I trip. My hand squashes into some-

thing cold and wet. Flies are buzzing. They sound angry. Too loud. I cover my ears; smear something on my face. The last tiny shred of sanity I possess is dis-gusted by the animal I have become.

I curl into a ball and rock myself into an exhausted sleep.

My dreams taunt me.

Mother watches me. She's wearing that look of disappointment reserved only for me. “You disgust me,” she says, pale lips peeling back in a grimace. “You’re stumpy and grotesque and your head is too big. You’re not normal.” She turns her back to me. “You’re a curse to this fam-ily.”

The words echo in my head: “a curse, a curse, a curse.” I wake with a sob. My heart slams against my chest as if it too wants to escape. I try to stay awake; can't.

Next, my father visits my dream. Rot-ting flesh peels away from grey bones; even his decaying body can't bear the sight of me. His cloudy eyes fix on me.

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“It’s your fault you know,” he says, a black storm of flies exploding from his mouth. They fly straight at me. I sense their terrible hunger. I wake screaming.

Again, as hard as I try to stay awake, my body betrays me. This time I see mother sitting cross-legged on the swampy ground of our farmstead. Cra-dled in her lap is the lifeless body of my baby brother. His neck is bent at an im-possible angle and one of his eyes hangs by a red noose at his cheek. He was two years old when stampeding sheep tram-pled him to death. I was too slow to res-cue him.

Mother hunches over little Buikhu and her whole body shakes with grief. She rocks and rocks and chants: “Be-gone wretched curse.” Her chanting be-comes shrill and mad, a crescendo of ha-tred. Spittle rains down on Buikhu, and to my horror, he awakens. His broken head turns until his good eye sees me. “Why were you born?” he asks.

I wake screaming. My captors fetch me and drag me topside. The light scorches my eyes. I try to shut it out;

can’t. Still I scream. Somebody shouts at me. I can’t make out what he is saying. They hogtie me to the mast. The ropes are so tight my hands go numb.

I hear the whistle of a whip and the wet thud as it cuts my back. For a heart-beat I feel nothing, then—as if someone has taken a fiery torch to my skin—the pain bursts into a roaring flame that de-vours my sanity. Again and again the whip strips my flesh; until a blackness, free of dreams, rescues me.

When I wake, I smell something new, clean freshly washed decks mingled with roasting fish and spirit alcohol. Where am I? The underworld?

Another dream?

I try to move and the pain in my back flares.

Blackness.

I wake to the sensation of tugging on my back. It feels like someone is pulling my skin off.

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Blackness.

Voices. I can’t make out what they’re saying. A man? A woman?

Blackness.

A flood of memory tries to drown me. I scream. “Shhh,” a woman’s voice. “Shhh little one, you are safe now.”

Blackness.

A man’s voice; “Will he survive?”

“His body will recover. The infection has passed and his fever is broken. But,—”

“Yes?” The man interrupts.

“He has been through a trauma you and I will never understand. Only the strongest hearts recover...”

Blackness.

“Ah, he’s coming back,” says the man.

“Let him sleep Moshe,” the woman protests.

I try to lift my head. Too much.

Blackness.

Two men arguing.

The first voice I recognise as the one called Moshe. He says, “Ah, come now Tuthmose, I didn’t know the slavers were yours.”

The other voice, Tuthmose I assume, sounds angry. “I was going to give that dwarf to little Tuthmose as a toy. He so enjoys playing with them. Those stupid slavers made such a mess of the crea-ture, he'll just give Tutty nightmares.”

“Well.” Moshe sounds like he's trying not to laugh. “Those stupid slavers won't do anything like that again.”

“Are you making fun of me Moshe? You'll do well to remember who is Phar-aoh.”

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“My humblest apologies, Beloved Horus; Lord of the Two Kingdoms; Ra's chosen. I did not mean to be disrespect-ful. I only make jest of the slavers who fell so quickly to my sword, which—of course—is ever at your service.”

Tuthmose wheezes in response, and I hear footsteps fade. I hope they're his.

Then I hear footsteps approaching. I want to look, but am afraid.

“Ah, Master Dwarf,” Moshe sighs. “It seems you’ve become my property.” I keep my eyes shut. Finally his footsteps move away and I breathe a heavy sigh.

“You heard all of that didn’t you?” the woman asks me.

I squeak. Oh gods, what have I done? I start trembling.

“Don’t be afraid, Little One,” she says. “You're among friends now.”

I risk opening my eyes.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” a middle-aged woman says. She has dark scars on her face. They enhance her beauty. With alarm, I notice that she is smiling at me. I shut my eyes.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I'm a friend.”

For a while she says nothing. I can hear her breathing. And then, when she does speak, it comes so unexpectedly that, to my shame, I squeak again.

“My but you are a fortuitous one,” she says, ignoring my outburst.

“Osiris would be weighing your heart right now, if Moshe hadn’t come across you when he had. Those slavers, vile crea-tures,” she spits on the floor, “were whip-ping you directly into the underworld.” She takes a deep breath. I open my eyes. She sees me watching and smiles.

Could she be a friend? I’ve never had a friend.

She licks her lips. “Moshe has an im-placable anger, and when he saw them beating you, it burst forth into a flame so

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hot and bright only their blood would quench it. He commanded his crew to pull the Wings of Horus alongside the slavers barge and demanded your re-lease. They paid no heed, of course, which only served to fuel his anger. You should have seen him. He grabbed the sword from his hip, jumped across croco-dile infested waters and slashed and cut until their blood and filth washed over the deck, flowed into the Nile and fed So-bek’s minions. Moshe then ordered his crew to lay a boardwalk and told them to search for survivors. You were the only one still alive. I wished to cross and help, but he forbade it. I believe he wanted to save me the distress of seeing how they’d treated you; I confess I was grate-ful. When he untied your body and car-ried it across, I feared you already dead. He laid you on his own bed and I saw you were still breathing. He begged me to save you and I desired nothing else. I have been at your bedside since.”

I push myself up and fight back the urge to vomit as the wounds on my back crack. “What is your name?” I breathe.

“You must sleep little friend."

“I must know your name.” I feel the blackness threatening, but I must know.

The last thing I hear, as I fall into dream-less sleep, is, “My name is Hatshepsut, little one. My name is Hatshepsut.”

It is the first real sleep I've had in a very long time.

***

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call me“we both know you want to...”

Nick Prinsloo0716770291

revnickp@gmail.com

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