Author: Colin Clouddance | Cape Town Curios | Twitter: @ColinClouddance
Introduction
Meteor showers occur several times a year; they are the small bits of debris left by comets as they pass through the inner solar system. From the ground, those bits of dust appear as beautiful falling stars, however each is a speck of dust that burns and is destroyed as it hits the Earth’s atmosphere. A meteor shower is the perfect cover for an alien invasion. Living in Cape Town, while on her way to work in the central business district, Deatra witnesses a theft. What is stolen is connected to the aliens and has historical and future significance for herself, South Africa, and the rest of the world. The colonial oppression of Apartheid set up cultural hierarchies that remain imbedded in South Africa and within Deatra’s own body. Deatra fights with herself and against her heritage, the very heritage that gives her a chance to craft the future. Post-Apartheid South Africa was labelled “the Rainbow Nation” yet many of the Apartheid structures remain or were reconstituted leading to uneven progress among South Africans. Those who are not benefitting within the new South Africa are frustrated and angry. Deatra becomes entwined with one such group that has organized themselves to achieve their goals and equality ultimately by military force. Khoisan Horizon captures this moment in South Africa as the rosy glow of the end of Apartheid fades and promises still have not been delivered. Khoisan Horizon projects a revolutionary South African future.
This city skyline of Cape Town central business district includes the FNB building which is mentioned in the Khoisan Horizon short story. Deatra works among these buildings.
Astro-Blackness: a person’s black state of consciousness, released from the confining and crippling slave or colonial mentality, becomes aware of the multitude and varied possibilities and probabilities within the universe.”
-Reverend Andrew Rollins (2015)
Khoisan Horizon
The concert was amazing! The crowd was pressed against the stage swaying to the music. Caught up in the moment Deatra tilted her head back eyes to the night sky letting the music pull her. She was surprised to see shooting stars!
She remembered that there was a meteor shower this week. The stars appeared to be shooting across the sky along with the music. She smiled and inhaled deeply. She couldn’t decide which was more awesome the band on stage or the natural light display in the sky.
Her eyes dropped back to the stage as the crowd screamed and shouted in appreciation as the song ended with a held note. Everyone got louder as the note ended.
As the crowd settled and the band prepared for their next song, Deatra turned her eyes upwards again. Every streaking ball of light made her breath catch. A particularly big one moved slowly across the sky and then turned towards the desert in the North. The smaller meteors moved much faster. As the band started up again, she kept looking at the sky waiting to see if another meteor would turn. None did.
She let her eyes scan the crowd as the music washed over her. The people were so excited that three people really stood out – two women and a man. They were small and appeared to be Khoisan. They were not dressed flamboyantly like everyone else and they were not paying attention to the concert. They were slowly walking through the crowd taking things. Except, she couldn’t see what they were taking. The victims, caught up in the concert, didn’t seem to notice.
Fireworks were the big finale of the concert. With the backdrop of the meteor shower, it was spectacular.
The next day Deatra disembarked from the commuter train in downtown Cape Town. She worked in the FNB building a few blocks away. There was a little Khoisan man that reminded her of her grandfather. He moved through the crowd taking, just as the people did at the concert the night before. She followed him with her eyes. No one seemed to notice him and nobody complained that anything was stolen. She found this puzzling but didn’t want to be late. As Deatra continued on her way to work, she saw three more Khoisan men and women doing the same thing: Working silently, unnoticed, stealing something invisible from people. She searched around herself trying to see if any of them were near her. There were none, but across the street she watched as a young man grabbed his stomach after a Khoisan woman touched him. He seemed to not see the woman as she passed by him on the left. The woman’s face showed no emotion, just an intensity that comes with being focused on a task. The man she touched, had stopped and was looking down at his stomach. He seemed to be frozen.
Curiosity got the better of Deatra, so she crossed the road to get closer to the man. He didn’t move during the time that it took her to get to his side.
“Hey Man, are you fine?” Deatra asked him.
His eyes looked at her as if he were waking from a dream. He lifted his shirt to show her his stomach. Blood was trickling down from his navel.
Deatra stepped away from him in surprise at the sight of blood. The woman hadn’t touched him anywhere near his navel.
“You need to go to hospital?”
The man nodded.
“Give me a minute. I’ll make a plan.”
Deatra called her office to let them know she was taking a friend to hospital a couple of blocks away. She sat with the man as he waited to be seen. He was silent. When the doctor came she gave him her card with her phone number on it and asked to be called if the man needed help getting home.
The man from the street reminded her of a little boy as he kept looking back at her as the doctor lead him away.
Once he was out of sight, Deatra started towards her office. Downtown Cape Town had grown but most things remained within walking distance since the growth had been upwards rather than out. The downtown area was bordered by the ocean, Table Mountain, and national parks, limiting its size.
Deatra thought about what had occurred as she walked the few blocks to the FNB building. Subconsciously, she searched for Khoisan people as she walked. At lunchtime, she got a call from the hospital. The man was asking for her. The doctor said that the bleeding navel condition seemed to be spreading among the people of Cape Town but showed no signs of being contagious.
She trekked back to the hospital and was directed to the waiting room where the man was seated. As soon as he saw her, he stood and approached her with his hand out.
“Hallo! I’m Khwezi”
His name signaled that he was Xhosa.
“I’m Deatra. Pleasure to meet you.” Deatra felt a little awkward so asked, “So, what did the doctor say?”
He searched her face as he said, “but I am not. Can you tell me what happened to me?”
Deatra thought about what to tell him. She decided to stick to what she had seen in regards just to him.
“I saw a Khoisan woman touch you on your back. Then you froze and grabbed your stomach.”
Deatra glanced away as she decided how to tell him the rest.
“When you just stood there, I came over to see what was wrong.” She looked at his face again. “Did the bleeding stop?”
He shook his head as he said, “No. It has slowed and the doctor says it should stop soon. I have to go slowly.”
He shook his head again. “I didn’t see any Khoisan woman.”
Deatra said, “She was behind you, but passed on your left…”
“I didn’t even see her.”
Deatra knew he hadn’t seen the woman. All she could offer was, “Strange.”
“Do you need help getting home?” She asked him.
“No. I just wanted to talk to you about what you saw.”
“Did the woman steal anything from you?”
“I seem to have everything, but I feel very different. It must be the blood loss,” Khwezi answered.
“Well,” she let the word drag a little. “I should get back to work.”
Khwezi nodded, “Sharp sharp!”
“I hope that you will be fine. You have my cell phone number.”
He gave her a half smile and nodded again saying, “Sharp.”
She quickly left and it happened just as she exited the building.
A featherlike touch brushed her elbow. A sharp pain emanated from her navel and a bright shiny part of her was gone.
“No!” she shouted as she grabbed the arm of the Khoisan man that had touched her.
Forcefully she said, “I want it back!”
A flood of happiness, contentment, and light surged into her body through the connection she had with the man. Her navel stopped hurting and her consciousness was filled with the magic of endless possibilities. She knew that simply by thinking and wishing she could make anything happen. She had a small spark before, now she had an infinite supply.
Fortunately for her, the man, like many Khoisan, was small. Though she was part Khoisan herself, she was tall which she thought was from her Zulu ancestors. She roughly pushed the Khoisan man away.
“Thank you, and you people stay away from me!” She stood over the man like an avenging warrior until he got up and without saying anything quickly walked away.
Deatra searched the street for more Khoisan people. There were a few but they were clearly just normal residents of Cape Town, not those taking that unnamed essence from people.
Deatra reflected on the strangeness of it all the rest of the afternoon. At the end of the day, there were five Khoisan men and women waiting for her as she exited the building. She knew they were waiting for her. She felt emboldened by her earlier encounter, so confronted them directly.
“I told you people to leave me alone!”
“We can’t leave you alone. You know too much.” One of the older women was the one speaking. “You have too much.”
Deatra thought they sounded ridiculous. “Spare me the drama.”
She turned and walked away from them.
“We can see that you carry our blood in your veins; that is why you can see us. That is why you could do what you did.”
Deatra got angry and turned to face them again. “What did I do? I stopped you from stealing…”
She was momentarily at a loss then added, “HOPE from everyone? And, you make their navels’ bleed?”
She started walking away again.
“It isn’t hope that we steal, it is potential.” The woman paused.
One of the men added, “Most people aren’t using it anyway.”
Deatra ignored them and continued walking. That they knew where she worked was disturbing so she decided to avoid going home and spend the night at a friend’s house.
A new group was waiting outside her office building when she arrived the next morning. This time it was only three of them.
She did not break her stride as she headed for the front door, but they came close to her as if they were going to touch her.
“Don’t touch me!” She said firmly.
They stepped back. One of the women said, “We won’t touch you. Please listen to us.”
Deatra studied her face. The woman seemed anxious.
“You have two minutes.”
“We would like you to join us in our cause.”
“What? What cause?” It was not what Deatra had expected to hear.
“Can we meet you for lunch today and we will tell you more?” The women was very earnest.
Deatra did not think it was a good idea but she wanted to know. “I will only meet with one of you.”
The woman nodded and curtseyed a bit, “That will be fine. Only one of us will come.” She was all subservience, backing away while curtseying to her.
Deatra entered the building but paused to watch the group through the glass doors. The subservience was gone. They moved among the people walking in front of the building deliberately stealing…potential…as they went. The people didn’t see them and unlike her and Khwezi, they didn’t indicate that they felt pain in their navel.
She had forgotten about Khwezi. She thought about calling him but decided that there would be too much explaining to do. He was a stranger to her. She decided to tell one of her co-workers that she was going to lunch with someone that she didn’t know very well and to call the police if she wasn’t back in an hour and a half.
Her co-worker said, “Blind Date?”
She answered, “Something like that…”
She was surprised to see a young Khoisan man waiting for her when she exited the building. He was dressed normal and even had short dreadlocks.
He stepped forward with hand extended. Deatra did not take his hand. After a moment he dropped his hand and his friendly look faded.
“The Khoisan people have worked hard to preserve their traditions and live life their own way… in the face of repeated invasions by Europeans and other Africans…by everyone.”
Deatra interrupted. “Spare me the history lesson of the Khoisan. You are supposed to tell me why you are stealing everyones’ potential?”
“It is all related to what I am trying to tell you.” His face was angry and dangerous. “This takes time. Why don’t we find a place to sit?”
Deatra pointed towards a cafe down the road. She waited until he started walking and followed behind him. She was not going to give him the opportunity to touch her and run.
She watched the eyes of the people they passed. They seemed to be able to see the young man.
He resumed talking once they sat down. “We are not big people and as such we are perpetually assumed to be simple and childlike. As you know yourself, that is not true. We have fought and won the right to live life on our own terms but the cost has been high. Everyone has relegated us to the bottom rung of the human ladder. They call us bushmen, primitive, backwards, stone-aged, and barely human. Well, now we will have our revenge.”
Deatra recognized her own prejudices that aligned with much of what he was saying. Yes, she had Khoisan ancestors but she never saw this as an advantage. She thought, this little man talking revenge was ridiculous. She considered that she still thought of the Khoisan as less, incapable of any kind of revenge.
“Revenge? By making people bleed to death through their navels?”
He clearly heard her condescension in her voice and slapped his hand on the table. “You only have part of the picture!”
“Well, then tell me the rest. You have not convinced me to join anything.”
“Our Khoisan ancestors came from the sky.” He stopped as the waitress came to take their order. Deatra had heard this legend before, there were many ethnic groups in Southern Africa that claimed to have ancestors that came from the sky.
In his anger, he slipped into his natural rhythm of speaking, “Our sky relatives came back and we work with them to…”
Deatra couldn’t believe what he had said and lost track of what he was saying. She interrupted.
“What do you mean? Your sky relatives came back?”
He was clearly annoyed at her interruption. “We always been in touch with them through our elders and in ceremony. They back to enact plan to elevate Khoisan people to global leadership role now now.”
Deatra’s brain was not working “They came back?”
“Yes!” He was getting more annoyed. “OUR SKY RELATIVES CAME BACK.” He slowly articulated each word for her.
The waitress returned with their beverages giving Deatra a moment to digest what he was saying.
Her contempt came back, “Well, where are they?”
“They with the elders… in the desert.”
“You can’t prove that they are here, can you?”
“I can’t believe they want you to be part of the plan. What are they thinking?”
He searched outside the window and whatever he saw caused his anger to dissipate. He groaned a bit and then continued speaking.
“Their are rules and laws metaphysical in nature that dictate actions of humans. Each person born with some knowledge of this and with tools necessary to survive and thrive. The potential we harvest will be used to enact new political reality of Khoisan. The potential ensures our success.”
“Can’t your alien relatives just show themselves and put you people in charge?”
Deatra still had disbelief in her voice.
“That won’t work because of the metaphysical laws. Only potential fulfilled works, otherwise we rule for perhaps a year or two and then we be overthrown.”
Their lunch arrived. Deatra simply did not believe what the man was telling her. How could the Khoisan have such power? She reflected again about her Khoisan ancestry; it was not a fact that her family advertised. They lived in the cosmopolitan Cape Town, there was no room for Khoisan realities or mythology. But the reality was that Deatra had witnessed and experienced the taking of potential. She had been given more than just her potential in return. She thought about the possibility that what the man was telling her was true. To fulfill her potential she wanted to be manager with an increase in salary that would allow her to finally purchase a car and send enough money home for her father to pay the remainder of his mortgage. Energy surged to her navel as she had such wonderful thoughts. Strangely, such wishing was different for her this time: She knew that it would really happen.
The man leaned forward as he continued to try to convince her, but Deatra wasn’t listening. This was the Khoisan he was talking about, not the Zulu who were skilled leaders and warriors with a long history of conquest. What could the Khoisan really achieve even with excess potential? Still, she was curious about the whole conquering-the-world-with-the-help-of-aliens possibility. She stared at the man’s face. He was so earnest and had a righteousness about him as he spoke. It was clear to her that he believed in his mission. The potential of alien intervention was the tipping factor for her.
Interrupting she said, “I want to meet these relatives of your…relatives of OURS…from the sky.”
The man’s mouth froze open in mid-word. He blinked and closed his mouth. He shifted his weight back in his seat and stared at her a few moments.
“You’ll have to trust enough to travel blindfolded. Would you trust that much?”
He threw down the challenge.
She was surprised that he had not consulted anyone else before essentially saying yes. She had a challenge of her own.
“You have to guarantee that no one will try to take my potential again…ever.”
“You one of us. We’ll no take your potential: you are family – our relative.”
Deatra nodded, “When do we go?”
“Right now, after we pay.” He pulled a blindfold out of his pocket.
Deatra suddenly felt that she had been manipulated from the start. She wondered how he had known that she would want to see the aliens and had prepared in advance. As he was paying the bill, she tried to shake herself out of her shock.
She thought about if he was going to make her disappear, which would solve his problem.
He stood up as his attention returned to her face. He sighed, “I not gonna kill you. You’re family. Please trust me.”
As they exited the dining area he sent a text message. Deatra was still trying to understand what was happening when a minibus pulled up next to them.
“Come let’s go.”
She thought, no changing my mind now. She admitted to herself that her added potential made her more courageous and bold. By some confused reasoning she thought she could merely wish herself safe and it would be true. She got in the minibus.
Hours later, she was lead into a structure and her blindfold removed. The man was still with her. She wasn’t fluent in the San language so could only pick up a couple of words here and there: now, ready, love, family, see.
The people in the room surrounded her, she felt like a giant standing in the middle. An old woman addressed her, “You must go through this door. We will be here.”
Deatra smiled nervously and nodded.
The circle opened, and Deatra walked to the closed door. She paused and wondered what she would find on the other side. She looked back at the people in the room, then opened the door.
She took several steps into what appeared to be an empty room. It was brightly lit and seemed to be cleaner than the other room, but that might have been the effect of the brighter lights. She thought that the situation was strange, but felt compelled to close the door to give herself a moment to figure out what was happening.
She carefully looked around the empty room again. She was confused and raised her hand to rub her head. Something moved on the ceiling. She moved back to the door as she stared up in horror. The only thing she could say was “No! No! No!”
With the door at her back, she stared at the creature that was perched on the ceiling so obviously Khoisan but at the same time so alien. The small childlike features with slightly Asian eyes, the delicate fine boned structure coupled with the body parts of a predator: sharp teeth, claws, thorny protrusions, exoskeleton, extra spider legs. The eyes were calculating, not childlike or cheerful.
The mouth that was clearly made for rending flesh opened and said, “Our relatives are the best of us, that is why we came back. We must rejoin and rebalance ourselves. We have forgotten how to be…peaceful…happy.”
Deatra could only stare.
“You are the best of us. We are here for your benefit. You, our relatives will rule the Earth and be happy and safe. We have much to share and much to learn again.”
Deatra shook her head and ran from the room as fast as she could. Her relatives were waiting for her, watching her, but she kept running. They reached out to stop her.
She shouted, “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”
She flenched away from their hands and ran outside. She ran and ran, not knowing where she was going. She was just running AWAY!
Silently she cried as she ran; she was breathing too hard to make a sound. She dashed the tears away with her hands as she ran.
Several kilometres away she stumbled and nearly fell. She slowed to a stop. She stood still and tried to process what she had seen and what the creature had said.
A few people had followed her and stood some distance away watching her.
It took her some time. To her it felt like moments but in reality it was over an hour. The Khoisan waited, they had waited for centuries for this moment, for the return of their sky relatives. They had endless patience.
Her brain finally shook free of her fear and shock over what she had seen, over what she had experienced. Noticing her relatives nearby, finally she spoke choosing her words carefully.
She started with a sob, “I will not joint your cause…but I will not stand in your way. I will keep quiet about what I know and what I have seen.” Her body shuddered.
She focused on the faces of her relatives. They looked disappointed but satisfied.
As she rode blindfolded back to Cape Town, she wondered if there had ever been a good situation where one group of people was put in charge of all other people. Had a ruling class or ruling group ever cared about people not of their group? Could the Khoisan reform their predator alien relatives? Or would they be corrupted by their need for revenge and the amazing power which was being handed to them by their alien relatives?
Her thoughts caused her to shake her head. She would have to wait and see.
