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MindF**k

Powerful and disturbing

Set in South Africa, MindF**k is a powerful, disturbing, and at times frightening story. Chris Burns, and his friends – Kerbs and Sky Eyes – take to the road, heading for the MindFuck rock festival. Along the way they pick up the gorgeous Partygirl. Burns and Partygirl connect immediately. But on the first night, while the rock music blasts from the stage, something unexpected happens – his world gets turned on its head as one of the boys emerges from the tent with blood on his hands. And nothing will ever be the same again …

MindF**k is a real page-turner. The gripping, character-focused, first-person narrative delves right to the heart of a life on-the-edge and virtually out of control. Gritty, hard-hitting, and often shocking, it is packed with drama, emotion, suspense and intrigue from one page to the next. And there is a serious sting in the tail.

Did you know?

MindF**k is also available in French as MindF**k, and Afrikaans as BreinBliksem.

Extract

Warning

This book won’t make you feel better about yourself, it won’t explain the meaning of life, and it certainly won’t help you ‘find’ yourself. If Mommy and Daddy don’t like it when you read books with explicit language do one of the following right now:

  • Chuck the damn book away.
  • Kindly request the bookshop where you bought the book to exchange it for one of those transform-your-life-into-something-precious-and-beautiful-in-ten-easy-steps-books.
  • If you nicked the book from a bookshop, return it in the same fashion and instead nick one of those transform-your-life-into-something-precious-and-beautiful-in-ten-easy-steps-books.
  • You can tear out the pages and use them to smoke a little something.
  • You can secretly read the book in the loo where Mommy and Daddy will (hopefully) not disturb you.

If you still have the book in your hands, you probably want to continue reading it. Then, my bru, you’re in for a hell of a ride, but be warned: this book is going to mess with your mind and it may just leave you even more fucked-up than you already are.

press play to begin . . .


Track 1: The things we won’t do for money

It was Friday night. I sent an SMS to Kerbs:

2night, 12 bells. bring ur

tools. i’l open the hate.

‘Open the hate, what hate?’ grunted Kerbs while slipping through the gate. The rain poured down and shined on his jacket.

‘Hate?’

‘The SMS, dude’

‘The gate, Kerbs!’

‘You really should learn how to fucking spell, Burns.’

‘Yeah, the day you find a job.’

It had been a year now since Kerbs finished school, and he was still unemployed. I always reckoned that anyone who even considered giving him a job would be totally off their rocker.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Kerbs.

Back to business: Everything was organised. I nicked three of my mom’s sleeping pills earlier that night. One for the mutt. (He’d chowed down hard on that Vienna and by now he was in doggy dreamland.) One for the old man. (He knocked back the whiskey and should be hanging around alcoholic heaven roundabout now.) Last but not least, one for my mom – in her coffee. I think she had already popped one by herself as well, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. (She was probably so wired that we would only see her later the following afternoon.) Kelly missed the drug party. (She was with her boyfriend again.)

‘Come on, I’m getting soaked,’ I said to Kerbs.

He walked up to my mom’s brand new BMW in the driveway. ‘Is the alarm off?’

I pressed the button on the remote. The car’s lights flashed and the doors jumped open, but we couldn’t take the easy road. It would look too suspicious.

It was the perfect night to put our plan into action: Mom forgot to park the car in the garage. She’d intended going to the gym but it had probably slipped her mind. The rain also helped; the neighbours would be sound asleep. And nobody would show their faces to investigate strange noises.

Kerbs stood ready with a brick in his hand. His gaze met mine. I nodded. With great force he hurled the brick through the car’s passenger window. The glass shattered, shooting away like stars and falling on the wet paving. Only then did he open the door.

‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ I asked.

‘Sort of.’

He got into the car and wedged a screwdriver between the Kenwood front loader CD player and the dashboard. It wasn’t easy, but he didn’t take any shit. I could hear the dashboard cracking. With the tip of the screwdriver lodged behind the CD player, he pressed it forward. Hard! The mounting snapped. One forceful jerk and the player popped from the dashboard like a new born baby from his mom’s tummy. Hurriedly Kerbs cut the wires.

‘Don’t just stand there watching me, you should check to make sure nobody’s coming,’ he said.

But I couldn’t help it; one ought to learn how to do this kind of thing. You never know when you might need the knowledge and skills. (Outcomes based education turning around to bite the community in the ass.)

Kerbs started on the speakers. After a while he said, ‘No, shit, I’m not going to hassle with this, it’ll take a lifetime.’

‘Okay.’ I shrugged. ‘O yeah, check out the cubby-hole. The sunglasses . . .’

Kerbs removed my mom’s Police sunglasses and stuffed them in his pocket.

‘I also planted her cell phone in there.My mom sometimes forgets it in the car. She’ll never know it was me.’

It was a Nokia. Small technological wonder: GPS system, WAP enabled (unlike its user) and it could take photos, record sound, you name it. She uses it to phone people.

‘Okay, do you have everything?’

‘Yes.’ Kerbs stuffed the loot into a black gym bag.

‘Alright then, you have to go now.’

‘See you later, bru.’ Kerbs gave me a pat on the back. ‘Open the gate.’

Again, he slipped through the gate. The rain came down even harder now. I watched the raindrops run down the BMW’s leather seats. So much for the new car smell.

Kerbs’ car pulled away in the street. It backfired once, sounding like a gunshot.

I entered the house. Everything was dark, but I knew the way to my room. Hey, I must have done it a million times, after long, drunk nights on the street.

The sudden voice from the living room startled me.

‘Chris.’

‘Dad?’ I asked when I saw his silhouette moving against the curtains with the patio light on in the background.

My heart started racing.

‘Why didn’t you tell us you were going out?’

Two things he said totally confused me.

Numba one: who were the ‘us’ he was referring to? Was it him and my mother? They haven’t been much of an ‘us’ for a long time now.

Numba two: did he really think I went out? Did or didn’t he know?

What could he have heard? What could he have seen?

Silently I rewound the night’s events in my mind.

Noises: the click of the opening gate; our voices in the driveway; the brick sending the car’s window to hell; the cracking of the dashboard; the click of the gate opening up a second time; Kerbs’ car backfiring.

See: fuck all from the house – there were way too many plants. Except if he came out of the house. Kerbs was right, I shouldn’t have checked him out, I should have kept an eye out for nosy onlookers.

Fast forward to where we were last.

I realised that it was one of those soapie moments where the silence lasts a lifetime and one of the actors simply tilts his head to the side until it becomes time for an ad break.

Where was my ad break?

Okay, time to decide.

He didn’t know – ride the wave.

‘I was only out for a while. I didn’t think you would mind.’

Fanie Viljoen
Skrywer, dagdromer, koffiedrinker.
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