Solaris Rising 1.5 by Ian Whates

Author:Ian Whates
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

ELLEN WAITS UNTIL she can no longer see the dust cloud trailing her daughter’s bakkie, then shuffles into the kitchen to wash up the breakfast dishes. She can hardly bear to be in here; the window overlooks the stoep where that thing—that monster—skulks in its crate.

She’s packing away the plates when she hears the toot of a horn. She bustles to the front of the cottage, sees Rina’s old Mercedes bumping along the dirt track leading to her gate.

Ellen smoothes her hair, hovers on the stoep as Rina heaves her bulk out of the driver’s seat, a milk tart balanced in one hand.

“Ellen!” Rina calls. “Shall we not sit on the back stoep where it’s cooler?”

“Let’s go inside,” Ellen says. “I will put the fan on.”

Ellen makes a jug of Oros and carries it into the lounge, where Rina is already cutting herself a healthy slice of milk tart.

“Ag, Ellen,” Rina says. “I feel so bad for you about Zizu. It’s a bad way to go, né? I was saying to Koebus that he must have eaten a poisoned rat. How else could such a thing have happened?”

Ellen doesn’t voice her suspicions, all of which concern Jannie, Rina’s son, who left the farm years ago to set up some kind of investment business in Bloemfontein. Jannie is always zooming down to the farm in his sinister black BMW, armed with brochures for luxury retirement villages. “Feet first, skattie,” Rina often says to Ellen after one of his visits. “That’s the only way I’m leaving here. But shame, my Jannie, he means well.”

Ellen doesn’t think Jannie means well. She thinks—knows—he’s a bully, his piggy eyes full of greed, desperate for his mother to die, desperate for Ellen to give up her claim to the land on which she’s entitled to live until her death, so that he can sell it off to the fracking companies to be raped for fuel. Ja, Ellen thinks bitterly. Rape is something he knows well. She has never forgotten the day that ten-year-old Zelda came home, her dress ripped, knees torn, accusing Jannie and one of his friends of dragging her into the shed. That incident had been covered up against Ellen’s wishes. It had poisoned her last few years with Manny, who’d traded their silence in exchange for an expensive boarding-school education for their only daughter.

Ellen pretends to listen while Rina rattles on about the borehole maintenance that’s needed, wonders what the old boeremeisie would say if she knew what was lurking in a box, just metres away from where they’re sitting.

Rina eventually stops talking, taps Ellen’s knee. “I must go. Jannie is coming to visit this afternoon and I want to make some rusks. I’ll come by on Wednesday as usual to take you into town.”

Ellen accompanies Rina to the gate, watches her drive away. As she walks back along the path, she stumbles over one of Zizu’s old bones lying half-buried in the dust.

She allows the tears to slide down her cheeks, relieved there is no one around to see her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.