Sixteen-year-old Engela flees to Bloemfontein because the leader of the Satanic Group 13 wants to kill her. Her path crosses with Pieter, a friend of her brother’s, who turns her over to the owner of a brothel in return for money he owes him. After a desperate and impoverished childhood, the rebellious teenager becomes mixed up with Satanism, alcohol and drugs and is eventually kept as a sex slave. She only wants to escape, but how? Every night the club’s doors are shuttered. Her one chance of freedom is the young student, Jacques, who works in the club’s reception area. But then he also disappears after a mysterious accident in the Drakensberg…
When Engela wakes up the next morning she notices an empty bottle on the dressing table with a note attached: “Urinate in the bottle and leave it on the kitchen cupboard.” Her allowance of two white pills is next to the bottle.
She doesn’t understand the point of the note, but she’s too tired to worry about it. She’s too tired to cry.
She is exhausted – her soul, her body, her everything. Everything is exhausted. She stumbles to the bathroom.
On the way back she leaves the bottle on the kitchen cupboard as instructed. She gets back into bed.
She wants to cry, but she’s too tired for that too. She swallows one of the pills. She knows it will make her feel better. Then she starts to pray, for the first time in three years.
She begs for a miracle, that she will touch the front door and it will open. She asks Him nicely because she believes it will happen. After a few moments she gets up again and walks to the front door.
She yanks at the door, but it’s still locked. Locked. Furious, she jerks the door once more.
“God! You don’t exist! You don’t exist!” she yells. “I asked You nicely, very nicely, but You don’t help me!”
She rattles the door hysterically. It remains locked. “You don’t exist! Where are You when I need you? Where are You? Why don’t You open the door? Why not!” She staggers back to the bedroom, yelling. “Why don’t You open the door! Why not! Why not!” She falls down on the bed.
“Marius was right all the time. You don’t exist. It’s your fault I’m here! It’s all your fault!” As the pill enters her bloodstream and reaches her brain, through the sobs, the pain and the anger dissolve.
She is gliding on a cloud to another dimension. To a place where there is no pain or anger, where there’s no remembering. It’s fantastic, she thinks, before the illusions take her off to dreamland. She finds herself in a big park with many trees.
A notice with her picture is nailed to every tree. The notice says in big, bold letters: “LOST”. Groups of people gather around the trees to read the notice. She stands in front of them and waves her arms. “I’m here!” she shouts. “I’m here!”
But nobody sees her . . .
...
“Bloodbath in Paradise,” the thirteen teenagers sing and scream to Ozzy Osbourne. Marius du Preez takes the next album, Cheap Trick’s Dream Police, from 1979, from his record collection.
He lowers the stylus on to track four. Gonna Raise Hell. This track plays for just over nine minutes.
“And what are your plans for the holidays?” Susan had enquired of her stepdaughter two days before the start of the July holidays of 1993. They were doing the dishes. Ever since she married Andries, three months ago, Susan has tried her best to befriend the sixteen-year-old Engela, but Engela’s not an easy one. A rebel, Susan told Andries despondently.
“Not much,” Engela responded. She wipes the dishes with the cloth. “But this Saturday I’m going to watch a video at a friend’s place. Girly stuff, you know.”
Engela is an expert liar; she uses the name of a fictitious friend because she knows her stepmother doesn’t know the children from school or the people in town. What she can’t mention at all is the fact that she and the rest of the Group 13 gang will be having a garage party at Marius’s house. His parents are away again for the weekend and they will have the house all to themselves, he said when he invited them a week ago.
By ten o’clock that evening Grim Reaper’s Final Scream is next on Marius’s playlist; Queen follows with Another One Bites the Dust.
The garage is dimly lit with 13 black deco candles burning on the tool shelves against the walls.
A gas heater hisses in a corner. It’s winter outside, but in here the party is warming everyone up.
Out there life is gloomy, but in here the balm of alcohol soothes their bodies.
Tongues meet eagerly in the half light; hands in search of love slide over breasts and erections while Judas Priest sings Better By You, Better Than Me. The music stops. Everyone looks at Marius standing in front of the hi-fi. He lifts his hand to indicate they should be quiet.
He wants to say something. “Get stoned and worship Satan!” he yells.
“Get stoned and worship Satan,” they all yell back. They know what his next treat is going to be. He puts down next to the hi-fi the green Tupperware container filled with the best dagga from Lesotho. As always, when Marius’s parents go away they leave him plenty of money to compensate for their absence.
“Potent stuff, this,” Marius says. He got it earlier that day from his connection just outside of town. The party becomes more relaxed. Uriah Heep plays softly in the background. The group sit cross-legged, rolling the dagga into joints. Soon the bittersweet fumes fill the air around the thirteen teenagers and the thirteen candles.
“We are thirteen, but actually we are one,” Marius philosophises.
He stares at the opposite corner of the garage. “Nobody knows about us, nobody knows we’re here, only we do.”
Everybody nods in agreement. Yes, only they know. They are one.
Marius knocks the ashes carefully into an empty KOO tin placed on the floor in the centre of the circle, and puts the lit joint down next to it.
Then, opening the blade of his pocket knife, he makes a cut on the inside of his arm and stares in ecstasy at the blood trickling slowly from the skin. He passes the knife to the teenager sitting to the left of him so he can also cut himself. Another trickle of blood appears on the inside of an arm. The bloodstained knife is passed around the group of teenagers until it reaches Engela, who is last to drive the blade through her skin. They turn to each other and mix their blood by smearing it on to each other’s wounds.
“We are one,” Marius muses again. He gets up, goes to the hi-fi and stack of records on top of the workbench and chooses an album that was released in 1991.
The cover art shows a naked baby boy swimming under water in a blue swimming pool, his arms outstretched, towards a dollar note dangling from a fishing hook in front of him.
Marius lowers the needle on to Nirvana’s big hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit. The seated teenagers sway to and fro. Now and then a glowing cigarette end finds the KOO tin in the centre of the circle.
“Dudes, tonight I have some big news,” Marius says slowly. He waits for everyone’s empty eyes to fix on him before he continues, deliberately.
“The climax of the Satanists’ calendar is coming up in two months’ time. In October. Already small groups are getting together in preparation for the big day… as in Bloemfontein… that’s where it is… Bloemfontein… on Naval Hill.”
For a moment it appears as if he has lost his train of thought.
Marius scratches a match across the side of the box and lights another cigarette. “In Bloemfontein… next weekend… a group will get together on Naval Hill. Friday night. And… three of you guys… can also go. That’s what I have organised for you guys.”
He waits for his words to sink in.
“Geez, Marius,” a voice says in admiration from somewhere in the circle. “You’re a great pal.”
Marius lifts his hand theatrically.
“I will appoint the three. Tonight. The three that can go.”
The teenagers look at each other in excitement, unaware of the dried blood on their arms.
“I’ve organised a lift and all,” Marius says. Then he gets up to change the music on the turntable. This time it’s Duran Duran’s The Union of the Snake.
Marius moves about the group as the evening progresses. They don’t talk much because words are superfluous on this night of truth, where music, blood and dagga unite them.
It’s nearly midnight when Marius goes and stands behind Lizmarie and puts his hand on her shoulder. She turns her head.
He winks at her and nods his head.
She smiles. She’s in. Later he does the same with Brenda. And then with Engela.
She feels the excitement tingling through her body. Next Friday night… they will be on Naval Hill.
...
This is an extract from From Playground to Prostitute, Based on a true story of salvation, by Elanie Kruger with Jaco Hough-Coetzee and published by Jonathan Ball at a recommended retail price of R210.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
* Jaco Hough-Coetzee is a senior journalist at Huisgenoot and YOU.
* Elanie Kruger was born in Brits in 1977. After many years as a member of a dysfunctional family she was held captive as a sex slave for eight months. After her escape and rehabilitation, she worked in the corporate sector. She now spends her time giving talks across South Africa to warn people about human trafficking, and to help parents and their children. She has three children and lives in Johannesburg.