Africa Macabre: Chilling Short Stories Cosmic Love Poetry from the New Master of the Insane

By Jack Stephens

And there it was, as it was every day, a deep thumping sound seemingly coming through the floor boards of his double story white washed house in a forgotten village in North Africa. How he hated that sound, but in spite of his irritation and growing hatred for that particular noise, he suddenly smiled broadly and yawned long and lazily. Then he, rather violently, threw the single sheet off his naked, thin and hideous body, jumped out of bed and opened his bedroom window shutters; hard, so they banged against the outside walls. If the village loved noise, he thought, then he would give them noise, by the hand of Allah, he knew how to make more ferocious sounds than anyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Jun 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482807561

Jack Stephens

In a far Northern Africa city, Jack Stephens was born in the early sixties to Sicilian parents, who were immigrants from a tiny sardine fishing village on the outskirts of Italy. In his formative years, living in Africa, Jack was exposed to the Islamic culture and Arabic language, then from the tender age of five, his family moved to France, where he and his family lived for three year. This multi-cultural, multi-lingual upbringing gave Jack the advantages seen in his creative writing and thinking skills. At the age of eight, Jack’s family immigrated back to Africa, this time, venturing further south, into a port city in the Eastern Cape, were he spent the next 18 years. Despite being little equipped in the mother tongue, English, he completed both primary and secondary schooling locally, and then went on to complete his BCom, and later his Masters in the field of Economics. Currently pursuing his PHD, Jack is a shrewd businessman, mentor, leader and public speaker. He has been sourced for his intellectual property in many arenas worldwide including the field of business, education, media, stockbroking, trading and political arena. Jack is a passionate individual, driven by his goals and aspirations, but holds a deep inner awareness of self, his surroundings and the effect that he chooses to make on the lives of others. His motto is to find the “FUN in everything you do” and to pursue “self-thinking as a means to the reality you want to achieve.” His passion for writing has led him to publish a number of books over the past twenty years. His love for writing, his inner child, wild imagination and cosmic awareness, has awoken his newly found passion for life, and resulted in him exposing a more in-depth, true self through his poetry. “Through writing, I have found my means of expressing, to address and embrace the turmoil of life” Africa Macabre is a mixture of cosmic, love poetry, short stories to thrill and frighten the soul into realizing that even the most tranquil of people have inner demons. “My near-destroyed soul re-awakened and the fire of passion re-ignited 12 months ago and I have no intention of letting this cosmic warning go unnoticed. This book is my first work of fiction, but by no means the last.”

Book preview

Africa Macabre

Chilling Short Stories

Cosmic Love Poetry

From the New Master of the Insane

Jack Stephens

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Copyright © 2015 by Jack Stephens.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4828-0755-4

             eBook         978-1-4828-0756-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Toll Free 0800 990 914 (South Africa)

[phone] (outside South Africa)

www.partridgepublishing.com/africa

Contents

Ode to Kathy

Ali Fafi—You Stupid Man

A Splendid Day

No Drinks for Free

You, Me, and Us

The Transplant

Stranger

Political Games

The Time Machine

The Prospector

Jump

The Mugging

God, Death, and Santa Claus

The White Pill

Never Pat a Burning Dog

Just for Fun

Traffic

The Liars’ Club

The Past Destroyed

That’s because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear—the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness.

—H. P. Lovecraft, Pickman’s Model

Dedicated to Kathy Florence

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Ode to Kathy

Kathy, I’m strong

A complete man

When I’m with you

Like exploding stars

From cosmic chaos

My very being soars to the infinite universe’s furthest corner

And roars back smiling

Happy, complete

When I’m with you

I spent my life, my every moment, and precious heavenly light

in symphony

searching the crowds, the sky,

God’s every creation

Looking for your halo, your masterpiece to the world

I combed every corner

Looked under all foundations

till my shadow finally touched yours

and I knew

I just knew

that my touch was yours

and yours mine

like we were made from the same cloth of life and light and ash and flesh

and holy harmony

Through time immemorial, from Divinity’s own outstretched arms

I have lived and lived again

Looked for you among the many zodiacs

connected the moons, the constellations

and created an astrological shape not seen before

By man, alien, or even demigod

Written with the fabric of atoms

to call you to me

A shape of you, my Angel, written across energy

To give the ancient heavens and all that live in it

A simple message

Kathy, I love you

A message I shout out from every fiery supernova

that man, woman, and child will see across all night skies

without telescopes, with the naked eye

And stories will be told throughout the millennia,

From astrophysical crèches, where Master Souls are born to mankind

It is they, who will tell the story of my love for you

My love is, simply, now forever built

complete, orderly, harmonious, fissionable.

It is not a secret that I have searched many souls to find you

through birth and destruction

power, joy, and sadness

through Black Holes, asteroids, and cosmic debris

spoke to Achilles and Zeus and all the minions in between

and choose death at the hand of Caesar before failure

lived a monastic existence of poverty instead of loving someone else

yet many now wonder why it is .

. . . that I deserve your love, I am asked continuously

by friend, stranger, by me

Well, I tried to be everything

To everyone

Everywhere, throughout time

Till there was nothing left of me

But I didn’t give up

I changed my search

I stopped shouting

And listened

until your Angelic words came to me in visions; so bright and clear

over and over again

when I was so empty, destroyed, and devoid of everything, nothing left

you said, ‘I have heard you, seen your passion, followed your search, saw you use your flame till barely embers were left

so, listen, the universe is complex, yet simple too

stop looking

just know, just be . . .

. . . and you will never see a more gorgeous two letters ever come together, to say . . .

. . . I also love you unconditionally’

I now know, Kathy, that through all that came before, it has finally brought me to you

and you to me

Our souls have touch and energies fused

now swaying . . .

. . . and dancing among heavenly bodies as we became one

a journey just started, despite echoes from the past

And I will always dance with you

When I look into your eyes,

a myriad of rainbows, so many of them

Shatter in glorious light and unbelievable colour

I know I have much to learn

In this chaotic roar of my reignited soul’s fire

But from today, I understand

the look in your eyes, the way you smile, your gentle touch

It all says, I love you.

So my journey is complete, just started

I am now in the abode of all earthly gods, angels, and spirits

Nirvana, Zion, and Canaan, all at once, in harmony, at peace

A missive of love, a message to you, Kathy, my sweet

I will always hold you, gently, firmly, passionately

And every day tell you, ‘Kathy, I love you’

Ali Fafi—You Stupid Man

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Ali Fafi woke up and, as he did every morning, kept his eyes shut and listened. Intently, carefully, he listened.

And there it was, as it was every day, a deep thumping sound seemingly coming through the floorboards of his double-story whitewashed house in a forgotten village in North Africa. How he hated that sound, but in spite of his irritation and growing hatred for that particular noise, he suddenly smiled broadly and yawned long and lazily. Then he, rather violently, threw the single sheet off his naked, thin, and hideous body, jumped out of bed, and opened his bedroom window shutters—hard, so they banged against the outside walls. If the village loved noise, he thought, then he would give them noise. By the hand of Allah, he knew how to make more ferocious sounds than anyone.

He would show them who was the chief of this village.

Damn, it was already blindingly hot, too hot to have windows in this isolated, sand-swept village littered with mud houses.

Ali stretched his arms out, almost in the shape of the crucifix, and threw his head back—his grey-white goatee now pointing straight out, as if it were a warning sign to anyone who cared to listen. He gave a deep, long, guttural scream: ‘AAAAAAEEEEEEE.’

He stopped, listened.

The thumping was fading but still could be heard. Today, Ali just exhaled and decided that another scream wasn’t necessary. He looked onto the village communal walkway and saw Fatima, who, like many other villagers, had stopped when their chief had screamed, as he did every day.

‘Fatima,’ he yelled, ‘you will be mine one day.’ The villagers laughed. A polite and expected laugh, no soul in it whatsoever, but Ali accepted it. They respected him, he thought, maybe even feared him, and that made his face contort into what people believed was a happy sneer.

The villagers waited for Ali to no longer frame the window and muttered, ‘Ali—you stupid man!’ but they continued to smile, just in case he was still looking at them from inside the window and just out of sight. He had done that before, they all knew. Consequences of such disrespect would earn them a whipping in the centre of the village, sometimes even a stoning.

Ali stepped into the hallway and made his way down the steps slowly and carefully. He was aware of children’s toys and other—what he preferred to call—junk. He would teach these young thugs a lesson one day, he thought. Still too young, still protected by his numerous wives. Oh well, time and patience made him great, he thought, so he would wait.

The winding stairs ended into a large room, solely furnished with a long table and countless children seated, waiting for him to arrive before they could have breakfast, start the day. They were amazingly quiet. Unusually so for children under the age of ten. In the background, Ali heard the thumping starting up again.

‘Children,’ he said, ‘stamp your feet. Raise your hands to Allah.’ The children started to thump their feet, and their thumping feet got louder and louder.

‘Ahhh,’ said Ali, ‘that is just too beautiful. children, now let’s pray to the Prophet and to Allah for all our people.’ Ali loved this part of the day. The noise was joyous, uninhibited, and, Ali thought, simply did its job. He knew that he would have to think of another solution in future, but that was then. Today, he would enjoy the heat, ask Fatima to marry him again, and he would have her any way he could. That, he knew, was a certainty.

Ali held his hands out, started the prayer. He refused to get down on his knees. He didn’t bow to anyone, not even the almighty gods.

‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.’ He continued through the ‘I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship but God,’ keeping an eye slightly open to spy on the children, trying to find one that wasn’t praying. That, he thought, would give him an undisputed and undeniably good reason to thoroughly discipline the culprit. Wives would not argue on that point, he contended.

‘Hayya’alas salah.’ His voice rose still louder, now shouting the ‘Come to prayer, Come to success’ part of the prayer.

Then slowly his voice fell, completing with ‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.’

Ali looked around the table. Small faces looked back at him. He raised his chin slightly, indicating that they could now eat. The children started chatting, the noise growing, and the thumping fell into a background noise.

After a short time, just enough for the children to have completed their meal, Ali threw his head back and screamed, ‘AAAAAAEEEEEEE.’

‘Time for learning,’ he said, looking at his wives in the background. ‘I want to test these children tonight.’ A warning, more than an instruction.

‘Now,’ he told no one in particular, ‘I must work.’ And he stormed out of the house, throwing his chair back against the wall, uprooting the African carpet, and swiping the fruit off the table with his walking stick. He laughed, as he did every morning, slamming the door as he entered the increasing heat of the day. Ali walked across the thirty-metre yard, his sandals kicking up fine white dust. As he approached the middle of the yard,