a short ongoing novel by Vyg Fynbos: Killing the gifted

The little girl lay on her back admiring the blueness of the sky, the whiteness of the clouds and the solidness of Table Mountain in the background. She closed first her right eye, then the left, jumping between the two visions with great joy at having discovered this oddness in the way one might see the world. Her acute senses alert now, enabling her to hear the slightest buzz of insects in the gardens, the chirping birds, and the swish of the wind through the plants and trees.

She became aware of her horribly neurotic mother pegging socks to the washingline, and stared at her through the corner of her eye, mixed feelings of awe, fear and a longing for affection washed over her and she slumped, letting go of the acute senses she has been enjoying just seconds ago.

She knew it was never a good thing to be in sight of her mother, if she was spotted, she was sure to be shouted at and given some awful task to do. Yet, she longed to be noticed, to be held and to be told that she too was a good and clever girl, but it never happened and so her longing burned through her like a fever, causing havoc in her inner universe.

So instead she paced her breathing, almost holding it in, and listened to the drums in her head, digging her index finger between grassblades into the moist soil and wriggling it there, she then dropped her head with a sigh, feeling faint and ill, closing her eyes, she lay there and waited for the feeling of illness to pass.

She knew there was something wrong, but she had no words to describe the strangeness of how things would sometimes be closer or further or bigger or smaller, or how she could hear the sounds of things, others could not, nor the way she could smell things that others barely noticed. Her mother, father and sisters often laughed at her, calling her names like malkop (afrikaans word for mad in the head), telling her, that her imagination is too vivid and out of control. Sometimes when she was ill and sailed on her tummy on the cool cementfloor or became too listless, her mother would show a slight concern, but nothing was ever investigated, nor a docter called, only the usual offer of panado syrup and go lie on your bed.

She disliked going to school,she felt ill often in those primary days of her life, strolling the schoolgrounds at playtime, finding herself lonely and without friends. It was in those early days that she realised that she was somehow different from others and that nobody really understood her, and that she could not speak her true mind and had to be careful to think aloud as it often drew strange looks and rolling eyes from her family.

She learned quickly to laugh and smile her way around, suppressing the feelings of illness, the strange visions, thoughts and ideas she percolated, and so gently retreating to her safe place, her mind.

In her mind, the world was a different place, a place where she could be healthy and full of energy, a place where she was loved and cuddled, and often told how clever she was, how nice it was to be around her and a place where she had many friends, how the wolf that slept under her bed and scared her for many years came to find a place there, she didn't know, she must have put it there herself somehow, maybe the wolf was a warning to her future self.

She found it difficult to shut her eyes and go to sleep at night, wonderous thoughts crammed her head and clashed violently with her fear of the wolf under her bed. No matter what anybody said, she knew the wolf was there and that it would bite her if she got up. Many nights were spent in paraletic fear, not only the wolf scared her, but also the big black men with their long and sharp panga knives. Her fear took on every form of nightmare, every possible way of dying by panga would play over and over in her mind, in full colour 3d with acute sound of her and her families bloodchilling screaming and pleading.

She loved books, and by age of eight was reading every book that she could lay her hands on, Louis L"Amour, Wilbur Smith, Leon Uris and all the Readers Digest her mom and dad read, were becoming boring and so she discoverd the library.

a short ongoing novel by Vyg Fynbos -April 2004