“Okay, no it’s fine. Ja, tell Mackenzie she can come fetch it.” Mackenzie leaves to fetch the tire and I cancel the AA. Manly Afrikaner man stays around as he assumes that we

will need help when the tire arrives. His friend goes and sits in the bakkie, his hairstyle is getting messed up by the wind.
We huddle together for warmth and wait for Mackenzie.

An ADT car halts behind us.

“Afternoon.” An impressive man exits the vehicle. He is humongous, both in length and girth. We don’t correct him to tell him that it’s actually night.

“What seems to be the trouble?” He’s wearing the khaki ADT uniform and it stretches to bulging over his form. His police boots and military hard hat complete the outfit.
“I hit the curb and now my tire’s flat. My friend is bringing a spare and then we’re going to change it,” I say. Everyone else seems too intimidated to answer. He looks the situation and each of us over, and nods.

“I will help them sir, they are okay,” Afrikaner man speaks.

ADT nods again.

He doesn’t leave.

We wait for Mackenzie.

“I think we’ll be okay now, my friend is bringing the tire,” I tell ADT helpfully. I wasn’t scared of him and I wasn’t offended by his presence, I just thought that maybe there was someone else who needed him more at that particular moment.

“I’ll stay here until you leave safely,” he points to the ground and leans against the car. That sentence touches me. I think it’s the first positive moment I’ve had with any kind of law enforcement.

Mackenzie arrives victoriously, bringing with her the tire of hope and new beginnings, the most beautiful round object ever to behold.

ADT and Afrikaner man debate how to change the tire. Together, they go about getting the tools, removing the battered old tire and replacing it with the new one. I have to explain to them how the damage to the front and rear of my car are from two separate incidents and not from the night in question.

We huddle, reduced to spectator status, even though we could have changed the tire. We watch the two men in the busy street. As they bend over my car, one jean-pant-clad bum and one impressively-uniformed-buff bum stick out into the darkness. They are a team for no other reason than to help the girl on the side of the road.

“Flashbacks” is about as descriptive as a word can get. Judith, being fancy, calls it the ‘intrusion symptom’. Some PTSD sufferers’ flashbacks are so bad, they can’t go about their daily life, they are so repeatedly interrupted with scenes from what happened. My friend emails me a while after we were raped and tells me about her nightmares, when she is drowning in the blood that came out of her vagina. I feel bad for her but relieved that my unconscious seems to be steering clear of the subject, until one insignificant week night. I sleep on the ground floor of our flat – the others all sleep upstairs. My room has its own sliding door that lead outside to a little garden. It also has Trellidors and blinds. The blinds are a bit broken and don’t close all the way, so sometimes I fall asleep looking at the black slit. That night – a night no different from any other night – I dream about him.

I see his face and recognise it more clearly than I would my own. He’s come to finish what he started. He’s come to kill me. I know this because I was inside of him. I am part of the rapist. Just like he never left me, I never left him. But I am also me, lying in bed, unknowing, unsuspecting, sleeping. He creeps, silently, right to the slit where the blind gapes, the perfect frame for him to see my face. He never doubts where to go. Never hesitates. He doesn’t have to recognise me. He has always known me. That’s when he sees that both the glass sliding door and the security door are gone. He has his butcher’s knife in his right hand. All he has to do is reach.

I breath, smell, hear him, feel him. I startle awake and see him. The predatory whites in his eyes, his teeth, the glint of his knife, his nails as he reaches for what was left…

I gasp, really awake now. The sheets stick to me. I reach for my cellphone.

“Hello?” My mom answers instantly, almost as if she was waiting for my call.

“I dreamt… he was here!” I sob, hysterically. “Mom, he was here and he… came to… kill me!”

I sob and chatter incoherently for a while and my mom makes soothing noises.

“You’re safe. Do you hear me? He’s not there. You’re okay. You’re safe,” she repeats.

After about ten minutes of repeating this mantra, she asks if I’m tired.

“Yes,” I hiccup.

“Do you want to go sleep in Jessica or Ashley’s room?” she asks.

“I-I can’t move,” I tell her. It’s the truth. I am frozen to the spot. The mere thought of trying to walk to their rooms and all the movement and danger that would entail and then to speak to them and explain what happened, exhausts me. And I don’t feel like I can burden them with this. I hate putting stuff like this on them.

“Okay, okay. I’ll stay on the phone with you until you fall asleep. Okay?”

“Okay. That sounds good,” I say.

“Okay, good.”

We put our phones against our ears and I try to sleep. It’s 3:30 in the morning. I can hear my mom breathing. Every couple of minutes she whispers, “You are safe. I am here. I love you.”