The strobe lights coruscated, red-blue-green, red-blue-green, in time with the thumping beat from the one metre square Tannoys mounted on either side of the dance floor. Each flicker of light revealed the seething mass of bodies writhing, gyrating, stomping in time with the music in a unique and surreal pose. The air was heavy with the combined smells of deodorant, alcohol, and sweat, and the dancer's faces had that familiar glaze brought about by amphetamines and physical exhaustion.
The tables around the dance floor were occupied by people smoking, drinking, conversing. Some babbled away oblivious to the scene around them, and others sat in awkward silence, fiegning interest in their drinks, or the names carved in their tables.
Samuel sat alone at one of the tables nearest the door, sipping his drink and soaking in the atmosphere. So this is what its like, he thought to himself. So this is what Cyle has been raving about ever since he moved away to Cape Town six months ago. He wondered what was keeping Cyle, he was almost twenty minutes late.
Snippets of conversation surfed over the standing waves: "Well I heard that she..."; "No no, I definitely saw..."; "You look sooo lovely tonight babee."; "Please, just a little bit more. I promise I'll have your cash tomorrow, I just need some more stuff to last me tonight, please, I swear, hand on the Bible, you'll have your cash tomorrow, just lemme have one more bag, just one for tonight."
This last snippet caught Samuel's ear, as the voice had a pleading tone sounding just like the voice his sister used when grovelling to his parents. He reoriented his gaze until it fell upon the speaker, who was sitting at the next table with a guy wearing a leather jacket and a pair of Police sunglasses. The other two chairs at the table were occupied by heavyset men dressed in black, one of whom was chewing menacingly on a toothpick.
There was a parcel wrapped in brown paper in the middle of the table, and as the groveller nervously turned his eyes towards it, Samuel saw the heavies' stiffen, and their hands reach into their jackets. A look of desire flashed across the groveller's eyes, his hand leapt from his lap, grabbed the packet, and began to flee away from the table after his body towards the crowd on the dancefloor.
Samuel saw the bluish glint of steal emerge from each of the heavies' jackets. This image floated around unattached in his brain for a while until it was jolted into place by the loud crack of the first gunshot. This was soon followed by a stream of others, each ejected into reality by a flash, and terminated by a scream and a red gaping hole.
Samuel's body was frozen in place, and his head turned involuntarily towards the dancefloor. People were screaming in terror, and once white outfits were splattered with red. Others clutched their stomachs, their legs, their heads; some lay curled up on the floor, rigid. Still the music thumped on, the lights kept flashing, and in a weird and terrible way the gunfire almost fitted in.
As more people gushed red Samuel ran for the door, hitting people out of the way, screaming in unison with the crescendo. Once outside he ran, ran as fast as he could. He didn't want to know about the innocent people who had been slayed, didn't want to know about the grief their families were to go through. He just ran, ran away from the gunshots ringing in his ears, from the images of people lying in their own blood; of his own cowardice for not doing something, for not trying to stop the guns firing into the crowd...