Free The Raft: A Novel by Fred Strydom Page A

that had bound then broken them forever. But the man did not know they were cars at all. He could not recall their shapes nor did he know the purpose they served. They were strange physical abstractions, signifying nothing. He knew nothing, understood nothing. Nothing of himself or the world.
    He turned, saw a large woman sitting in the car beside him, in the front seat, staring into space. She turned, looked at him, no expression on her face.
    Their gaze shared nothing but mutual bewilderment.
    The man had to get out. He had to breathe.
    He looked at the side of his car. No handle, no button. He pushed hard—it wouldn’t open. He looked around. A rectangular glass screen, the blue outline of a hand. He lifted his hand, looked at it. The hand on the screen … The same shape as his hand. He pressed his palm down, onto the glowing contour. The side of the car opened, startling him. He stepped out. He stood and the blood rushed to his head. He swooned. Steadied himself. Breathed deeply, then looked around.
    A line of cars stretched out behind him. Each dazed occupant looked back at him. The man scanned the street. People, ambling slowly, dragging their feet. Drifting in a quiet stupor.
    The man walked forward, stumbling into the sides of cars. He looked up to the sky. Wispy clouds drifted overhead. The sun shone strong, exposing an absurd, meaningless world.
    The man wandered to the side of the road. A few people huddled silently in the shade. The small group proved a strange mix of people—an old woman, a young dark-skinned boy, a man in a grey suit and yellow tie, a portly woman with large breasts sagging under her baggy t-shirt.
    The man squinted at her chest. There were colourful words on her shirt, but he could not read them. Squiggles and shapes. Meaningless … like everything else surrounding him.
    Still, the clouds drifted and the sun shone as usual. The buildings were still standing, food was still cooking in the pans on stovetops in restaurants, the televisions in the shop windows were still flickering. Not a leaf of a tree had moved out of place.
    He walked along the street. The details of the new world around him filled his blank mind: flowerpots on the windowsills of white shops, chalk scrawled on a black signboard, a steel gate swinging on its hinges outside the boutique. He recognised none of these objects.
    He caught his reflection in the window of an electronics store. A man with a hard jaw, a wide sharp nose, sad and sloped eyes—the face of a stranger. He pushed a finger into the fleshy centre of his cheek. His mirrored likeness did so too. He was, indeed, looking at himself. His eyes refocused and a television image swam forward on the visual-glass—the studio background for a weather channel. No weather-person was standing before the image to offer predictions for the week’s forecast. All he could see was an indecipherable map and a smattering of mystic numbers.
    He approached the open doorway of a grocery store, stopping to peer inside. There were people in the store. A few people sat on the floors of the aisles, opening packets from the shelves, eating the contents. Tins rolled across the tiled floors. A lone baby cried in a shopping trolley.
    The man sauntered further down the street. A fire hydrant spurted water into a gutter. Thirsty. The man realised he was thirsty. He got down on his knees and drank from the gutter, cupping the water in his hands. The blue tie around his neck dropped forward. He grabbed it and studied it quizzically. He pulled at it, but the peculiar accessory only tightened on his neck. He slipped his fingers into the loop around his neck and tugged outwards until it loosened. Finally, he whipped it up and over his head and threw it on the ground.
    He walked on.
    He passed three more car wrecks: a small silver one mounted across a lamppost, a white one with its side stripped by a brick wall, a long black one that had shattered the front window of a food mart. Two of the