PROLOGUE
Life. It is full of surprises. One minute, life is good and next, an unexpected curve ball is thrown at you. You have to make to with what is thrown at you. I have had to adjust and restructure my life after the tragedy that fell on me. Losing the only people that held my life together caused damage but I survived. I had to.
Now, years later, the scars remain as silent witnesses to the strength I never knew I possessed. Every morning is a conscious choice to move forward, to breathe, and to find meaning in the void they left behind. People often speak of moving on, but I have learned that you do not truly move on; you simply carry the weight until your spirit grows strong enough to bear it. This is not a story of a perfect recovery, but a chronicle of how I learned to navigate a world that felt entirely alien without their presence. It all began on a day that started like any other, before the silence became my only companion and the path ahead vanished into the unknown.
The sun filtered through the kitchen curtains, casting long, warm shadows across the breakfast table where we shared our final meal together, blissfully unaware of the impending storm. There was no omen, no sudden chill in the air to warn me that the foundation of my existence was about to crumble. I remember the mundane details with a clarity that is both a blessing and a curse: the scent of freshly brewed coffee, the sound of lighthearted laughter echoing in the hallway, and the casual promises we made for the evening. Looking back, those ordinary moments are the ones I hold onto most tightly, because they were the last moments I knew what it felt like to be truly whole. I stepped out the door that morning with a wave and a simple goodbye, never suspecting that by sunset, the world I returned to would be a fractured landscape I no longer recognized. This was the moment the clock stopped, and the long, arduous journey of rebuilding a life from the ashes began.
I moved on, with the help of the only relative I had left, I moved on. I carried on. I learned to live with the loss. My aunt became the pillar I needed. I became her child, she was there, through it all.
She didn't just offer a sanctuary for my grief; she provided the steady hand that guided me through the fog of those first few years. With her, the house wasn't just a building, but a space where I could fall apart and put myself back together again, over and over, without judgment. She understood the weight of the silence I carried and never forced me to fill it until I was ready. It was her quiet resilience that eventually seeped into my own bones, teaching me that while the past could not be changed, the future was still mine to shape. We created a new language of belonging, one built on shared meals, long walks, and the understanding that some wounds never truly close, they just become part of who you are. Because of her, I stopped looking at my life as a series of broken pieces and started seeing it as a mosaic, fragile but enduring. Now, as I stand at the beginning of this journey, I realize that the strength I found in her shadow has finally become my own light, ready to face whatever the world decides to throw at me next.
*******
No matter how hard we try to take a certain direction, life will always throw you to a different direction before you get to where you want to be. I studied, got my degree but finding a job was a different story. Every door I knocked on was shut in my face on some: you don’t have what we are looking for, you don’t have the required experience. Everyday it was the same story. I got tired and started looking for other options. I couldn’t start a business because we didn’t have enough money for me to do that.
The frustration began to settle in like a permanent fog, clouding the optimism I had fought so hard to maintain. I spent my days scouring newspapers and online forums, my fingers stained with ink and my eyes tired from the blue light of the screen. My aunt never complained, but I could see the subtle toll our financial constraints took on her, the way she would linger over the bills on the kitchen table with a furrowed brow. I felt like a burden, a graduate with a degree that was nothing more than a piece of expensive paper in a world that demanded more than I could offer. Desperation eventually pushed me toward roles I had never imagined for myself, jobs that had nothing to do with my studies but everything to do with survival. I started taking on odd jobs around the neighborhood, from painting fences to tutoring local children, anything to bring in a few coins and keep the shadows of failure at bay. It was a humbling transition, one that stripped away my remaining pride and replaced it with a raw, gritty determination to simply keep moving, even if the destination was still nowhere in sight. Each small task was a reminder that while the grand plans I had envisioned were on hold, the act of striving was, in itself, a form of progress.
It was not enough, I had to do more, until the one fateful day that changed my life. The day every financial constraint in our lives disappeared. The day my aunt and I breathed for the time in a long time. She didn’t know what I had to do to get that kind money and I had no intentions of telling her at the time.
The day that changed my life when a woman named Vicky offered me something I never thought I would ever do in my life. I went to her house for another odd job. Before leaving her house that day she sat me down, looking at me. “I have been watching you.” She said in a quiet voice, not rushed, gentle. “You have everything I am looking for.” I looked at wondering what she was on about. She pushed an envelope towards me. When I took the envelope, it felt heavy, thick. Slowly I opened it and I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. “You can make a lot more than what’s in that envelope, that’s if you accept my offer.” She said with a gentle, quiet smile. I was still in shock, my eyes had not moved from the envelop. “I have clients that would love to spend a night with you. You have everything they want: the looks, the body and the energy.” At that moment I looked up from the envelop, looked into her eyes. Before I could say anything she spoke again. “I run a high class brothel. You won’t be standing on the streets waiting for a car to drive up to you. Clients make calls, they book who they want and make a payment. You will be safe at all time. You charge what you want and I take only 10% of earnings and the rest is yours. The tips you get from clients are yours, they don’t get paid into the business account, they get paid directly to you. Every fortnight I pay you earnings less my 10%. In that envelope, is R5 000, take it, think about what I have just told you. My card is in the envelope, call me tomorrow before 17:00. Go home.” She stood up and left me there with my jaw hanging. I gathered myself and walked out of her house. My thoughts in shambles.
That envelope felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket as I walked through the familiar, streets toward home. My mind was a storm of conflicting emotions—disgust, fear, but above all, a terrifying sense of relief. When I stepped through the door, my aunt was there, her face etched with the usual weariness of another day spent stretching everything we have. I did not tell her the truth; instead, I told her I had landed a lucrative short-term consulting gig for a wealthy private client I had met while tutoring. As I handed her a portion of the money, the way her eyes lit up and her shoulders finally dropped their heavy burden was both my salvation and my damnation.
That night, I lay awake staring at my degree hanging on the wall, a silent witness to my shattered dreams. Wondering if life would be like this if my parents were still alive. The R5,000 was more than I had earned in months of back-breaking odd jobs, and it was only the beginning. I wrestled with the image of the person I thought I would become versus the reality of the person the world had forced me to be. By the time the clock began its slow crawl toward 17:00 the next day, the refusal I had prepared had withered away under the heat of our mounting debts. I realized that the world did not care about my dignity or my hard-earned education; it only cared if I could pay my way. With trembling fingers, I pulled Vickys card from the envelope and dialed the number. When she answered, my voice was steady, even if my heart was not. I told her I was in, and in that moment, I felt the last of my old life slip away, replaced by a cold, calculating resolve to survive at any cost.
I made a choice and I chose survival. From that day everything changed. I settled our outstanding debts. Life became comfortable. It went back to normal. There was a sense of piece that financial relief brought. She kept asking where all this money was coming but I couldn’t tell her the truth. Telling her the truth seemed like I would have to take a step back from this life and go back to where we were and I couldn’t allow that. Eventually she stopped asking and just lived. This was not forever. I was working towards something and when the time came I would stop and focus on my dreams.
********
This life was nothing I expected it to be. Clients were vetted, background checks, medical checks, the works. Vicky made sure that we were safe every way possible. When ever we went out to clients, she gave us mobile trackers, we had to send our live location to make sure we are safe. If a client mistreats any of us, they are a issued with a warning and if it happens again, the client would be burned, deactivated from system. Vicky didn’t play with her people.
The day I met a new client, a client that would become my regular. First it was once a week booking, then twice a week and it became three times a week. It has been two years now, three times a week. Over the two years I realized that this client was somehow more than that. They became a safe space, spontaneous as they were I never felt out of place with the client. I never felt unsafe. They reminded of something, something I thought had died a long time ago.
I though I had forgotten how it felt to be human. I thought I had forgotten how it felt to just live. Unkind as life had been to me, it never failed to remind me that I am still human.
Our sessions often transcended the transactional nature of our arrangement. Sometimes, we spent hours simply talking about the dreams I had shelved or the quiet ambitions they still harbored. In those moments, the expensive hotel rooms and the shadow of Vicky’s trackers felt miles away. This client didn't just pay for my time; they paid for the version of me that still remembered how to dream. It was a terrifying realization that, despite the financial security and the armor I had built, I was still vulnerable to the very thing I tried to lock away: connection. As I looked at my reflection before each meeting, I no longer saw just a survivor or a provider for my aunt. I saw someone who was precariously balanced between a past they couldn't reclaim and a future that felt increasingly tied to the comfort of a stranger’s gaze. I knew the end goal was still to walk away, to use the wealth I’d accumulated to finally live the life my degree promised, but the cost of leaving was becoming harder to calculate than the price of staying.
Life. It is full of surprises. One minute, life is good and next, an unexpected curve ball is thrown at you. You have to make to with what is thrown at you. I have had to adjust and restructure my life after the tragedy that fell on me. Losing the only people that held my life together caused damage but I survived. I had to.
Now, years later, the scars remain as silent witnesses to the strength I never knew I possessed. Every morning is a conscious choice to move forward, to breathe, and to find meaning in the void they left behind. People often speak of moving on, but I have learned that you do not truly move on; you simply carry the weight until your spirit grows strong enough to bear it. This is not a story of a perfect recovery, but a chronicle of how I learned to navigate a world that felt entirely alien without their presence. It all began on a day that started like any other, before the silence became my only companion and the path ahead vanished into the unknown.
The sun filtered through the kitchen curtains, casting long, warm shadows across the breakfast table where we shared our final meal together, blissfully unaware of the impending storm. There was no omen, no sudden chill in the air to warn me that the foundation of my existence was about to crumble. I remember the mundane details with a clarity that is both a blessing and a curse: the scent of freshly brewed coffee, the sound of lighthearted laughter echoing in the hallway, and the casual promises we made for the evening. Looking back, those ordinary moments are the ones I hold onto most tightly, because they were the last moments I knew what it felt like to be truly whole. I stepped out the door that morning with a wave and a simple goodbye, never suspecting that by sunset, the world I returned to would be a fractured landscape I no longer recognized. This was the moment the clock stopped, and the long, arduous journey of rebuilding a life from the ashes began.
I moved on, with the help of the only relative I had left, I moved on. I carried on. I learned to live with the loss. My aunt became the pillar I needed. I became her child, she was there, through it all.
She didn't just offer a sanctuary for my grief; she provided the steady hand that guided me through the fog of those first few years. With her, the house wasn't just a building, but a space where I could fall apart and put myself back together again, over and over, without judgment. She understood the weight of the silence I carried and never forced me to fill it until I was ready. It was her quiet resilience that eventually seeped into my own bones, teaching me that while the past could not be changed, the future was still mine to shape. We created a new language of belonging, one built on shared meals, long walks, and the understanding that some wounds never truly close, they just become part of who you are. Because of her, I stopped looking at my life as a series of broken pieces and started seeing it as a mosaic, fragile but enduring. Now, as I stand at the beginning of this journey, I realize that the strength I found in her shadow has finally become my own light, ready to face whatever the world decides to throw at me next.
*******
No matter how hard we try to take a certain direction, life will always throw you to a different direction before you get to where you want to be. I studied, got my degree but finding a job was a different story. Every door I knocked on was shut in my face on some: you don’t have what we are looking for, you don’t have the required experience. Everyday it was the same story. I got tired and started looking for other options. I couldn’t start a business because we didn’t have enough money for me to do that.
The frustration began to settle in like a permanent fog, clouding the optimism I had fought so hard to maintain. I spent my days scouring newspapers and online forums, my fingers stained with ink and my eyes tired from the blue light of the screen. My aunt never complained, but I could see the subtle toll our financial constraints took on her, the way she would linger over the bills on the kitchen table with a furrowed brow. I felt like a burden, a graduate with a degree that was nothing more than a piece of expensive paper in a world that demanded more than I could offer. Desperation eventually pushed me toward roles I had never imagined for myself, jobs that had nothing to do with my studies but everything to do with survival. I started taking on odd jobs around the neighborhood, from painting fences to tutoring local children, anything to bring in a few coins and keep the shadows of failure at bay. It was a humbling transition, one that stripped away my remaining pride and replaced it with a raw, gritty determination to simply keep moving, even if the destination was still nowhere in sight. Each small task was a reminder that while the grand plans I had envisioned were on hold, the act of striving was, in itself, a form of progress.
It was not enough, I had to do more, until the one fateful day that changed my life. The day every financial constraint in our lives disappeared. The day my aunt and I breathed for the time in a long time. She didn’t know what I had to do to get that kind money and I had no intentions of telling her at the time.
The day that changed my life when a woman named Vicky offered me something I never thought I would ever do in my life. I went to her house for another odd job. Before leaving her house that day she sat me down, looking at me. “I have been watching you.” She said in a quiet voice, not rushed, gentle. “You have everything I am looking for.” I looked at wondering what she was on about. She pushed an envelope towards me. When I took the envelope, it felt heavy, thick. Slowly I opened it and I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. “You can make a lot more than what’s in that envelope, that’s if you accept my offer.” She said with a gentle, quiet smile. I was still in shock, my eyes had not moved from the envelop. “I have clients that would love to spend a night with you. You have everything they want: the looks, the body and the energy.” At that moment I looked up from the envelop, looked into her eyes. Before I could say anything she spoke again. “I run a high class brothel. You won’t be standing on the streets waiting for a car to drive up to you. Clients make calls, they book who they want and make a payment. You will be safe at all time. You charge what you want and I take only 10% of earnings and the rest is yours. The tips you get from clients are yours, they don’t get paid into the business account, they get paid directly to you. Every fortnight I pay you earnings less my 10%. In that envelope, is R5 000, take it, think about what I have just told you. My card is in the envelope, call me tomorrow before 17:00. Go home.” She stood up and left me there with my jaw hanging. I gathered myself and walked out of her house. My thoughts in shambles.
That envelope felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket as I walked through the familiar, streets toward home. My mind was a storm of conflicting emotions—disgust, fear, but above all, a terrifying sense of relief. When I stepped through the door, my aunt was there, her face etched with the usual weariness of another day spent stretching everything we have. I did not tell her the truth; instead, I told her I had landed a lucrative short-term consulting gig for a wealthy private client I had met while tutoring. As I handed her a portion of the money, the way her eyes lit up and her shoulders finally dropped their heavy burden was both my salvation and my damnation.
That night, I lay awake staring at my degree hanging on the wall, a silent witness to my shattered dreams. Wondering if life would be like this if my parents were still alive. The R5,000 was more than I had earned in months of back-breaking odd jobs, and it was only the beginning. I wrestled with the image of the person I thought I would become versus the reality of the person the world had forced me to be. By the time the clock began its slow crawl toward 17:00 the next day, the refusal I had prepared had withered away under the heat of our mounting debts. I realized that the world did not care about my dignity or my hard-earned education; it only cared if I could pay my way. With trembling fingers, I pulled Vickys card from the envelope and dialed the number. When she answered, my voice was steady, even if my heart was not. I told her I was in, and in that moment, I felt the last of my old life slip away, replaced by a cold, calculating resolve to survive at any cost.
I made a choice and I chose survival. From that day everything changed. I settled our outstanding debts. Life became comfortable. It went back to normal. There was a sense of piece that financial relief brought. She kept asking where all this money was coming but I couldn’t tell her the truth. Telling her the truth seemed like I would have to take a step back from this life and go back to where we were and I couldn’t allow that. Eventually she stopped asking and just lived. This was not forever. I was working towards something and when the time came I would stop and focus on my dreams.
********
This life was nothing I expected it to be. Clients were vetted, background checks, medical checks, the works. Vicky made sure that we were safe every way possible. When ever we went out to clients, she gave us mobile trackers, we had to send our live location to make sure we are safe. If a client mistreats any of us, they are a issued with a warning and if it happens again, the client would be burned, deactivated from system. Vicky didn’t play with her people.
The day I met a new client, a client that would become my regular. First it was once a week booking, then twice a week and it became three times a week. It has been two years now, three times a week. Over the two years I realized that this client was somehow more than that. They became a safe space, spontaneous as they were I never felt out of place with the client. I never felt unsafe. They reminded of something, something I thought had died a long time ago.
I though I had forgotten how it felt to be human. I thought I had forgotten how it felt to just live. Unkind as life had been to me, it never failed to remind me that I am still human.
Our sessions often transcended the transactional nature of our arrangement. Sometimes, we spent hours simply talking about the dreams I had shelved or the quiet ambitions they still harbored. In those moments, the expensive hotel rooms and the shadow of Vicky’s trackers felt miles away. This client didn't just pay for my time; they paid for the version of me that still remembered how to dream. It was a terrifying realization that, despite the financial security and the armor I had built, I was still vulnerable to the very thing I tried to lock away: connection. As I looked at my reflection before each meeting, I no longer saw just a survivor or a provider for my aunt. I saw someone who was precariously balanced between a past they couldn't reclaim and a future that felt increasingly tied to the comfort of a stranger’s gaze. I knew the end goal was still to walk away, to use the wealth I’d accumulated to finally live the life my degree promised, but the cost of leaving was becoming harder to calculate than the price of staying.
LanguageEnglish
StatusOngoing
UpdatedMay 4, 2026
Chapters5
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