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The mail system : Host or domain name not found. Name service error for name=inventedzoocity.com type=A: Host not found
Reporting-MTA: dns; smtpauth01.mweb.co.za X-Postfix-Queue-ID: D4AF5A024B
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; Kahlo999@gmail.com Arrival-Date: Sun, 27 March 2011 21:51:59 +0200 (SAST)
Final-Recipient: rfc822;
Original-Recipient: rfc822;ghost24976@limboworld.za
Action: failed
Status: 5.4.4
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; Host or domain name not found. Name service error for name= type=A: Host not found
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From: Kahlo999
Date: Sun, 27 March 2011 21:51:59 +0200
To:
Subject: RE:
This is a scam.
No one is going to give you millions of dollars for nothing. Save your money. Spend it on ice-cream. Go out to dinner. Take your loved ones away for the weekend. Pay off your credit cards. Have an adventure.
Blow it on skydiving lessons or drink or hookers or gambling.
But please, don't send it to me or anyone else involved in this ugly little fiction.
And next time, don't be so fucking naive.
Questions? Please contact Giovanni Conte gio@ machmagazine.co.za
======== From:
Date: Sun, 27 March 2011 21:51:59 +0200
To:
Subject:
I danced until my feet broke off. Until my shoes turned red with blood. I always wanted to be a girl in a storybook.
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It's too strange, too poetical to be spam. I open up the Word doc and add it to my collection.
It bothers me, like a pubic hair between your teeth. Or a ghost in the machine.
Hey, it's not like I have anything else to do with my life right now. I take my laptop downstairs and four blocks over to the Nice Times Internet Café to print them out. The guy at the shop wraps the hard copies in a brown-paper bag for me, so it's only when I get home and spread them out over the floor that Sloth freaks the fuck out.
He's been resting on my back, half dozing, but when the pages are arranged on the linoleum, he starts hissing, tugging at my arms to pull me away.
"What's your problem? Is it this?" I pick up a page, and he hunches his shoulders and bats the page out of my hand. He scrambles off my back and backs into the far corner, behind the bed, bristling like the pages are possessed. Maybe Vuyo was right and this is bad muti, a hack spell from a rival syndicate. Maybe this is the cause of everything, the dark shadows over my life. I dig in my bag to see if I still have that bottle of muti the sangoma gave me. How hard can it be?
Sloth is not convinced this is a good idea. I'm kneeling in the middle of my apartment, burning imphepho in an incense holder, a spindle of fragrant smoke rising in the air. I've crumpled up the emails in a large empty pot. "Unless you have a better suggestion?"
He opens his mouth.
"A better suggestion that doesn't involve going back to Mai Mai," I add quickly.
His jaw snaps shut. And then he sneezes twice, abruptly.
"See? It's a sign."
Resigned, Sloth holds out his lanky arm and I take a pinprick of blood with a vintage brooch from my jewellery box and wipe it off on the most recent email.
I pour a liberal dose of paraffin over the crumple of papers in the pot, add a splash of the sangoma's cleansing muti from the cough-medicine bottle, and take a swig for good luck. Then I light the email streaked with Sloth's blood and drop it into the pot. Séance flambé!
What happens instead is that a two-foot-high flame shoots up from the pot, singeing my eyebrows. I fling myself away in surprise and my foot catches the pot. Flaming paraffin splashes over the floor. Sloth screams in alarm and starts crawling for his climbing post, moving amazingly speedily. He clambers up his pole, reaches out and hooks onto one of the loops of rope hanging from the ceiling and swings towards the front door, which is probably the smart option. If I had any sense, I'd be doing the same. Instead, I grab the first thing at hand, which just happens to be my yellow leather jacket, and start beating out the flames.
The fire resists valiantly, but I finally manage to whack the life out of the flames – and my jacket. The fire dies reluctantly, almost resentfully. Greasy, evil-smelling black smoke pours out of the pot and boils off the floor. Choking and gagging on the smell, I fumble