Malcolm Cumming is lost in the paradise of literature. He enjoys it there. Unfortunately the tug of the expedients of life sometimes interferes, but along the way he’s accidentally gotten a first-class education, and probably needs more. Now he’s travelling the world as a male model, knocking out the odd magazine feature on a freelance basis, and composing and compiling a collection of short stories for publication, two of which have featured in an anthology of southern African writers.

This is Malcolm's first story for Something Wicked.

extract from The Destination

My name is not important. None really are. You will soon come to terms with the validity of the notion that all names lead to one, and from that name alone you may reach God. Nevertheless, to avoid confusion, I shall tell you my name. It is Trevor Mitchell. In my tale, as with all things in life, the choice of what to believe is yours, and I have no doubt many would label me a liar, even with the evidence I am able to offer. It was for this reason that until now this anecdote has gone untold. It is true that in this respect I am a coward, and am disinclined to the mockery of other cowards. Some time ago, several months now, an incident occurred which I somehow had the misfortune, or fortune, to be a part of, and which, to this day, perturbs my own powers of belief.
  I live in a little known part of the world, a small suburb in Cape Town, South Africa. The suburb is named Observatory, a nod toward the astronomical observatory that the area quietly boasts. This star-gazing centre is present more strongly as the suburb’s title than as a presence of its own. Most people, even those that reside here, have not even seen the building - it rests obscurely on the far side of the river where few have any reason to venture, and the significance of the suburb’s title is blurred in the affectionate vernacularism  ‘Obz.’
  It is a quaint suburb, not quaint in the way of a charming old English village, but more in the manner of the tang of a New Orleans. It is unusual, distinct, colourful in every way. The suburb is gently illumed by the magic lamp of free-thinking, and through that oleaginous light filters the innocuous anti-authoritarianism characteristic to all the various pockets of comradeship found here. Apothecaries advertise their wares on small hand-painted signs outside their houses, Immigrants, legal and illegal, babble away in all the European tongues of West Africa and all the Bantu sounds of East Africa in their search for a better life, Rastafarians peddle their wares, students find an affordable (and suitably bohemian) haven, artists of all mediums and occupations eke out livings and careers, and in the centre of it all restaurateurs provide the heart that pulses in the nights, and ticks evenly during the day, but never hurries.
         

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