EA Friday Feature Anthology - September 2015, Page 3

  He had to stop now and press a hand to his roiling stomach. He felt dirty just reading this, but he knew he’d have to continue.

  “Everyone says that any type of foreign meat tastes like chicken. I thought human meat tasted more like beef. Whenever I started to feel queasy, I told myself I was only doing this to survive. Well, miraculously, I got through the winter by eating all the others and using their clothes to keep warm. I could hardly recognize myself in the sunlight. I had clumps of dirt stuck to my body, I was really smelly, and my teeth were falling out. I went to a nearby stream and tried to repair the damage as much as possible. When I found wild fruits and ate them, I vomited everything in my belly. I didn’t know it then, but my body had adapted itself to digesting human flesh only.

  That is how it started. I would venture into the woods and look for a lone hiker every two weeks or so. With the right lure, they would come back to the cottage and it was easier to overpower them there. One of the side benefits of my new diet was superhuman strength.”

  A sick feeling invaded his insides. In another time, he would have been that lone hiker lured here by the promise of shelter.

  “After some time, I became lonely. As you can guess, my kind of lifestyle didn’t allow for friends. Any person I met was just food for me. I thought it was about time I got a pet, someone I could mold into my liking who would entertain me and keep me company.

  The first time I saw him, I knew he was the one. He was carrying a backpack and a video camera hung around his neck. I could see a sleeping bag poking out from the top of his bag. He came into the woods with a group but soon, the others left him when it got dark. There was a rumor going round that Mystic Woods was haunted, that anyone who stayed there after dark was never seen again. Of course, that didn’t stop die-hard ghost chasers from coming to seek out trouble. I found them instead.”

  “As for my mystery man, I captured him and took him home. I tied him up and treated him as I would a pet dog. He ate what I ate and he slept where I slept. At first, he was very resistant to my attention but he realized very quickly that he had no choice. He became an animal, my pet. I thought I could control him, but one day when I came back from hunting, I found he had broken free of the bonds. I tried to search for him but it was all in vain. He came to me in the dead of night and broke my legs.”

  “I decided to write this in my last hour so that someone may know my story. I know he’ll be back to finish me off, and when he is done pieces of me will be scattered all over. One more ghost to add to the pile.

  Dear reader, please go. NOW. He’ll be back and—

  The note ended in mid sentence. He didn’t want to think why that was.

  He stood up quickly and went back to the other room. When he heard the growl, he looked at the door and saw two figures. The sound had come from the one who was crouched down like a dog. As he, it, started stalking him, he knew he was finished.

  They say that the last few seconds of living you see your life flash before your eyes. For him, it was knowing he would never go home. Wasn’t it sad that no one would miss him much, or even think of looking for him until too long a time had passed?

  ***

  It had been a very good day, Zoe thought.

  She had fresh meat now and all was right in her world. It would feed her and her pet very nicely for about two weeks, and then they’d have to find someone else. Not to worry, though. Now that the woods were ‘haunted’ there was no shortage of people coming around. It had been a stroke of genius on her part to create that rumor and make sure it circulated. As long as she made sure people kept disappearing, the story would stay alive and others would be lining up to replace them.

  Thank God for human predictability.

  ***

  A Mother’s Love

  She had the perfect husband. She had the perfect child. Why could she not be satisfied with both?

  The suitcase stood just inside the main door of the house. It had a push and pull mechanism. It was pink in colour with bright yellow flowers embossed on it, a present for herself on her twenty-fifth birthday. Though it didn’t look it, it was quite roomy inside and her rather substantial wardrobe had fit in very well. As for her, she wore a short violet dress, the one that skimmed her figure just so and made her look and feel like a million bucks. After all, just because she was going on a long trip didn’t mean she had to look bedraggled. If that made her vain, then so be it.

  She walked down the hall to look in on Mavis, her baby. Mavis lay there in her crib, one small hand curled up under her chin, dead to the world in her sleep, as if all was right in her world. To her, it probably was. I mean what did she know? She was only a baby, happy just to be fed and changed.

  Oh my baby, she thought, why is it that after all this time, I still feel nothing when I look at you?

  Growing up she’d always wanted to be a mother. She had many dolls that she practised her nurturing skills on. Many were the times she created a tea party and made mud cakes to ‘eat’. She watched her mother with her little sister and tried to emulate. To her, children were a delight and she couldn’t wait to have her own. He or she would be loved above all others.

  She met him, the man of her dreams, through a mutual friend and immediately knew her life would never be the same. They had what is known as a whirlwind romance, and before she knew it, he was her husband. She had a wonderful time playing house for real. He gave her carte blanche over the household. Maybe she didn’t see him as much as she wanted, that it was extremely rare to find them in the same room at the same time, but he had to work, didn’t he? How else would she get everything she desired?

  Then she got pregnant, and it was the happiest day of her life. Who knew such joy was possible, that you could feel as though your smile could light up an entire solar system on its own?

  It was a relatively easy time for her. It seemed like in the blink of an eye, labour pains beset her and it was a very fast ride to the hospital. After two hours, she held the baby in her arms and felt…

  … Nothing.

  She tried.

  Oh, how she tried!

  There is no one in this world who is without sin. What kind of mother did not love her own child?

  Surely, that was a sin.

  She had to leave. She just couldn’t take it anymore, all the pretense. The child would get another mother, someone who would feel. She lifted her right hand, as if to touch the child’s cheek, but she left it dangling in midair. Only a mother had that right. She, on the other hand, was just a woman who had given birth.

  The door slid shut with a muted click as she closed that door for the last time.

  ***

  Walking Straight

  What am I doing here?

  Once more, a stranger bumps into me, with enough drunken force behind it this time to almost send me sprawling to the ground.

  Where was she?

  She’s supposed to be back by now. Going to the toilet, my foot! Who took an hour powdering her nose, anyway? You’d think the loos were in another county instead of just twenty feet away. She had probably gone outside to smoke, a revolting little habit she’d recently picked up.

  I want to go home. I feel hot and dirty, and not in a good way. I can hardly see past my hand, it is so dark in here. The crush of bodies in this place is stifling, to say the least. Who knew so many people liked this band so much? I can feel my claustrophobic urges acting up and they want out NOW.

  The stench of beer, cigarette smoke and sweat— do these people never bathe?—is revolting. As I feel the bile start to rise up in my throat, I strain once more and try to locate her, my sister.

  Maybe you can’t see her because someone slit her throat and she’s even now bleeding out on the sidewalk, my overactive imagination taunts me. That can’t really happen in real life, can it?

  I pick up my Smirnoff ice and take a healthy swig. Clearly, I’m not drunk enough if I’m still notici
ng all these details.

  How did I end up here?

  There was a time I thought coming to this concert was a great idea. I mean, who didn’t like Karma, the band? Certainly not me. Sure, some said their music was a little risqué and a lot offensive, but that was just part of the appeal. They had carved out a niche for themselves.

  When I first heard they were going to perform at my local club, I think I screamed for ten minutes straight. It was a lucky thing I was alone in the house, or I would have caused ear damage. It wasn’t a question of whether I would go, it was a question of what I was going to wear.

  I was a little taken aback when my sister insisted on accompanying me to the concert. Our tastes in music were radically different and I did not see the point of her coming with me. She gave me some story about how she wanted to broaden her horizons and blah blah blah….

  Personally, I thought she had no plans for the night and she was feeling out of sorts. The night of the concert, I could barely contain my excitement. I felt like the energizer bunny on speed. I was ready and eager to go hours before the event.

  I got there to find that many others had decided to get there early as well. There was quite a substantial number of people. Who knew Karma had so many fans?

  I had a plan for the night. Get in, enjoy the concert, and get out before I started to feel closed in and other people got drunk and stupid. In about five hours, tops, I would be back at home, warm and dry in my own bed.

  What can I say about the concert?

  Fun, amazing, stupendous, a once-in-a-lifetime experience…. Words have not been invented yet that can fully describe it.

  I ran into my first hiccup of the evening on my way out of the door. We saw some of my sister’s friends seated at a table near the door. When I would have walked right on by, already seeing my bed in my mind’s eye, she stopped to say hi and so did I by default. A simple ‘How do you do?’ somehow translated into us sitting down and getting a drink in front of us.

  So that is how I find myself here, cold and very irritated, moving steadily towards anger. When my sister gets here, if she’s not lying dead on a pavement somewhere, I’ll have to kill her. It’s just the principle of the thing.

  I look at her friends across the table, talking at the top of their voices about some inane thing or other. It is clear that they have long gone past merely tipsy to full on drunk. At first, they tried to include me in their discussion, but they soon gave up when I gave them one death stare too many. I know it’s not their fault that I’d rather be anywhere else than be here, but do they have to be so loud and grating on the nerves?

  I hear a laugh somewhere to my left. It sounds familiar, so I look and see my sister with a strange man. The stranger has his arms around her waist, while hers are holding onto his arms. What they are doing can be loosely described as dancing, though they are mostly whispering in each other’s ear and laughing. It is clear to me that my sister has forgotten about me and everything and everyone else. I may be a soft touch, but I don’t appreciate being made a fool of. With righteous indignation, I pick up my stuff and prepare to leave. I’m tired, cold and sleepy, so I’m going home. She can take care of herself.

  Whoa!

  Did I just get up too fast, or is the floor tilting because I’m drunk? There’s a pleasant fuzzy feeling at the edges of my mind and everyone I see seems to be enveloped in a haze.

  Oh no, I’m seeing double, double!

  I look at the veins in my hand, the way they stand out starkly against my glassy skin, a surefire way for me to know I’m super drunk.

  With the slow shuffling walk of the really old or sick, I make my way outside. The 3am breeze helps a little in removing the cotton wool from the space inside my head. Home is just a five-minute walk, along a relatively straight road. I can do this, I think in an attempt to bolster myself. I start walking slowly towards home, in that exaggerated straight-line walk of drunkards. I am very careful to watch where I step lest I fall. Honestly, how embarrassing would that be?

  Wait. What’s that bright light? Have I reached the end of my tunnel already? I squint and barely make out a car moving in my direction in the distance. The urge to laugh maniacally at my weird thoughts is almost overwhelming, I quell it just in time. A mad woman I am not.

  I step out of the road, all the way out. Even though I think that the car is far, accidents happen. I will not tempt fate.

  I walk for about ten minutes before it hits me that I’ve walked much farther than is warranted. I immediately turn around and start going back, a bit more vigilant this time. It is so dark tonight, I think. The streetlights must be busted again. Or were they stolen again? It is difficult for me to keep a straight thought in my head.

  I catch the watchman at the gate to our estate closing the gate after someone else. I slip inside with a minimum of fuss, and since he’s the chatty sort, he strikes up a conversation.

  Him: Habari, madam. Umechelewa sana leo. (Hello, madam. You’re late today)

  Me: (knowing what he expects to hear) Mzuri sana. Ni kazi imekuwa mingi leo. I just want to go to sleep. (Very good. There was a lot of work today.)

  Him: Okay, madam. Uwe na usiku njema. (Have a good night.)

  Me: Sawa sawa. Pia wewe. (Ok, ok, you too.)

  I move away, trying not to lurch or stagger, with only one thing on my mind- a queen-size bed with a brass headboard, a floaty mattress topped with a grey and red swirls duvet, and a mountain of pillows.

  ***

  Stories

  By

  Vincent de Paul

  ****

  Cursed Blessing

  When I applied for a job in Kenya’s first nuclear plant, I did not know that there was no plantation there. I did not know how quickly it would move me from Kibera to Huruma, drain the blood off me; how I would go back home desiccated, a husk of what I used to be.

  Before this, we were living in an iron sheet structure I had grown up knowing only chicken resided in them. My wife was the famous Mama Mboga who supplied the whole of Kibera with veggies grown from sewage farms. We survived fires that were known to ravage such estates of penury thrice. We blamed the government for our woes, waylaid and attacked government officials who wanted to make us their charity projects. We survived the government-sanctioned eviction by the National Youth Service when it was discovered that we were renting out the bed-sitters the government had built for us preferring our former Squalid Quarters (SQs) where toilets instead of birds flew.

  Ten long years have passed and now I have few days to live. There is a motorbike outside my house that I should be looking for scrap metal dealers to buy. The Municipal tow trucks delivered the junk to my doorstep after my cousin whom I had elevated to working class succumbed to injuries after a street-racing stunt went wrong along Jogoo Road.

  On my lap is my latest addition to the world, a bundle of disfigured joy my wife delivered two years ago. The girl has never spoken a word and though doctors tell my wife that our daughter might be late in her development, as though she is an infrastructure, I know that she will never speak.

  Twenty years after nuclear energy was discovered in Kenya in 2011, the first plant was built. It opened job opportunities even for the youth whom the President of the Republic of Kenya (PORK) had been promising jobs since independence. It was a break in the economy and I applied for the Chief Security Officer position in the plant in charge of opening the main gate to the compound and keeping idlers from Mathare and Kibera away. The night of the day I was hired, my wife and I made what we called love till the large cock we were preserving for Christmas crowed telling me that it was time to go and report for work.

  With my new social class, I moved to Huruma so the idlers whom I used to entertain at the Kibera’s jobless corner for days on end wouldn’t find a money-minting machine in me.

  If they thought by our past association they would claim connections to the Chief Security Officer of the plant and canv
ass through me to get a job in the nuclear plant as engineers then they were mistaken.

  But a year later, one of the reactors exploded.

  The radiation spewed was ten times Hiroshma’s according to the Daily Nation newspaper pieces Maina of Kwa–Njugu’s Butchery wrapped a meat for me with. The tragedy robbed the country of its beloved, men and women. Others gave up their lives, their future, to save the country – firemen, Red Cross workers, volunteers, disaster managers, the gallant Kenya Defence Forces personnel who had survived al-Shabaab’s IEDs and ambushes in Somalia for two decades, and those who went to build the first shield to entomb the reactor. Over a million people died from the initial radiation. Another seven million were exposed to date. The result was a trail of cancers, genetic abnormalities and birth defects of which my little Ciku was a living testimony.

  Up until when I was given six months to live three months ago, I did not know what I had done by applying for that job, even for generations, not until I saved the last meat wrapper from incineration by my wife who wanted to light the jiko with it. Whatever my body gulped in gallons for ten years in that plant will live with me for generations to come. Up to my tenth, or even a hundredth generation, genealogy was forever altered – inoperable tumors, mental retardation, genetic configurations and other effects of the radiation that my body absorbed during my stint at the plant as the Chief Security Officer and passed it to my wife while consummating our love instead of rubbering it off.

  ***

  The Human Shrine

  I did not remember getting to the woods no matter how I racked my brain. What it managed to do was pump adrenalin into my body. I darted my eyes in all directions looking for a landmark to tell me where I was, or show me the way home. I did not even know whether it was Karura or Lang’ata forest in Nairobi. I figured that being in the woods was a nightmare I was waking up to, but I was not a member of the Night Runners Association of Kenya. Bodies were everywhere. Human bodies tied to trees, nailed to X crosses, stakes driven through their hearts, sprawled spread-eagle on the forest floor at odd angles. People painfully resting in peace.