Janice firmly fixed her eyes out of the matatu’s smudgy window. A child's incessant cries rend the matatu's musty airspace. After her vain attempts to get the man seated next to her to get his leaning head off her shoulder, she sat apathetically, frowning with concentration into the vast darkness. She forgot the annoying man, the howling baby and the stifling air. She forgot the awful music resonating loudly from the matatu’s tatty speakers. More than once she suppressed the urge to ask the conductor to turn down the volume. Then a song came on. Her frown eased up a bit.
The rickety matatu came to a halt. A woman, with her two
kids towing behind, jumped off the front seat. A white man, about fifty or so,
standing near the bus stop sign held tightly to his bag and moved a step back
to let the woman pass before she disappeared into an alley. The man peered over
his glasses, tilted forward as if to get into the matatu, then, with a final
change of mind, leaned back and latched even more tightly to his grey bag. The
conductor, looking over his shoulder, moved towards him then stretched his
black, calloused hand while flashing a small, twisted smile. He flung a wad of
green spittle an inch away from the white man’s left shoe then bellowed;
“Amalemba? You is going Amalemba? Two thousand onily! Chap
chap!”
The white man, visibly scared, simply shook his head and
clasped his bag. A black Mercedes with diplomatic license plates suddenly
pulled over. The white man quickly leapt into its open front door then it sped
off. The conductor hopped onto the already leaving bus, loudly ruing his luck. Janice chuckled.
*
Watery sewer streams outside the gate to her residential
building had receded giving way to thick streams of slimy sludge. Janice
skillfully jumped over the first stream directly under the building’s dim
security light bulb. She landed into another one next to the first. Cursing
loudly, she squelched through the main gate right up to her door. After throwing
the squidgy shoes off her feet, she waltzed straight into the washroom. A wheezy
cough greeted her entrance. She wiped her feet on an old rag, then made her way
through a slightly opened door into a room from where the cough originated. She
felt the walls for the switch and, on finding it, flipped it engulfing the room
in a dazzling white light. A limp, partially covered body, lay on an old
squeaky bed.
"Ma, I'm back"
An arm twitched on the body. Janice reached for and clasped
it gently. Her mother lifted her head then smiled strenuously; weakly pointing
to an old plastic can by the bed. She cleared her throat then swished her
generous collection in her mouth before spewing it into the held out can.
"Did...did you have a good day?"
"Yes ma," Janet answered placing the can down. “I’ll
make you some porridge before you take your medicine..."
Her mother nodded slowly, then with a loud sigh closed her
eyes. As Janet carried a jiko past the now darkened room, she heard soft
snoring sounds. The lung cancer had roughed up her mother but with the last
chemotherapy session scheduled for the beginning of the coming week, Janice was
hopeful that things would become better with the coming days.
She ripped apart old newspapers and stuffed them into the
jiko's inlet, then glanced at the fresh pages' contents before
ripping them up as well. An unsullied page with an astrology strip caught her eye. She
wasn't one to believe in such "stupidity", but for the first time she
looked up what her horoscope read:
VIRGO: You will meet someone today who will have no effect on your life, and
who you will immediately forget. Retain hope for a possible future
Janice
shook her head then thrust the newspaper into the jiko. She struck a matchstick
then held its blue spurting flame close to one crumpled newspaper. The grey
smoke from the fire danced its way into the starry sky before a breeze
dispersed it across the cold night. Janice looked up and saw a star. It shone
warmly, spiritedly. She smiled then closed shut, involuntarily, her eyes.
*
Reece's
eyelids opened partially. A bright blurry light burned through his slit like
eyes. On squinting them, he realized it was a star. He wasn't sure where he was
but his face itched. He tried lifting his hand to his itching face but his
hands were solid stiff. He then noticed a fluid flowing in front of his face, his
head soaked in it. It seemed he was lying down. Everything was dead quiet, save
for the intermittent cricket chirps. Of his body, only his eyes could move. His
breathing was also rather loud. Uneven, labored and loud. The fluid’s smell all
of a sudden became familiar - petrol.
This was no
dream. His heart started racing wildly. Try as much as he could, no sounds came
out of his open mouth. Reece's eyes darted left and right. Then they stood
fixed on four pills carelessly splayed on the bloody ground. The petrol's smell
became a little more pronounced, this time it was burning. Reece blinked then
thought about the pills. He closed his eyes for a moment then settled his gaze
on the bright star when he opened them. The star swiftly started to fade.
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