The Escape

“Where have you been!?”

The question had an accusatory odour to it.

I had been away for a week. But she put it like I had impregnated her and made off with her purse and vanished for the entire winter.

I stepped aside and she walked in to the living room, all tight dressed and Dior scented. She stood with hand on thik hip surveying the scene; empty beer bottles lying on their sides like they had passed out on the carpet, Hawaiian pizza cartons with unhinged jaws drooling bits of pineapple, like they were snoring with their mouths open, scrunched up Nandos chicken packets that looked like rocks had been tossed through the window by angry protesters and half eaten drumsticks that suggested an attack by a rabid animal.

She high-heeled noisily towards the window whose tightly drawn curtains had kept out the madness outside from entering my space. With a rasping noise she parted the curtains. I could feel the wave of madness rushing in with the sunlight. I squinted, partly to avoid the 11am sun’s glare and partly to take in the hourglass silhouette at the window. She clip-clopped towards me and stood a metre away, arms folded and boobs squished together.

“Where have you been?”

I didn’t respond to her question. I got a beer out the fridge and pulled the cap off and it wasn’t a screw top. Lately my fingers have had the strength of Schwarzenegger shoulders. I took a sip. The bottle fell from my hand, narrowly missing my unshod feet. In my fingers I held the bottle’s decapitated head. I tossed the bar weapon towards the bin near the sink and I momentarily felt like Lebron James when it’s parabolic trajectory sent it swishing into the opening of the waste basket.

I clenched and unclenched my hand. The bones clicked like breaking lollipop sticks.

“I’ve trying to get away from it all”, I said, reaching for the fridge door.

She kneed the door shut, spun round and flattened herself on the silver door. With one knee raised and foot against the fridge door, she looked like a streetwalker leaning on a lamp post in the red-light zone.

“I think you have killed enough beer bottles, Rambo!”

I pointed a finger at her.

“Woman you better move if you know what’s good for you!”

She ignored the threat.

“Get away from what?”

I sighed and threw up my arms in the air.

“From the bullshit! From competing Masvingo memes, poison ice-cream, electric cable beating, Zodwa’s grinning pantiless crotch, Anne Nhira, and whatever else is coming next!”

I pointed my finger a second time.

“That beer is what’s keeping me out of the mental ward, now moooove chick! Get out the way!”

“Ooh Ludacris, why your fingers so muscular?”

I lowered my hand and looked down on my fingers. For the first time I became aware of the swollen finger biceps. Lately I have been trying to escape the rising tide of bullshit, the tsunami-size waves of human excrement that threatened to drown me.

I looked back up to her face. Without the Facebook filter, in real life she looked half as pretty.

I sighed and brushed my locks backwards

“It must be from daily scrolling past the bullshit littering my Facebook newsfeed”.

She smiled a faint smile and turned round to peel the fridge door open. She had to bend to reach the last two beers at the bottom shelf. The movement of bending her back made her ass poke out.

She straightened her back and shut the fridge door.

“Here” she held out a frosted Zambezi. “Try not to strangle that one”.

She spun round and grabbed the bottle of Handi Andy. She uncapped it and pressed the middle, ejaculating white fluid over the counter. Humming some tune she began to wipe the week’s accumulation of grime. I took another sip and swallowed – hard.

My pen is capped

Jerà