Fiction: A Minute Too Late

Ismail Mia photo

By

Nyashadzashe Chikumbu

29/06/2017

01:21

Gasping and grunting I ran heart in hand, breath gushing out like a torn paper bag. Their footsteps loud hungry for my blood, shrieks growing with each close step. I hold on to the torn shreds of my flesh as it soon gives me away to their hungry hounds. In fear I run away for my life. If only I had a spear I would stand my ground like Tshaka the Zulu and vanquished the nightmare that would soon swallow me whole.

So loud are my cries, and so ear splitting are my shrieks for help – but in the dead silence no one comes to my aid…the onlookers grounds have become like the Frankenstein movie, me being the doctor hunted by my very own creation. All they can do is watch in despair that (perfect) punctual audience.

Just split seconds before my pursuer gets to me, I wake up, screaming and panting like a mad man. Sweat all over my body as if I had been baptized in Jordan itself. I thought to myself what a divine baptism. It takes me long to fully accept that this was a dream that almost came true, like an outcast who had just embraced the warm face of a mermaid; I’m left dazzled. The sun shines bright now with the newness of a virgin day yet to be broken. Still shocked to my rebellious wits at how I had slithered from the crocodile’s jaw, the black booted man had been so close to me. At that moment I could have wagered not to write again. “I would have soon added to the pile of dead bodies they had all claimed, hungry hounds, they would go an extra mile to stamp out a rat, so they called the lot of us…”

I decide to get outside to have one of those things they call a morning walk on the junk box, my faculties still romancing the maiden thought of what I had witnessed seconds before my awakening. Not that I had walked that far when I saw a small crowd, phones out pointing like weapons of war. African nuclears I chucked to myself. I decided to get close to see what was appetizing this crowd’s zeal. I do not know which one gave in first, my bowels or my legs….or maybe they gave in at the same time. I just remember falling to the ground, spraying everything within sight as I vomited to the sight of what these people had been looking at.

Spiralled like the milky way was a small man: now looking like a child butchered, his guts spread all over the place. There was so much blood, so much blood. They say that the woman who looked like she had interrupted a storm was the wife. It only came to me now that what had drenched her was actually the husband’s own blood – all because he had said their neighbor looked nicer in shorts than the long dull dresses she wore…what still shocks me of age is before calling in the ambulance or was it even called at all, these people had quickly pointed their phones at the scene with precision and speed; as the small man breathed his last.

Nyashadzashe Chikumbu

Nyashadzashe Chikumbu is a young rising poet and satirist who sees the stench of human folly with a microscopic eye. A citizens rights activist and a student looking all the way up to neurosurgery.