From chasing dreams to chasing pussy: A short story
The wakefulness was sudden. Odd even.
Could be because there’s now a power supply after what was an infinite amount of hours? No. I forgot to turn on the fans whose cool breeze would have stirred me from sleep the previous evening. The lights are off too. Except for the dull, tiny red from the television and other even smaller red stars from the extension box.
So what is it? Oh, there it goes again. Another bang. Or a thud. From outside. Oh no. We’re getting robbed!..?
Gently but quickly, I make my way to the curtains. Because of the heat, I’d drawn at least two of them as soon as I got home yesterday to usher in cool air so I don’t die of suffocation in my sleep. So it’s time to give the “as you were, don’t koba (expose) me” instruction. If robbers are attacking, maybe they’ll leave my bungalow alone if there’s no certainty anyone’s in.
There’s some ruffling outside. I take a supersonic glance and see my shirtless landlord wielding what appears to be a long, broad stick and opening the pedestrian gate. Stepping out of the compound. Or was that a machete or a gun? Why is this man so stupidly courageous? Was it a jazzed stick? Has he been fortified by native forces? Why is my shirtless landlord attempting to push back a gang of armed robbers (sometimes now generally grouped as bandits) with a jazzed stick? His wife isn’t even around so who is he trying to impress? Must be ment.
I’d dreaded this day all my life. Night raids. Gunmen. Knifemen. Armed-however-way men. Thirsty for blood and money and laptops and television and whatever thing may be valuable. I’d dreaded it. I’d heard of similar cases happening around town. One in this same estate last year. But I’ve been caught unprepared. Stupid! Why haven’t I got a gun licence since or even learnt to shoot chicken laps? Ment it must be.
I hear my well-built landlord calling for a torch. Quickly, I yank the one I (finally) bought three days earlier off the extension box. Don’tknow how long there’s been electricity but it must’ve got charged a bit. I run outside and give it to him. Where are these bastards? Should I be getting my batman suit too? (I don’t have one.)
When I meet him to pass the torch, Shirtless explains that, well, our face-off with the bandit-armed robbers isn’t due yet. His struggle is rather against a cat that has been on the prowl for chickens in the neighbourhood. Already, it’s killed a few of his chickens, the bigger of the bunch. And it’s always coming back for more.
He’d heard the scream of one of his investments and immediately came to the rescue. He shows me a trail of black feathers the cat had extracted from the poor flightless bird. The torch, he explains, is for him to retrieve the petrified chicken and deposit it safely into its cage. The cat has fled like it always does when he comes out.
“I missed it by whiskers,” he laments, his grief radiating through the midnight haze.
I could feel his pain. The poor man’s chickens had become refugees since this serial killer was on the loose. They ran for their lives, realising their owner was incapable of saving them. Other chicken-breeding residents have fallen victim as well, Shirtless says. It’s a communal emergency. A humanitarian crisis, if you may.
But there’s a silver lining. The displaced chickens (roosters) haven’t been terrorising me with their early morning lamentations. So you see, in this life, the line between oppressor and victim cuts through all of us.
Anyway, I started documenting this as a way to ask if anyone knows how to nab this blood-thirsty cat before it does more damage. It doesn’t even eat its victims. It just breaks their necks as if in sacrifice to an indignant feline god.
