Confessions of a Masturbating Twelfth Man

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been  eight years since my last confession. These are my sins…rather, this is my sin. I am a hockey player. I have been for three years. I play with, a team, Macho Paradise. Eleven men on the first team and I am the twelfth man. A substitute. I have been on the 'bench' for these three years. When I play, it's usually for the last twenty minutes when the team has scored a comfortable number of goals or when they have scored none and one of the eleven wants to sit those minutes out. Nothing sinful about being a substitute, Father. However there is something that the enemy does with an idle mind. The mind of a twelfth man who has two halves, thirty five minutes each, seated on the ground to watch his team mates play, score and tap sticks for victory dances. The fields do not have benches (only when we play at the astro turf stadium do I get to sit on  a concrete bench). A substitute with big stick bags all around him, a stick lying at the seventy six degree angle between his legs and extra balls for practice, strewn around. Green balls, red balls, and white balls . Where is the sin in this? Well, boredom and the lack of attention plus the illusion of  privacy provided by the big stick bags tempt me to pleasure  myself. So I rub the head of the 38" hockey stick against my privates. Sometimes it  feels so good I extend to the taped splice. When play is on the far end of the pitch, I take advantage of the solitude to  hook and pull and hook and pull and hook and pull and hook and hook and hoook and pull till my shorts are wet and I have to wear my track pants to hide the shame. Occasionally I sit on the balls and move in short circular motions, reminiscent of a Ugandan woman dancing the baganda dance in slow motion moving her waist and never shaking her shoulders. Worse, when the team is bending over in circular unison to bless the match and  my team mates bang their sticks on the ground as they chant the 'syke-a syke-a syke-a', I bend too but make sure the grip of the stick is between my legs in the guise of holding the stick in place as my left hand rests on the shoulders of a team mate and the other pretends to bang my stick. As usual with this type of sin, Father, the guilt creeps in after the pride that comes with improvisation and the bursts of joy that accompany the powerful sensations. The guilt of  mono-intercourse. So overwhelming I never look my team mates in the eye. When they hit the balls, I suffer. When they borrow my stick after breaking their sticks on an opponent's shin, I feel naked. I believe that I will stop sinning if they let me play.Problem is, they never let me play...and I love the game so much, I cannot quit. I am sorry for these sins...rather, this sin and all the sins I can’t remember.”

Father shifts on his seat.

"Sexual purity. Something we all thrive for, my child. You and I in equal measure.Believe me when I say, your sin is much sooner forgiven than my own sins.Go in peace."


"Thanks be to God."


The twelfth man picks up his stick bag and finds his way to the door that is marked 'Gents'. Father walks off to teach an acolyte class.


Linda Musita © 2011

Warning: All rights, sticks and holes are reserved.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt

"Stand up little girl, a broken heart can't be that bad."

- From the song 'To Be With You by 'Mr. Big (The Band)-

confound them

they see frailty,

a bony babe illuminating an SOS 

oh and they laugh, fits and fits of laughter

mistake my silence and indifference

for insecurity, defeat and denial

i smile when they stick out dog wet tongues

i giggle when they spit on my fine clothes

i laugh when they kick my high heels with their worn out sneakers

the burden,

the burden ,

the burden, is twice upon them

to prove beyond reasonable doubt

that they are not

everything they think me to be

and while they strive

i thrive

Linda Musita© 2011

Note: A few days ago I discussed Gustave Flaubert's, Madame Bovary  with a well read friend. We both agreed that Emma was a tad too gullible when it came to Rodolphe. I admitted falling for some of the lines he used to 'woo' her while at the agricultural show and confessed that I too, like Emma, am gullible...sometimes. Her reaction, "Linda Musita, gullible?". Yes, I am human. I get  my heart in twists too. And today, I am not in the mood for threats...but respect my copyright anyway*mwaaah*

Violencia

Remanded in quicksand
South are men at arms caressing M 60 machine guns
North is a contingent, hand-ling napalm bombs
East…east lie 23 armored tanks
West, masked and bearing the semblance of space men
Stand 10 pongos, ready for biological warfare
The airspace dinging with battle planes
Extremely pregnant and ready to bear ballistic missiles

“Consume her thoroughly!” orders the Generalissimo
“Leave nothing but vapeeeouurrr”

Surrounded, lacking a point of exit
The sand swallowing her knees greedily
Insatiable and wet
The southern aims
The northern prepares to swing and sling
The eastern bears in with the migraine rumble
Of its metallic monsters, shaking the theater of war
Provoking the sand to consume her bosom
The western unplugs 2000ml chemical flasks
And the pregnant planes go into labor

There then, she sinks into irrelevance
Her shoulders already enveloped in blanket heavy wetness
At the center of enemy territory
A single cadet lost to my battalion
Dying without penitence and absolution
A victim of the best arms

Yet, lo behold!
Her last sight is the Phantom Knight
Breathing fire, spitting sulfuric bombs
Riding to her deliverance
He pulls her by her groping strands of hair
And cultivates a sulfuric kiss of life upon her still lips

His embrace? Might it be safer?
Might it really?
Violencia? Answer me!

 Linda Musita© 2010

Note: There are battles that I never fight e.g battles with pathetic women for/over a man. There are wars that I ignore and cover with blankets e.g wars with my siblings. Legal battles, however, I love to fight hi hi hi.The civil kind that earn me money whether or not I have registered  my copyright.

Adam's Apple

Paintings of Adam and Eve show that each has a belly button (navel or umbilicus). Think about it.

-ITM-

Exiled. Naked. He looked up the apple tree. Boredom and a talkative, nagging woman were his punishment. His sin; questioning the existence of The Enigma after another cruel desert storm . Eden is a vegetative hell hole that offered nothing else but trees and fruit. He missed home. He missed the food, the camels, the dryness, the mirages, the confusion and his dysfunctional polygamous family unit. His father was a rolling stone that gathered no moss but a lot of fungi and virus that explained the old man’s loose nuts, the boils on the mothers’ lips and their itchy vaginas.

“Hey Adam, you are the man and by default the smarter of the pair?” Eve asked as she plucked an apple from the tree.

“Go figure,” why wouldn’t she just keep quiet? Did she have to ask those questions; closed yet wide open questions. Questions that led to more questions that he alone had to answer.

“Alright,” apple in hand bent over his head, naked, her privates covered by a mass of kinky-curly black hair. She had abnormally large areolae that made her breasts look like  half rotten coconuts. He did not like looking at her. He closed his eyes.

“Adam, I think that worms come from an apple. They do not infest an apple. Instead the apple gives birth to them. You know, like a mother after nine ripe months?”

“No Eve, I do not know.”

“Adam, you liar,” she stands straight.

“You do not have to keep saying my name every time you speak. It’s just the two of us here, you milk- less goat.” He rolled over and lay on his stomach. A man should not be forced to look up at a woman, especially when she is standing upright and nude.

“Adam, why are you so unkind?” She asked and sat next to him slightly bothered by the shade of the tree. She missed the desert heat. Why did The Enigma choose her to start a cursed race with this unimaginative sod?

“I am not unkind. You talk too much and think only when you are asleep. What would it cost me to have you quiet for…say...an entire moon?”

“Adam, you could help me prove that an apple mothers a worm or twin worms or triplet worms or a multitude of worms. I am certain that it will be a groundbreaking theory. A theory a lot like the Chicken-Egg Theory that puzzles your father.”

“You are as crazy as he is, I can see. Where do you suppose you will put that apple. There is no place here that is not already infested by worms that will eat your silly apple. The ground is burrowed with them, the tress and flower bushes camouflage them…Really, Eve? Do you want to prove that the worm is so ungrateful as to eat his own mother?”

She looked around. He was right. Defeated she transferred her eyes to his bare back and left them there, transfixed. An hour went by. He was grateful for the quiet.

“Adam, I have it!” she yelled, fell on her back, laughed, waved her legs instead of her arms, swung her arms instead of her legs, created unnecessary commotion.

“Holy Enigma! Affray! Affray! Why shout and kick? ” Her shrilly proclamation had interfered with his peace.

“Adam, if you want me quiet, we will have to put the apple on your back. You do not have worms…and well, if you do, they cannot wiggle out through your skin and attack the apple before it bears.”

“So?”

“Adam. Let us strike a saliva handshake- disgusting body fluids type of deal. Binding and hard to go back on. I will shut my trap if you let the apple sit on your back for an entire moon.”

“How will I function? Release my bladder? Eat my food? Stretch my limbs?”

“Okay, Adam, I will take those four questions and assume that you don’t want the deal.I, consequently,  will keep talking. I will talk without ceasing. Rumble, nag, chatter, squeak and shriek till the day or night you die.”

He knew she was capable.

“Alright, we have a binding contract.”

Adam spit on his hand. Eve wiped her pudenda then her armpits. They shook hands.

She put the apple on his back. He was happy for the calm but wondered if he would still be fine after the moon and whether after that same moon, he would have to bear her probably stinky loud mouth again?

Linda Musita © 2011


Note: I have a feeling that no one will want to be associated with this blasphemy or pass it off as their own...aside from myself. Nonetheless, all rights are reserved

Adultery

I have thought about you,
every single day of this fortnight.
You are my new fascination and as a principle,
I write about my stimulants.

So on the final sabbath of this fortnight,
I sat on my desk,
with my feather,ink and parchment
ready to pour out my thunderous feelings
inform the world of my savage desires.
Tell of your appetizing human landscape
and how your anthems make my heart run amok.

Your image was stuck in my head,
and I arrogantly assumed; as usual,
that the words would flow out easy-peasy.
But Alas!
No words!
I had bumped into what educated scribes call a writer's block.

Hysteria set in!
For the first time in my pen-pusher's life,
 I lacked words!
"Tyranny!" I thought.
"Who is this fiend of a man that leads me to betray Prospero My Pen?!"
You refused to get out of my mind and onto my parchment.
You stood firm in my tiny head,
filling every brain cell with your presence,
leaving no room for my words,
which words define my existence
and give Prospero and I grand earthly purpose.

This meant that chances were, i was being unfaithful to my Prospero.
A cheating partner!
Dispeakable, unworthy harlot!
An immoral shameless bed-hopper!
Jezebel's kind.

So I had to select,
between you: fresh faced and oh so kissable
and my faithful Prospero,
who heals my soul and occasionally feeds my tummy.
Predicament, ha?

With a heavy sobbing heart,
I rejected the well set up, majestic, husky anthem man,
that you constitute,
and chose my Prospero.

Pronto! the audacious writer's block,
crumbled like biscuit,
and I wrote.....
till I ran out of ink. 

Linda Musita © 2009

NOTE: When I was younger I wrote like this. Thanks to books, Gideon Chumo and exercise, I am a better writer. As amateurish as the poem may be, all rights are still reserved muahahahaha!

Old Man Passenjer

The bus is hardly full. Thirty three passengers sat still each mulling over something that the other knew nothing about. First stop, Nairobi Hospital. Next stop Nairobi Women’s Hospital. The passenger count has dropped to twenty. They are all quiet except the occasional banter between the conductor and his driver.

“Mwangi man! That big, black and very  black black-out yesterday had me banging my head on the wall”, says the conductor very much aware of the Caucasian woman two seats away.

“Ochi me I was so angrie I started counting my fingas…one two, dhree, four, bloodie faye…..wapi tthitima?!” he answers with his right hand off the steering wheel as he demonstrates the counting.

“Eh! Kenya Pawa and Lightening Company! And we pay billssss!!”

“Bloodie fuckayng idiots! We shouuund carry thewm on wheel-o-barrows to ndhe ndams. Make them kojorea the fuckayng howles and pronduce power!”

Ochi laughs.

“Sasa why are you laugheyng and I am not njoking! kihii wewe!”

Ochi swallows and plays with the coins in his pocket. He is uncircumcised. The truth hurts. The bus goes down the Kilimani hill.

“Bangaldesh!” an old man yells.

“Unashuka Bangladesh mzee?”Ochi asks.

“Hapana makende ya kuku wewe! I am reminiscing and it is none of your mother's business either.”

“Ssssychotic octogenerian!” Ochi growls and seemingly pleased with himself  turns his head, makes eye contact and smiles at the Caucasian female.

The old man spits and goes back to his memories.

“Bangladesh……sweet Bangladesh of old.”

Linda Musita © 2011

Note: Today I toned it down. Some of you are pitiful  scaredy cats that needed a break from the grotesque. Also it is a happy day, I flirted shamelessly and loved every minute therefore in that spirit I refrain from copyright related threats.

Naughtie Your Feline

Puurrrr am a likkle naughty pussy cat
might you sit by me?
So i can share your flush and blush
and plot a devious ploy
on what part of you i ought to squeeze and release
..first then second and a possible negotiable third


Puurrrr am a likkle naughty pussy cat
lean closer so i can munch you a bit
nibble your big elephant ear
and take a mighty mouthful of your suppley neck
rest my tongue on Adam's apple.

Puurrrr am a likkle naughty pussy cat
might i place my curvy right calf
upon your drumstick left? Oh drummer!
So you may do as you darn well fancy with both?
Even run the long three-legged dance, if you please.


Puurrrr am a likkle naughty pussy cat
I bet you would like me to draw Cupid's Torch,
on your bare unbruised back,
with my cute ovaly sharp claws?
Scrooooohhhhhhh, scraaaahhhhhh.
I shall create art. I promise.


Puurrrr am a likkle naughty pussy cat
I shall let you drink from my saucer.
If only you let me bounce and twist on a high stool,
pray that you shalln't cover your eyes
but ogle and partake of my 'Puss in Stiletto Boots' gyrations.


Meow, don't be a mousey, i beg.
Tame this likkle naughty pussy cat.


Linda Musita©  2010 

WARNING: I get catty when my rights are infringed!Sccrooooh!

Aunt Gololi

-For Emma Karuri-

Yes I am twenty-eight and unwed
True and established observation
Puzzle is how my unwed nature
Affects the quality of free oxygen
That gets to your lungs and brain

I ought to be like Cousin Wendy
Got married real fast to your choice
Ay, if I had toad eyes, a hyena’s indecision,
The work ethics of a slug
And ostrich legs to carry all that mess
I would certainly marry the very first three legged creature
You aptly suggested…just like Cousin Wendy did.

Worst of all, I am a gold mining spoilt brat
By Jove! I cannot possibly comprehend such slander!
I am a spoilt brat, but I dare not mine gold! What of my nails!
Instead, in advancing the philosophy of the spoilt,
I choose not to marry a broke idiota.
So , until a man who embraces his responsibility a.k.a  ME, hops along
I am twenty-eight, thirty, thirty-two and yes…unwed

Marriage is a compulsory blessing
The Deity will surely punish me for my defiance!
You are one to speak
Uncle Twinky-winkky has 2 mistresses, 3 almost mistresses
And 6 bastard children happily ever after
Mismatch made at the gates of hell or a compulsory blessing?

Those eggs are expiring
Rotten babies are bound to come out of this one.
Well fortunately for me
You are not the power that will settle tots in my sacred womb
So at twenty-eight, thirty-two, thirty-five or forty,
I shall have healthy progeny
Because I have faith, the size of a mustard seed

The family will have an old haggard maid
What sort of reputation is that?
Pardon me; I will not be Bobby Brown’s nth wife
Just to save face for my extended family
Especially now that I figured, everything is not for everyone
Nuptials included

Linda Musita © 2010

Note: My writing is my heart. If you break my heart , I will tear you into pieces.

Get it Twisted Love is not a Beautiful Thing

I liken myself to honey that attracts ants. I would rather be a flower that attracts hardworking bees but my disposition is not a matter of choice. They say I was not a beautiful baby. A blessing, sometimes, because it is an unwritten law of nature that an ugly baby grows into beautiful toddler and a more beautiful adult. Fate, the puffed heifer, had other ideas where I was concerned.

Father looks at me and sneers.

“Your fingers are like the spaghetti sticks I cook for Mr. Andrew, too skinny for any ring to fit. Even the ones…customer made ones…A man would have to pay jeweler a billion money just to engage you. No such man! Msccchew!”

I direct my gaze to my slender fingers and think that there has to be a reason. They are not an accident. Well, truth be told, that is the only alternative I have: ‘Pep thought’. Otherwise I would stab my father with the fork I use to eat the leftover spaghetti he brings from Mr. Andrew’s house. Killing your father…patricide…is the father of all curses -another unwritten but loudly spoken law of nature-.

Honey is good even though it streams out of an ugly beehive. I am good. My insides are okay. I am happy most times, especially when he has gone to cook for Mr. Andrew. I love people. I smile at them and wave my left hand at them. I cuddle the dogs when they fall sick. I feed the rats and spare them the maize meal mixed with Indocid that father places strategically and hides uncannily for their death. I usually look for it and when I can’t find it, I arrange plates and plates of water around the house, to save their lives. I pray for the safety of the rainbow, the clouds, moon, the sun and the stars. They hang loose on the sky without hooks and I fear they may fall and hurt themselves.  I am good.

My exterior however, is a puzzle or a riddle depending on the date of the argument.

“Your mother was beautiful. Ahhhhhhhh hips and legs, toes and fingernails. I not know how we produce abnormal baby like yah.”

My mother was pretty. That is what he says (and so does everyone else… after looking at me like a circus freak). She left, though. Immediately she saw her child; a little girl with bony fingers, a big head, one eye shut-one eye open, pouted lips, concave belly, crooked ankle and pubic hair. No one knows where she went not even her family, which is also father’s family. Father and mother are cousins. Her mother and his father were brother and sister. They died as soon as I was born.

Father says it is my entire fault. I made mother run and killed half the number of my grandparents with my first cry. He also says that it is my fault that no boyfriend will ever want me for a girlfriend and that to have grandchildren, he may have to get drunk and do what Lot did.

“Lot?” I asked.

“Just a man in a big bookie. He wife turn into a seasoning stone. Later he took drink and does the deed with his daughter, two daughter.”

The deed. The deed. The deed. As far as I gather, a girl has to be as beautiful as mother was to get the love of a boyfriend. After the boyfriend loves her, he does the deed to her and a baby comes out.

I do not think that father loves me a grain of rice. I think if he does the deed before he loves me, an ugly baby will come out. I do not want an ugly baby.

I will stab him with a fork the day he does the deed. If only I knew how the deed is done and when it is done. I would stab him before he does it. 

Linda Musita © 2011

Warning: REFRAIN!Control your pickers and stealers

Secret Recipe

Boil pots,

upon pots,

pots of water.

Pout not,

when the pots' lids sing,

"Ka ba ba ba ba ba ba
kabaa ba ba pap pa pap
ba ba"


Lest the pots pour


Linda Musita © 2011

Note: All boiling rights are reserved

Murder, She Wrought

“Are you sure you did not hurt yourself today?” Koli asked. “You may have overdone the kicks…”

“It’s been six months, Koli. I should know better than that, don’t you think?” She interrupted the cardio kickboxing instructor, picked up her bag and left the gym.

Audrey was right. He was wrong. She had not ‘overdone’ anything. All she did was try to get rid of a mass of anger on her throat. Someone had thrown her under the proverbial bus and she felt the need to save her skull from his barbaric act. Unfortunately, the overextended, “Kiiiick, to the knee, jab, jab and kick, kick, to the knee, jab, jab, jab and kick” had not done a good rescue job. She still felt like someone had let down a running stomach on her head and the filth was flowing down her face, seeping into her eyes, nose and mouth.

Hence the need to get on her scooter and rush before the ceremony started.

She checked the contents of the scooter basket. They were intact. She wore the helmet and rode off to the very odd choice venue.

XXX

By the time she got there, the vows had been exchanged. Now, it was kissie-kissie time. The bride was wearing the usual Nairobi bride ‘sleeveless, bare back and unsightly boobies’ dress and her purple lips were puckered and eager. The groom, with his large compound eyes, looked like the Average Kamau in dress pants, a shirt, a cravat and a waist-coat. She appeared pleased with herself; he looked complacent, like a sick dog. 

‘Mwaaaah’ and his lips had purple smudge on them. The Mrs. lovingly licked her thumb and wiped the smudge off his lips, just like a mother does to a child, at the same time licking the lipstick from her teeth.

Audrey, still on the scooter, hidden by three, unnecessarily conjoined flowery pillars watched as they sat on the two chairs set aside for them on the podium. The Reverend stood from his chair and made for the temporary pulpit to serve his marital sermon.

Here lay the problem. She did not anticipate the ludicrous podium. It would not do. She gave the hand grenades in the basket a critical eye, counted the number of possible casualties; she included and realized that the plan of jumping just the two love birds was not feasible…with a podium. First, her arm, strong as it was, couldn’t possibly swing a grenade that far from a scooter. Second she had planned on doing cook offs after pulling the rings. If she did that, the news would read differently. Something like,’ Woman on Scooter blows herself up at an uncharacteristic wedding at the historical Kamkunji Grounds.’

No, she needed something more specific and extremely tragic for the Mr. and Mrs. It had to be clean and diabolical; worse than bootleg explosives. Something that would merit applause from the damned. It would require close to 47 hours planning but step one had to be climbed by the end of the day. Possibly within the next three hours, in the form of a wedding gift from a good old family friend.

XXX

“Habari yako?”

“Mzuri,” answered the man at the information desk.

“Inspector Kipchuruchuru yupo?”

“Ndiyo, na wewe ni nani?”

“Mtoto wa ndugu yake.”

He leaned forward and looked at her entire frame. Petite, very high burgundy shoes, black fitting skirt suit, black scarf with red and white polka dots and hair that was cut like a little white boy’s hair. Convinced that she was the lady actuary that the boss had ordered he let in, he directed her.

“Ehhh, alisema utakuja. Fanya hivi, nenda kwa yard, utampata. Fuata tu reli mpaka…”

“Najua,” she hurriedly walked towards the platform and turned left onto the  track.  She was so excited she nearly chocked on her saliva.

Papa Kipchuruchuru was not her uncle but he was her godfather, so to speak. He was a failed soldier turned train driver. She met him in 1991 when she was seven years old. Back then her parents travelled a lot by rail and they always tagged her along. They quarreled endlessly and bit each others’ ears through the journey. Whenever that happened, Audrey would walk out of the first class train compartment and wander about the train. One time, she bumped onto the knees of a man. He was standing at an angle by a window. Then, he looked like a very important man and she almost walked away but her eyes caught the thumb in his mouth. She stood beside him and sucked her thumb as well. From that day he became the father that she should have had.

Now, twenty years later, he was Regional Locomotive Inspector, leaning on a pole at the yard, staring intently at a pool of oil. As soon as she made him out in the green overalls, she rushed her feet, tears dancing in her eyes. He embraced her and she held on a little longer, then her eagerness took over.

“Did you deliver the gift on Saturday?”

“Yes I did, dressed up like a likely friend of the parents. She called that night. This means you were right. Newly weds always open the envelopes before the honeymoon, probably hoping for some cash.”

“Ehe?” Audrey urged.

“She called to apologize, said that her ‘houseband’ and her already had honeymoon plans and they were leaving yesterday. I coughed and faked an old man’s disease and convinced her to take this trip first, it’s only for two days. Zapele Islands were too beautiful to reject and from there they could connect to their original destination. It wouldn’t hurt.”

“Ehe?”

“The idiot, agreed.”

“Alright we have no time to waste,” she went into the shade and came out five minutes later, maroon overalls, training shoes and a baseball cap.

They walked towards a locomotive, meters away and he tried to get the story.

“Scorn, Papa, scorn. You do understand don’t you?”

He held her hand protectively recalling the day, seventeen years ago, when he walked into a train car and found her naked father trying to penetrate her from behind. Her mother sat there and watched. Three days later a newspaper report read that a highly intoxicated couple had fallen asleep on the rail track in Yala and a train squished them into minced human. Since then she had lived with him and on his army stories, lessons on mechanical engineering and his obsession with physical fitness.

“You never know if you will need it until you need it,” he barked every time she sulked and pouted at his obsession and need to turn her into a female Kipchuruchuru. “Anyway, I may die before you and I have to leave you with something, don’t I?”

Papa Chur and Audrey finally got to the locomotive and went under the car with a tool box and two flashlights between them. Within an hour, they interfered with the braking system, the fuel tank compartments and the over- speed safety device. The sand tanks and sand sprayers were muddled as well. The traction system was going to do exactly what they wanted it to do; get the damn locomotive off the rails.

XXX

8pm and the pair were on the platform with their luggage. A few meters away, the lights on two locomotives were on. Her phone rang and the old man told her to leave the luggage on the platform and walk with her husband across three rail tracks. The train would pick them up there and someone else would load their luggage. She asked about the second train. He said that it was an ‘escort train’. She slid her mobile phone into her jeans’ pocket, clapped excitedly and took her ‘houseband’ by the hand. His compound eyes saw more to this sinister arrangement but he did not utter a word. He did as she said and they stood exactly where the old man said they should.

Audrey got on the death locomotive, still in the maroon overalls and cap. Papa Chur got onto the second loco.

“Remember to pull the notches like I showed you…and to get the hell out immediately I reach out my hand.”

“Alright,” Audrey affirmed.

Her locomotive was running light but Papa’s was towing two loaded freight cars. She got the knife switch and soon enough the eight wheels were moving. She looked to her left and Papa Chur was driving simultaneously.

 A minute later he signed at her to accelerate.

The new wife clapped some more. The ‘houseband’ shifted on his feet.

The locomotive rushed. Papa Chur held out his hand and Audrey balanced her feet at the cab’s door. She stretched until his fingers firmly clasped her wrist. All she had learned at the kickboxing class came to play here. The co-ordination, balance, flexibility and strength to lunge forward and into Papa’s arms, just as traction failed the loco - now on the last notch- and the purple lips let out an almost demonic scream.

XXX

The old man sat on his armchair, watching the morning news on television.

He smiled and called Audrey, “You should have watched the news.”

“Hey Papa, I have to work you know. I am sure they will do a recap tonight. And the suitcases?”

“Just about to torch them, “he ended the call.

Linda Musita © 2011

NOTE: Don't touch this and tamper with copyright. You'll be sued.