a thousand and one tales - one
I’m trying to learn how to write on the fly. None of this is pre-conceived or pre-meditated, I want to see how far I can push a story without stopping to build the characters, or to plot out a proper tale. So I’m writing and developing the story real time. Let’s see how it goes.
—
One.
He has the stupidest grin on his face, a face damaged by a life of pain, hardship and toil. A face weathered and leathery like the discarded hide of a long dead mountain goat. He displays a mis-shapen set of teeth whose ugliness is magnified by the fact that there are only six of them left, the last two hidden so far in the recesses of his mouth that he has the appearance of an overgrown rabbit gnawing at the remnants of a once hopeful life.
He is unbelievably happy. A stranger had handed him a coin with a crane on it. That meant his miserable existence was made better by the previously unimaginable amount of five hundred shillings. His mind whirled with infinite possibilities. He owned his little fiefdom, he was the king of his kraal. Life, friend, was a sum of joy, beauty, hope and an endless supply of food.
Food.
Reality came crashing down on his weary shoulders. Five hundred shillings was not much in these parts. It was a meal, true. Two meals, if you pushed it hard enough, but it was not enough to stoke the dying embers of his wildest imaginations. It was, in all reality, simply five hundred shillings. For a life whose very definition was survival, five hundred shillings would not even begin to cater for the next few hours of his life. With grim determination etched on his face, he pulled aside the rags he wrapped around himself. The rags served as his bed, his sheets, his clothes, and once every few years, his towel.
Hidden deep within the rags, right next to his lice infested skin, was a pouch, in which he stashed his daily loot . He’d picked the pouch right outside Kampala Pentecostal Church, the same pouches they used to collect their offering for their magnificent new building. Their dream was a far cry from his. Every Sunday, he saw droves of people walking into the church with those pouches, coins jingling in them. He’d once asked one of his more elitist friends why they carried those pouches. His friend, in all his one-legged filth-ridden wisdom, said the pouches were specifically made to put in five hundred shilling coins as contribution for the new church.
As he put in his own five hundred shilling coin in his pouch, to store within the confines of his personification of poverty, the irony was not lost on him.
He said a short prayer of thanks to the gods above, and uncurling his gnarled hands, he winced past the pain of the disease that stiffened his fingers, making it excruciating to do the only thing that counted as work for him, holding out his hands, pleading for the next meal from the passers-by.
They hurried past him, stepping around him as if his mere existence was a disgrace to their own existence. One stepped into a puddle of muddy water, splashing him with a mixture of mud, urine and his own excreta. Uttering profanities that the heavens would forever wince at, the passerby cursed him for ruining the extra sharp shine on the newly bought pair of Bata shoes that cost on the sunnier side of one hundred thousand shillings and might cost him an interview that had the prospect of earning nine hundred thousand shillings per month, minus allowances.
He sighed and stretched out his hand. He was used to this. It was a daily routine. What mattered more, today, was food. He needed to eat, he needed to get some more money to buy food.
Food.
The police turned up a few hours later, their inefficiency a masterful example to police forces the world over. The afandes asked questions, huffed and puffed, made their presence felt, and after doing their preliminary investigations, got onto their bikes and left, leaving the dirty work for their lesser comrades.
As the breakdown vehicle pulled the truck away from the wreckage, there was a gasp from the crowd that had gathered hours ago.
Underneath the tangled mess that had been the truck, was a shrivelled hand clutching tightly to a pouch, and sticking out of the pouch was a lonely five hundred shilling coin with a crane on it. The face the hand belonged to had been transformed from the weather beaten face it had been earlier. It now had the most incredulous expression anyone had ever seen on a dead person.
The dead eyes were wide open, staring upwards, at the pile of maize, beans, matooke and chicken that had been on the truck. The same pile of food that had crushed him to his death.
Even in his last moments, the irony was not lost on him.
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
[...] Continue read the full tale at Two W.E.A.K Dudes. [...]
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
cherry darling, this is where the socks are meant to be
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
nice
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:14 am
Brilliant save. LOL.
The first two paragraphs were a bit off for me.
*Like the emphasis on irony.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:29 am
dude, this rocks! *applause*
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:32 am
@els, thanks.
@princess, and yet here I was pouring my heart and soul in the first two paragraphs… *sigh*
So it looks like the narrative works better than the descriptive? or do I simply have to make the descriptions less superfluous?
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:44 am
@Eleet, thank you, thank you.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:03 am
hmmm… really good… although was hopeful for a happy-ever-after ending…
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:15 am
@ DK: Yes, the narrative works better than the descriptive in this case, because some of the description IS superfluous.
Ease up on that and you’ll be good to go.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:52 am
As usual, I am jealous of your writing skills. It’s superb.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Double thumbs up !
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
@sybella, I’m a sucker for chaotic endings
@princess, carlo says you’s jus’ a hater. lol. I’m going to do a piece that has the descriptive in overdrive. Flex your wince muscles.
@Mudamuli. thanks.
@Igis, thank you, Ebert.
@Carlo, wama thanks.
October 26th, 2008 at 9:06 am
just super. keep the bad endings coming
October 26th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
[...] this is spontaneous, just winging it. For other “writing on fly” pieces, see 1001 Tales - One and 1001 Tales - [...]
October 28th, 2008 at 11:59 am
i hate bad endings but some, are to die for!
December 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
You just had to kill him didn’t you?!?!
December 4th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
DK
THIS MODERATION ‘BIDNESS’