Written by: Oratile Ndimande
With special thanks to Freddy Nyezi for editing
A few minutes past eight o’ clock on the morning of the fourteenth, more than a week since the ambulance’s visit to the Chester apartment building. Sunlight welcomes itself in through the windows in a kitchenette, warming up some of the twelve doors in the corridor and lighting up the off-white painted wall that it could touch. Each door is framed in by a thick, greying blue – like a stubborn and unamusing tutor, armed with the uninteresting lesson of the use of contractions and punctuation in Shakespearean text. It has been an hour since the echoes of a muffled alarm broke the much-needed silence that Monday morning.
The alarm echoes up and down the corridor, as though it is a little child running up and down, playing in and out the sunlight. Its initial mischievous giggling in has grown into a raged screeching and beeping, a young hell for all the other flatmates who are either snoozing their alarms, nursing a hangover, or engaged in… prayer. The home of this alarm is behind the door of room 106, easily marked not by the room number on the door, but by the regular alarms that would go unanswered for hours. Room 106 was quickly becoming known in the corridor as a nuisance because of this. A disgruntled flatmate steps out of his own room and goes to knock on the door. Why was this happening again, the neighbour wonders.
Inside, Odirile is stunned awake by a knock on the door and realises that the shrieking he’d endured in his dream wasn’t from a strange creature in the closet, but was his phone blaring out his alarm. He switches off the alarm and yells to the neighbour that he is awake. He gets out of bed and immediately takes off his pants and takes out his sheets and throws them to a corner of the room, noting that he would have to wash them later when he gets back. He is supposed to have meeting with a lecturer today where he would have to fight for a chance to save his studies and his scholarship. He takes a quick cold shower, trying to psych himself into the new week. Maybe this commercialised 'holiday' would remind him of his first loves, writing and performance.
…
“Mr. Oo…”
“Odirile Tiro”, he helped the professor.
“Odirile. My apologies. What you are requesting from us is a little more leniency that we usually grant, especially given your attendance record and your current marks,” the lecturer says looking at her laptop. Her raised eyebrows remind Odirile of a cartoon character he liked watching as a child. He imagines that they are slightly bushier and there was the moustache of Mr. – No, he needs to focus on the meeting.
“Mind you, we’re only allowing for this because of the medical reasons you’ve included in this application.” The lecturer continues. “Please consider this a wake-up call Mr. Tiro. All the best, it's good to see you’re recovering well from that incident.”
“Thank you, Professor.” He says gratefully and relieved as he stands to leave. He thinks about his name on the list the previous week, Odirile Tiro – Illegible for Examination. Indeed, this is a wake-up call, he thinks to himself. Needing to wake up and look where he is going, he collides with another walker. He almost apologies but doesn’t, it’s Thabiso he’s walked into.
“Oh, sorry… Odirile. Hey”
Odirile tries to move into the open space to left, but Thabiso steps to be in the way.
“Excuse me, Ke batla go feta.” Odirile says without looking at Thabsio. After what happened that Saturday night, he is not able to. He turns to the open space on the right but Thabiso turns again to block him. “Thabiso, o ko tswe mo go nna!”
Sensing his irritation, Thabiso gives up and moves aside. “I’m sorry. You’re to have to unblock me at some point, we have to talk abou…” Odirile storms off before he could hear the rest of the sentence, he already knows what he wants to talk about. But right now, he doesn’t have time for that.
Later in the day in his apartment, he gathers his clothes to his laundry. He looks at the sheets and pyjama pant he had previously tossed in the morning. He remembers that his mother bought him those sheets for the holidays last year. He stares at them, with soft memories of his trip back home; his mother and sister; the semi-peaceful naps he’d taken since he’d moved in… He must throw them away, he thinks. Those memories are now soiled by a hard convenience, one he cannot move past without getting rid anything that reminds him of what happened that Saturday night.
End of Part Three
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