PICTURE THIS – A short story by Judith Rwang
After having a very long day, numerous clients at the salon during the day that you and your girls couldn’t wait for the last lady to leave after getting her pedicure done.
You all couldn’t wait to get home. Personally, you could not wait to get home, get a nice hot water bath, have a cup of chocolate tea and hug Abel- your big soft teddy bear till I fall asleep.
It’s already 9:00pm by the time you get home. You go straight to lit your gas burner and boil some water. After taking your bath and having a hot cup of tea, you go to bed.
Somehow, you find yourself thinking about how your day went, I try to make mental calculations as to how much profit you made during the day as you were too tired to do that back at the salon and so you decided to do it the next morning.
At that point, a line from a book on accountability that you read earlier about procastination hit you. You get up immediately, move to your reading table and start making accounts for all the payments and expenditure for the day to ensure everything is balanced.
By the time you are done, sleep has travelled far away from your eyes and of all the things to remember, you remember the gist you had at the salon earlier during the day about ghosts. A client started the gist while you were making her hair. She told you all how her neighbour’s husband who died a few years back was seen by a family friend in a neighbouring state.
She told you how the man disappeared after being recognized. The gist became more interesting and intense when your apprentices and workers started giving accounts of other people’s experiences with ghost.
In the end, I get scared and you discover that you never hated staying alone untill tonight. You thought to call your best friend. Who knows, just maybe she could help make you feel better with her calm words over the phone but then you remember she’s married and you’d be crazy to call her by this time of the night.
In the end, you decide to make do with what you have- cuddle Abel until you fall asleep. You put the lights out and close your eyes. It was working, you were falling alseep already. “You’d be fine” you whispered to yourself.
“Yes, you will” Abel says. You turn the lights on and there it is. Abel smiling at you.
You scream and pass out.
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