The same word, written over and over, all over the hotel bedroom wall. And he was gone. In another version of this story I apologised to the hotel staff, paid for the paintwork, got in my red car, drove to Jo’burg and flew home alone and none of the terrible happened and neither of the brilliant either. There was nothing to stop me. He’d likely be dead but what did I care. I’d tried. He and his toy guns and broken foot and magic marker could meet their fate and I’d be safely on a plane out of there. But that isn’t what happened. We found him on the banks of the Zambezi trying to get a lift across to the island. He’d hitched there from the hotel. I don’t know how we got him in the car. All I remember is leaving my friend in Livingstone and setting off for the border with him beside me, torn black leggings, bare foot up on the dash, and being stopped by the police. Their shocked faces when this thin, crazed White girl didn’t behave with deference, screamed at them instead because that’s what I do when I’m cornered, because by then I’d had enough and I’d lost all sense of sensible. How they threw our passports at me from the window of their car and drove away. All I could think about was reaching the airport when I would never have to see him again. I could throw his passport at him, get on that plane, be gone. We stayed in a glass fronted hotel the night before the flight, he in another room, a bottle of whisky. He turned up at boarding. I remember how the air hostess came to me in distress, how they threatened to land the plane if he didn’t stop raging and abusing and frightening the other passengers half to death. And that would have been it, the goal post moved again to reaching the UK; as soon as we were home I was out of there, I was sending him away, this bird of paradise who’s feathers had turned ragged, I was telling him for certain it was over. But I had forgotten the shaman who waited for us at the farm, his takeover ready, who’d had a month to shore up his plans, who’d cut the brakes on my car and locked the doors.
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I keep hoping these are going to end with '... and that's when I decided to jack all this in and get a proper job'
Holy fucking shit