All Black, All Red

Chapter One: Let's Plan a Suicide

Friday June 8, 2012

He sat there thinking about the Report he hadn’t written and all the others he didn’t want to write. He thought about all the women he had loved, or thought he had, who just couldn’t love him back. He thought of his latest beau, Kendi who had so blatantly rejected him and he decided that it was always going to be like this. His mouth stretched into bitter grin as he reached for the remote. The 7 O’clock news was just beginning. Jane Ngoiri in her Chinese-cut blouse was reading the news tonight; something about a chairman of NHIF being ambushed by the board members. He tapped the mute button and just stared at the screen. He saw nothing.

He thought about this world without him. Would anyone notice? Would they care that he was no longer there? Would it matter that he wasn’t? Just as he was formulating his mock suicide his phone vibrated. THE DEVIL read the caller ID. It was his name for his Editor Wambua Mwinzi. That man really busted his balls. “Argh… what now?” he thought as he pressed ‘answer’.

“Yes boss, is something the matter?”

“Yes. I got your Amani story and I must say Mohamed, it’s horrible.”

Wambua always called him by his full first name instead of his nick name, Moha, whenever he was about to punch a hole in his ego and drag it through a sewer.

“Well, boss, explain to me what’s horrible about it,” he was calm. It came easily because he had had years of practise with a mother he knew better than to talk back to.

“For starters, she’s old. We need some fresh blood for this magazine, readers get bored with the same old faces.”

Same old faces? YOU told me to write about her you foundering idiot, thought Moha. And when I tried to suggest a seventeen year old hip female rapper you insisted she was a nobody that wouldn’t get the magazine the attention it needed.

“Second,” continued Wambua, “your piece is full of grammatical errors. Whatever happened to Mr I’ve got grammar in my DNA like grandma?”

He didn’t care. What were editors for anyway? Holding the phone some distance from his ear, he counted to fifty, and then to a hundred until he felt sure Wambua was about to shout some expletive and then hang up on him. This man didn’t believe in conversation. He believed in telling, demanding, insulting and sending threatening memos if any of his writers so much as raised an eyebrow at anything he said.

“You better send me something else by midnight or by God you’ll be living with chokoras on River Road by December!” And with that, the devil hung up.

Good thing I always ignore what he tells me, Moha thought to himself. He looked at his phone for a bit, afraid of his inability to feel fear or anger at that very moment and then placed it on his coffee table. In his mind’s eye, he remembered himself writing that other story on the 17-year-old Karun from that band that every kid was talking about. Camp Mulla, was it? Yes; Camp Money.

“That’s one camp I wouldn’t mind joining,” he said aloud. He looked at his watch, the devil had spoken for a solid 20 minutes. He’d wait until 11:30 and then send it. You’ll never catch me pants down devil, he told himself.

Saturday June 9, 2012

It was a few minutes past midnight when Moha hit the send button on his laptop and  went back to planning his suicide. He knew he’d never go through with it, but planning it gave him something to pour his morbidity into. That way, he wouldn’t be in a bad mood when he went to work later that morning. Nor would he annoy or scare Julie, that new Editorial intern from the 6th Floor. Oh how he wanted to have something with her. He was even willing to work on a Saturday just so that he could flirt with her, get a whiff of her perfume and pretend to accidentally touch her hand. Anything for her. He sighed, leaned back on his sofa and stared at his TV as thoughts of Julie's tear stained face came to him. 

"She should be the one to find my body."

                                                                                    ***

Across the hall from him, his neighbour Terry was in her bathroom, shaving her legs. She was travelling to Turkeythat morning. The driver would be picking her up at 5:30am and she had to be flawless when she landed at the investor’s conference in Istanbul. Eight hours of sleep on the plane would have to be enough. She’d just take a quick cold shower at the hotel, change her clothes and fire up her brain with a searing cup of coffee. They would love her, they’d love the proposal, they’d love her strategy and then she’d be rich.

She started to fantasize about all the things she’d do with that retainer she’d be getting every month. It would be huge. She had no doubt that they’d agree to it. And why not? She was promising miracles and she intended to deliver. These guys would be impressed. And if all went well, she’d quit her job at East Africa’s largest investment company, Black Gold Financials Limited and become a lone wolf. Eliminate the middleman. That was the goal. Her employers at the company never took her seriously. And if they did, well they didn’t pay her like they did. And she was tired of giving it her all for a bunch of men who thought of her as a toy they could use to get sexual release. That was going to end. Today.