chapter 2
1770 Words
Insomnia is a midnight spirit with unbridled appetite, of tossing your mind into world of thoughts. You remain helpless when it strikes.
It sometimes make you freak out, thinking of the food in your hobby your uptown boyfriend or your favorite cow grazing in up country.
I like chocolate. My affair with chocolate is beyond endearment. Its an outright addiction.
Usually when i lost sleep at night. I would think of chocolate. I would then have no option but to call my street vendor. A model girl with enticing tropical elegance. She is called Kate.
Hey Jack,i am sorry to bother you at such an odd time
Jack: Who are you and what the hell do you want?
My name is Eugene, God is good, I don't want any hell
Jack: so what do you want?
I was requesting if i can get bittersweet chocolate from your wife.
Jack: crazy!! She is asleep .
I know she isn't asleep , please i might die if i don't savor the taste of chocolate tonight, just help me out.
Silence
Jack are you there?
Silence
Jack please!
Jack; she can't talk
I know my chocolate vendor very well , she is not dumb.
Jack; (gasping in deep breath) she can't talk to you right now. I am suppose to know her better.
Kate; hey , what do you want?
My favorite chocolate...
Kate: Bittersweet chocolate?
Yeah
Kate: why don't you consider milk chocolate today?
I haven't tasted that.
Kate: its sumptuous
Can it heal a broken ego?
Kate: what?
I mean what makes it all tasty ?
Kate; it has cacao mixed with sugar, actually what makes it extraordinarily is the vanilla flavor
And who does all this mixing of all those ingredients?
Kate: they are called Purist.
That sounds like a consultant in the office of the holy spirit.
Kate; Goodnight, come and get it tomorrow in my stall.
But i wanted now?
Silence
Hey, is anybody there?
Silence
Goodnight silence
Silence
Sssssssssssss
But i don't think my problem was insomnia. Insomnia was too good to harm me at a time where my life was just good. My blogging hustle was promising, i was comfortably single and my gustsy aging mum could dance Lingala music before the glaring arthritis.
The problem was my mattress. It was demeaningly thin. The wood underneath tattooed square boxes in my body.
He has been battling insomnia. The damn gruesome demons. That crawl into a vulnerable world of an innocent kid , without a trace, f*****g everything up.
Demons that get your head spinning in a dry circle of wrath. Demons smelling grandfather's sneakers.
His name is Alex. Has got one name like a banana. Girls call her Lexy. Pucker lines rise and contort his face, when someone calls him Lexy.
Like " hey Lexy do you think a dove is the only bird that will make it to heaven?"
"Hey Lexy, do you think Osama had the coolest beards in the world"
He would purse his lips, like a teenager who lost a bet on Christmas.
Alex resides in a little cave in Elcity estate in the lip of Langas, a wild ghetto. A small room, with a creaky iron bed. A sad gas cooker. A frowny door mat.
There's a wooden box, with bundle of tatty clothes. Batch of whiskey bottles . Valium and couple of depression tablets.
There's a pair of Happy socks. Sad happy socks . Shrinking back into belly of dirt. Poor and wasting in dirt.
There's an oil painting in the creamy wall. It's of a teenager. Deadlocked. In a soft cotton boxer, bare-chested. Chilling in a balcony overlooking an ocean. Smoking pot, listening to music.
The little cave had a small window. Allowing little distorted shards of light at the day. A window that was in love with a cheap embroidered curtain.
The curtain embraced the window flawlessly. There was a naughty smell, fragments of Lexy's personality. The smell blast your nose as you enter into the cave. It smells Biblical Jezebel's armpits.
In the little cave, Lexy couldn't fall into slumber. Sleep had turned out evasive. Playing " hard to get" , like a rich Kenyan slay queen, I mean rich in foreign accent.
He would be curled in the edge of the spring bed. His back propped on the wall. Fiddling with his phone. On Google. Exploring on anything that bubbled in his mind.
He would ask questions, google would answer like a good father. A good father without crazy beards. A good father, who knows a bad guy in a black hoodie who wanted to hack your account.
Google acquainted him to the work of antiquarian writer called Susie Dent. An excerpt titled ; What Made Crocodiles Cry. Alex had a literal turbulent hunger to learn about crocodiles.
He discovered that crocodiles had dinosaurs as distant cousin. Google whispered to him like " Hey , Crocodiles are the biggest reptiles on earth. They are related to dinosaurs and birds. thank you for stopping by at such an odd hour, goodnight"
Google would show him the world. He would get to know the oldest crocodile in the world. He would later know that a group of woodpecker is called a descent.
He would learn that the name of her crush, Diana meant a special gem, a Roman goddess. The second meaning would leave him astounded. That it meant a girl rarely found , with a lumbering backside and genius smile.
Lexy just wandered vagrant in the vast world of internet until midnight. He would stop to read blogs, creative blogs. He fell in love with a Kenyan blogger. A wordsmith with a blog dubbed Bikozulu.
When it clicked 1:00 in the am. He would storm outside in a short. With a silver lighter. And packet of cigarettes. He would walk out of the gate.
He would watch cats make love in the alley. Glaring cats , watching the big screen of the sky. Watch the moon cutwalk in the corridor of the sky. Ok I am sorry, the moon doesn't do cutwalks, it slides through the sky in a soft rolling grace.
Stray dogs crossed his path. Prowling dogs with turbulent hunger. Then what fascinated him was the night runners. He loved to watch them , dance with strokes of fire and their pets giving them company.
He would play Dominoes with an old man Kim. Kim loved a night play. With his shrub of beards,he looked a little older than Biblical Methuselah. Let's say two years older than Methuselah.
Old man Kim resided at the opposite street, named East London. It's few meters from Kisumu Ndogo, a wild settlement, where thievery has gone international. The place hangs in an inebriated cloud of thuggery. The only thing that can't be stolen there is your thoughts, but you also have to be careful, less you think aloud.
When they were tired, the old man would slump into the sofa. He would chew quat. Lexy would hit a bottle of whiskey. He would later smoke in the old man lavish duplex. Kim usually started their short weird deft conversations.
Kim: hey boy
Lexy: what's up old fish
Kim: f**k, I will grind your spine the next time you call me that name or I might end up chopping off your ears and use it as an ashtray.
Lexy: easy man ,I am sorry
Kim: Ok, I was thinking of the old good days. I miss a lot. What are you thinking right now
Lexy: I am thinking of Vera Sidika
Kim: who is she?
Lexy: a Kenyan socialite. She is so beautiful. Actually to be sincere I was thinking about her ass.
Kim: you must be nasty, contemplating about a woman goodies won't help you right now.
Lexy: you see I am tempted to think God must have blessed her from behind. Sometimes I just think the Government should tax her for being that heavy.
Kim : nasty kid...
Lexy: sometimes I think her ass isn't real, like it's two gigantic balloons made of flesh and plastered on her back.
Kim: so what's you problem?
Lexy: I don't have any problem, but my concern is that why can't she leave our girlfriends in peace? Why is she always opening the curtains to her bedroom and showing them her spoiled wardrobe? Why is she sharing to much? What did her Sunday school teacher told her about sharing? People share ideas not ..
Kim: stop that nonsense, give me another puff
Some nights, Lexy just chilled on a swivel chair. Listening to uptown reggae in his transistor radio. In a lousy reception.
Some breezy nights , he would be watching porn. Tucked deep In the blanket. So that God could not watch him, with censorious reprimanding eyes. He would later yonk away, m**********g.
There are special nights, he would be in his pants thinking of Indian slay queen, swimming in algae-filled pool. Under Provencal sun.
He would kill some nights reading a travelogue. The Valley of Assassins, was his best. It dares his damn spirit of adventure.
Then on one crisp Saturday morning. He slipped into his corduroy Jeans and Jesus sandals. Pretty cool sandals indeed. Visited an office of GP in Eldorado town. A guy with sleepy catlike eyes and broad smile.
"Hi Simon" he had greeted the guy.
"Hi young man, how can I help you?"
The man had snapped back.
" I can't sleep at night...."
"Because you don't have a girlfriend?"
"Ooh no, it's just difficult for me to sleep"
"Do you think it's an animal stealing you sleep?"
"Yes, I think it's a Crocodile"
" So what do you do when your sleep is f****d up"
" I don't watch porn"
"Sorry?"
"I just fantasize, sometimes I find myself in a food joint in the streets of Hong Kong having a meal of soap fish as a Chinese model of course very brassy , in knotted chunky heel loafers,is laughing to my jokes."
" This is the thing, don't smoke and booze"
"I see"
"Smokers due to nicotine which is a stimulant, take long to fall to sleep"
"True, I also realized drunkards take long when they pee"
" Don't be silly, you have to walk out and exercise to release the built up tension. Make sure your bed is comfortable. Which music do you listen to?"
"Acid techno"
"Is that music or chemistry?"
"Hahaha, it's a music genre, with celebrated artist like Josh Wink , Alphex Twain and Djspeedy"
" Cool, the music must be quiet. Go try and let's see what happens"
- Writer
