A short story - With friends like these, who needs the devil

Coke?

No, I want some water. My throat is parched and dry.

Coke will do?

What’s with you? I said I want water.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOO!

Oh. It’s the neighbour’s cock. Why the hell is that cock so time conscious? Can’t it just sleep, like, five more minutes? It’s morning and the sun is flooding into the room like a burst dam.

Darn! I didn’t close the curtains.

HOLD IT! The curtains in my room are never opened. In fact, I’ve boarded up the window to avoid such instances. And come to think of it, my neighbour doesn’t have a cock. I had it for supper one drunken night when I had a craving for chicken and all the Kenchics were closed. What a hearty meal it was. My equally drunk neighbour, owner of the cock, agreed with me.

Hey, what’s this? My pants are wet. I get up with a start and curse at yet another wet dream.

Oooh! How my head hearts. Will someone please stop that bloody thumping.

Sniff. Sniff.

And what the hell is that nasty smell? Other than my ‘wet dreams’ I also shitted on myself? I vigorously shake the cobwebs in my head and I also manage to shake loose the remaining nuts.

Where the hell am I?

Evidently not home.

What the? I’m in a ditch. Aargh! I jump out like my pants are on fire. Which would otherwise be impossible seeing I’m waist-deep in sh*t. I look across and see my friend, Marto (remind me to stop being his friend) and two of my other pals rising from their “bunkers” with the same shock and disgust on our faces and bodies. What the hell happened here?

It’s all coming back to me now.

It is 8.30 pm…

I’m out with my pals on one of our out-of-this-world drinking sprees. Tonight, we have targeted a slum deep in a forest that itself is deep in the bunduz. How we got here only God and Marto know. It was his idea and clearly without His blessing. We being the freaks for adventure we are, we follow him like sheep. “BAR! BAR!” we chant foolishly.

We walk into this dingy idea of a place. From outside the place looks like the owner hired a bad tempered tornado to do his deco. Kinda reminds me of my brother. So there we are staring at a joint, which Marto fondly and appropriately calls “Magegania Bar”. Once you walk in you understand. The roof is low and on one dimly lit wall is a sticker ironically stating “We should all lie low like envelopes”.

The source of light in this otherwise dark den is a lantern that’s precariously hanging above the bar man’s head like a cheap halo in a poor budget play. There are no windows. Well, even if there were any, thanks to the semidarkness we wouldn’t have seen them. One therefore wonders what would happen if the lantern was knocked off it’s perch by the tall and volatile barma___ That was close!

The owner who was in a hurry to make a quick buck had added a surprising element of design. The drinking area was sunken. I don’t mean that the floor was a tier lower. I mean that the customers sat in ditches dug around a square platform that had wood on top. Looked at it properly one would notice that this was actually the table. Poor budget at play again.

Who’s idea was this? This thought runs through our minds as we direct our shocked looks towards Marto. He shrugs his shoulders and tells us to relax as we literally sink into our seats. As soon as our bottoms are seated on the wet mounds of earth, a cold frothy liquid is placed in front of us. We stare at each other, then stare at Marto who’s salivating. We are about to apply our grade 0.5 CPR lessons (why did I skive first aid classes) on him when we realised he isn’t salivating because he has tasted the, er, liquid. He’s salivating because he can’t wait to gulp it down his throat.

Marto assures us this is the local brew and it’s called “Magegania Bridge Racer”. Oh, I will remember that name for a long long loooong time. The waiter then starts reciting a chant. It’s no chant. It’s a set of rules on how to “enjoy” the froth in front of us.

Our waiter for the night – we actually bought one round – is called Muthemba. A name I make out from the hurriedly-put-together nametag on his breast pocket. Everything here, by the way, is done chap chap. And cheaply.

Muthemba, our one-round waiter stops chanting, “I can see we have new blood here.” For a moment I think Marto had sold our souls. I panic and the saliva I swallow noisily only succeeds in amusing Muthemba who adds, “Don’t worry young man. What I mean is I have never seen your faces in this neck of the woods before.”

He had a very interesting choice of words. I should point out right now that, Muthemba has the heaviest accent, which, if we had time would be betting was Kamba, Luhya and a mix of all the 42 dialects.

“Never sip the Magegania Bridge Racer.” He chants. “You must gulp it down quickly and then rise up immediately and make for the bridge you just crossed. Make sure you get to the other side before it gets you”

Oh I forgot to mention the bridge, didn’t I?

My bad. This so-called out-of-this-world Magegania bar is located on the other side of a river, which the locals happily call River Tigana na Maundu. And THIS bridge is the only way to this once-in-a-lifetime, rather one-in-a-night, “bar”.

Yes, so we are to gulp it down and run towards the bridge. Before it gets us. What is this “IT” he is talking about? We freak. Marto is cool.

Just when we are about to ask why or what this “IT” is, out shoots Marto like a dog that has just chewed chillies. We tense. Has he seen “IT”? We look at the waiter and he has this look of, “if you are wise just gulp it and run”. Now we knew why curiosity killed the cat. It almost killed us too. We want so much to taste this brew. But at the same time we are scared of “IT”. What the heck, we only live once. And that was almost it.

“ROHO JUU!” is the chant at our…er… table. On the count of three, we lift the glasses, mugs, whatever and down the “racer” in one gulp. And then we are off. Running for the bridge as though it’s the Athletics Golden League.

Now two things. In our lack of wisdom we had chosen a “table” at the end of the bar, so running out from there was, how shall I put it… like running from the devil in hell.

It’s pitch dark with pits, sorry, seats, lining the path to freedom. And the next thing, the bridge isn’t just outside the bar. No. It’s over 100 metres away. And we aren’t exactly Asafa Powells, so clearly getting there became a 30-minute affair. Not forgetting the road to the bridge is winding. But I tell you we cut the straightest line ever.

We had only gone for a few seconds when I heard a thud. Then another. Had the others been caught by “IT”? I tried to think what “IT” was. I was far from getting an answer when “IT” got me.

Black out!

So that’s “IT”?

Now here I am waking up in a ditch. A wet ditch. With a cock crowing in the distance. To my right, I see my other pals Wamogonda and Othis, the two thuds I heard last night.

My watch, which luckily wasn’t stolen, informs me that we weren’t drinking, or should I say gulping, running and blacking out last night. All this happened the night before jana.

We had blacked out a full day.

What’s that?

It’s me screaming for Marto blood. Marto himself a despicable sight didn’t make it far either. It seems that this thing, the Magegania Bridge Racer, has a fixed distance one can reach before blacking out. If you’re a novice that is.

Talk about a drinking sprint…spree. I am not following Marto ever again.

“Let’s do that again.” beams Marto like the silly donkey in Shrek. The look we give him, would have made Shrek proud.

Wamogonda, Othis and I realise that an idle friend is the devil’s son. And Marto was more than just the son. He’s the devil himself.