RIDING HOME

Dr. John, pot bellied, dark, loquacious sixty-year old civil servant in the Ministry of Information, or Misinformation as people always said, sat in a cane chair, his favourite spot behind the new cottage he acquired for Lara, his new catch. There, across Lara, he drank and chatted, but did the former with more care and the latter as a corollary to the former. Though rich, he was selfish with money as he was with forgiveness. He never gave too much, except to beer and beautiful women and he only forgave when it was almost useless.

“I shall not remember my own name after our night together”. He said.

Lara laughed and the bulge of her mammary gland made Dr. John smile, soon, he would bury his head in between her cleavage and forget the flapping pieces on the chest of his wife whose only work included growing fatter and making children.

“It won’t be bad”, Lara said, “after all, I can remind you”.

She blew an air of kiss across the table between them and Dr. felt that, this newly acquired woman with her dark skin glowing in the warm rays of the setting sun, would take him to the heavens, and back hopefully.

And she did. For during their night together, Dr. John had coughed and gasped for air, his body twitching as he withdrew from Lara. She had quickly gone for a glass of water and on returning, dropped the glass at the sight of the man’s body, as it lay silently, lifeless with a manhood without its earlier glory.

“I shall not remember my own name”. She remembered his words and her own promise to remind him. But she would not have to, for now she looked again, after two weeks, at his body being lowered into the grave, amidst wails from co-workers at the Ministry, family members and his housewife, whose only hope of sexual fulfilment was being covered in bleak darkness, by every measure of sand, every movement of the shovel and every word of the cleric in black: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.