THE STRANGE BEING IN MY MIDST
by Sonja Brown
“Do you smell gas?” De-Bra asked as we sat drinking wine.
“I turned on your oven to heat the quiche, I thought it works with power,” I replied, suddenly worried.
“What do you use for brains?” she sighed, put her wine glass down and disappeared into the kitchen.
I think it took three minutes.The sound of an explosion was so deafening I threw half a glass of wine in my own face.
“Fuck it!” screamed De-Bra and moments later a strange being staggered past me…and right into the bathroom.
That strange creature was wearing the same tracksuit as…oh my word, De-Bra.
I wiped my wine face with my t-shirt and hurried to the bathroom.
I’m telling you, my brain didn’t know whether to make me laugh, cry or run out the front door in shock. My feet stood glued to the tile floor while my tongue looked around my mouth for something to say.
The toilet seat was down and De-Bra sat on it, in shock. Her round knees trembled in unison with her chin. Shame, man. Her face came out of a Van Gogh painting, the hair scorched white and nearly frizzed down to her scalp. Eyebrows and eyelashes? Let’s not go there. Plus the gas explosion had given her face a painful sunburn.
“You need a hospital,” I croaked. “Let’s go.”
At Linmed they gave her one look and told me to get her ass to emergency. All the way there she never said a word. Same here, but I wasn’t in shock anymore, I was scared. When De-Bra put her mass behind a blow you were going down. And it was my fault she looked like a coal miner who got drunk on the job and stayed there for a week.
Later, back at her house, I had to help her undress for a much-needed bath. Shower was out with that tender skin. And with those hands and that face, partly hidden behind green gauze, she reminded me of a well-done frog. She spoke with some difficulty, I prayed the pucker wasn’t going to be permanent.
“I’m going to kill you when my hands work again,” she said.
“Come on, no-one said stick your head in the oven!” I tried to defend myself while carefully wrestling her blackened t-shirt over her head.
“How else was I supposed to get to the burner, bitch?”
“De-Bra, you’ve never really used that oven, have you? The burner button is on the outside. How the hell did you turn the oven on?”
“With a lighter, of course,” she hissed.
“In a gas oven? Are you crazy?” The look I got warned me not to say another word. De-Bra just sitting on me could cause a great deal of pain. So I got busy taking off the rest of her clothes and helping her into the bath. I was offering her a soft sponge to soap herself when a really nasty thought hit me. The mocking look in her eyes told me she was ahead of me on this.
No, forget it. This is a true story about De-Bra too thick to work a gas oven, it’s not about me soaping her all over and cleaning her everywhere…please don’t make me even think about it.
I’ve been looking after De-Bra for three days now. I’m her friend. It’s my duty. Even though I regularly feel a powerful urge to run screaming down the street. De-Bra is not an easy person to live with.
We bought her a new gas stove. It will be delivered tomorrow. Later, when she’s out of the gauze and bandages and no longer dream of killing me, we’ll worry about getting her new eyebrows and eyelashes.