These portraits are brought to you by the author of Maggie's Milkman and Extraordinary Rendition.
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The Tourist
I guess you don’t expect it to be quite this hot, and I
guess if you’re on holiday you bloody well ignore the conditions and do what
you planned to do anyway. Who comes to Prague to hang out in air-conditioned
shopping malls? No, when you come to Prague you climb up to the castle, cross
Charles Bridge and go up to Petrin come rain or shine, and today was definitely
shine. And you could see the weather had taken its toll on the tourist as he
came into the café. He looked like he’d just crossed the Sahara in search of
water. He looked around the oasis of a café wondering if it was just a mirage,
a figment of his scrambled, heat addled mind. He sat down with his back to me
and picked up the menu and used it as a fan. I took a slurp of my iced tea and
watched him take his handkerchief and mop his brow for what must have been the
umpteenth time that day. Then, he slipped his rucksack off his back. I smiled
to myself. There was a sweat patch so dark it had completely changed the colour
of his light shirt and it was a perfect imprint of the rucksack he’d just
removed.
She was small and petite, not an ounce of fat on her body,
yet in her tight black t-shirt and yoga pants she had all the curves of a
roller coaster. It looked like she was trying to make up for her lack of height
by standing very straight and proud and that was having the effective of
accentuating her soft curves further.
Music leaked from her headphones; was her gentle swaying dancing or the
motion of the tram? She was arrogantly pretty, her dark brown hair was scraped
back into a ponytail revealing a perfect face, her brown eyes sparkled and a
small, smug smile sat on her lips. Her nose was delicious in more ways than
one, it was small and dainty and adorably pretty and it had a small blob of
caramel nestled on it. I smiled to
myself and then looked out of the window of the tram I didn’t want to be
accused of staring at the girl, I’d learnt my lesson from last time, but nothing
outside the tram could hold my attention when the very meaning of beauty was
standing just about a metre away from me. I looked back at caramel nose and
smiled to myself again
Sleepless nights
Vic lay on the damp sheets, sweat on his brow, on his neck,
on his chest. The air hung hot and heavy, pinning him to the bed, trapping him
like prison shackles. He could hear the flap of moths’ wings overhead like police
surveillance helicopters while the mosquitos trumpeted their presence, circling
like vultures over his prone body waiting for the moment to start the feast. The
room was full of corpses; dead insects that Vic had managed to swat. But for
each dead body, Vic knew there were at least 5 more creatures, creeping,
crawling, leeching, lurking, an army of bugs invading the room. The plague of
insects was the price Vic had to pay for the open window, the hope that there
might be a gentle breeze to cool his sodden brow. But any breeze there was was
like an old fashioned hand dryer in a gents toilets; warm and lackadaisical and
not fit for purpose, but the thought of closing the window was out of the
question.
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