Picking the Curses (Fiction)

“I don’t know, man.”

He is still holding the cigar between his thumb and first finger, even though it’s burning dangerously low.

“These stories I mean. You don’t want to believe them. But there’s away something gets into your head when you’ve heard lots of them like me”

This is his third roll since we started sitting here. I’m in the opposite side of the room and there is like two, th

ree meters between us, but it looks like the marijuana he is smoking is affecting me more than him.

I don’t smoke bhang. Not that I’m holy or that shit (any kind of smoking is bad for the lungs).In fact, once in a while, I do boil a little bhang in my tea to help with constipation. But I don’t like the giddy feeling of that comes with “getting high” too. I’m more of an alcohol(ic?) person.

Then Natasha walks into the room. She gives me a smile as she heads straight for her boyfriend. Natasha is beautiful. You haven’t seen beauty until you've meet Natasha. I wonder why she fell for a weirdo like Ken. Although he isn’t bad face and body wise, Ken is a mess. But I haven’t figured out why I like spending time with him either. The two get into loveydovey in their couch and completely forget my presence.

I’m left to ponder over the stories Ken has told me today and wonder if they have started getting into my head too. Like the school headmaster in Mumias who died of swollen foot a week after angry villagers slaughtered goats and chickens at his office’s doorsteps, cursing him for badly caning and harming a pupil.

Or the mother of two who had to leave her matrimonial home after a big mosquito, the size of an obese woman, knocked at her door at night. Or the mad man, an immediate neighbor of Ken, who won’t stop shouting at night. Romours are that the man killed his father during a fight, and so each night, his father’s spirit comes back for a duel. He also smokes lots of canabis and sometimes asks Ken for salt.

I’ve doubted these stories. But I remember at one time I saw an old, bearded man in religious attire discarding five shilling coins, intentionally, along a road. He was chanting short prayers and throwing a coin down after each chant. I was on a bicycle, and by the time I passed him, he had already dropped a total of 30 shillings. I had heard before that curses could be transmitted through money. I couldn’t master the courage to pick those “curses”. But here I am, doubting Ken’s stories.