Clean up the Filth

A musty film envelopes everything. Even her corpse like hand as she reaches for more stale, cornmeal bread. The chair gives a low moan as her weight shifts, its legs covered in splinters waiting to bite at her ankles. As she brings the morsel to her mouth she is interrupted “Don’t be greedy now musikana”.

The room is dark and smells of damp. Sewers surround them and the sound of sloshing and gulping is enough to make her wretch, but she is used to it by now. They used to say that this was the best place for people like her, under the streets, out of sight. She was nothing and she was where she belonged. The president had told her so. ’Murambatsvina’. ‘Clean up the filth’.

 Thick stone walls drip with the stench, and when the light is allowed to enter she can glimpse the deep indentations of the ones who have gone before. Controlled numerical scores keeping count turn to panicked scratches. Frantic cries for help, a silent screams eternally damned. The claw marks frighten her. A trickle of dried dirty blood is encrusted just below a tough broken fingernail that’s embedded in one of the blocks; it looks like it has been there for a thousand years.

She lays the bread back on the small table, keeping her head down. The floor swims in a thick black syrup that collects about her bare feet as if hiding, it fills between her toes and leaves dark red stains in her mind. The droppings from the rats get swept away; the rats themselves have been wise and escaped into their secret retreats. They know what is coming.

The guard sits up right outside, just the other side of the metal bars gobbling at home-made sadza and nyama, making her mouth water. She does not remember the last time she ate well, now she was not eager to eat, it sustained her. Her belly is swollen, more so than before. It protrudes under her thin brown shirt begging for something more. Volatile moans vibrate the scars laden across her skin.

 He watches her. He liked watching her. Sometimes he comes in for an unscheduled rendezvous but below the streets, they say no one can hear the cries of the broken.  He was not a tall man, his face was not mean. Worse. He looked soft with his rounded tummy poking ever so slightly over the top of his uniform, not untidy but comfortable. His face was a gentleman’s face and his eyes were, at a glance the colour of chocolate. Worse. He looked like a father. A closer examination of those big soft chocolate eyes revealed him. They were black and hollow.

After the meal, it would begin. Just like it had before, time and time again, the familiar pungent odour of sweat mingled with blood would fill the room and become overpowering. Only when they could stand no more, would it stop. It always began with footsteps. Rapid footsteps. Rushing to do their work, complete their task. Maybe today was the day for change. A day of reform. 

She hears them now. Scuttling along the tunnels, an eager child in hope of some magnificent gift awaiting him. She does not know his name, the one that comes. He is small and fragile looking with deep inset eyes and a low brow. The hollows in his sickly cheeks make his mouth droop down and his hands are always cold. She closes her eyes, crumples her face and tries to allow herself one more moment of silence, of calm before the screams. There are always screams. She tries each time to be used to it, used to the instruments but it is impossible and each time they revel in her agony, standing over her at the end breathless and satisfied.

The keys jingle together, almost politely. She opens her eyes. The door is pushed and they step inside. The light above her is turned on and the flood pours over her, drowning her. She is the smallest thing in the room now. She is the thing he has come for. The bag hits the table. Thud. No words. She looks into his eyes, she always does. “Shall we begin?”