Thirty-Three Teeth

Farewell the Diarrhetic

Old Auntie See lived in a shed behind a peeling white French colonial mansion that now housed five families. For a living, she bought fruit at the morning market, cut it into colorful slices, and sold it from a card table beside her back gate.

Business was never too brisk, since money for luxuries had become scarcer. As a result, her main diet was overly ripe fruit, which saw her spending much of her nights in the tin latrine behind the shed.

On that particular Sunday night, whilst engaged in her dribbly business, she thought she heard a growl. There were footsteps through the undergrowth of her uncared-for garden. They were too heavy to be those of a dog, but somehow too zigzag and rambling to be those of a person. She called out anyway: “Can’t a woman have a shit in peace any more?”

There was no answer. The noises stopped. And after a few more minutes she forgot all about them. Diarrhea, in its most vindictive state, can erase even thoughts of terror.

Some twenty minutes later, she groaned and rearranged her long cotton phasin around her waist. She stepped through the corrugated tin door, and before she could stoop to wash her hands in the paint can basin, that thing was on her. She had no time to scream-to run-or even to turn her head to see what was biting into the back of her neck. With one swipe of its powerful arm, she was dead.