Read Online The World of the End by Ofir Touché Gafla - Free Book Online Page B

slacker ponytail, swooping down in front of my mother’s womb at the critical moment. That, my friends, is abuse! I’ll always carry that strand of hair on my upper right corner! The bubble of perfection was popped pre-partum and I haven’t even mentioned the maltreatment I received at the hands of him and his wife. You brought me into this world, thank you very much! You shoved me into an album along with my sisters: thanks again. You did not open that album once in ten years and you know what? I don’t even mind the indifference, I can bear the affront, but what have you got against aerating? Let’s see you live in the house for ten years without opening a window. Why can’t you understand that each and every one of us needs to be framed and placed in a visible spot, like that kitschy one with you and the kid, who, by the way, is gravely undernourished, if you haven’t noticed.
    For an entire decade, we’ve been suffocating in the coffin you crafted for us, you ingenious humans, and you still don’t get it. The picture of you two hugging at the castle in Cardiff, okay; the fragrant landscape shots, fine; but did you forget what the wife of the righter stepped in? All my sisters keep a more than polite distance, turning their noses, yearning for me to depart. I learned to live with the burden, and you could say that my nose-holding sisters learned to live with the smell, but then, all of a sudden, a decade later, you decide to open the album and pull me out. How exciting! Someone’s finally paying attention to me. My sisters breathe easy. We all wonder where I’m going.
    Shockingly, you give me to the old geezer. I don’t even want to go into the insults he hurled at me; let’s just say that I wish him a long life and a brutal senility. From the moment that appalling artist shoved me in his pocket, I knew I was in danger. I spent a whole month lying in his pants, dying of boredom. I wanted to scream—since when do we fold a photograph, ay?! But the fool had a stroke and I had to suffer through his repulsive shudders. Thank heavens they force patients to wear a uniform, or I would have spent a month at that depressing hospital. Luckily, his wife took his pants and threw them over the couch in the guest room. Just like that, for a month, as if I was worthless. At the end of the month, Kobi and his wife arrived at the artist’s house and asked for me back. They mumbled something about me being the only picture they had of the righter and his wife, and that they’d love to get me back in the album. The old lady didn’t waste any time. She fished around in the pocket and returned me to them.
    I returned to my owners with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was upset by the way they carted me off a month before; on the other, life in the coffin was better than wasting away in a ratty pair of pants, especially if you take into account the horror stories I’ve heard about the washing machine. Kobi’s wife put me in her pocketbook, forever changing my fate. They thanked the artist’s wife and then decided to stop for coffee on the way home. After an hour at the café, pleased to have me back in their custody, about to order the check, the woman excused herself to go to the bathroom, saying she’d be just a minute. Kobi laughed and joined her. The surreptitious smiles didn’t elude me. It wasn’t the first time, and I imagine it wasn’t the last. But it was the last time they saw me.
    The shamefully libidinous couple forgot the bag under the table. Five minutes after they got up, a young woman, with the look of a starving college student, walked into the café. With truly shocking nonchalance, she spotted the forsaken bag, picked it up, slung it over her shoulder, left a small tip, and walked out. I shuddered, knowing I was in the hands of a criminal. She bolted out of the place and only slowed to a walk at the corner, where she went through the bounty. She opened the wallet and smiled. Crime pays well. She