Read Online We Ate the Road Like Vultures by Lynnette Lounsbury - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lynnette Lounsbury
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everyoneâs eyes as I dropped my jeans with trembling hands and tried to squat over the hole with any sense of poise, dignity and simple balance. I failed in all three and at one point in the cascade and had to put my hand on the floor to steady myself, possibly contracting both HIV and cholera. I donât thinkanyone got any sort of look at my bag of tricks but my bare arse garnered the attention of perhaps eighty people, and the sheer pale glow of it inspired the sort of awe usually reserved for weaponry and wealth in that part of the world. One man grinned at me with both of his teeth showing and clapped as I finished and stood and pulled everything up and trying to cover up as quickly as possible. I smiled wryly and bowed to my audience who responded with scorn and disgust, though one group of three men examined me in a way that reduced me to primal terror and I stumbled back to my bare patch of wall and huddled down into a ball, hoping they would stay where they were.
I thought of Adolf and knew he might be dead, that bruise on his belly spoke, even to my medical ignorance of internal injuries, and I doubted he was being seen by a doctor, but he was clearly not in good enough shape to be in this cell with me. Here was a man I barely knew and I was already devastated by his potential death, perhaps cos it was partly my fault, not a huge part, but somehow I knew it was me that haddrawn a bank robbery upon us, not Adolf who would be more likely to win a foreign lottery and donate it to a rebel leader fighting for freedom against a corrupt government.
The men were still watching me, whispering, though they stopped when a guard opened the cell door and pushed in a large tub of water and a bucket full of small ripped-up hunks of bread. I knew I shouldnât touch the water but I dived for the bread as quickly as everyone else, kicking and clawing in a way I hadnât imagined possible, until I felt a hunk in my hand and scrambled backwards, head down, to devour it in my corner. The tub of water sloshed all over the place in the melee, and a bloody fight erupted between two older men. Nobody came to stop it and no one in the cell bothered with more than curiosity as the men bit and tore at each other, screaming and cursing and finally moaning in pain. The larger man took a bite out of the smaller manâs eyebrow that left a gaping bloody wound, and the smaller man, blinded, curled immediately into a ball to protect himself from the rain of blows and kicks that followed. The larger mankept kicking the smaller manâs body and legs and back and head long after he was still. Only the sudden and putrid smell of shit let us know the moment he died and of course, cos I was in hell, nobody came to remove the body, it just lay there hour after hour in the middle of a crowded room that, despite being dark and made of thick concrete, was still hotter than most places on the planet, and whether or not the body started to decay, that sweltering pile of shit made our eyes run and, a few of the weaker of us, heave.
To make my life even less bearable the whore, the toothless, matted black-haired whore, found herself another customer and, while they did move to the corner of the room and the room was very crowded, I could still hear, and, unfortunately, see, as she leaned against the wall, hitched up her skirt to reveal her skinny bruised buttocks and let him pound into her for the longest ten minutes of my incarcerated life. It was a car crash, I truly didnât want to look but it was very hard not to, her head down and hair covering her face, his buttocks over the top of his sack pants clenching and pounding, his dirtyhands gripping her hips and his breath puffing and panting in time with his lust. I had never seen anyone have sex outside a television screen and it was the most raw, sad thing I had witnessed, far less dignified than the man who was kicked to death on the floor and lay dissolving in his own acid shit. I
I thought of Adolf and knew he might be dead, that bruise on his belly spoke, even to my medical ignorance of internal injuries, and I doubted he was being seen by a doctor, but he was clearly not in good enough shape to be in this cell with me. Here was a man I barely knew and I was already devastated by his potential death, perhaps cos it was partly my fault, not a huge part, but somehow I knew it was me that haddrawn a bank robbery upon us, not Adolf who would be more likely to win a foreign lottery and donate it to a rebel leader fighting for freedom against a corrupt government.
The men were still watching me, whispering, though they stopped when a guard opened the cell door and pushed in a large tub of water and a bucket full of small ripped-up hunks of bread. I knew I shouldnât touch the water but I dived for the bread as quickly as everyone else, kicking and clawing in a way I hadnât imagined possible, until I felt a hunk in my hand and scrambled backwards, head down, to devour it in my corner. The tub of water sloshed all over the place in the melee, and a bloody fight erupted between two older men. Nobody came to stop it and no one in the cell bothered with more than curiosity as the men bit and tore at each other, screaming and cursing and finally moaning in pain. The larger man took a bite out of the smaller manâs eyebrow that left a gaping bloody wound, and the smaller man, blinded, curled immediately into a ball to protect himself from the rain of blows and kicks that followed. The larger mankept kicking the smaller manâs body and legs and back and head long after he was still. Only the sudden and putrid smell of shit let us know the moment he died and of course, cos I was in hell, nobody came to remove the body, it just lay there hour after hour in the middle of a crowded room that, despite being dark and made of thick concrete, was still hotter than most places on the planet, and whether or not the body started to decay, that sweltering pile of shit made our eyes run and, a few of the weaker of us, heave.
To make my life even less bearable the whore, the toothless, matted black-haired whore, found herself another customer and, while they did move to the corner of the room and the room was very crowded, I could still hear, and, unfortunately, see, as she leaned against the wall, hitched up her skirt to reveal her skinny bruised buttocks and let him pound into her for the longest ten minutes of my incarcerated life. It was a car crash, I truly didnât want to look but it was very hard not to, her head down and hair covering her face, his buttocks over the top of his sack pants clenching and pounding, his dirtyhands gripping her hips and his breath puffing and panting in time with his lust. I had never seen anyone have sex outside a television screen and it was the most raw, sad thing I had witnessed, far less dignified than the man who was kicked to death on the floor and lay dissolving in his own acid shit. I
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