The melting man

Missing In Venice

I woke up, feeling cold air creep it's way up the spine of my body. I lifted my arms out into the freezing air of this time of season. My hands roamed the surface of the cover for the extra blanket I always keep rolled up next to me. When I felt nothing there. I rolled around under the covers. This time I lifted my other arm and searched the lift side of my bed where I always had a warm sweater to pull over my body in cases like this. I still felt nothing, stubborn I stayed in bed.

My stubbornness always last only two minutes against the cold of this time season. Forced, I miserably stood up and faced the cold weather. I could already see how the skin of my bony fingers and dried up from the cold, my fingers now a cold blue and purple shades with a little bit of yellow in a few areas. I hate this time in season. I opened my eyes and looked to the feet of the bed on the right side where I kept my gloves. It will normally be under my pillows but I had not worn them.

I soon realised that this is not my room. I was now freezing my limbs in the sick bay. I sat up my eyes wide open in confusion. I was alone in this dimly lit room it was low energy lights that works during load shedding. I was freezing on this bed the door to the sick bay is always open due to obvious reasons. I knew I could not close the door to stop the cold from coming into the room. I had put on two pairs socks and a pair shoes and walked the length to the doorframe.

I poked my head out the door and looked if there was anyone I knew around. There was no one I knew. I walked out of the room towards the secretary's desk to figure out how I ended up in the sick bay when I was with Ayesha and Mihle in the Life Orientation class. The secretary was a short lady with hair that was always dyed red. She always wore a black knee high heeled boots with brown lipstick she always replied in the same language you spoke. She taught herself all the eleven official languages of South Africa.

She was on the phone speaking Zulu when she saw me opening the tinted glass door to her office. After I had closed the door I had followed her eyes from me to one of the vacant chairs placed along the wall opposite her desk at first I had not want to sit on the cold chairs but I soon realised that I was still very much tired and sit down lazily into the chair. My body shivered as I made contact with the freezing cold of the chair. I knew that this was going to be a long day.

When the secretary was done with her phone call she had told me that I could go ahead and leave the office and straight to my room. The walk of shame, you always felt ashamed when you walk to or out of the school's office even if you had gone nothing wrong, you always felt terrible, or maybe it was just me. I made my way to one off the rowboats and got ready to paddle my way to the living containers. The rain had filled the "roads" that use to be a parking lot into a big lake/dam.

The climate made this time of season look like we lived in Venice. The flood boats had never lifted from the ground yet. The local government was extra cautious with the flood and had put us in the boats assuming the worst would happen. The dark water of the lake was still as the walls of the flood boats lifted against the wind, if the wind come from the east, the east side of the flood boat's will rise it wall to block the winds. The wall was made of chalk and everyone feared going near the pale chalk wall. 

I paddled my way to the living containers which was quite the workout. I think I was going to have lower back pain from this paddling. Even with the flood boat's chalk walls in place you still had to fight against the south-easterly wind that pushed the rowboats further and further into the canal. You would have to watch out for the on coming shipping containers that will always go bump when you collide your rowboat with them. I was having a lot of trouble rowing the damn boat, this time of season always made me grumpy, just why?

The dangerous south-easter pushed me and my rowboat so strongly that I had felt it rise above the water and climb the pavement and bumped right into the door of my room. I really hated this weather with a passion. I had to now fix the miss that this stupid weather put me in. I grabbed the rowboat and tied in to the pole with a double knot that I knew I was going to regret later. I was sometime the course of my own problems. I matched on my tip toes into the room wanting to leave Ayesha.

Ayesha and her confrontation for as long as I could avoid it. I was determined to prolong my situation for like two days or so but I knew that it was just me and my wishful thinking. Fate would let me just have until tomorrow morning and I would just have to take what fate has given me and eat it up and she would most certainly make sure that I swallowed. My truth had to be taken in one way or another and fate had jotted it down long before Van Wyk learnt to hold her paint covered brushes.