Dont urinate here
It was a prohibiting warning by a hard-skinned landlord! The warning was amply replicated on the walls of his single-storey building with a CCTV that the head of the defaulter would roll: A “Don’t urinate here or your two kidneys shall burst into two!”
The painter of the prohibiting order, paid in full his named price, had delivered it in blood-bright letters that appeared to be bleeding at their tapered bases.
“Absolutely scary,’’ muttered Obadiah Brown about a graphic artwork he equally thought ‘splendid’ and ‘professional’. Obadiah believed he knew the still-unemployed polytechnic graduate of Visual Art, who had wrought the letters of the order. Then, instinctively, he felt the part of his back, where Anatomy claims the human kidneys are positioned.
“Well, aren’t they still there? I don’t feel their loss…”
Surely, a good reason for Obadiah’s face to flash some sort of delight: the one that naturally follows an anatomical discovery by physical touch of an organ or tissue one had feared its mysterious disappearance. Rather, Obadiah’s fingers were ready to find out for record purposes the current US Dollar worth of the human kidney and this information he picked from his browsed handset, on its screen readily displayed after typing command $262000.00.
“Goodness Heavens!” Obadiah heard himself exclaim but not from shock nor amazement. He had released the expletive simply as a reasonable reaction to a just grabbed information that is worth treasuring. He could reply to a challenge to defend his being unmoved at a time he should have emotionally celebrated his safe and intact two kidneys. God’s own very truth: it had dawned on Obadiah that the words of the prohibiting order was completely out of order: shamefully, an offence that is worse than the one it is trying to prevent with blood bright letters, also blood-rich! Obadiah was fully convinced the giver of the order had only needed to warn the urinating man against a court prosecution or an attached fine to the offence.
“Just something about the defaulter ending up in one of the foul-smelling spaces in Kijum’s congested cells.”
Soon, wisely, Obadiah got his loitering legs moving again. It is sensible to get the hell one of the places like an escapee to face the direction to their town’s newest emergency site for refuse dumping. For this site he was heading with a handful crumpled sheets of papers, on which he had written things, later rejected them and curiously would not want to see the unused things in even his trash can.
The truth one must not try to debate its veracity was that Obadiah had recently begun to breeze out of his room just for the sake of it, without plans nor their facsimiles: mostly for strolls which an onlooker might not differentiate from those of a tourist at heart. Obadiah knew he had just risked an incriminating three minutes of a loiterer on the premises of a building whose electrified walls alone meant undisguised hostility to its non-occupants and above all the owner landlord’s preparedness to frustrate the burglar with smart house-breaking ideas.
What if they had been confronted by, for example, a security of the building for suspicious movement around it? Would his waiting excuse have been “Oh! Sorry, I was only pacing round it and taking an admirer’s look”?
Of course, his mere voicing of such should be a shame for its being a sham. A fifty-two-year-old teacher with claims to sanity releasing his educated lips to an alibi that should sooner hasten his prosecution than set him free.
In a matter of a half hour, Obadiah Brown had made it to their Kijum’s garbage theatre - a stretching high-as-a-hill nauseating sight on the fringes of her third-in-rank market. From about ten meters his eyes had spotted human waste which some bastards had, unobserved, discharged at the site, also noted the vast domestic items from residents kitchens now putrefied, a quantity of industrial wastes from chemical reactions and the academic ones of crumpled papers!
Later, Obadiah was to solemnly swear with cupped hands describing a microphone that he would see to arranging for himself a Permanent Adviser about Life. Sometimes, his eyes should be ones that are shut to Dangerous Fantasy and its invidious Day-Dreaming Brother: on the whole, less fervor for the so-called Wonderful World and Beautiful People one comes across in one’s sometimes carefree strolling…
At the garbage site was a stationary Van surrounded by a half-dozen men, who it seemed would not fail to celebrate its speedy full occupation by a particular set of persons they had in mind. It was rather later that Obadiah could correctly interpret the smile that had briefly played on the lips of the youngest of them all. As roguish as it was mischievous the way they had all stood by their van and looked on, they might not have been a lot different from the Pharisees who were waiting to see if Christ would go ahead on a Sabbath day to heal a withered hand! Scarcely had Obadiah Brown sent flying into the piled-high garbage the pack of crumpled papers he had with him, when a right palm much younger and more powerful than his own right encircled his left wrist like a handcuff while its owner said all too easily “Like The Gentleman you are accompany me to that waiting van to sit in its comfortable front!”
It was not the apprehending young man’s used ‘Gentlemen’ for Obadiah that had weakened his will to resist compliance with his instruction. Clearly, Obadiah, soon-to-be-fifty-three years and a school teacher, could distinguish between a Gentleman designation of another which had been purposed for some self advancement and one from the bottom-of -a -heart. Quickly, he had grasped the challenge to hurriedly prevent more eyes from witnessing his manual handcuffing by a younger man, whose other palm was rudely fastened on the back of his trousers and actually with it forcing him towards the van. In the half-rickety four wheels of faded paint, Obadiah’s building curiosity about the nature of his offence was taken care by the youngster in an official voice that would not elaborate anything.
“My man, you’d dropped a waste matter before the official 5:00pm for it.”
“So? By the way, I hadn’t got the knowledge of this prohibition.”
“Well, you’ve just done exactly and shall pay a fine of ten thousand Leno or face a jail term of two years…
A by-far less bitter penalty than a bursting into two of one’s kidneys - Obadiah Brown had not the nerve to contest it. Already on the van was a woman with the saddest face in Kijum: evidently another catch by the Sanitation Hour Violation Squad. With her decided masquerade of a face, Obadiah was no longer in a position to judge her beauty or ugliness. However, the woman had and displayed the beautiful strength of wisely warning the oldest man among the half dozen against having to pay the ugly price men do for recklessly touching a woman’s body beginning with her shoulders.
“But who’s been touching you Bloody Dreamer,” thundered the man, a lot of attention drawing to his rough face and near walrus moustache.
“You ought to have known that I have a wife who like you has vagina.”
The woman, now in her later thirties, betrayed body moves of one who could have slumped in her seat but for courageously holding on to a will against a fall. It did appear that the ease with which her verbal attacker dropped the sacred word Vagina’ had melted her bones up to their marrows. In defeat, the poor lady could only keep repeating with an obvious stammer that the man should pity sensible men of his age and body size.
Waow! Then, an important secret has been unveiled and a magic wand the seeker could keep artfully waving against his subject has been found. It was apparent to the rough- faced man that he merely needed to be lending his lips to offence-giving sex words and the late-thirtyish woman would surrender a fight: above all, pay their fine of ten thousand Leno for violation of the Sanitation Hour for Refuse Dumping. As though, long hungering for a second dosing of the helpless woman with ‘the dirty’ , the man vulgarly remarked that she would not have got into the mess of having to part with ten thousand Leno, if she had stayed back at home for a Round Two Sex with her husband or boyfriend.
Hell’s Heat!
On the spot, Obadiah Brown began to find irresistible the ideas he had with unblinking eyes been treating like orphans. Not any more would he say “Get out!” nor its American “Gerraway!” to whomever offered him a visa to the United States of America or a chance of permanent relocation to Britain, France, Holland or Japan. But certainly he would think over a genuine offer of stay in missile-receiving Ukraine doing her best to fight back Russian Aggressors… Sure as the Heavens, a Russian Vladimir or Alexander would mistake him, even as black skinned as a raven, for a Ukrainian to silence forever.
“No, the spectacle would not look good to volunteering mourners.”
A moment for Obadiah Brown to unconditionally salute the courage of Kijumian residents in Ukraine, who had vowed to perish with their hospitable hosts rather than flown back safely to Kijum at no cost. If it was true - their heroic refusal to exit Ukraine of perceptible tension and bombing - then all the troubled zones in the world are a more tolerable theatre for habitation than their Kijum!
“For all her pretences to Peace, Love, Unity and wonderful timing of Refuse Dumping!”
At last, they made it to the squad’s prearranged base for their take-offs and the van easily found for entry the gate to its unkempt expanse with ramshackle walls. There, Obadiah and his female fellow captive met a rather tattered sight of men and women with similar Sanitation Violation Cases to answer. Not less than forty persons, whom Obadiah had just joined in the offence of discharging a waste product before the official 5:00pm for it.
”But in their own case,” thought Obadiah, “they had dropped the real garbage stuff supreme in awful smell and not at all good to look at.”
Obadiah did not complete an eye survey of the yard with shrubs, before he espied the squalor it shamelessly offered an onlooker and only with a few head turns picked out a man who had chosen to be more vocal than less on the peculiarity of the circumstance in which the offence for which he would have to pay was committed. For some days, he had been uncommonly feverish and had taken some prescribed-by-doctor drugs that often made urinating ‘a must’ at internal of a half hour: a diuretic which had said to prove that it was really one, to this end compelling him to unlawfully pass out the emergency water of that moment by a corner of a major road. The targeted ears of a nearby sanitation staff paid not the least attention to the man’s chatters. The man has to either naturally or magically produce for lawful collection the x10000.00 Leno fine for prohibited urination on the road by users… Unfortunately the taxi-driver by occupation had just put on the road his Mitsubishi cab for a half-hour-try-your-luck roving round town when the urge to pass out water came pestering him to do it and he succumbed.
“No. don’t worry yourself,” vouchsafed at last the owner of the targeted ears but not against his will added “God is going to handle your matter while you keep staying here with us and watching out for His Miracle!”
The taxi driver was only a half talkative, not an aggressive man nor the quick-tempered. Ignore he did the cleverly breathed threats in his respondents statement. According to him, already, he had phoned his wife to inform her of the unwelcome development his main message-instruction that she try to bring along with her to the venue ten thousand Leno, plus or minus.
A full one hour later a woman who seemed to have stepped into her third trimester of pregnancy ambled into the yard and with her purposing walk towards the taxi driver confirmed her being his wife. Briefly displayed was the momentary thrill a prisoner often felt, when it was clear he would soon regain his freedom. However, the man preferred to express the thrill through vaguely thankful remarks that implied that his wife had needlessly wasted some minutes in her acting upon an instruction that was as simple as ABC…
If the taxi driver had expected his wife, even as an overweight messenger to show in before a full thirty minutes, he soon found out the much stronger reason why he had got it wrong. The suitcase he had presumed had encased his freedom-fetching ten thousand Leno only had and revealed some of his shirts and trousers plus a few items that did not resemble money and never would.
No holding things off, an alternative arrangement shall have to be made under the circumstance, unless they have no more interest in the freer air outside the squalid yard of the Sanitation Yard…
All too soon, the man’s pregnant wife had conceived one, to her as genuine as it was brilliant. Simply turning around to look and sighting a female staff of the Sanitation Squad and she was confident of a favoring response from someone of the same gender to the proposal she had to make.
And what was that proposal? That on trust, she herself be detained in the Sanitation Yard while her husband scout for the demanded sum. Perhaps, the Pregnant Thing was luckier than she had ever been all her life by having not got quite close to whom she had addressed. The suddenly upset sanitation woman could check her anger and with that the big mistake of wiring a hard slap to the face of a woman who would soon be in some labor room. But the sanitation woman make sure she breathed a meant threat to kick out the premature baby in her uterus, if she neared her again with the same proposal…
Meanwhile, Obadiah Brown was all eyes and a motionless helpless male six-footer. One thing, though, he had successfully, perhaps happily too, established: that in Kijum there had been after all True Love of the Self Sacrifice - not between Mr. A and Mr. B nor between Sanitation Workers and Sanitation Hour Rule Breakers but rather between Husband and Wives with the latter beautifully stronger in it than the former.
The woman’s husband had seen what had transpired but did not utter a syllable. To Obadiah’s great displeasure and as great wish to know his First Name and Last. Just then, the seemed to have observed a tired-looking wife, said to take care of the situation by vacating a wall-supported shaky stool he had been occupying for his pregnant darling much heavier more weary.
Truly wonders would never cease until the end of time! Only a few eyes had shown disinterest in the drama they were sure would soon unfold after Big Tummy had dared to sit on the seat offered to her by her very caring husband. Indeed more eye than less were fastened on both the spouses and the stool in contention. Three- times -complying wife made a serious move to rest her more-than-two-hundred-pounds weight on the seemingly secured two-legged wood seat that should have been four-legged and three times changed her mind as at the very last moment, each time she did shaking a rejecting head while her tiredness-fighter husband kept hammering a have-no-fear-assuring hand on the stool’s top.
“Oh my God!” gasped an Obadiah who would not help it. Before him a 21st century female Julius Caesar for having three times politely declined a three-times offered Caesar Seat Crown!
Obadiah was not missed out either on the point that in Kijum there are, indeed, men who can richly requite their wives’ extended love, even though sometimes naively or like one who should still be handcuffed for having recklessly caused the death of his subject of love…
Any wisdom now in hesitating to bury in the cemetery of the new heart-warning development his profound regrets over leaving the four walls of his cozy room for a frivolous disposal of a few crumpled sheets of a rejected write-up and getting arrested for it? If he had not yielded to the urge and got arrested he would not have met this dramatically rich scene at some other place and time…
Or would he have? Could it be a future possibility? Now in a formerly browned-out-Obadiah Brown grew a will to drop on the corrupt palms of the closest sanitation idiot close to one-third of the sum demanded as fine for the offence.
“Of course, three thousand Leno would do and should.”
He is not a blind man. A fellow detainee in that yard he had seen produce only three thousand Leno for collection by one of the extortionists and the amount gave him back his bird’s full wings to fully fly out of the squalid theatre, no returning to same.
“Why would one repair to a hovel?”
If he, Obadiah Brown, should add another one Leno to the amount he had decided he would release to them for his own release, then one more reason should be given to him by his captors.
“In the spirit of handling Mr. B’s case the way they had foully handled Mr. A’s.”
Not long the progressively spent afternoon would announce twilight and this might change the picture of things for the arresting program that is already clearly suspicious. Obadiah had in mind the entire Sanitation Team eventually showing a helpless will to collect a thousand Leno from detainees as fine, because it is getting dark and the last thing they had in mind was prosecution of offenders in a law court. None of the members of The Team Nor their faces seemed to be ones that could show up in a court room for the rigmarole of prosecution.
Just then a reason emerged for Obadiah to willingly hand over a full ten thousand Leno to the crew. All over again, the taxi driver urinating defaulter had begun to freshly pressurize his pregnant wife to sit on the wall-assisted firm stool he himself had been occupying and nothing of the unwanted had happened. Rather like Thunder with no Rainfall Escort an exasperated female watcher of the unacceptable episode struck out at Husband! He is luckily alive for having passed his water into Government’s Gutter, not into kidney-depriving gutters of Private Houses and he is here lousily anxious to waste his pregnant wife.
“What was that!”
Obadiah’s thoughtful curiosity had been stretched to the furthest. Some notions he feared might be the exact interpretation of what the sourly displeased woman had said were determinedly claiming all the spaces in his mind. So heightened was his curiosity that he could not help pleading for its satisfaction. For his hunger to be fed with some response and troubles taken Obadiah ended up being the Sanitation Yard’s only Nursery School Child on a subject he should have long known: that in Kijum Private Buildings’ Urinating Defaulters are sometimes dragged into them for forcible extraction and eventual commercialization of their kidneys: even for half the prize of their US Dollar Worth.
“What-at! Satan out of the Wilderness!”
Obadiah Brown tried to not faint and succeeded to not do so. However, he was no longer standing on the firmest of legs. Besides, the ground underneath his feet was visibly trembling.
Then, very clear, the prohibiting order he had seen on the walls of that single-storey a few hours ago for the urinating offender, had been worded as Samson’s riddle to sound like it.
“With just the can-we-bet? part of it missing!”
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