The JRB presents new flash fiction by Abbey Khambule.
~~~
New Year’s Eve
Up in Moulin Rouge, Joel tucks a Powerball ticket into Proverbs and looks out the window past the discordant art deco sign.
Across the potholed shimmer of Esselen, a box TV falls from a hijacked high-rise, heralding a new year—a new riot.
The fall barely startles a stray chasing his tail in the neon-lit rain. Soon, he’ll cower and shiver when fire cracks in the sky, lapping at the moon.
‘Happy New Year!’ the Wits alumnus shouts at the JMPD, although the clock hasn’t struck. The men in blue-and-brown are here for a domestic brawl, but frankly, they’d rather be suborned at roadblocks.
Joel wishes he’d rather joined the metro in his earlier life. Since December 16th, he’s had no single dream and has repeated the same lottery numbers that last returned him R25. In the autumn of his life, his two pots are emptied.
‘Noma yini bossa yami!’
Or was it ‘Alms for the poor!’ the Wits boy had hooted at him this morning when he went across Claim to buy the lottery ticket?
Either way, it doesn’t matter now, as it didn’t matter then, for Joel was and still is lost in thought, brooding over the blood that sheened the concrete and mirrored the path of the babbler across the sky. He still wonders what it means, in the Fafi world of dreams.
~~~
- Abbey Khambule lives and works in Johannesburg. His literary work has appeared in Brittle Paper, DRUM Magazine, Jalada Africa, Kweli Journal, Litro Magazine, New Contrast, New Coin, Olongo Africa, The Pomegranate London and The Johannesburg Review of Books, among others.
