Thursday, August 12, 2010

A Weird Day

I was recovering from a pretty bad flu. I can't remember the last time I was so cold and it was 95 degrees when I drove home from work. Even then I had to turn the heat on and still couldn't shake the chills.

By this point, I was recuperating. I stared out of my window and saw a cop talking to a lifeguard on the other side of the fence of the community's pool. I only caught sight of this discussion because it took place near enough to some sunbathing ladies, who I imagined were quite hot as my room is kind of far away and my eyesight is beginning to wane.

I took a moment to push my eyes left when I saw another cop. And another cop. And several more cop cars. I also noticed a police helicopter repeatedly circling the community at a low altitude. I recalled that there is a detention center down the block and wondered if something had happened there. Maybe someone escaped. I didn't give it much thought, but did think of a place to hide should the need arise.

The smoke detector in my room had been periodically screeching for attention at all hours for the past couple of days, constantly waking me up. A flier warned us that the fire alarms would be tested the next day. At 11pm, the alarm went off in the hallway, but not in my room. I ignored it, but only because Cheap Seats was on TV, a rare occurrence. The alarm persisted for ten minutes, until a fire truck pulled up outside the building. Cops and firemen in one day and I hadn't even left the apartment.

The smoke detector's screeching kept nudging me out of sleep, but I was jolted when a stroke of lightning nearly hit the building, which shook violently. I managed to calm down and fall back asleep when it happened again. I finally went back to sleep when the smoke detector called me up again.

It was at that point that I decided to massacre the people of Darfur.


An excerpt from Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir's forthcoming autobiography Sudanese Shlemiel (pages 187-188).

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