Dear readers

As stated on my profile, My name is Vhuhwavho Maumela. I am 18 years old and I love to write and read stories. Thank you for reading through my stories and supporting my blog. One day when im older I would like to write a novel( maybe even two). I am just starting to show my stories to people outside my family or friends. I would really love your views and opinions on my writing. please do feel welcome to comment or contact me directly at vhuhwavhomaumela@gmail.com. I am open to ideas and advice to. thank you.

yours sincerely
Missvee, Vhuhwavho Maumela

cruelity of the universe

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The smell had been lingering for a while now. I am quite sure passers thought it was a cat.  Cats die frequently in Hilbrow, Johannesburg. I am sure it was not just here. It was all over South Africa. Where I come from Limpopo, was a naturally beautiful province. We had cats there normally wild cats. They died all the time. They were hit by cars or killed by other cats. It was normal, cruel, but normal. Many say it’s the universe’s way of balancing life in the animal kingdom. I simply say its cruelty of the universe. It was also very normal to have such smells in Hillbrow, after all, this suburb is known for high crime, prostitution and drug abuse, but above it all was pollution.. I don’t think I had breathed a breath of fresh air since I got here. The air was dense, heavy with the life around this place. Limpopo’s air was clear and fresh, but a man must go out into the world and find his purpose. With my highest academic achievement being a mere high school certificate I had set out to Johannesburg to find a job. This city is known as the city of gold, city of dreams; the USA has New York City. South Africa has Johannesburg; the biggest economic city in the country. It sounds all glamorous when you don’t live in it, but this place, I have learnt, is the wide road to hell that is mentioned in the bible.

I stood there in disbelief. It was not a cat. It wasn’t even a dog. It was a baby; a dead baby. The lingering smell was the smell of his tiny body rotting in the flat trash storage bins.  He looked…I don’t know. I simply cannot find a word to describe that sight without being disrespectful of the dead. It is custom in the South African black community to respect the spirit of the dead no matter how young. I looked at him. He did not look like he was resting. The looked tired of screaming. He looked like he was calling out and no-one seemed to hear. Well, not until now. His eyes where filled with blood and his gut cut wide open. Who in his right mind would do this to a child? He looked no older than a year old to me. But I wouldn’t know: I had never really seen a kid grow in front of my very eyes.  What do I do with a dead baby?  If he were alive, I could take him in; try to give him the love he needs because I felt like he had died too young. I felt he had never really experienced the love a father can truly give to a son.

And then I looked around me. I was in Johannesburg. What would happen to me if I reported this to police? The police would find its mother and she would be questioned.  If she knew I had reported this, she would probably try to kill me. I know I sound paranoid, but this is clearly a woman that had killed before. Maybe I am being too quick to judge. Maybe the child was abducted from his mother and she didn’t know where he was.  I felt a chill down my spine. I was never a man of fear, but today, right now was different. I felt scared. The abductors could be watching me right now. They could be aiming a gun at me. I could turn around and find a man with a knife. I could be dead in the next minute; all because I tried to call the cops on a dead baby. I turned around, hesitated a bit, but moving on. As I moved away from the bin I felt slight relief. I was escaping the danger. Every step I took felt safer. My father had always told me to always do the right, humane thing, but my father was not here now and the child was dead already, I convinced myself. What good could I be to him now? This was Johannesburg and it was no place for a man like me. Someday someone would find him and maybe they would do the right thing for me.  I couldn’t help the child. I simply couldn’t.

It still haunts me today. Twenty years later. I still wonder to myself. Did anyone ever find the child? What if he had truly been abducted? Has the mother found peace? I really wonder if I could have helped her find her child. But what if it was her that had killed him? Was she ever prosecuted? Does the child’s DNA still linger in that place? Did another man find the child? Did he call the police or did he submit to fear the same way I did? I will never know neither will I forgive myself.

my father's fate

Daniel couldn’t believe this. The man he had grown up to respect as his father had just been arrested and sentenced to death by hanging. His own father was the serial killer that Britannia had suffered from for the past three years.  Eight women had been killed and two were left to die in the woods and found by police after a whole week of searching. They had described the suspect to police. Daniel remembered the day he saw that photo. Even when he saw that the man bore much resemblance to his father, he did not want to believe his father was responsible for this. How could he be? Rosemary had been attacked and killed by the serial killer. It couldn’t be him. Why would he rape and murder his son’s own fiancée? But police evidence had proved it was him. He had raped and murdered all eight victims including his beloved Rosemary, the women he had sworn to marry.

He took one look at his father. This was him, the man who had taken the life of his beautiful wife to be.  He felt partially guilty because although this man had killed seven others, he felt as though his heart would excuse all of it if he hadn’t touched Rose. How could he touch his son’s fiancée? She was forbidden fruit, especially for him. At once Daniel gathered the courage to speak.  “Why dad? Why Rosie?  Of all the women in Britannia, why did you have to touch her? My one and only true love, why did you have to take her away from me? Father, I loved her. Of all the women in the world father it is her that I loved, tell me why you had to take her away from me” Richard looked at him. There he was, Daniel, the little boy he had loved from birth. He had watched him grow and cared for him more than he had cared for his other children. He was proud of him. Dan was an excellent lawyer; he owned 5 businesses in town. How could he tell him he did all this out of pure insanity?  How did he tell him he had the urge to kill and make people suffer after he had witnessed his own wife murdered three years ago? How could he tell him he was angry at the world for not attempting to find the men who had entered his house and slaughtered his wife with an axe?

 

And then he spoke “I am sorry Danny; I didn’t know it was her. I wouldn’t have touched her” and then his eyes glittered, tears streamed down his face. “Danny, I’m sorry” he said this and he looked down. That had been the events of their last meeting. Tomorrow he would see him again in the prison hanging room. His father would be killed tomorrow. He would have to suffer the consequences of his wrong doing. He would be murdered like he murdered Rosie. Murdered the same way mother had been murdered three years ago. He could appeal and represent his dad in court. They could appeal for a lighter sentence, but he was not going to do that. Not to the man who had killed the love of his life. Not to him, he would have to die. 

 

He looked at him. He was sure he had been the last person his father had seen. His other siblings did not show up. They were angry at what he had done to people. For him, it was different. He had a grudge to hold. He wanted to see it; the death of a man who had ruined his life. He felt happy but sad; the kind of sadness that completed him. And when his father’s neck broke, he felt his heart ache and then he realised what he had done. He had let his father die. He felt no better than his father, he felt as though he had killed a man; as if he had pulled the rope that had killed his father. His father had never tried to appeal solely. He had placed the ball in Danny’s court and Daniel felt as though he had failed to play. He remembered the promise he gave to Rosemary’s corpse. “I will make sure the man who did this pays with his life” he had promised, but then he wouldn’t have dreamt it to be his own father. He left feeling like a true lover and big hero to his late fiancée yet feeling like an even bigger traitor to his father. As he drove home he wondered to himself, what will separate a man and his father if it isn’t true love?