The taxi-driver smiled ruefully at me. I was already uncomfortable so I smiled back. I checked myself suspecting something might have fallen off me as I scrambled into the car; nothing had. My wallet was in my pocket where I had left it earlier that evening, too tired to care. My Maplet was unharmed – Dew’s dot had stopped moving – and we were slowly closing in on her dot in Mega. I wondered what she was doing in Mega. I remembered vaguely, some advert I had seen back at the Armor about a show in Mega. Was her lover taking her to see some show?
The driver bashed into my train of thoughts suddenly jolting me back to the dark and unknown road that was reality. I would have been stoned to coma than believed I had already travelled this same road once on my way here.
Bushes as tall as basket-ball players ran past us as we neared the lights of the city – the actual city, not the outskirts now – of Qastivity. I did not hear what the driver had said so I asked him with a questioning ‘Eh?’ what he had said and he quite cheerfully repeated himself.
“Reckoning your thoughts is ocean deep,
This has caused curiosity to heap.
Please don’t think me a creep,
But do you dare allow me a peep?”
I thought about his request. Who spills marital secrets and issues to a taxi-driver they just met? Then I remembered an episode of a television series I watched – Rookie Blue – where a girl had unwittingly revealed how alone she would be that night to serial killing taxi-driver. A chill ran down my stiffened spine and I stared at the driver.
He got the message behind my eyes and said quickly,
“It is said, ‘curiosity kills the cat.’
Having mewed, it’s clear I am no rat.
Please ignore this nosy gnat
Who perches though blind as a bat.”
I quickly repented of my resolve. I decided to let him in on my problems.
“My wife is Dew dropped on my world
She left our room without a word.
So here I am in hot pursuit
To catch the thief who steals her fruit.”
He frowned at this. He didn’t seem to like what he had heard. Understandable, I thought, I didn’t like it either, but I had to know for sure. I couldn’t sleep tonight knowing – or even suspecting – she was out with someone else; on our time too. I looked at the Maplet, she was still in Mega.
I said,
“I could be catching other prey
But I am not a hunter.
Instead I hope and I pray,
My dove is no kingfisher.”
He smiled sadly at me through his rear-mirror and replied,
“In my opinion, we are all hunters
Like planets surround some stars
To deny this birth is pain
Like the feelings you now gain.”
I sighed. Not out in agreement with him but mainly because I had argued this quite frequently with my close friends when I told them about my suspicion.
“Only a fool will deny GOD
Thus the wise must revere him
As vengeance is the LORD’s
It is my choice to not help him.”
The driver squinted at me before snorting in disbelief. I knew what he was thinking; what was coming next, and it came. He asked me the same question my friends back home usually asked (even though I USUALLY had the same answer) only this time he asked it when I didn’t have as much fortitude as I usually did. I was contemplating my answer before he asked,
“You are wise but so naïve?
You walk the path but dodge its end.
Should guilt arise, will you forgive?
Or bring your marriage to its end.
Your wife be sorry she might beg
And plead from you a second chance
Or she might say, ‘Don’t break a leg,
Divorce is not a lovely dance.’
Either way prepares your words.
And makes less blunt your fleshy sword
To see beyond a lie to loot,
You must devour the bitter truth.”
Even after he was done speaking, he didn’t look at me. I could see – and feel – the pain on his face; the anger in his eyes and the wrath of his words. I buckled under pressure. My mind couldn’t produce a suitable enough retort.
2nd Daniel 