Mr Mbebe awoke to find his spleen had resigned. It sat on the edge of the nightstand, tapping a tiny leather briefcase with its left arterial valve and looking thoroughly unimpressed by the acacia wood furniture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I need growth potential,\u2019 the spleen gargled, coughing up a small plume of glitter. \u2018You just drink lukewarm rooibos tea and worry about power outages. I am moving to Nairobi.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Mbebe rubbed his eyes, which briefly swapped sockets out of boredom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You can\u2019t go to Nairobi. You don\u2019t even have legs.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I have ambition, Mr Mbebe. That is far more aerodynamic.\u2019 The organ hopped off the table, landed with a wet slapping sound on the woven rug and slid beneath the bedroom door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By noon, the house was shedding its architecture. The hallway wallpaper unpeeled itself to reveal a thick layer of damp cured biltong that hummed a jaunty jazz tune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time Mr Mbebe tried to open the front door, it opened into a completely different living room where an identical version of himself was already sitting, eating a head of raw garlic and weeping over an instruction manual for a toaster that had never been invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stepped out onto the boulevard, but the red dirt road had turned into a conveyor belt of sticky mist. Commuters in sunhats floated past, their faces replaced by ticking grandfather clocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Pardon me,\u2019 Mr Mbebe said to a corpulent woman whose coat was made entirely of squalling weaver-birds. \u2018Do you know the way to the bus terminal?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018There is no terminal,\u2019 she squawked, as three birds detached from her lapel to peck at his shoelaces. \u2018The roads went on strike last Tuesday. They decided they wanted to be riverbeds instead. Now the coaches just fall into the sky.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Mbebe checked his wristwatch, but the hour and minute hands had melted into tiny fleshy middle fingers that were busy tying a miniature knot. A skyward coach whined overhead, falling up towards a violet sun that smelled strongly of burnt toast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He sat on a bench made of frozen groundnut soup and sighed. His chest felt hollow, not just because of the missing spleen, but because the universe seemed to be gently shaking him out of its pocket like loose change. He didn\u2019t fit the foggy streets, the weaver-bird coats or the fleeing organs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From inside his coat pocket, a small voice piped up. It was his left kidney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You don\u2019t need to worry, bru,\u2019 the kidney whispered, oozing a little bit of optimism. \u2018I hear Jo\u2019burg is nice this time of year.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Mbebe reached into the pocket and gently patted the kidney. It felt warm and vaguely reassuring, like a damp bean resting against his palm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Jo\u2019burg?\u2019 Mr Mbebe mused, watching a second coach tip gracefully onto its bumper and drop upwards into the violet sky. \u2018I suppose if one\u2019s spleen can seek its fortune in Nairobi, a man and his remaining organs might as well try the Highveld.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The weaver-bird woman let out a triumphant cackle as her coat suddenly unspooled itself into a flurry of yellow wings, leaving her standing on the frozen soup bench in a neatly tailored tweed suit. She didn\u2019t seem to mind; she simply tipped an imaginary hat at Mr Mbebe and began strolling across the mist as if it were a paved promenade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We\u2019ll need a ticket,\u2019 the kidney piped up again, squishing lower into his pocket. \u2018And perhaps a pair of socks for your lungs. They look cold.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Mbebe checked his chest. Sure enough, his ribcage was slightly ajar, rattling like a loose window shutter in the draught. But for the first time since his spleen had packed its briefcase and marched off into the morning, the hollow feeling inside him didn\u2019t feel like an empty room. It felt like an open door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stood up, dusted off his trousers and stepped off the kerb directly into the misty conveyor belt. The road gave a low, musical rumble beneath his soles, abandoning its dreams of being a riverbed just long enough to slide him gently toward the horizon. He didn\u2019t know where the bus terminal was or whether the skyward coaches made stops in Johannesburg, but as the mist swept him forward past ticking clocks and jazz-singing wallpaper, Mr Mbebe leaned back into the slipstream, held his pocket tight and let the world unspool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mr Mbebe checked his wristwatch, but the hour hand and the minute hand had melted into tiny fleshy middle fingers that were currently busy tying a miniature knot. A skyward coach whined overhead, falling up towards a violet sun that smelled strongly of burnt toast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,13],"tags":[323],"class_list":["post-4184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experimental-prose","category-trails","tag-mr-mbebe"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4186,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4184\/revisions\/4186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}