My late auntie always advised me: “Shatisani, don’t get angry, get even! That is a far better way.”

My auntie would be proud of me now. I am getting even with my boyfriend, TJ. Big time! These days I am making him pay for the way he has treated me. Oh yes, revenge is sweet!

Like last night. I put his precious PVR decoder in the middle of the carpet. He got up in the night, in the dark. He tripped over his decoder and went flying across the room. Whack! He smashed his head against the wall.

This morning he has a swollen eye and a cut on his forehead. Good! Now he knows what pain feels like! Meanwhile his PVR is beyond repair. I smashed it with a hammer, just to be sure.

Best of all, he doesn’t dare to blame me. In the past, he blamed me for everything that went wrong. But not any more! Not the way things are now! Not the way I am now.

For the first time in our seven years together, I am the one in control. I am the one with the power. Me – Shatisani Dihoro! Ever since that Sunday in late June.

Now he is the one who slinks around our apartment with fear in his eyes. When I am in one room, he quickly moves to another. I follow him until he cowers in a corner, covering his head.

That Sunday in late June! Such a strange day it was. I woke up, feeling hopeless. My eye was still swollen from Saturday night. I tried my best to cover it with make-up. I got into the taxi as usual – Slash’s taxi – and headed for the take-away restaurant where I worked, for my Sunday shift.

I was looking forward to some peace at work, before I had to return to TJ and our apartment that was now my prison.

“You just try to leave me, Shatisani! I will find you, wherever you go. There is no escape.” That’s what TJ always said. And I believed him.

“You belong to me. You are my woman and I love you.” He said that a lot too. I didn’t believe that part.

But that Sunday, as I put on my work uniform, with TJ still snoring loudly in the bed, I didn’t realise my life was about to change forever.

I am a free woman now. I can leave any time I choose. But not yet. I am having too much fun getting my revenge. Watching TJ slowly turn into a shivering, pathetic, wreck of a man. Even his snoring is soft and sounds more like sobbing.

I am busy planning what I will do tonight to make his life impossible. So many possibilities!

They do programs on TV about people like me. But you mustn’t believe them. It is not like that at all, I promise you. The TV has got it all wrong about us.

There is a knock at the door. TJ’s friends have come to visit: Jerry and Vusi, with six-packs in hand. They ignore me, but I don’t expect anything else. They always treated me without respect, demanding food and more beers as if I was the servant girl. Now they just ignore me completely.

“Come on, TJ,” they say. “Pull yourself together, man.”

But TJ sits cowering with his head in his hands. The gash on his forehead is still bleeding.

***

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