He woke up early in the morning and had gone to the shop. His mother was still asleep and she was always worried and stressed of him. She didn’t know what had gotten into her son. As he arrived, he entered and pushed the door robustly like a tsotsi whom is about to rob a bank.

“Hey Blondie, give me the stuff … my stuff”, he said.

Replied the cashier, “How many?”

“How much are they? How much have I just given you?”.

“Fifty bucks. You can get only two with your dough. Take here” Blondie responded, her face facing down. He left after taking the dagga furiously. 

He returned home and entered his room. He was the only one in the household who was a gourmand and also whom didn’t take a shower regularly. He could spend more than three weeks without touching water. He was then in his room, his buttocks itchy. Then he just walked around his bed. He put his bed at the centre of the room to enable him to circulate around it. “It is time for dinner now in my room, my stuff is ready, and it’s weekend. It’s gonna be Christmas for me. Let me go to fetch some water, salt, sugar, milk, juice and avocado.” 

He got back to his room after fetching the stuff he needed in the kitchen. “Where is my watch?” He shouted. His mother woke up as she heard a shriek in the house. It was eleven O’clock at night when his mother woke up. She asked, “whom is it”. He sneaked back to the kitchen as he forgot a bowl and a bucket and he realized the jar carries a little amount of water, he came back with the bucket filled with dirty water. He never cared about the dirt as he only needed water, clear or dirty, blue or green – orange or red . The water had some particles of flour. He was glad because he used to steal flour and eat it raw. He often did this after taking his drug.

He abhorred cigarette smokers with passion because he didn’t smoke cigarettes since he had a breathing problem. His doctor told him to not smoke it as it would exacerbate the problem. When he asked if dagga was fine, the doctor said not as worse as cigarettes. He’d be the king of smoking if it wasn’t because of that. He poured water into the red medium bowl next to his legs, over a small rough brown matt that turned into dark brown, and he realized that he should mix salt and milk first. When he should return the water to the bucket, he poured it on the matt and then flooded the floor . “Oh! I am wetting a wrong place, I always do it in a wrong way. I always forget” he rasped. Every time he tried to mix his drug, he flunked to do it accurately. His culture inhibited his to acts of immoral nature. He took the salt, sugar and milk and embedded them inside the bowl and then stirred them carefully. “Now I put the stuff inside. Mmmm! It smells good, like the wine or whisky called J&B”. He wrapped the drug with a transparent plastic bag from the shop after stirring all the ingredients. He stared at it through the plastic as its color changed to green, from green to yellow, from yellow to brown.

He ran around the bed with black sheets and a blue duvet with some thin sketches of monkeys. Three mice came as he was flying like a dragonfly in his room around the bed. The mice have torn the plastic he wrapped the bowl with and drunk all the drug in the bowl while he was running around the bed. They added by snorting and spreading all the milk, sugar and salt around on the floor of his room. And they escaped. You could never see where they passed. He ran for two hours. On his last round, when he started to slow down and decrease the acceleration, he saw the bowl vacant and he fainted for a week in the room. Its foul smell was all over the room, but not other parts of the house. As he used to flee and come back home after months, his mother never cared. After a week, his father tried knocking at his door to check up on him. It wasn’t that late yet, although Theo was drugged almost for a week in his room due to the foul smell of his drink. It knocked him down without having swallowed any amount of it.

“What has come into my life. Am I dreaming?” He said.

“Theo! When will you go to school” asked his father.

“Father, is it you” he said as he opened the door.

“Oh! My gosh” his father exclaimed. 

He was surprised by the mess the room of his son was. Everything was smelling nasty in there. Everything was unpleasant. “Drugs are smellin’ in here. What’s going on? You should go back to a rehabilitation school. Take a shower, I’m here to take you” his father said. He realized that Theo’s life was just a bush full of pigs and hyenas. But he did as his father pled. He took his son to a rehabilitation school. After too weeks, Theo was clean and he forgot about taking drugs. As he no longer had anything that taken his time, he thought of writing poems. He began writing and he met a guy called Musa whom is a published author of the book “Elegies and Eulogies”. He was always motivated by Musa to keep on writing until it was no longer a hobby as they published a poetry book together. 

Theo was now bathing and cleaning his room everyday and he thanked his father for extracting him from the darkness and rebuilding him to shine like others. Theo bought a car and visited his household. They never believed their eyes and they felt like they were dreaming. He was following his culture’s rituals as they helped him distinguish the black and the white parts. With a warm hug, he said, “Mom, I am here alive”. With some thin tear droplets, she replied, “God is tremendous, see you now”. “I never thought you’ll ever change” she said. “God is omnipotent. I was lost. I was insane. A healthy mind doesn’t behave like that” Theo replied.

“Let me show you something, let me go fetch it in my car” Theo said. With a smile, she responded, “Oh! Ok”. He went to fetch three books he wrote within two months. The first one was named “Transformers”. It is the one he likes the most since it advises that “nothing is impossible, so we should not throw a towel while we are still in the middle of the journey”. Theo was now a poet and a motivational speaker. He was booked at so many schools to motivate learners. His success was more inspirational since some journalists published his reality transformation within Sowetan and Dailysun journals. He also appeared on a TV program on SABC 1 where he was interviewed about his other two poetry books that he wrote. 

“I was happy to see you on Real Goboza my son” his father said on a call.

“Thank you father. I wish my mom had a TV to see me succeeding.” Theo replied. And they said goodbye.