CHAPTER THREE : FOUR (4)

FOUR(4)

'And here I thought, ... I pause a little... I was hallucinating?' I say with contempt, shaking.

'You look well.'

'How did you get out?' My tone sounds frank, stern.

'Dear father...' I caress his hair without distress.

An average young man who people would not believe to be my father is in front of me in the middle of nowhere.

Isn't this voodoo?

Fun!

I scorn.

I can not contain my anger. My tongue rolls touching my lower and upper teeth. I scoff. I breathe letting out a puff of air through the air spaces between my tongue and teeth.

The bat in my right hand is swinging freely like a pendulum bob set to oscillate.

I continue caressing my father's hair.

'Answer me!'

He still did not talk. I breathe out heavily this time, controlling my breath as stealthily as I can.

'Father?'

'Father?'

'Father!'

I lose my patience. I get tired of his attitude. I push him, dragging him across the bitumen floor and I shove him in the booth. He is weak.Why would he not be?

'Ooh, father. Luck always comes your way. I intend to break your bones with this bat.' Showing it to him as I swing it, holding it firm.

'But now I can not. I do not know what stopped me.' I say it laughing madly.

'Meeee.'

I turn to face him again sounding so serious that it shocks me.

'Or have you been praying, desperately? Aren't you still atheist?'

I sound surprised so I cover my mouth with my left palm. 'You have found God. How? When?'

In a low breath-taking voice, the same one I heard in the morning, in the toilet, a word came from it, sounding like a whisper and yet an echo ending with wheezing.

'Four(4).'

The word shakes me. I close the booth with force. I face the booth with my back leaning on it. I look to nothing in particular but consequently left and right. My thoughts are raging like wildfire. My right leg is shaking, my head is also.

"Four(4)?"

How dare he? Blackmail?

I clench my teeth forcefully letting out air. I look scared like his word is robbing me of my breath. I stagger almost landing on the floor.

Unknowingly I walk forward with one leg hinged, the other dragging itself like a corpse. I scream, almost cutting my voice.

'No. No. No!'

I will almost swear I heard whipping laughter. I am shaking. I look back.

Did he just jest?

And he repeats that same word.

'Four(4).'

He is trying to get the better of me.

I can not lose. I am Veronica Siphoned!

I went to the booth of my car, opening it up. I let out my father who is grinning like he won the lottery. I breathe out a full puff of air almost wheezing. He gets out, pulls me away from near the booth, he closes it.

'I will drive.' He said. 'I'm "your father" after all.'

I am exhausted anyway from all this drama. How did he get out?

I double-locked the stockade.

Or did?...no. She would not have.

I am lost in thought, oblivious to my father's reckless driving.

Oblivious to the lots who all seem like they have seen their lost long-time friend. My head whirls round and round to the very first day my "father" became my father.

~∆

2000, 5, 20.

The day I got abandoned. The day this guy in the car who is driving me to my present destination picked me up from the streets. I was left in the rain. My real parents probably could not take care of me. I assumed that till this present day, they had a better reason. I never went to an orphanage. He made sure I never did.

Him.

Should I be grateful? That I am with him and not in the streets, roaming?

At least I can sleep, eat, have a father and mother all in one person?

He never got married, never asked him why, 'tis his business, isn't it?

If you are wondering why I said I had a mother who birthed me and died on that spot, I lied. *scoffs*

Wait! Am I having a conversation with myself? Ehn? Pfff, it can't be. I'm simply telling you the story, whoever is reading this.

He is a stray one. His job is a reckless one and still, is.

HOPELESS I AM.

WHERE'S MY DAUGHTER?