Chapter 2

Zizwe was taken aback when he found himself tied up with barbed wire on a tree. Same tree that had grown again at the back of the house. Movements of his body for breaking free, the wire left a wound on his skin. His upper body almost covered in his blood. It wasn't entirely his own, the rest cascaded on the branches of the tree. Every drop like a bad leak on the roof.

He looked at his surrounding. He was on a gloomy dessert. Further confused when he spotted familiar figures. Two bared different genders stood glaring at him. Glazing white eyes glittering massively. An aged couple from Mqanqala who lived two blocks away from his house.

"What's going on" Zizwe asked himself. His toneless voice freaked out about their physical abnormality.

A rain of blood began to pour from the dark sky. Zizwe shifted his body again, and he groaned in pain when the razor wire scrapped his skin. Then he saw a figure appearing behind the bared couple. Another old woman. Observing closely, the woman had a resemblance of his grandmother. The mother of his mother. Realizing who she might be, Zizwe's expression was frightened.

"Great-grandmother" said Zizwe.

She stood on his face with her hands on her back. The blood rain moisturizing her appearance red. Himself too had turned into the battle of the blood River.

He saw her eyes were pitch black as a black bear.

"I will be seeing you soon" she said with no ordinary voice for a woman. It was rough and gruffy. Almost nerve-wracking.

"You're dead"Zizwe said courageously. "You left the family with antagonism to the people of the village."

She jerked her head slowly, a devil smirk plastering on her red face. Her mouth hung open and she puked blood, splashing on his face. The time he woke up, his neighbor, Carol, had been there trying to wake him up.

"Carol" He said when he saw her. His face full of sweat."What are you doing here?"

"I came in when I heard you mumbling and shouting in your sleep" she said. "I brought you some lunch."

Zizwe sighed and wiped off the sweat with his shirt. He glanced at the table and saw a familiar lunch box inside a transparent plastic. The pleasant aroma that flew out into his nose growled his stomach. Carol had been generous again.

"Bad dream in broad light."

"A nightmare" said Zizwe.

His hands rapidly went for the lunch box on the table. A warm spicy spaghetti and mince was ready to be devoured. At some times Zizwe would wish he could consume food cooked by her every single day of his life. Every meal she had brought him and Aneliswa for the past year was nothing but succulent.

"Let me go and grab you a spoon."

Zizwe's eyes had no chance to avoid Carol's hourglass body. She had curved, sensuous thighs and a curved smooth breasts. The long stripped dress she wore revealed every shape of her well developed body making it difficult for him not to be aroused. A pleasarable fantasy of visualizing her naked would come on one of his masturbation nights. He turned his eyes away from her body as she disappeared Into his kitchen.

Growing up to adulthood, Zizwe and Carol had been always apart. Her parents would command her to keep her distance away from him and his family. As she grew older and wiser, Carol began to befriend Zizwe secretly until she left home to study of becoming a professional nurse. Now that she was back years later, graduated, discovering Zizwe's mother had died, she'd gotten close to him again without worrying about the approval or commands of her parents.

Zizwe thought for a moment, about the nightmare. It was the first time to have a dream about his great-grandmother. It bothered him about what she'd said to him. Seeing him soon. Knowing that she was witch, the impossible could happen to return from the dead. But how? Zizwe had no idea. His brain swam in the mud. The only hope he'd for that moment was the nightmare to be just was it is. Just a nightmare.

When Carol came back, he consumed the delicious spaghetti into his tummy. The last he had ate nice food from his pocket, was when he'd bought a Kentucky fried chicken family feast for him and Aneliswa two years back. Since then, Carol had been generous by bringing them tangy meals every now and then.

"You going to let me eat alone?" Said Zizwe.

"Am okay. You can leave some for, Aneliswa."

"She hates mince. And besides, she'd be back with her tummy full from the food they eat at school."

"Next time I won't bring any mince then. I know she likes spicy food. Like you do."

"I love mince" he said looking at her with a smile.

Carol smiled back,"You really dressed nice today. Wanted to give an impression to Aneliswa's teachers?"

Zizwe chuckled softly and shook his head as he devoured his food, "No, but an impression to Mr Sibiya. I had an Interview with him."

"At his company? I suppose it went well."

"I wish. It was hardly an interview. He dwelled on my family past."

"Am sorry Zizwe" Carol felt dejected.

"Gogo Dumakude made our lives a living hell. She's the one I was having a nightmare about."

"What was she doing to you?"

"Nothing much. I was just tied up with a razor wire. She said to me that she'd be seeing me soon."

"Like a possible return from the dead? I doubt she has that kind of power, Zizwe. Those kind of witches only exist in fiction. I think it was just a nightmare."

"I hope so. Otherwise her return would be the death of me."

Carol's phone rang on the couch next to her thigh. It was her mother. She was needed back home.

"I have to go" she said after she hung up. "I need to prepare this church service for this evening."

"Is just for tonight?"

They both rose from the couch.

"Until Sunday. Whole of this weekend."

Zizwe wanted to invite Carol to eat supper with them later tonight; now he thought perhaps the followings week would be a good time. But still, he somehow had fear to ask her if she could.

"Okay. Thank you for the lovely meal again" He said.

"I will see you soon" she said with a smile as she walked out.