This Fucker Burn has been posting me for some time now, dropping my testicles on the cutting board and keeping his tucked inside his pants. True, he's been doing all the edits so I don't have a ton of access as per my request, but today I told him to send me a chapter he had finished, the most recent one and so he did. I'm a self-loving piece of shit, there's no denying that, and you should throw a flag at the fact that I'm posting his writing that's essentially all about me - but this one has to go up. I know Burn's cadence, and if you don't sometimes it takes a paragraph or two to get down - so my dropping you right in means you have to pick it up on the fly. But I got through the end of this chapter we lived together and I felt a chill - because I'm a smart man...a very smart man...and if this isn't everything we need it to be, then I'm going to give up...because it is. My boy can fucking roll.
John moved to Emmett and Malkia and said exactly, it’s true we came here to give out the money and it’s true I have close to 1 million Rand in this suitcase…I was going to spread it out but now I don’t want to do that anymore…I want to leave it all with you. There was a long beat, silence before Malkia wound up and slapped John across the face. Tisha began to cry and grabbed my hand. Malkia saw this. She stepped to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. I looked down to Tisha and told her everything was okay and that me and John were leaving. Then I looked to John and saw he wasn’t finished, and from that point, nothing was vague for me. I can recall his words, word for word, because everything he then said and did changed my perception of him. There are moments I hold onto. This was one of them. John stepped into her and said exactly, I know you’re proud I know…but I also know that you love your children…I can see it and I could feel it when you walked inside…it’s up to you…you can take them away and you can have bright days or you can stay and have bright days but whatever choice you make you can’t deny what I’m trying to give. Then he told her with less eloquence that money is bullshit, all bullshit but that we weren’t leaving Langa with the briefcase. He said if they didn’t take the money, we would walk the streets until someone found us, then exactly, if they kill us they kill us…me and Burn made a pact to be dead before we were 30 anyway so if that’s how it’s going to happen we’re fucking ready for that. His eyes stayed on Malkia and he asked her if she would be ready for that, admitting he now had love in his heart, in that moment, maybe for the first time in his life and that she would be responsible forever for extinguishing it. I think he was implying love for them. I think she understood. Then he asked her again, shortening his clips into a rapid succession of would you, would you, would you – faster and with growing intensity. Malkia looked to Emmett and said something we didn’t understand before he darted out the door and jogged away. She told us to sit, stabbed her knife into the wooden wall and asked if we were hungry. Durban actually said yes.
