Forty-two-year-old Brenda revelled in the delight of vilifying neighbours and spreading scandalous rumours. Her latest target was the oh-so-fresh-faced intern, Mary-Ann.
“What a pretentious name,” Brenda thought uncharitably when Marcus, the Overseas Department Supervisor, introduced Mary-Ann to the team. Everybody welcomed the newcomer with genuine smiles; Brenda faked it.
“I bet this bitch won’t last a month,” Brenda declared confidently to herself. She sharpened her nails and stropped her tongue in anticipation of delivering scathing remarks camouflaged as compliments. Brenda was an expert at the finer art of sarcasm.
No one had ever thought to or dared tell Brenda that sarcasm was an indication of a slower functioning brain, or that her comments were not sarcastic at all. They were blatant insults.
Unbeknownst to Brenda, Mary-Ann had already seen through Brenda’s façade as if she were the most transparent window pane in the whole world.
“I suppose you’re going to warn me to watch myself around Brenda, right?” Mary-Ann asked Lara, who was seated opposite her work station.
“Oh, yes! That one’s a blade short of a full set of cutting knives. Her words drip venom and her company’s toxic,” Lara added, shaking her body slightly in revulsion and dislike.
“Why is she still employed here then?” Mary-Ann asked, mystified by the situation.
“It’s Marcus; he knows Brenda’s husband quite well ’cause they attended the same high school from Grade 9 to Matric,” explained Lara. “I guess Marcus feels kinda obligated to help out his old school buddy?” Lara suggested, shrugging her shoulders in uncertainty.
Mary-Ann shook her head before she said, “Still makes no sense to me why he would employ such a mealy-mouthed woman.”
Although Mary-Ann looked extremely young with her bright brown eyes, smooth olive skin and frizzy hair that perfectly framed a heart-shaped face, she was no novice travel agent. What the others soon learned within the next few weeks was that Mary-Ann was thirty-eight going on forty; that she had worked for two other travel agencies before joining her current place of employment; and that she had a core of tungsten steel. Anybody who tried to push her around met with resistance so immovable that Mary-Ann soon gained the honorary moniker of Shredder Schroeder, an obvious pun on her surname. Brenda despised it with implacable, vitriolic malice.
On every occasion when she tried to bully, insult, needle or humiliate Mary-Ann, the “newbie”, as Brenda thought of her, responded in kind.
The first of many confrontations occurred after a staff meeting.
Mary-Ann was helping herself to some cocktail steak pies and sausage rolls when Brenda came up behind her and grunted like a pig.
“Oink, oink,” Brenda rudely snorted. “Planning to add a few more fat rolls to those already decorating your hips?” she said while pointing at Mary-Ann’s hips.
“Yes, for sure. A man loves a woman who has some love handles he can hold on to while she rides him. I wouldn’t want my hips to be so sharp that I could end up goring some vital part of my lover’s anatomy,” Mary-Ann chuckled. Then she smiled toothily at the seething Brenda before floating off like a stocky butterfly to join a few of her colleagues.
Two days later, Brenda nearly ran physically into Mary-Ann as the latter was exiting the ladies’ bathroom.
“Oops, excuse me,” Mary-Ann instantly apologised and stepped back from Brenda. As she was about to walk off, Brenda reached out and lightly rested a hand on Brenda’s arm. The unexpected touch spooked Mary-Ann, making her flinch involuntarily. The other reason for her slight start was the frosty touch of Brenda’s fingers which penetrated Mary-Ann’s light, long-sleeved knitted top.
“Now why would I want to excuse such a sorry excuse for a woman as you?” Brenda replied in a truly witch-like manner. “You probably didn’t even flush or wash your hands, did you?” she added nastily.
“Oh, no. I did, but I know that’s what you do, isn’t it? That’s why you assumed I didn’t flush or wash my hands, right?” Mary-Ann retorted so swiftly that it felt as if she must have been waiting for just the right moment to fling the dart with lethal accuracy at the bull’s eye painted on Brenda’s back. At least, that’s what Brenda thought, her blood roiling at Mary-Ann’s effrontery.
And so the rivalry and malicious encounters would have continued, if Fate hadn’t decided to Step In and teach Brenda A Lesson. But even Fate was foiled in her attempts to reform the embittered woman.
Lundi was having a ridiculously awful day. First, his girlfriend discovered that he was cheating on her; she unceremoniously kicked him out of their tiny shack. Then he saw when he went to an ATM to withdraw fuel money that she had withdrawn all the funds he had had in his account. It wasn’t much to begin with, but it was all the cash he had saved up.
To compound Lundi’s bad luck, his car broke down while he was carrying his first passengers of the day. They all bundled out of the “cockroach” to hurriedly climb into the next one. “Cockroach” was the derogatory nickname the residents of Gugulethu had given the Avanza taxis.
Lundi struggled to push the useless car to the kerb, mostly because he was slightly plump, but also because nobody offered to help him. Once he had the car safely parked along the side of the road but annoyingly still obstructing traffic, he called his friend Sipho to help him sort out the car trouble. Eventually, after nearly two hours of slaving away at the engine of the Avanza, they finally managed to get it started again.
That morning, when Marcus announced the start of the annual Package Deal Specials, highly affordable overseas holidays targeting backpackers and retirees, Brenda knew her moment of malice had arrived. Mary-Ann would be out on her ear in less time than it took a plane ticket to be printed, for she would outsell the retard, and Marcus would give Mary-Ann her walking notice. In Brenda’s fevered mind this was a logical, ordained conclusion.
“Don’t forget that the one who manages to bring in the most clients will be receiving an all-expenses-paid two-week trip to the Seychelles,” Marcus announced, treating the travel agents to his charming smile. Everybody in the office had a crush on the man; he just had that dynamic personality and killer looks that made him irresistibly attractive.
“Marcus certainly adores the attention, doesn’t he?” Nathan sighed in open longing. He tore his eyes with great reluctance away from his hunk of a boss. “Celina is such a lucky girl,” he added, referring to Marcus’ fiancée.
“As if you’d ever stand a chance with him,” Brenda mocked Nathan who belatedly wished he hadn’t spoken his thoughts aloud.
“I mean, look at you,” Brenda continued. “Bouncing blubber like inflated balloons; even your chin has a chin,” she snorted then laughed aloud at what she believed to be a hilarious comment. “When you tread down the corridors, I have the overwhelming impulse to shout, ‘Wide load passing’!” she insultingly added.
Nathan was a kind soul who literally wouldn’t hurt a fly, so he merely ducked his head and went back to working on the discount flights flyer he had been designing. He was therefore completely astounded, unlike everybody else, when Shredder Schroeder came to his defence.
“Wait,” Mary-Ann said loudly and quite clearly in the silence that had fallen over the office after Brenda’s insensitive barbs. “Are you implying that you’re any thinner than Nathan?” she asked in utmost incredulity. “If he’s a ‘wide load’, then you’re certainly a barge run aground. You know, one of those huge ones used to cart trash from the mainland to a garbage island?” Mary-Ann elaborated in a seemingly innocent manner. Brenda was fit to burst several veins.
“Excuse me?” was all she could manage, as her tongue had suddenly tied itself into a Gordian knot because of how much the whippersnapper had infuriated her. Before Brenda could muster her vast array of vituperative retaliations, Mary-Ann dismissively retorted with a “You’re quite excused.”
Marcus, having witnessed the exchange, unexpectedly declared, “New rule. Henceforth, insults of any kind are verboten. Did you hear me? Forbidden!” he emphasised before he returned to his office.
Just as Lundi was thinking that things were looking up for him, seeing that he had managed to drive three trips and make some money, his car ran out of fuel. This happened just after he had used some of the taxi fare he had earned to buy himself a huge breakfast. He immediately pulled into the nearest petrol station, using the very last of his money to barely line the bottom of the fuel tank with some gas. Lundi’s infamous temper finally reached boiling point.
Marcus approached Brenda’s work station ten minutes after he had gone into his office. His determined stride towards her conveyed a sense of urgency. Brenda steeled herself for whatever was coming, bristling like a prickly porcupine.
Marcus whispered to her, “Nathan has emailed me an official complaint of harassment and discrimination against you. I want to see you in my office now, please.”
Brenda instantly went on the offensive. Giving Nathan one of her most wicked glares, she left her station to stalk after Marcus. As she passed Nathan though, she hissed at him, “Complain all you want, Blubber Blob, but it still won’t change the fact that you’re obese and ugly.”
As if a well of courage had suddenly sprouted within him, inspired by Mary-Ann’s chutzpah, Nathan whispered back in a flurry of words, “I might be ugly physically, but your maleficent soul is stained as black and filthy as the Devil’s heart and ass.”
Lundi pulled out of the petrol station and parked along the side of the busy road. He started to pray fervently.
“Lord, what have I done that’s so bad that I’m this cursed? I know I drink and sleep around and gamble, but a man’s gotta do manly stuff in this world, Lord. I know I don’t go to church or give charity, but charity begins at home, and you’re everywhere so why do I need to attend church to worship you?” he asked, becoming really annoyed. That was when he abruptly lost my mind.
His anger and frustration spilled over so violently, so unexpectedly, that he went from calm contemplation to aggressive rage in seconds. He put the car in gear and sped down the road.
The dented and much beaten up Avanza became a fast-moving, loaded weapon, hurtling down the road towards an unsuspecting victim.
Brenda received Marcus’ reprimand and letter of warning with ill grace. She was seated at her work station, the one near the front windows, facing the busy street and thinking murderous thoughts when Lundi’s out of control Avanza jumped the kerb to thunder through the shop window, landing with a sickening, thudding crunch squarely upon Brenda’s desk.
Brenda left this mortal plane without ever experiencing a shred of metanoia, a penitent conversion of her pernicious heart. On the contrary, as she looked up in stark terror at the mechanical monster descending in slow motion upon her, the last hateful words that came to her vengeful, resentful mind were, “Fuck me sideways, that’s gonna hurt like hell.”
Image: Dee @ Copper and Wild (www.unsplash.com)
