Raeefah took great pride in her large, sunlit, modern kitchen. It took nearly a year and a half to have the building contractors complete the room to her exacting and exact specifications.
“The kitchen is the heart of any home,” Raeefah had told her husband, Noor, when he had complained weeks into the first remodelling of the room that she was being too nit-picky. “I’m only trying to ensure that the heart of our home has a healthy beat.”
The builders had had to entirely demolish the interior on three occasions before Raeefah was finally thrilled with the result.
“I swear,” Noor had stated the minute before the builders had revealed the room to Raeefah, “if you don’t like the way it looks, you’ll be doing the rebuilding yourself!”
To which Raeefah had calmly and confidently replied, “Deal. I should have done it myself in the first place.”
The expansive windows above the sink all faced east to utilise the sun to its maximum potential, ensuring that the room was radiant with natural light captured for the better part of the day. Next to the sink the cabinet makers had installed a number of built-in cupboards, both at eye-level and under the countertops. On the opposite side Raeefah had asked for a bench to be installed in an alcove. In the middle of the kitchen sat a huge work island with a marble top; it took pride of place. The island also contained a smaller sink set in its centre.
Raeefah was rinsing off some mushrooms for her popular mushroom and corn soup when the strange thing occurred. At first, she thought she was imagining things when she noticed out of the corner of her left eye that one of the drawers near the main sink was opening on its own nearly imperceptibly. She turned her head to have a full-on, better view of the drawer. It wasn’t moving. In fact, it appeared to be fully closed.
“I must be getting senile in my old age,” the robust forty-two-year old claimed. “Seeing things that aren’t there. Oh, no. I had better start playing Wordle more. Alzheimer’s, you’re not sneaking up on me, pal,” she thought to herself and chopped up the mushrooms.
As she reached for a brown onion, she very distinctly, unmistakably heard the tiniest of squeaks, like that of a metal hinge or steel track being used. The sound had come from behind her. Slowly, as if a life-preserving instinct of caution had vehemently been activated in her brain, Raeefah turned around.
She screamed something incomprehensible when the top drawer in the bottom cupboard slid open violently of its own volition. Before she could respond by running like hell out of the kitchen, the door to a cupboard above the open drawer swung wide open, exposing the cupboard’s innards of Nutrific cereal, Illovo Golden Syrup, a jar of brown sugar, a half-used box of Jungle Oatso Easy porridge and a tall plastic container filled with muesli.
“Noor!” Raeefah yelled so loudly, the water she had used for the soup mixture rippled, exactly as in the famous scene of Jurassic Park, when the Tyrannosaurus rex had stomped towards the petrified kids.
Noor, who wasn’t physically active and carried an extra kilo or two of fat around his middle, had never run so fast in his life as then, when his wife shrieked as if demons were after her. He wasn’t far off the mark.
“What? What?!” he gasped as he sprinted into the kitchen. Raeefah had turned ashen, her naturally light complexion having lost all of its colour. She was pointing a shaky finger at the innocuous-looking open drawer. “You want me to close the drawer?” Noor asked her inanely.
The look Raeefah turned on him, in spite of her terror, nailed him to the wall with its lethal implications.
“No, genius,” she snarled.
“Then what is it? You’re just standing there pointing at the drawer; how am I supposed to know what’s going …” he started to say when the cupboard door banged shut.
“Sheeeeshhh!” Noor exclaimed, jumping in fright.
“Yeah? Now you know why I called you?” Raeefah asked acerbically.
“Don’t stand there! Come over here,” he ordered his wife who was only too happy to oblige. She moved hastily over to where Noor was standing, next to the double oven. Both husband and wife jumped a good foot off the ground, shrilly screaming in dread when the light of the top oven suddenly switched on.
The cupboard door once again gaped open like a yawning mouth while the drawer pulled itself back into its slot, squeaking softly all the way.
“Noor, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Raeefah asked.
“Yes, definitely,” Noor replied.
They both spoke simultaneously.
“This kitchen is bloody haunted, man!” declared Noor.
“This is the work of the twins,” claimed Raeefah.
“What?” each asked of the other. Raeefah burst into laughter. Pointing at Noor, she said, “You’re so gullible. I didn’t even for a second think that the place is haunted.”
“Really? Is that so?” Noor asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “So who was the one who bellowed at me for help? Huh? It certainly wasn’t moi,” he added, pushing his face right up to his wife’s.
Raeefah gave him the talk-to-the-hand gesture. Then she hollered, “Boys! If you don’t show your mischievous faces this second, you’re both losing out on dessert for a month!”
Gently, the bottom door of the cupboard near the sink opened gradually. In the space underneath the counter sat Umayr, one of Raeefah and Noor’s twins. He was the creative one who loved constructing gadgets of all sorts.
Umayr smiled sheepishly at his parents as he released the thin wire contraption he had used to open and shut the top cupboard door. It was patently obvious that it was he who had pushed open the drawer from within the space underneath it, where he had hidden himself.
“And the other rascal? Where’s he?” Noor asked, referring to Umayd.
“I’m here,” Umayd answered from right next to Raeefah, once again giving her a slight scare. Both parents looked incredulously on as the skinny boy unfolded himself and stepped out of the interior of the cavernous oven.
“Are you absolutely insane or just perfectly stupid to hide in the oven?” Raeefah exploded, whacking the boy smartly up the head. Umayd only grinned like a simpleton.
“We scared you really well, didn’t we, Mom?” Umayr had the temerity to ask his already irate mother.
“It was my idea to switch on the oven light. I told Umayr it would scare you guys the most,” Umayd boasted.
“Let’s see how scared you are when I lock both of you up in the garage tonight,” Noor threatened.
“Nah, that’s too good for them,” Raeefah drawled, placing her right hand on her chin and rubbing it in thought. The eyes of both boys suddenly went very wide in concern. They knew that whenever their mother had that thoughtful expression on her face, it usually spelled disaster for them.
“Please, Mom,” Umayd begged, “it was just a prank!”
“Yes, and we won’t ever do it again,” Umayr vowed. “Just don’t make us stay with Uncle Sameegh again. He makes us drink prune juice,” the boy complained, pulling a sour face.
“See, boys? If you really want to scare somebody, come to me for lessons,” Raeefah said with a twinkle in her eye.
The Cheshire cat grin plastered on her smug face told the twins one thing most vividly: never mess with mom!
Image: Shahied George
