Miss Evelyn (Writer's Cramp)

MISS EVELYN

So, what if her battery runs out? big deal. She is not a fun of modern day gadgets. Never visits the internet, only goes on facebook and whatsapp when she gets notification that she has received a message. After she checks the message, she is out again. She is forty, still lives at home with her parents, she really hasn't got the luxury of time. Ask her if you want and she will tell you, a phone is only good for making and receiving calls. But the thing is, no one ever really calls. All she cares about is putting together some money to get a place of her own, so that her parents will get their noses out of her business. Every day, she is up by five. By six, she is out the door, endures an hour and half of gruelling traffic before she gets to the office. All for what? A salary that barely helps pay the bills. Whatever remains after the bills are paid, covers her transportation to work. And to think of the roof, leaking so much she needs an umbrella inside her home when it rains. Every week, she charges her phone once, on Sunday. The battery could die out for all she cared. Her mother tells her she has no business using an android phone, she should get herself a yam.

Well, one day it happened. One of those rare moments that actually … never happens. The dream that you wake up from wishing it was real. She had come home from work just thirty minutes earlier. Her feet were tired, but there was only the floor to rest it on; her shoulders ached, and she wished she would never have to go back again. She was sitting in the arm chair in the sitting room, trying to watch some TV before she went to sleep. Her parents were already asleep in their bedroom. A game show was on, actually, it was the only thing she ever watched on TV. Every day before the show ended, the presenter called a number- any number at all that came into his head and asked whoever answered, a question. If the person answered right, the person won two hundred thousand cedis. That-was-money! She watched this show every week, knew all the answers, and laughed to see that this season no one had won the big prize.

She was dozing when she heard the brrriiiiinngg coming from her phone. She looked at the TV and saw that the show was almost over. The presenter was on, making that call. She trudged towards the sound of her phone, wondering where it was. She found it behind some books on the floor, the battery was blinking red.
“Hello”
“Hello Madam, good evening,” the sound seemed to come from the TV, but it was in her ears as well.
“We are calling from the game show, Let’s Get Rich! and tonight, you are our lucky viewer”
She sweated in her palms, and her legs shook. It was real. Reeeaaal!
“Now, to your question.”
“Spiders belong to the group of animals called…”
“Arachnids! ARACHNIDS!!!”
She waited to hear the applause. The drumroll. Nothing.
Her phone was dead.

From the TV, “Well viewers, it looks like we lost our lucky viewer. Next week, it might be you. Till theeeen, “Let’s geeeet, rich!”




(Yam- very simple phone with very simple features)