Suffocate Inc. | 5-Minute Freewrite: Thursday Prompt
Greetings, everyone

This is my entry to the #freewrite 5-minute exercise hosted by @mariannewest. See details here.

_{Image by Maansi Kumar at Flickr.com ("Suffocating Around You")}

Suffocate Inc.

Suffocate. Such a pervasive word when you live in a dilapidated country under a dictatorial narco-regime on the coastal mediocrity-driven town in the middle of the tropic. You have a lot to suffocate about.

I don’t even need to think too hard or make up stories about feeling suffocated. Yesterday, after a long day of long walks and little done, I found myself sleeping alone. My wife and daughter decided to stay at an aunt’s apartment. I could have done it too. It is considerably comfortable there, but I had not packed anything at the time I dropped by and I had to be first thing in the morning at the court house to have some very important documents initiated. My older daughter’s future depends on that travel permit to be approved so that she can travel to Brazil in September and get there the education her own country denies her here now.

I was tired enough to think that it would be a short night, but my fan broke, it was about 100 degrees, and there were enough mosquitoes in the house to defeat Thanos’s army.

On a regular day, I might have slept with the door open, but I had to close it this time. Unfortunately for me, there were already enough mosquitoes inside to guarantee me a hell of a night.

I was suffocating within 40 minutes. I took a bath (ironical and fortunately, the water was cold) and went back to bed without even drying off. It was useless. The noise of the annoying mosquitoes in my ears and their aggressive diving into my eyes and nostrils made me remember the King Kong scene where the planes attack and he tries to catch them. Sadly enough, Kong was more successful than I was.

[End of 5 minutes]

The effort was taking a toll on my thermostat. I was sweating like the tap of a boiling pan in a few minutes. I kept commanding myself not to suffocate, to take it easy, to calm down, but how can anyone calm down with out-of-tune fiddles in your ears, which you tried unsuccessfully to avoid by covering up with your sheet only to give up to the heat a few seconds later. To make matters worse, my neighbors, who by now were drunk, started to argue like they were about to kill one another (which unfortunately they never do) over some stupid domino play.

I had taken five showers by 6:00 AM. No point in trying to sleep any more. I tried to get ready and do some Steemit, knowing perfectly well that I’d waste my whole day at the court house. As it usually happens, my internet did not work at all and after 5 minutes I was sweating again and didn't do much.

I walked to the court house, waited for my ex-wife who had texted me saying she’d be late. The lawyer was not there as he promised he’d be and my impatience escalated when I noticed that my phone battery would die any minute. I realized after some suffocating minutes that I had been pacing back and forth the building’s entrance. By the time the lawyer came he made me feel nervous enough. Why wasn’t my ex-wife there yet? She had said she was on her way some 45 minutes prior to that. Usually people take a bus to a certain point (if they are lucky enough to catch one) and then have to walk a long way to their destination. Taking a taxi is not always an option.

Finally she arrived. We went up two flights of stairs. Picture the most claustrophobic stairs, then remove any lights, and add some human traffic. We got to the section where the documents were supposed to be dropped and it was as hot as hell. No air conditioner, only some fans for some of the county clerks who fretted behind half-wood/half-glass partitions. Give me your IDs, the lawyer requested. Would a copy work? My ex-wife asked. Oh, oh. It was really hot again. She had left the original in another town they’d just returned from some days ago. I did not know that. But don’t worry, she said. A friend brought it. It’s in town. I just have to call her and she’ll send it over.

It was not going to be that easy and we’d be in a nerve wreck for the next hours.

We were lucky enough to have a chance at the judge’s hearing (you may spend days waiting for one and tons of things may happen to prevent you from ever seeing a judge). I was glad it was not a very formal thing. I had never used the phrase your honor and I did not plan to start today. The fat slow-paced talking guy behind the formerly dignifying desk who apologized for not having air conditioner or enough chairs was actually cool, even though the first minutes of our talk made me feel he was trying to sabotage our daughter’s trip. Ironically, he was just ventriloquizing what airport officials might do to block her trip and force us to pay some implicit bribe. I had had enough suffocation for a day. I just wanted to get out of that building.

I had to return 15 minutes before they closed, thought. After we thought we had a great day, paid the lawyer (in dollars, not Bs), and joked about how smoothly everything had gone, the lawyer called me when I was in the middle of another long walk under noon sun to tell me that a last-minute modification of the requirements demanded extra copies of everything we had submitted. You may think, what’s the big deal? just make some extra copies. Easier said than done when some of the files were in the phone, when the battery was dead, when the internet failed and the cyber café where you could work things out had a suffocating waiting line around the block.

I literally ran to the court house at 12:45 pm. They closed at 1. The lawyer had told me it had to be done today or else. He’d wait for me until I got there. When I got there he had already gone, the secretary said. I must have looked like I was about to collapse on the spot because this usually rude or indifferent secretary offered to receive the documents and make sure the lawyer would get it and go ahead and initiate the process.

I finally breathed out. Suffocate. Such pervasive word.

Source
_{Image Source by Sccumy at DeviantArt.com}

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://becksbitcoin.com/2019/07/26/suffocate-inc-5-minute-freewrite-thursday-prompt/

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