APPARITION

Tina was thrilled that she would no longer have to wake at 5:30 to make the hour and half long trip to work every day. Although her new job demanded shift work, living and working onsite would be much more convenient. She had gotten residency at a Nurses home would be working as a medical technologist at a local hospital, adjacent to the Nurses home.

It was a quaint room on the fourth floor. The lift was a bit squeaky but in working order. She was informed that the rooms would be inspected from time to time and house - keeping would come in any time after 8am, weekdays only. The room was furnished with a shelf at the entrance, a single bed on the left, study desk, wooden chair, and clothes draw on the opposite side. The kitchen, laundry and bath facilities were communal.

It was her first experience of living away from home and she would have to adjust to communal facilities but nonetheless she was excited at the thought of freedom and the independence that came with it.

The hospital was accessible through interleading corridors. In the days that followed, she had only explored a few hallways. From her room she had a peepview of the ocean along with a view of the frog pond, the unkept and sadly neglected staff pool. It was not the kindest of sights and she opted not to gaze out the window.

At first, she was able to go home on a monthly basis but as time progressed, so did her work and study commitments. Her family would visit her on the weekends, take her out and restock her supplies. In the passing months Tina had adjusted well. She had met the ladies who shared her floor, nurses, two of them student nurses. Her new friends were happy to help her run her errands.

By Ravika Naicker

Spring was ending and the seasons’ end had brought with it bitter cold nights. Tina worked split shifts. This week she was working 14:00 to 22:00. She had just got off her shift and was heading to her room. The sky looked heavy and gray through the glass shielding the corridors. And unexpected roar of thunder made her jump. She couldn’t help but laugh to herself when she realize her silly fright.

She passed the creepy janitor as she headed for the lift. As luck would have it, the lift was out of order. She was exhausted, it had been a busy and tiring day at the lab. With festive season a few days away, it was about to get a lot busier. She had been looking forward to a hot shower and light snack in front of the telly. She remembered she still had some course work to complete. She hurried up the stairs, undressed, grabbed her towel and toiletry bag and headed for the showers. She opened the faucet and waited for the sight of steam. As soon as the hot water hit her skin, she could feel herself relaxing. Eyes closed, she started to drift off. Calming darkness. Interrupted by the sound off voices in the hallway, Tina shut off the water, toweled off quickly and headed back to her room. The hallway was empty, maybe one of the ladies had just got back from their shift.

Awakened by the unbearable cold, Tina squinted at her clock; 2:46. The weather had gotten a lot nastier since she had left work the previous night. As usual, she had meant to grab a coffee and something to eat but had been so tired that she had not even closed her door shut.

Deciding that she should put in some work on her assignment, she armed herself with a large mug of coffee and grabbed a bag of mini crackers, spring onion – her favorite and got settled. The lights began fluttering. She gazed at the ceiling, and rolled her eyes …. the last thing she needed was a power outage. Prolonged power outages were not uncommon during storms.

Tina was extremely passionate about her field of work and would speak about it to anyone who would listen. Aside from her hematology, and anatomy and physiology text books, her bookshelf held a few novels by her favorite author, Robin Cook. She soon found herself absorbed by the fascinating World of Microbiology. Tina was scribbling notes when she was abruptly disturbed by the bang, bang, bang, ear-splitting knocks on the door. Tina gave a quick glance at her clock, …. 3:13 and replied, “Just a minute”

She placed her work books aside, hopped off the bed and rushed to the door without even putting her flip flops on.

There was no one at the door. She looked left and right, no one in the hallway. Just as the lock on her door clicked Tina heard laughter and brisk footsteps. She opened her door again and called out to the prankster, ‘This is not funny, I’m trying to work here!’ Tina was really pissed off now and was in no mood to deal with the immature behavior.

Once again, she looked to the left of the hall, this time she could see a figure. In that instance, she knew something was horribly amiss. She wanted to run back into her room but her feet wouldn’t move. If anything, she felt as though she was being sucked in closer toward the shadowy figure. Her heart was racing, and even though it had been a cold night, she could feel herself starting to burn up, she felt light headed.

When Tina opened her eyes, it was 11h45. Her head hurt so much. There were a bunch of missed calls and texts on her cellphone. She showered, sorted her laundry and downed her breakfast shake in a few gulps. Tina was in such a hurry to get to the lab that she had no time to pay attention to the scorch marks on the hoodie she had used to bed. Her dresser had another random little gift which she was certain was left by Likai. The box lay there, unopened since yesterday.

Tina was always polite to all those around her. It’s just how she had been raised. Likai, the fifty seven year old janitor, had joined the nurses homes’ cleaning staff more than thirty years ago. Likai didn’t speak English all that well, actually she didn’t speak much at all. She was a stalky woman, not much taller than Tina. She must have been rather striking in her youth with her bronze- colored skin, high cheekbones, narrow nose, and thin lips.

The weather had turned into an unforgiving storm. Tina was restless. It was long, never - ending afternoon at the lab and night had set in by the time Tina was ready to leave. The waves sounded wild and she had an uneasy feeling like something was wrong as she walked upstairs to her room. She placed her satchel on the floor and sat down on her bed. With partially closed eyes she started to recall the mornings events and remember why she was so disturbed… all her floormates were a nursing conference last night. No one else should have been on her floor.

She was back there, being drawn toward the dark figure at the end of hallway. She could hear her heart pounding within her chest, beads of perspiration formed on her forehead. When she was finally in front of the figure, she could feel her breathing hasten. The dark mass was about to engulf her. She raised her hand to block her face and, in that instance, it felt as though a current had passed by her and as though her hand was on fire. Without looking back, she ran to her room and shut the door. On the other side of the door, she could hear shrieks of laughter followed by pounding and on her door.

The little box from her dresser fell onto the floor revealing a string of hand-crafted beads with a pendant of a serpent with its tail in its mouth. The beads matched her red rosewood bracelet. She could hear a familiar voice and words she could not understand. Silence and calm followed.

INGREDIENTS:

ICING SUGAR: This makes up the bulk of the google eyes. Make sure you sift the icing sugar before using it to remove any lumps.

CORNFLOUR: Cornflour helps thicken the icing mixture

WATER: Mix in small amounts of water at a time until you have the right consistency. You don’t want it too thick that its hard to pipe and you don’t want it too runny that it doesn’t keep the round eye shape.

VANILLA EXTRACT: The flavouring is completely optional to make the eyes taste a little more interesting.

BLACK COCOA POWDER OR BLACK FOOD

COLOURING: This will make the pupils of your edible eyes. With Black cocoa powder the dark pigment works perfect in the recipe to create pitch black pupils but black food colouring also works well.

Tip: if you want to use what you already have in your pantry, making black food colouring requires blue, green and red food dyes. If you’re using black food colouring, choose gel colouring for the most pigmented colouring.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup or 125g icing sugar (Powdered sugar)

• 1 tablespoon or 9g corn starch (Cornflour)

• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence/ extract (optional)

• 2 tablespoons or 30ml water

• 1 tablespoon black cocoa powder or black food

• gel color