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Airbag Lodging
by Albert Russo

At first I wasn’t sure whether the fact of having to remain in Israel would bother me or not. But seeing that my uncle had turned from Feta white - is that where the expeshun ‘chalk and cheese’ comes from? - to the color of Brussels sprout, I got a lil cheeky. Coz if I don’t nudge him a bit firmly (I usually slap his thigh so’s to straighten him up), he might veer to crocodile green, and then he pouts for hours on end, with his mouth half open like them disgraceful prehistoric beasts that look petrified, when what they really want is for you to come near them for a quick bite of raw human flesh. Brrr … another failed invention of goddess!

“Don’t worry,” I said, getting happier by the minute, but pretending to be annoyed, “I’ll help you buy the food, even though you know I hate supermarkets.”

Bonka squinted at me - this is what happens when he comes out of a nightmare and touches ground, like a plane that’s just lost one of its wheels as it lands. Yeah, he gets all shook up, and I need to give him a good loud bark for his two eyes to resume their normal place. Only then can we start having a ci-vi-liiized conversation. He’s the one who taught me that even if we disagree we oughta discuss with calm and compowwwsure.

Between you and me, sometimes you have to be fast and furious to stop growlups shenanigans, coz it can go on and on, with preface, introduction, convoluted (yeah, I know that word too, which has ‘con’ in it) explanations and epilogue, which, when you get there, becomes a whole fookin’ epischmuck and you’ve lost an uncoushy (unconscionable, ha ha) amount of precious time during which you could have built a castle in the sand.

“Now, now, Unky dearest,” I sweet-talked, forcing myself to be nice - this is when my jaws start hurting, coz it ain’t natural to be kind when you are boiling inside -, “why don’t we look for a nice lil airbag place overlooking the beach?”

There were quite a few offers on booking.com, but my Unka the Bonka said that those were for the likes of Angie Jolie, Meryl Strip or Lenny Di Capricorn, meaning they were much too expensive for us.

After searching for maybe two hours - I had to contain myself not to bash his head - we found a cosy apartment in the South of Tel Aviv.

We had to take three buses to get there to meet our landlord.
Wa wee wooow, we had never been to that area. It looked derelict and smelled of garlicky food and piss at the same time. Only later - it was already too late - did I learn that it was mainly inhabited by poor Israelis and immigrants - many of them illegal. You could see that some of the people around were either slightly drunk or stoned.


Excerpt 6 from CORONA ZAPINETTE by Albert Russo