Run
Growing up in South Africa, you learn quickly that some problems can’t be solved, and the only thing you can do is run.
I was one uppercut away from defeating E. Honda. I didn’t turn around when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
The second tap came harder, accompanied by a gravelly voice, “Give me some money or find out.”
My hands froze on the red joysticks. I turned slowly. I was short for sixteen, but a little taller than the twenty-something, rail-thin man staring at me with nervous eyes. He lifted his shirt. Tucked into his underwear was a long rusty machete, the blade stretching from his waistband to his nipples. I emptied my pockets into his sweaty palm.
“That’s all you got?” He said.
Patting my board shorts, then turning the lining inside out, I stared blankly back at him.
“What about your friends?” He grabbed my hand.
As he showed the blade to my friends, I slipped from his grasp, sprinting out of the arcade.
I found a security guard dressed in red and black with a big baton attached to his belt. “We need your help! There’s a guy with a machete in the arcade. He took my money!”
The guard scratched his salt and pepper beard, looking left and right as though trying to cross a busy street.
“C’mon,” I said, “Before he gets away.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “How big?”
“What?”
“How big is the machete?”
I put one hand on the top of my thigh, the other on my chest. “Maybe this big. And rusty.”
“Rusty!?” He exclaimed, shaking his head, gripping his baton.
“We need to hurry!” I tugged his hand.
“I don’t get paid enough to deal with men carrying machetes.”
“So what are we supposed to do?”
He lifted his baton, swinging it back and forth. “This is South Africa! Run!”
