For the love of Eric and Joanne’s home?
The 1970’s saw the height of war, crime, religious strife and unregulated riots, dominated by gun shots, bombs, insults, and fights… Eric and Joanne fell in love anyway.
These two were nothing special. Eric, just an ordinary looking fella, short and hardworking in a small bank, and Joanne, another unremarkable looking precise woman with a quick smile and two relatively long upper teeth, which probably drew Eric to her.
Because the times had taken everyone they knew, there was no one to stop them from moving in together to their house; a lavish modern bungalow, one of the smallest yet most beautiful houses at the time.
Its compound, its structure drew a lot of attention from everyone, especially Yolanda, Eric’s secret admirer who began taking disconcerting walks around the house almost whenever Eric and Joanne were having sex.
The walks and their odd randomness eventually drove Eric and his wife to confront their daily visitor, who later feigned love for Eric and said she would do anything to keep them apart.
In that mind-space, like Eric and Joanne, you could also have assumed that Yolanda was simply a crazy woman or an annoying neighbor in their location — that is, until Yolanda arrived with a gun one early morning.
She wasn’t alone. She had also organized a group of individuals who had objections to the loan terms, bank policies and offers at the bank where Eric worked — They intended to destroy the house while Eric and Joanne were still inside.
Yolanda fired up the house while Joanne watched a bullet inch up to Eric’s left cheek. She had never felt so helpless and strong at the same time as she pushed him to the right side.
“Eric, are you okay?” were her first words after the furry.
“Errrr,” and she was struggling to speak to an unresponsive Eric.
Yolanda and her squad did not retaliate as they observed the couple leaving with their dog attached by a rope around its neck to Eric. Joanne was supporting her hands to her chest with a scarf.
Yolanda couldn’t understand what was happening, but she could tell that something was very wrong as she watched Eric and Joanne grumble to one another before parting ways.
When he was some distance from Joanne, Eric yelled. “Aahhh?”
Joanne had mumbled with a huge smile, “Aaaaahh.”
And so, unknowingly, they parted ways, deaf and mute from the scaffold, while Yolanda moved into their home, her first love and ideal house in the 1970’s.
Author’s moral of the story
Similar to Yolanda, there are occasions when our intense desire for something leads us to take actions that severely injure others, ruin something important like a friendship, or hurt people in ways we cannot fathom.
I have recently witnessed solid friendships fracture for the sake of power and money. I’ve seen people act funny merely to get ahead. So I ask you today: Is it always worth the damage?
Is a trustworthy relationship worth a betrayal? Is destroying something so beautiful worth it for the sake of lust and victory? Do you think Yolanda did right in sacrificing Eric and Joanne’s union only for the sake of their home at a cost of isolation?
What’s your moral of the story?
P.S. This is my first attempt at writing a short story. This story suddenly came to my heart and head, and it just couldn’t me leave alone, literally. I hope you’ve drawn something from it
