The hare took a glass of water as he tapped the back of his uncle, who had a confident look on his face.
"I am sure someone like you will be able to survive this. After all, your hide is the best when it comes to drum making."
Baboon laughed at his nephew's praise and held his chest up high. "Who do you think I am?! I am the great baboon, feared even by lions!"
Hare clapped his hands, seemingly allured by his uncle's words, and Baboon took this as his signal to jump into the boiling pot.
Pwii–!
The uncle jumped into the water, splashing some of it outside the pot. However, as a creature with low heat tolerance, he felt his body getting scorched as the lid was placed on the pot.
"AHHHH! KIND NEPHEW, GET ME OUT OF HERE!! I AM DYING!!"
Baboon screamed at the top of his lungs, but all his nephew could do was place a heavy rock on top of the lid, ensuring his uncle didn't have a chance to escape.
"Uncle, I didn't start the fire; it was already burning like this when I got here," Hare said sadly, shaking his head.
Hearing his uncle scream like a person losing their virginity, Hare remained patient as he sat on the bench, watching the hourglass timer.
The screaming came to a sudden halt, but Hare still composed himself until the timer rang again. His uncle might have tried to trick him, but he knew that Baboon wouldn't survive more than ten minutes in boiling water.
After extinguishing the fire, Hare took out his utensils and opened the lid. He waited patiently for the water to cool down while he prepared the other materials.
After half an hour, he took out his uncle's hard-boiled body and cut off the head first. It was too ugly even for hyenas to consume.
Skillfully removing the hide, he extracted all the bones from every fiber of his uncle's body, leaving only the parts his mouth could consume.
Taking a whole week to eat Baboon's body, Hare then ventured into the wild with a drum he made from his uncle's hide and the bones as drumsticks.
He knew that something without an ending is miraculously shocking, meaning everything has an ending—even this world we live in, which has consumed many of us.
On his way to an endless nowhere, Hare played the song of how he killed and ate his uncle to the creatures he met in the wild.
He created a symphony that captivated the hearts of many, and his song carried a powerful message to the masses.
What do you think that message was?
Tito closed the book and said, "The story teaches us to stay calm and avoid falling for temptations when we face difficult times. Baboon was so hungry that his heart raced at anything that suggested food. Hare was smart and used his uncle's desperation to his advantage."
Tito had read a familiar version of the story before. After all, he grew up reading this kind of books while others were in elementary school building puzzle blocks.
He looked at the books in the red clay pot, and his face became disdainful. Only a small part of the story was going to be different from the ones he had grown up reading.
That being said, he took each book and read them one by one.
In all the stories, the baboon was foolish, the hare was clever, and they were all in times of hunger.
Like when the hare pretended to be dead in front of a food cargo truck. After being beaten by the driver, he was thrown into the cargo but escaped with food for himself. Baboon heard about this and tried it, but the driver had learned his lesson and whipped the poor creature to death with an electric whip.
'I can't believe they let kids read these stories,' Tito thought, maintaining his old demeanor. The violence and haunting scenes in these fairy tales were far too much.
'I wonder why I didn't turn into such a person,' Tito laughed to himself. Anyone could tell that he was more like the hare.
A reserved person who liked to take advantage in every situation. One could say he was a bully to the weak—so what?
Everyone is a bully; kids bully ants by killing their kin. Everyone is evil, and the one who claims to be a saint is the most evil of all.
With his golden eyes shining in the moonlight, he found them shaking a bit as he picked up the last book in the clay pot. Unlike the others, it had a dark cover and an R18 sign on it. It was torn and had a burnt edge at the top.
Tito shook it a few times to remove the dust that covered it, and this raised a thought in his mind: 'Just what is the meaning of the prison giving me this illusion? Mmm... The clue might lie in this last fairy tale, which is not for kids. I am sure I've never read anything like this before.'
Opening the pages, Tito was stunned to see them written in Shona.
'Long ago, in the summer when the rains hit the earth daily, Baboon woke up early in the morning from his house to avoid the rains that would come in the afternoon.
His home was nestled between rocks that lay on top of each other, protecting him from the hot sun and rain. In front of the cave stood a giant tree, which only he could climb, offering him warmth in the winter.
His nephew had promised to build a house for him, but those were all fairy tales, as Hare never showed any effort to build one.
The morning sun shone brightly, illuminating the canopy of trees scattered in front of his house, where he could hear the sounds of his fellow, monkey playing around, shaking the branches.
In his hollow eyes, he could see the falling green leaves from various trees scatter along the dirt pathway that led to a slick wooden house in the distance.