She took a sip of the hot coffee and smiled at the writing on the mug: Work is stressful and my doctor warned me against stress. Fanta realised with a start that she had been having "aggressive" thoughts for a while now. What kind of parents saddled their child with a name like Fanta? Everyone in the family knew that her parents were avid fans of Roots and had it not been for the intervention of her grandparents her brother, Jeremiah would now be Kunta Kinte. Jeremiah was bad enough. She couldn't suppress the laughter then. This thought always made her laugh.

At 21 Fanta's life wasn't going on very well. It wasn't moving according to plan. As she sat in her office thinking of what to do with the mounting workload, she thought of her dreams; to be a successful woman handling a career and family with ease by the time she reaches 25. Not with this boring, empty "pay-the-rent-and bills" kind of job. Her mind always wandered when she was overworked. One would think that with all the work waiting to be done, she'd be busy, she wouldn't have time to spare on silly thoughts, as her mother called them.

She had always been the "different" one. Her brother often told her in the oh-so-often fights they had, that she must have been adopted. She was the darkest in a family of light-skinned, beautiful and graceful beings. She had a high forehead that the kids in her street dubbed "kenya-bus", thick, coarse hair that was impossible to comb let alone braid. This hair,  she had, in a moment of rebellion, cut off with a blunt razor. Visitors from upcountry who hadn't seen her in a while often confused her for her brother making her mother cringe in discomfort. She knew she wasn't exactly every mothers dream of a daughter but it would have helped a bit if her mother would once in a while take her side and tell her that all will be well.

After receiving her first pair of shorts from her father as a birthday present at the age of four, Fanta adamantly refused to don anything that was in any way feminine. Her mother being a gifted dressmaker, tried her best to make the most beautiful dresses which she only wore for a few hours on special occasions (these being far and in between - birthday, Easter, Christmas). She remembered threatening to become a professional bodybuilder or to join the army or both when the rest of the family got on her nerves.

"Will you join us for lunch, Fanta?"

Her reverie was interrupted by Amanda's high pitched voice.

"Nobody leaves you in peace here," she thought.

But she turned, smiled and stood up. It was getting harder and harder to be her jovial self. It was tiring being jovial just so everybody could be at ease around her. They walked to the nearest café where they could get had a meal for half the price. She always ordered the same - chapati karanga, not because she loved it so much, rather because she felt it was the only "cheapandbest" meal that was relatively edible. The misery of being a junior clerk.

Her hand went automatically to her throat, she was choking. She had been so immersed in her thoughts; she didn't feel the food going the wrong way. Was this how she was going to leave this world? As undramatic as her own life.

Later on,they had said how unnerving it was that she smiled so serenely even as she teetered on the verge of death. She couldn't breathe but she didn't panic. She welcomed it.

She woke up, saw the white ceiling and smiled. The doctors and nurses were standing beside her bed, looking at her with the worried look of a mother not really sure how to help her child. She had the gift of looking past people and giving the impression that she wasn't even aware of their existence. Callousness towards her own fate.

When she woke up again, she was sitting at her office desk. The pile of work still awaiting attention.

They stood outside, looking at her through the tiny window that allowed a view of the whole room she was stationed in. Acute depression had taken its toll on her young body. At 29 she looked like she was fast approaching 60. Catatonia, they said. She could sit like that for hours, not moving, not talking but at times smiling that serene smile that said "I have a secret and I'm not sharing."

Eight years had passed since the accident that had wiped out her whole family. She had been the one driving and hadn't seen it coming. No one could explain how she could have survived with barely a scratch on her body. The car was a total write-off and the rest of the family had died on the spot, including the driver of the other car.

She never cried, they said. She got out of the wreck, shook off the pieces of glass in her clothes, called the police and paramedics and waited patiently by the roadside. They found her seated cross-legged smiling into the distance. The only thing she said was "I killed them all". She hadn't spoken since then. She asks for a pen and paper at times and writes incoherent things. She lives in her own world. Her face haggard, eyes sunken with permanent dark rings, shoulders slumped as if carrying the burdens of the whole world; she's an incurable insomniac.

It wasn't the first time she had choked on her medication. There were times when Amanda, her nurse, actually thought of letting her choke to death. Put her out of her misery. This wasn't a life worth living. She had once been an intelligent, beautiful girl with a bright future. She'd just finished her university studies, was working part-time as a clerk as she waited for her documents to be processed so that she could go to England for her masters degree in economics. None of her relatives wanted to take responsibility for her.

Instead they had pounced on her father's wealth and property and duly disappeared. Amanda had been taking care of Fanta for so long now, she felt like she was her own daughter. She always talked to her as if she were normal. She knew that somewhere in there, Fanta understood them all and she only needed time. But eight years was a long time to mourn and shut oneself out. Wasn't death better? Who was she to think such things anyway?

She was startled by the sudden movement. Shocked at the alarming speed with which Fanta had moved and was now standing in front of her, she looked at her wide mouthed.

"Shut it, its summer and you don't really want to know what the fruit flies taste like."

Amanda's jaw hit the floor. It was the first time Fanta had spoken. Now she simply stood there and then slowly the tears came. They were unexpected and stopped as suddenly as they had started. For the first time since the fatal accident, Fanta had shed a tear. She wiped them off, looked at Amanda with such profound sadness and spoke again for the last time in her life.

"I'm tired", she said. She turned to go to bed.