HAPPY NEW YEAR

I have missed you people (assuming there are people that read my scanty blog) Any way internet challenges have prevented me from blogging as actively as i would have liked but I promise to be more faithful in this new year... and as a demonstration of my faith, here is another short story I wrote for another competition, (it would interest you to note I made the final shortlist for the writer's competition.. subsequent post would be more intellectually stimulating I promise... guten tag

 

happy newyear

11:30 pm

I trudge along… no wait, I TRAIPSE (such a fancy word for my awkward gait) along route 6 carrying the weight of my world along. Your first impression is that I am probably not a very enthusiastic or a happy person right? Well you are going to have to wait till the end of my story to make that determination for certain one way or the other albeit I would be the first to admonish you from placing reliance on my mere say so. After all if there is one thing I can say for sure about our sinful world, it is; we all tell LIES

It is rude to not introduce oneself before presuming to impose a story on hapless readers such as yourself... I apologize but I am not sorry. Our relationship will not survive the last full-stop to my story.

You see the dark towering cherry trees that line route 6 to the right?  The view tonight is picturesque. This city has its fair share of virtues and vices… the seedy clubs lining the way to my left with resonating music, lewd drunks and ladies with negotiable morals more germane examples of its vices. It is hard to hear over the din of honks and hurled expletives created by the endless stream of automobiles creating a big traffic hold-up on route 6. Most are on their way to the cathedral for the big “coming into the new year Inter-denominational Service”. It is doubtful most of them will get there in time... this service is my destination too and it is for this reason I am legging it this cold night. This story will be short for in fifteen minutes I will be in the Lord’s domain.

11:45 pm

It is cold out tonight. Hopefully the sporadic clapping our joyful hearts would produce in church will thaw my frozen fingers. It is funny how the need to clap and sing joyfully will mysteriously arise as soon as I get to church even though at this moment, I do not feel very joyful. The rowdy crowds of fun seekers plunging their scarlet souls in deeper sin mill seamlessly all around me adding to the gridlocked traffic and giving the environment a festive aura.

“Uncle good evening…”

“Good evening dear, do I know you?”

“I go do you better, come follow me…”

Yikes! Silly me. I cannot walk away fast enough from her. Get thee behind me, I have a date with my God.

Traffic from route 17 has brought a party and a fight. Angry people everywhere and irritable drivers blaring their horns as if they somehow believe they can create a path if they blew hard enough. An itinerant preacher is going hoarse in his attempt to introduce the sparring duo to Jesus. I negotiate my way so as not to receive a free gift from the brawlers or the encouraging group of spectators like a black eye. I can make out the outline of the cathedral now and my steps become lighter.

11:52 pm

“ejo tori olorun, fumi l’owo…”

“…”

“don allah bani kudi”

What a tenacious beggar. He is actually tagging along beside me as I try to pretend he does not exist. It does not work so I fish out a worn #100 note for him. Estatic, he wishes me success in all my endeavors. The high level of security at the church is sad. All kinds of detectors are being used to screen for bombs. The future looks bleak for this country. The pedestrian gate is manned by two uniformed gentlemen who look under the influence of something.

“Wetin you carry Mr. man?”

They greet as I halt before them. Obviously I am empty-handed… Good-naturedly, I flash them what I hope is my best impression of a toothy-grin.

“My Oga’s them,  I hail with respect... how go dey go now?”

“My brother if no be for hunger we for thank God, Since morning we never shop… we dey here dey suffer for una”

I recognize their subtle request and give them the twin to the #100 the obstinate beggar got from me a while ago. The other one collects it and registers his displeasure immediately…

“Ogaaaa oh na boli money u give us so but wetin we go use wash am down?”

Extortionists! I produce a #200 naira note and they unceremoniously shove me in... I look at my knock-off timepiece as I make my way into the… I have just three minutes to the New Year and the service is fever-pitched as it approaches its crescendo…

“AMEN?”

“HALLELUYAAAAAAAH!!!

12: 58 PM

I make my way slowly up the aisle... bodies litter the church in various poses of supplication. Over 7000 people beseeching the lord for varied reasons as I stride forward with purpose… I stop briefly pretending to pray while I ensure my fingers are ready for what is about to come.

 “BRETHREN JOIN ME AND COUNT DOWN THE LAST 10 SECONDS OF THE YEAR”

“TEN…”

“NINE…”

Right now I am so giddy with anticipation I begin to sweat… then I am enveloped by calm so serene it seems almost divine. I start to race forward with purpose…

“FIVE…”

I tear off my tunic and a few wide eyes betray the panic my appearance has caused but it is too late for me… too late for them… too late for everybody. They will speak about this day for a long time to come. They will tell their children and their children’s children. I have finally succeeded at something contrary to what everybody in my past thought…

“TWO”

“ONE”

I feel the plunger in my hand vibrate as I clench it in my fist; I hear the beep as the signal is received kick-starting the chemical process.  I scream as I am blinded by the white flash and deafened as I literally disintegrate as the primed ordinance lashed around my midriff explodes with a resonating boom:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Reporting for duty

I have been case-scenario bored these past few weeks after my bar exams and everything that once made my life an active phenomenon. After searching for alternatives, some funny, others downright retarded, I asked my friends for ideas. You would not believe how clueless the bunch of 'intelligent' people I call my friends can get when I am desperate for help. One of them did suggest I start a blog. Why and how he thought I have the wherewithal to capture peoples imaginations with my writing is indeed a question for the gods which I absolutely wont attempt to decipher. My reply was a simple; does it pay/ and his lackluster, 'Nope.. it doesn't...' did little for my confidence in just doing it.
blah.. blah.. blah.. plenty story later I am writing a blog as you would have noticed by now (smart you! here is a cookie). this inexplicable about-face is owed to the competition I saw on my TL while browsing twitter one cold irresponsible morning.. (for the curious -> http://t.co/wrEx5f6o ) for the love of writing; for the exhilaration of competing; for want of a better way of spending this time; for testing the fates and probably entertaining a few other bored people out there... here is my humble entry into the competition.
To bring you up to speed.. its a story told in reverse with the part in bold type already written and the contestants (Me in this case :-D ) are required to complete it in less than 1200 words in time periods of 2 days, 2 months and 2 years. Enjoy..
or TRY to enjoy... and tell me all about it when you are done reading by leaving a comment.. thank you..

Now

Aigbe smiled callously as he watched Esosa tumble backwards onto the floor. He thought to himself that she quite looked like a fish out of water – flailing about, reaching for support that would not be forthcoming. His smile very quickly evolved into a cruel laugh as he watched the back of her head crash onto the cold, tiled floor with a sickening, wet sound. Leaping astride her semi-conscious body, he rained three solid blows onto her torso, working his way from her lower ribcage to her sternum. She yelped, shook and choked with each blow, unable to fight back.

“You are the one that will die, not me, Stupid Harlot!”

He spat into her face as the last blow landed and she choked violently, jerking with the impact of the blow and recoiling from the glob of projectile spittle that had hit her face.

“You! Are! A! Mad! Dirty! Prostitute!”

Each word was punctuated by a slap that sent waves of pain coursing through Esosa’s head. She could barely speak or shout or scream in protest, much less move. She felt herself start to slip into a numb blackness but she tried to hold on. Aigbe wrapped his hands around her neck and muttered.

“Witch! Harlot! Your plan has failed!”

Esosa closed her eyes and let the numbing darkness take her as her husband choked the remaining life from her, his wedding ring pressing against her carotid artery.

2 hours earlier

Esosa smiled to herself as she poured the brown powder into the bottle of Merlot. She re-corked it and shook it violently until the powder began to dissolve. She knew Aigbe was already on his way home…

She knew he had received her letter, he would know all by now…
She began to undress... each layer of clothing symbolic, each discarded garment representing a sordid past she did not want; which she had once wanted so much.

Esosa was a fighter.

She was the type to make lemonade from the lemons life tosses routinely to its less-favoured participants; only life had never given her lemons. Fact is - it had never given her anything at all.

All she had, she had fought for. And now it was all at risk…

She tried to shut out the unpleasantness from her thoughts but her rebellious mind would not co-operate. A languid bath and a drink later, she was still torturing herself with thoughts of the mistakes she had made, the little victories, the friends she had lost, the lives she had ruined…

Looking at the bottle of Merlot, she smiled again as she remembered her proudest and her most shameful moments all at once… for it was the same memory. She shook the bottle once more, noting with satisfaction how seamlessly the arsenic had merged with the darkly blue-coloured wine. She hoped she would pour the contents down the drain in the end; it was almost too much to hope for. Aigbe would be home in a little over an hour…

Aigbe - Her loving husband; Handsome and impulsive.

Would he forgive her? Would he understand?

She sat on the cold tiled floor of the foyer, waiting… her thoughts fixated on what she had done. Too weak to cry anymore she steeled herself for what had to be done. She would end this… together as a family or together as two individuals who had loved too much and lost too much… she would end this the way she had started it –

Fully-dressed in a bathrobe and nothing else, holding a bottle of Merlot and two fluted glasses, Esosa waited for her husband…

2 days earlier

Esosa had surprised herself by crying six times that day. For 2 decades she had not shed a tear, not even a solitary drop as she had trudged through the bitterness that was her life. Until two years ago she had not seen any reason to cry...
Every adversity she had faced she had stoically challenged.

To crack six times in one day for her was quite unprecedented. She had turned on the waterworks to see if it would abate Jona’s avarice but the man was implacable. She knew he would stop at nothing… the conniving, blackmailing bastard. He had left her with an ultimatum, an endless flow of tears and a painful resolve – No one was going to blackmail her.
Aigbe would be back in the country soon. She would write a letter and give it to the driver when he went to pick her husband from the airport. Aigbe would know the truth, all of it in detail. She would write the letter before she could change her mind; like she had done before. She would… just as soon as she could stop crying…
Six weeping sessions later, she was ready. She knew exactly what to do. She wrote the letter and sealed it in a blue envelope – Aigbe’s favourite colour. Then she asked the handyman, Sunday, to run a special errand. She wanted a bottle of merlot ‘Oga’s favourite brand’, and household arsenic…

2 months earlier

She had wanted to tell him. She had planned to tell him; but he was so happy. She couldn’t break his heart like that… not on their wedding day.
It had been a dream wedding. Aigbe, the scion of the Odion family had wedded the little known vixen, Esosa in the most talked about wedding of the decade. In the past few months, Aigbe had been borderline-suicidal; his betrothed had wrapped her luxury car around a tree while doing 60 and speculations had been rife of his complicity. It was Esosa who had pulled him from the brink.

First out of pity, then remorse, then love

She had not planned the whirlwind romance that had engulfed them both. She was innocent of falling in love with him. It just happened.
Her best friend had died and it had been Esosa's duty to cheer her distraught fiancé up. It was all her fault after all… so she had entered Aigbe’s life and started it all…

Fully-dressed in a bathrobe and nothing else, holding a bottle of Merlot and two fluted glasses, Esosa walked into her soon-to-be-wedded husband’s life…

2 years earlier

Esosa had cried for the first time in years… probably since she was a bawling child in an unfriendly basket outside a cold Orphanage… silent tears she had shed as her attackers brutalized her and robbed her of an innocence she didn’t realize she possessed. Her pretty face contorted with shame and misery… she vowed vengeance
Best wishes of a best friend gone wrong, a posse of hot boys to show her 23-year-old best friend a good time on her birthday... how was she to know they would rape her? How could she have known her friend would be scarred into morphing into an amatory predator? How could she have known Esosa would never forgive her?
The deed having been done, no one knew Esosa would open up to her cousin, Jona, and with his help, mastermind the death of her erstwhile best friend by tampering with her brakes… no one could guess that it was the beginning of the end.