The story of my night continues here....
Everything had become a mystery to me. The death of Oyinkan had breathed some feelings of ineptness deep down into my soul. For days, I was just alone in my room, not speaking to anyone, or answered anyone who knocked on my door. The memories of Oyinkan’s death still roamed greatly in my mind and the most intense parts of her inflowing memories are the moments of her burial. It was such a disdainful sight as I saw mummy Oyinkan almost tearing herself down in pain. She wept so much that it seemed no one could control her, and yes, no one did. Who else could feel the loss more than her. She was the one who bore her for nine months, who washed her clothes when she dirtied them, who spent the night, maybe praying for her to be a great woman and all those hope for a fulfilled dream, a bright future of reaping the fruit of her labour were all gone; all gone within a day.
Her dad, who one would have thought would be strong was also there, standing by the grave and shedding tears. Who would have blamed him for crying? Who would have said he shouldn’t cry, that he should have been a man? When he had lost his greatest investment, an unredeemable one for that matter, his daughter, his jewel. I wished I could read what was going inside of him, what he was thinking. I couldn’t move close to the grave to so as to give the casket a loud sound from falling soil being poured on it by close ones. I had seen enough of her breathless self, I wanted to see no more, no more of her clayed being and that was why I sat down during the church service when everyone was moving to pay their last respects; refusing to move an inch from my seat; I thought by this at least the pain would go away. So immediately, she was being lowered, I went away, even escaping many class delegates from school in order not to receive different versions of sorry from various mourners of truth and mockeries. I got a bike as soon as I hit the main road from where her cemetery led out. She was buried in a church cemetery; the one owned by her home church, which I had prayed for many times that I never remembered, but still I wouldn’t forget.
Her dad, who one would have thought would be strong was also there, standing by the grave and shedding tears. Who would have blamed him for crying? Who would have said he shouldn’t cry, that he should have been a man? When he had lost his greatest investment, an unredeemable one for that matter, his daughter, his jewel. I wished I could read what was going inside of him, what he was thinking. I couldn’t move close to the grave to so as to give the casket a loud sound from falling soil being poured on it by close ones. I had seen enough of her breathless self, I wanted to see no more, no more of her clayed being and that was why I sat down during the church service when everyone was moving to pay their last respects; refusing to move an inch from my seat; I thought by this at least the pain would go away. So immediately, she was being lowered, I went away, even escaping many class delegates from school in order not to receive different versions of sorry from various mourners of truth and mockeries. I got a bike as soon as I hit the main road from where her cemetery led out. She was buried in a church cemetery; the one owned by her home church, which I had prayed for many times that I never remembered, but still I wouldn’t forget.
Like most suicides I had seen on the TV, Oyinkan did not drop any note. But she needed not write one, I was her suicide note. I was the one she explained everything to, I was the one that spoke to her, telling her to be strong and to pick up herself and head for school and which I thought she did when I thought it was her I was speaking to not knowing I was hallucinating due to the drug I had taken shortly before going to class after leaving home that day. Okay, that was a secret Oyinkan didn’t herself know. All Oyinkan knew was that I had a condition of smoking Indian hemp habitually and it had become so intense that each minute of the day, I wanted to be high. I wanted to feel something in me that was not me; something more, something super than myself. That unquenchable thirst, that feeling of wanting to be in a deeper higher mood led me to the act of syringing myself with unlawful liquid drugs. At first, I felt good, better, in fact best. That was the feeling I wanted and that was what I got, not until I began to experience some strangeness in what I saw, being unable to distinguish between what was real and what was not. I was beginning to lose myself totally that, sometimes, I would not even know which was real or not and it didn’t come to be until that night I went to Oyinkan’s place to console her, a day before she passed on.
Though after her death, I was still very much addicted and it was gradually looking like I was exiting the world of reality into that which was beyond the eyes and the ears. I was gradually closing the gap between sanity and insanity and soon people began to notice whenever I was alone and would for minutes engage in serious conversations without anyone dialoguing with me, after which I would come back to my senses. Yet, I did not stop, not until something ignited my memory back to what I saw few hours before the discovery of Oyinkan’s hanging body.
************************************************************************************************************************************
It was the scene I had encountered that day after class when I thought I was speaking to her, not knowing only emptiness was in front on me as words dropped from the centre of my lips. After taking myself through severe and serious thoughts, I was able to place her words well and by replaying it in my mind, I created a connection between her words and then it came to be known to me, the missing core of all what she said.
It was there all along, I only wasn’t settled to put everything together. I discovered she was trying to tell me that what I was doing was not the way, which was something her spirit being must, perhaps have realised later on, after the gutter had been crossed. But it was too late for her to turn back. She had already placed herself in death’s swift arms to be taken on a short cold never-to-return journey to the place where only a gutter lies between the two worlds of the living and the dead. Inside this gutter she crossed, there were always a flowing white and black waters lying side by side and which together flow with time. Every human has this gutter too. The thin link between living the world of differences, of colour, of discrimination, and of war: only what laid after these waters were what you will find after you’ve crossed yours too. But usually something happens to the waters, and on a normal circumstance, it only happens once.
It was there all along, I only wasn’t settled to put everything together. I discovered she was trying to tell me that what I was doing was not the way, which was something her spirit being must, perhaps have realised later on, after the gutter had been crossed. But it was too late for her to turn back. She had already placed herself in death’s swift arms to be taken on a short cold never-to-return journey to the place where only a gutter lies between the two worlds of the living and the dead. Inside this gutter she crossed, there were always a flowing white and black waters lying side by side and which together flow with time. Every human has this gutter too. The thin link between living the world of differences, of colour, of discrimination, and of war: only what laid after these waters were what you will find after you’ve crossed yours too. But usually something happens to the waters, and on a normal circumstance, it only happens once.
However, some have claimed to have seen it twice, even thrice. Once the two flowing water divorces their fluidity and become dormant, it meant just one thing: one’s feet has crossed to the other side of the gutter from where pleadings for return is spat out of the mouth unto a blank sand. I’ve seen this gutter too, and I’ve seen the waters flowing, but I’ve never crossed it. The first time was when I was a little boy and I saw a vehicle coming to hit me while crossing the road, but behind the vehicle was a heavy dark force coming accompanying it and within this heavy dark force, I saw the gutter for the first time. The second time was also a long time ago. It was when I fell from a mango tree while trying to get ripe and tempting mangoes from it, this time, as I headed for the ground with my body turned upside down, I saw myself falling beside the first side of the gutter, but I came back again. However, after Oyinkan died. It was frequent. In my sleep I would see it, while walking I would see it and while I syringed myself, I would see it more clearly than other times.
What Oyinkan told me that day later saved me days later. Her tears for me to stop what I was doing went straight into my heart and most especially her fading voice which repeatedly said she thought I had stopped. That meant she believed I could still live without engaging in what I was engaged in, but it meant it was not really her but her spirit expressing herself in the world of the living, which rarely occurred after one has crossed to the other side of the mystic gutter. Maybe that time she was already dead and she had realised the sad thing she had done, but it was too late for her to cross over the gutter, so she came to me in her spirit form to warn me not to continue in my addiction which one day might lead me into exchanging my life with the pain of death; for through the moments she was alive she never mentioned it that I should stop smoking marijuana, so I reached the juncture of decision, where one’s mind and spirit has to agree with a convoluted issue, that she only wanted to warn me of the pain that may come to be if I didn’t stop. Though are words were short, but her lament spoke farther than her words.
Across the gutter, only your deeds remained; nothing more. Only on earth can one make decisions, but once the waters stop to flow, one’s decisions will be covered with a robe laced with vacuum threads. Or maybe, I thought, her appearance was as a result of the drug I had taken, and my unconscious system was trying to pull me back into my conscience, trying to give me a message and warning that my systems were no longer working as they should or perhaps it was what we Yorubas called the Eleda who have decided to speak to me by taking up the shape of someone closest to me or maybe it was nothing just a shadow of voices heralding messages through my environment. Painting a bigger picture of what happened from the night my hallucination started seemed impossible. Different ideas and explanation would bust into my troubled mind that I was not able to settle for one. All I knew was that on that day, I decided to combat my dyed-in-the-wool addiction.
Stopping was the most difficult thing I‘ve ever engaged in all my life. It was as if I was deliberately killing my soul, which quite taught me lesson. I came to the realization that I was the one who made such thing a god in my life, which I then found severely difficult to detach myself from.
The first thing I did was to empty the syringes and the fluids into the river that was on the road leading to my hostel. I made series of resolution that I wasn’t going to go back to drugs or toxic substances. But sometimes, I still went back to marijuana to have some feeling of highness.
One morning, as I was heading for school, I saw the madman again. I was surprised to see him since it has been quite a while since he last was seen around that area. The last time I saw him he was seating by the road side with a loaf of bread worth seventy naira in his hand which he ate in great haste and that was about a week ago to that time.
I had wondered each time I passed where he could have gone to, until again he suddenly appeared in a new attire, but this time it was more torn and dirty. And he was standing like my first encounter with him. His lower parts were now principally in the air for flies perch and humans to uncontrollably perch and accordingly stare at. His face was darker like one who had for centuries rubbed himself in some thick and expired engine oil that was extracted from an old vehicle ricked out of the garage of a 1920s man whose bones by then must have mixed so much with the sand. His eyes were terrible, and now dangerous as it went through and fro without a pause. His usually habit of speaking to passers-by was no more, instead he looked at everyone as if to pounce, making everyone who noticed him, stare with bewilderment and then take a bow of fear and move on with swiftness. But I didn’t move on, no, I stayed.
I felt there were some connections between us that I haven’t figured out yet. The way he stood and watched every passing person like an enemy was strange but there was something else, something that was drawing me closer to him. As I still mumbled and delivered my mind to the hands of sorting out the force that drew us together, he took his hand to his breast pocket which was almost falling off his ragged shirt and brought out two things I was so much familiar with: it was a matchbox and a rolled up paper which without doubt I knew was marijuana. After igniting the paper, a little pleasant smell that emanated from it brought me to the day Oyinkan died, the moment before I headed home and I saw him do the same.
I had wondered each time I passed where he could have gone to, until again he suddenly appeared in a new attire, but this time it was more torn and dirty. And he was standing like my first encounter with him. His lower parts were now principally in the air for flies perch and humans to uncontrollably perch and accordingly stare at. His face was darker like one who had for centuries rubbed himself in some thick and expired engine oil that was extracted from an old vehicle ricked out of the garage of a 1920s man whose bones by then must have mixed so much with the sand. His eyes were terrible, and now dangerous as it went through and fro without a pause. His usually habit of speaking to passers-by was no more, instead he looked at everyone as if to pounce, making everyone who noticed him, stare with bewilderment and then take a bow of fear and move on with swiftness. But I didn’t move on, no, I stayed.
I felt there were some connections between us that I haven’t figured out yet. The way he stood and watched every passing person like an enemy was strange but there was something else, something that was drawing me closer to him. As I still mumbled and delivered my mind to the hands of sorting out the force that drew us together, he took his hand to his breast pocket which was almost falling off his ragged shirt and brought out two things I was so much familiar with: it was a matchbox and a rolled up paper which without doubt I knew was marijuana. After igniting the paper, a little pleasant smell that emanated from it brought me to the day Oyinkan died, the moment before I headed home and I saw him do the same.
************************************************************************************************************************************
On that day, I discovered an enticing attraction to him and what he was doing and I wanted to do the same. That memory spat my spirit to the ground and I became afraid. I was scared of ending up with a hair so knotted, terribly brown, dust-dyed and severely twisted as his. I was scared of exposing my private items, which I held in high regards to the public audience who would disregard what I had been covering for many years. They would see those two items dangling up and down and left to right without anyone offering a reproach. Even little children would see it and be left to stare at it, for no one would slap their concentration on such vital objects out of their sights and minds: those who should have corrected them would conclude that it was something to be stared at since it had become a public property.
I was scared that I would have to dwell in the realm of the unknown, not being able to cross the gutter on time, but remain with a transformed brain and senses that no longer responded to appropriate stimuli and which already, I had started to experience. All these fears gripped me intensely, with each fear holding unto vital parts of my body, my head, my brain, my sacred items and so on. I was affected by this scene and was just there looking at him, until I began to move my feet gradually away from the place and towards the bus area to get myself a transport to school.
I was scared that I would have to dwell in the realm of the unknown, not being able to cross the gutter on time, but remain with a transformed brain and senses that no longer responded to appropriate stimuli and which already, I had started to experience. All these fears gripped me intensely, with each fear holding unto vital parts of my body, my head, my brain, my sacred items and so on. I was affected by this scene and was just there looking at him, until I began to move my feet gradually away from the place and towards the bus area to get myself a transport to school.
Through the moments of receiving lectures that day, I was not myself, the observation I had made about the madman affected me so deeply. I felt myself been exchanged for coldness and my feeling, so dried-spirited was engrossed by some scrunching atmosphere of regret, pity and resentment for myself. I had gone deep into this act of not being myself, the real one I was made of when I was born. I had always wanted to feel more, which was the same thing that affected Eve and her Adam when they fell: they too wanted to feel more, perhaps feel high, and by the time they realised it was all for vanity, they were already in the realm of eternal vanity (until the redeemer came). Everyone has an angry night, a night when one’s night begins to fume heavily, and sombre darkness is emitted. My night had begun already, but I still had the chance, at least my night has not totally consumed be: I was not yet insane like the madman on the way home, though I have started experiencing some strangeness in my behaviour, but I still had the chance to turn back, I still had the chance to heal myself and that chance, I knew had come.
Without any more hesitation, that day after getting home, I did what I had never expected to do. I refused to smoke that day and I didn’t. I was really happy and on the following day, I tried it again, but each time, I felt myself being drawn towards that holocaust past, but I had the goal set before me. With this, I continued trying. Before I knew it, five days went by without striking a match stick against its box with the intention of smoking. And as the sky began to show some signs of light, the terrible and fierce night bit by bit became appeased.
Without any more hesitation, that day after getting home, I did what I had never expected to do. I refused to smoke that day and I didn’t. I was really happy and on the following day, I tried it again, but each time, I felt myself being drawn towards that holocaust past, but I had the goal set before me. With this, I continued trying. Before I knew it, five days went by without striking a match stick against its box with the intention of smoking. And as the sky began to show some signs of light, the terrible and fierce night bit by bit became appeased.
That was my night, what about yours?
THE END
Dear reader, the story, The Anger Of The Night has finally come to an eventual end. Hope you enjoyed the story. Please leave your comment(s) behind and you can also read other intriguing stories, poems, play and quotes on the blog. Best regards!!!
Comments
Post a Comment