DAY 13: Your Number is Up

“Something terrible has happened,” he began.

This story is about a young man who has experienced pain to the utmost.

The situation: A young man left home several years ago in search of greener pastures. He travelled to some distant place-could be the same country but a different state or the same continent but a totally different country. Well, he did head out anyway, for a bigger, better deal.

There was a time and those were the good times when he was rich and lived large. He beheld the promise and reached out and took hold of it-glimpsed a treasure worth dying for even worth living for, to the fullest. He enjoyed it all while the money lasted. I don’t know, I’m thinking I should do this like he ran away from home or something. Probably, had to leave in a hurry.

His name was Andros Jonas. And yeah, Andros Jonas going to have a new name anytime soon. He was a college graduate (studied a course specializing in computer or some great stuff like that). Maybe, he came from some other part of the country down to Cornrow Local Council. Or maybe I might move the guy outside the country.

This is a story where the mobile phone is the major plot device. The unfolding plot is relayed through a telephone conversation. Andros tells his woes over the phone-explaining his life story while the plot plays out around them (he and his friend or whoever he’s talking to).

            “Something terrible has happened,” Andros began. The tears choke him and turn his voice into a croak. It was 10:30 P.M, Saturday night. His friend, Blake was awakened from his sleep by his mobile going off as it rang and vibrated.

            “Hello. Who is this?” Silence. “Andros is that you?” He asked, checking the screen of his mobile for caller ID. Unknown number.

After a few moments pause. “Yeah, it’s me, old buddy. It’s me alright. Guess, I caught you at a bad time, huh? Sorry, old buddy but this just couldn’t wait. I got to tell somebody my story, right away.”

            “Yeah, well, okay. We’re friends and we’re cool. How about you? Are you okay?”

A faint sound carried across the distance into Blake’s earpiece. Sounds like shuffling of feet or like fidgeting. “I’m okay. Look, do you have one minute? This might take a while, you know? You might want to get out of bed and boil some coffee or anything to get your mind off the time and of course, keep you awake. I don’t need you nodding off on me. This is one of the things nature does not permit to be told twice and really I don’t have the strength of heart to do it.”

            “Okay. I’m getting out of bed as we speak.” He relocated the mobile to his other hand, his right hand while using the left to insert his hands free device in his ear. “Okay. I’m ready. Roll tape, bro.”

            “Yeah,” Andros said, chuckling a bit. “You were always the one with the sense of humor. Always the comedian.”

            “You ain’t really at home, Andros. Are you? I hear sounds like many footsteps all around you. This has got to be some late night Call Center. Men what kind of hornet’s nest did you kick this time?”

            “Are you telling this story or am I? I called to tell my story. If only you’d put a lid on that rima oris of yours, I’ll get to it in a minute.”

            “Well, that’s quite an education I’ve received for my indulgence. Thank you.” Blake couldn’t hide the touch of annoyance in his voice. But neither did he like it. It wasn’t fair on Andros that he was getting this sort of reception. “I’m sorry, Andros. Just tell your story.”

“Okey Dokey,” Andros said. He sounded a trifle off-balance. He was probably unprepared for Blake’s counter. A few sniffs came through Blake’s end of the connection. Blake knew Andros was trying to contain his emotion and he chose not to interrupt, for the time being. “Lisa is dead.”

The wind on Andros’ end seemed to tunnel through the cables and course into Blake’s room because, the temperature in his room suddenly dropped a few notches. The wind howled in his ear like Rachel weeping for her children. This created a kind of reverberating sensation and Blake kept hearing the words,

Lisa is dead.

Lisa is dead.

Lisa is dead.

            “B? Blake! You still there, good buddy? Don’t hang up on me now. God, not when I need you the most. Not now you got me spilling my guts. B?”

For the fraction of a second, Blake couldn’t find his voice. “Still here,” he said. He’s hyperventilating. “I’m here.”

            “You heard what I said, right?” It was not a question. It was a prompter, an invitation to the dancehall of the macabre.

            “Sure . . . it was hard to miss,” Blake held the phone (he was not aware he was doing this), as if was Andros’ hand. If he squeezed a little harder, their conversation would have been over and not because any of the two men hung up.

            “Okay,” Andros pressed. “She’s dead. It was terrible. Awry. Gory. But that’s the half of it. The road that led to the final destination was long and twisted. It was gilded with thorns of life. Let’s deal with the little foxes, first. Shall we?”

There’s a hiss in the background, like some mechanical device coming to a halt. It sounded big. The bus, Blake thought and he could not have been more right. There’s the sound of footsteps. A door clangs shut-people getting off a bus. Tires screech as the bus pulls out into the road.

            “Go one word at a time, Andros. Do you hear me? Take your time.” Then, a thought occurred to him. “Andros, where are you? Can’t you . . . would it be possible for you to get down here? Let’s talk in private. This line is as open as a duck’s ass in a windstorm.”

            “No, I can’t make it. Maybe, sometime later. I’m still here, for now.” Blake took here to mean Eritrea where Andros had been staying with his wife, Lisa (now deceased.) “Let’s try and make this as good as if we were in the Palace.” The Palace was the BQ (boy’s quarters) behind Blake’s childhood home where the two friends used to carry on the bulk of their covert boy’s activities. Andros’ house was just around the block. Two blocks away in point of fact.

            “Yeah, just like the Palace days,” Blake replied. He closed his eyes in deep reflection. A lonely tear trickled down his left cheek as he recalled the summer of the year when Andros’ parents passed away. They were murdered, in reality. A yet-to-be-identified assailant had gained access into their bedroom and sawed them in half in their sleep. Police report said they may have been drugged before they slept. They died painlessly. The report had said. Yeah, tell that to the corpse’ family see if it helps the tears. “The Palace days,” he repeated dreamily.

It was Andros’ turn to be silent. It was like a subconscious association-he was feeding off Blake’s thoughts without even knowing it. They were in the Palace the afternoon of his parents’ death discussing how one day they would grow up and marry sisters of the same parents. How that would make their parents proud.

“We had built their dreams together,” Andros said. “Dreamed big dreams. We were pretty close and people sometimes took us for brothers. You were slightly taller than I was and this led to the erroneous belief you were older than me.”

Andros was actually sixty-two days older than Blake; fair while Blake was what he himself liked to call, West African sepia.

“The night of the incident, when my parents were killed, Maya, my kid sister had wept and screamed enough to resurrect a mummy. Usually, mom would have been by the crib at the zound of a zeep. Minutes had passed and I had not heard mom’s footsteps not even dad yelling for her to get the baby.

            I’d gotten out of bed and gone to my parents’ bedroom to see what was keeping mom. I found the door slightly ajar and wondered if mom had beat me by a few seconds, to Maya’s crib. I thought that accounted for the open door because mom and dad always had the door closed and on a few occasions, it was locked.”

Andros didn’t think it appropriate to knock on the door as his father had thought him to do. He slid through the crack, widening it by a few inches as his body went through. He saw their bodies in the dim light of the moon as it streaked through the window to bath the couple on the bed in an eerie glow. It took him a few seconds to adjust his eyes to the darkness.

“My parents’ bodies were split into two equal parts. The job was real neat; the coroner said the killer must have used a really sharp instrument like a sword. He said he didn’t think anything else could have done such a tidy dissection. Their intestine had been scooped out to spell the words . . .”

And now, it was all coming back to Blake. He remembered why Andros had to get away in the first place. He remembered why he had travelled down to Eritrea. This was painfully becoming a pretty long story.

            “You’d recall that before my parents’ exit, I used to tell you stories about my nightmares-how, many of those times while I slept, a scepter ominous and darker than the shadows came and stood beside my bed looking down at me, searching my thoughts even though, I was asleep and my eyes closed. It had talons for a hand. I never dared open my eyes at any of those times it visited but I could have described every one of its features. Except its face. Yeah, except its face. I never saw its face. On a few of those visits, I’d heard the words spoken to me.”

Some of those times, he’d come awake and felt the presence and mistaken it for his mom checking up on him and tried to make himself believe his fear was absolutely irrational. He was only working himself into a frenzy letting his imagination run away with him.

“. . . Until that night I stood in my parents’ bedroom and saw the bodies split into perfect halves. You were the only one I told back then, cause you were the only one who would have believed me. Who else would have believed such a gruesome story off a kid’s mouth?”

            “How are you hanging out back there? You sitting or standing? I hope you got someplace to sit this thing sure takes it out on the legs,” said Blake who was leaning against the wall for support himself. He didn’t feel like sitting.

            “I got away to Eritrea to avoid having to confront the faceless thing with claws. I knew the words on my parents’ bed were a kind of message or more appropriately, a calling.”

What were the words?

What do they stand for?

How does Andros deal with it?

What part does Blake play in it?

But, I think the greatest question is: Is there a way of escape out of this bottle-neck situation?