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| Courtesy: Wikipedia |
Today’s
Prompt:
Write about the letter X.
Word Count: 1,160
Da’Wo (sounds like /da wo/), so nice of you to come by where
I hang my hat. Sit down, kick off your shoes and I’ll fetch you a cool glass of
milk while you’re at it. It’s a fine evening for a little chit-chat don’t you
think?
What? You want to watch some TV?
Why not, go right ahead but I gatto tell you son, Junior done lost the remote
and all of yonder buttons are badly in need of repairs. You only get to watch one TV channel and sometimes if not most
of the time, they’re off the air. I think it’s cause their dick keep
trespassing with their brains or something.
You know I haven’t seen your
mama since you was five. How is she with her bad self? Heard she remarried once
but my ex was never the type to stay in a man’s house for a long-drawn-out period.
I’m sorry to have to shove this crap in your ears but, your mama, my ex was a
rolling stone who never laid down her hat. I don’t think she ever even had a
hat.
Since you got me started on exes
why don’t I tell you a little story about the letter X? Boy, that letter has
been a victim since the day God dropped it among the bunch of ‘em English
alphabets. Take a good long look around and see for yourself.
Seen a sign that reads CAUTION lately?
What one letter spelled it out to you? My point exactly. The talons of
discrimination stretch beyond the hood to schools. Every time you get an
equation right, you get a V but when
you forgot to cross your ts and dot
the is you are sure you gonna
get yourself nothing but a big slice of x.
Let’s take a shot at the movies.
First one on my mind is… The X Files,
brilliant, you watched the series? Ain’t it all just about more bull than you
can take in one lifetime? The only thing I took away from that heap of trash
was that I had to be suspicious of everything with questionable origin. You never
can tell it just might be UFO. But I didn’t have to buy what they were selling
did I? But that was then and this is now. These days we got Professor Xavier
and his X-Men—a bunch of societal rejects
running around doing more harm than good—a Prof that bears a name beginning with
the accursed letter who ends up with a bad case of dead; ripped to shreds like a tight wad of paper blown to smithereens
with dynamites by one of his own. I’ve never witnessed a sorrier sight in my
entire life.
Look up the street. I bet you
seen them light poles on your way down to my crib. Did you see them signs warning
against electrocution? Yeah, the ones with the skull and crossbones? Now, what
letter of the alphabet does the pair of bones leaning over on each other remind
you off? Ain’t no letter gives you the creeps like the letter x my pa used to say that a lot when he
was around. I don’t know, but it looks like I kind of caught his fever. x
is the symbol of the unknown. Ask any mathematics genius and he’ll let you
in on it; why it’s an open secret. The horror writers even caught up on the
deal. Peter Straub, ever heard of the dude? Straub wrote a book, a ghastly, hide-your-eye horror about a
savage figure that commits violent crimes, and guess what Straub called his
novel? Mr. X., that’s what. You can
almost always presume that when a child’s got an x in his or her name, s/he would most probably come to a bad end.
No, I’m not wishing evil on anybody’s kid. Look around you boy, there is enough
evidence backed by data collected over time. This is no folklore setting I’m
presenting to ya, this is the real deal.
All the examples I’ve dealt out are
ordinary enough, I guess you’d say, but not all instances of x are of the ordinary. I got my reasons
for saying that… say you finished your milk. Looks like you could do better
with another glass… what? You’re cool? Very well then, I had better get on with
the damned story. And since it’s just you and me sitting here on the back porch
of my house, I think I can spill my guts and tell all I want to.
Hey Xanadu! How’s them old bones
of yours? That car of yours still naughty? No? Damn, I knew that mechanic was a
fluke. Poor baby’s still spitting oil. How’s the wife? Not yet back home from
the hospital? Damn. Alright, I’ll come right over to the house after I’m done
talking to my son.
Xanadu
lives right up the road by the old sawmill. Sure you remember him, guy used to
buy you hot buns every morning. He’s buried to his waist in drama. But it’ll be
suicidal to walk up to a man and tell him hey buddy, I know where you reap your
problems from. It’s your goddam name. You don’t wanna do that not if you wanna
live to a ripe old age. Sometimes I’m tempted and that’s a lot coming from me,
I’m tempted to ask Xanadu, i wonder if it wouldn’t make all the difference if you
plucked the x out of your name. But
I’ve never been able to bring myself around to do it. It’s like the champ who
tried to tell Arthur Excalibur would
be his ruin. Arthur had the class act hanged.
What was that?
Yeah, let’s get back to our
story. Where was I? That’s it, the extraordinary realm of the x. If the sound of that letter don’t ring
a bell every time I hear it. Boy, you ever read a Lovecraft story? Who is Lovecraft? You didn’t just ask that, did you? And you guys are supposed
to be the educated generation and
ya’ll ain’t know pip about Howard Phillips Lovecraft. That dude invented a
grimoire, it’s called fictional in
some quarters but we can argue about that till the Lord returns. You ever saw a
real occult manual before, son? Well,
after Lovecraft drafted his he put a mark right there on the front and you
wanna what that mark.
That’s the most intelligent
thing you said all day, son. He had an artist carve a customized x symbol up front and center. You’ll
hear a lot of folks going around till this day calling that thing, the occult symbol. That mark ain’t more occult
than a customized x is. But I’ve heard
it can do stuff, mean extraordinary stuff.
Come on, son, let’s get inside
and go bite a big chunk out of something. All that jive sure makes a man
hungry.
Eneh Akpan
June
20, 2013
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