Friday, June 7, 2013

DAY 7: Lethal Evenings

Courtesy: flickr

Today’s Prompt:
You strike up a conversation with a stranger in the check-out line at the grocery store who, as it turns out, is not a stranger at all.
Courtesy: Writing.Com

Word Count: 2,447

The check-out line at Andise (/Andy Say/) Mart, A-Mart for short, was like one of the chimney trains typically featured in WW2 flicks of yore; long-drawn-out and flat out slow-mo. Plus, the air conditioning unit was blowing hot; the heat was coming off in waves and it hummed aloud in monotone. It made customers shoot it wary side-glances as if they expected it to explode in their faces without notice.
                Sweat ran all over Idara’s face like the surface of a windowpane during a shower. She groped in her handbag for her towel and her elbow connected with the spine of the woman in front of her. It was a faint brush and would be ignored under certain circumstances but the heat and the bore in the store blew all things out of proportion.
                “Careful there,” the woman whose name was Angeline said.
                “Sorry,” Idara said, patting the other woman on the back. “Just getting my towel. It sure’s getting hot in here. Looks like somebody left a door open and let out all the air conditioning. Just the kind of stuff some people are apt to do in this kind of situation.”
                “Besides, that air conditioning unit’s singing a different tune today and management better start dancing.”
                “I suppose it’s kind of doing the complain-to-management-thing all by itself.”
                “It’s so sad we’re forced to endure the situation and to imagine we pay for services in cash.” Angie said, mouthing the word cash as if it wielded magical powers. “We deserve better.” Her face was streaked with sweat and she dabbed it off with the sleeve of her shirt.
                “Ugh, ugh, says who? The customer is always right if and when management says so.” Idara bellowed laughter and Angie joined in.
                “That’s funny.”
                “How do I get the feeling this line is advancing at a crawl or is it?” Idara asked her new friend.
                “I get the same feeling. But it’s probably the heat that’s getting to us. Over there, that’s three happy customers heading out the door. Looks like we’re moving, after all.”
                “More like three-happy-to-finally-get-away-from-this-asphyxiating-atmosphere-customers to me. Now, that’s a bit weird.”
                “What is weird?” Angie said.

Idara had stepped out of line and her gaze was fixed on something down the aisle behind Angie. Angie followed her gaze.
                “Last I checked I was bringing up the rear of the line, eh… I didn’t get your name.”
                “Name’s Angie, I don’t recall you giving yours, either.”
                “Idara. That’s pronounced He Dar Ra (like the Egyptian sun god).”
                “That’s a tough one. No offence. What does it mean?”
                “No offence taken. It’s Ibibio and translates as Joy.”
                “I wish you could wave a wand and spread a little bit of that around. Might animate the zombies in the house,” Angie said, hands flailing in the air, waving an invisible wand.
                “Sorry, but I’m so not into sorcery. I really wish I could that, heck I need it myself.” Idara smiled and turned to stare at the crowd mustering at the tail end of the grocery. “All these people and I don’t see an Emergency Exit just in case, do you?”
                “What emergency? Who’s scared of pumpkins going off like hand grenades or lettuce leaves that suddenly animate and wrap themselves around you? Maybe, the canned beans might pop out of their cans and grow giant stalks that reach all the way up to the clouds?” Angie laughed her head off while she made these silly suggestions so did Idara, her audience of one.
                “Seriously though, from the buzz of that air conditioning unit, anything is possible,” said Idara.
                “You know, you might have a point there.”
                “I do?” said Idara in mock shock. “How so?”
                “Can I tell you a story?”
Idara shot a quick glance towards the counter, which looked a 1,000 miles from where she stood. “Seems we’re gonna be stuck here till the next century. Shoot the stuff.”

And so Angie went on to spin a yarn that would awaken sleeping dogs that should best be let alone.
                “Not quite six years from today, I was a guest at an event where we had to stand in a line. I think it was a house party but I’m not sure. Anyway, it wasn’t the kind of place where you’d expect an accident or an emergency like you said it. But sometimes, bad things happen and we can’t stop or change the outcome.
                “So there I was and I can’t retrieve from memory, a single reason I was there. But I have a vague idea I might have been there to catch up on old times.
                “The house was an expansive and expensive job. A mansion. The owner’s wife had decided to gather her friends and friends’ friends together. She called it a social…”
                “Facebook thing,” Idara completed her sentence for her. “Only this was for real, not on the internet. Her name was Inuen Ndo (/Innuendo/) and she was…”
                “‘Always at your service!’” The women spoke the last phrase in chorus and burst out laughing. They looked like a bunch of kids waiting their turn at Santa’s Grotto.
                “I’ll be darned. If this ain’t a small world,” Idara said.
                “Have I just found myself a collaborator in crime?” Angie was utterly amazed and it had no association with Idara’s shock eons ago. It was genuine awe.

A tumor of memory appeared in Idara’s mind and began to take shape and grow in form and size. She grasped Angie’s shoulder with the hand that wasn’t occupied with a grocery bag.
                “Wait, wait.” It was a decibel shy of a scream. “Weren’t we supposed to do something if anyone of the guests stumbled upon another?”
                “Something,” Angie’s brow creased in a frown. “Like what do you imply?”
                “I mean, it was supposed a game, do you not remember? A fatal game. The darned occasion was designed by an evil mastermind as some sort of devilish game.”
                “Hell’s Own Tour,” Angie said.
                “Whoever ran into another after the event and if the two managed to invoke the memory of that lethal evening had to make a return…”
                “Make a return trip to the mansion of Mrs. Inuen Ndo and complete the game.” Angie completed Idara’s sentence.
Memory had returned and with it a haunted, sick terror that put the metallic taste of fear in their mouths.
                “Brrr,” Angie said. She was done laughing. “I don’t think we ought to go back to that place after the horrible things we witnessed. Thinking about it is creepy enough as is. I’m just starting to get my life on point since the game and its aftermath and now this? You’ve got to be way in over your head to think of stepping a foot within the walls of that palace of death again. Somebody was probably looking out for us and saved us from being pushed off the fringe into the pit of destruction.” Angie’s frame picked up a tremble. She probably did not notice. There was way too much going through her mind.
                “Girl, I never mentioned going back, not there, not anywhere near there. It’s a thought that crossed my mind about that day. I don’t believe that hoodoo stuff in any case.” Idara punctuated her speech with a wave of the hand.
                “Girl, you better start believing,” Angie said. “After surviving death row, I’m just glad I’m still breathing right now.”

The women had used up their speeches and now waited for their brain to cook up something. Silence rushed into the pause and held sway. The whirr of the A/C grew and became intense, concrete and magnified in the pregnant intermission.
                “What do we do now? We can’t disrespect the memory. Should we allow the spirits of all those dead folks wander aimlessly? We need to help them find rest.” Idara may not be into hoodoo/voodoo hocus-pocus but she wasn’t totally unbelieving.
                “They died trying to save their butts.”
                “That’s mean and a nasty thing to say. They died for us.”
                “They died their own deaths, nobody else’s.”
                “We wouldn’t be here today if not for the substitution game,” Idara said.

The Substitute Game otherwise called Hell’s Own Tour is a game of death, which their host the suicide, Inuen Ndo introduced them to. “For every human being on the face of the earth there is a substitute.” Her voice boomed through the speakers at her husband’s mansion. “That’s the reason I perceive life as a game of soccer. You can be substituted.”
                The women (it was an all-women show) had cheered and greeted the address with a smattering of applause. Had they known, really had a deep-seated knowledge, what fate awaited them, they would flee to the mountains, which surrounded the mansion.
Inuen Ndo (whose name translates as Bird of Marriage), after making her declaration asked each ‘contender’ to get a partner, somebody with natural traits matching theirs. It boiled down to traits as insignificant as identical voice tones. Of course, the guests considered this an interesting kind of sport. It all ran smoothly until the blood hit the wall.

                “You are all witnesses to the fact that there are way too many substitutes in this world to allow room for creativity and originality,” Inuen Ndo said, after the contenders had each selected a substitute. The observation was greeted with cheers and laughter. Inuen Ndo separated the group into the two; the featured players on one side and the substitutes or ‘excess’ as she called them on the other. Inuen Ndo collected the excesses then asked the featured players and guests to excuse them and wait outside. The fun was over; here was tragedy right on schedule.

Inuen Ndo’s husband had been cheating on her for a long time he’d taken getting caught for granted. But as it always happens when people push their luck, the bastard had been caught by his wife. She had discovered the reality about their marriage and confronted him. Mr. Ndo had told his wife in plain terms, “For every woman on this planet, there exists a substitute.” Then as if to spite her, he added, “You have just been substituted.”

The guests and featured players got outside to wait and hope for the game to be taken to new levels of excitement.
The explosion ripped the roof off the house and shot it into the skies like surface to air rocket launcher. It scattered debris and spread it wide over the vicinity. Many of the women waiting outside the mansion collapsed in a dead faint. The house was ablaze with burning women, mouths opening and closing in screams that were never uttered.
                After the fire had piped down, Inuen Ndo’s husband, Mr. Ndo’s remains was discovered in the house by authorities, strapped to a chair in his bedroom and charred by the fire. The surviving guests at the party understood the situation perfectly. If jealousy had made Inuen Ndo raze down her family mansion taking herself and her infidel husband along for hell’s own tour, it was all right. But why the hell did she need an entourage?

The women met at the foot of the hill leading up to the burnt-down Ndo’s Mansion. They had no previous experience on putting restless spirits to rest but they were strengthened by determination and personal resolve.
                They had decided to revisit the Inuen Ndo’s palace of sacrifice because after their meeting at the grocery, they had been tormented by torturous nightmares of women clothed in flames with mouths opening and closing in wordless screams for help that never came.

Idara had called Angie up and the two women agreed to meet there, at the foot of the hill where the burnt-down mansion stood, not yet revamped. They’d both heard the voice of the suicide host, Inuen Ndo telling them, ‘You must perfect the sacrifice.’ They had no idea what the sacrifice was nor did they have any plans on what to do when they arrived at the foot of the razed structure. Idara consulted books that dealt with fetish subjects at the local library and she got her head messed up a lot more than before she went to the library.

                “Got any ideas what exactly we’re supposed to do when we get up there?” Angie asked Idara as they walked up the hill towards the house. “Even their ashes-what was left of the corpses-are no longer there; they scuttled them away for the first mass burial this town ever witnessed.”
                “I don’t know what to with it just yet but I brought something along with me.”
Angie sprang at it. “What is it?”
                “Not just yet. It’s kind of a secret, somebody might hear us.”
                “Who in this god-forsaken place is going to hear us? There’s nobody here.”
                “Hush.”

The wind picked up in a hurry and grew fierce. It whirled at the center of the debris, rose up and rushed at them like a striker turning for home. Angie broke into a run and Idara was on top of her holding her down.
                “Stop. Be bold.”
The wind did not fling them away when it got to where they stood wide-eyed. It went round them in a circle. When the women moved forward, it parted and created a portal made of moving air.
                “I don’t know if this is what you wanted or not,” Idara said as the women came to the rubble.
                “Who the hell are you talking to?” Angie hissed the words to keep whomever Idara was speaking to from overhearing.
                “Be quiet.” Idara’s hand was in her pocket fiddling for something. Soon, she held up a pouch and raised her voice. “But I got this and I want you all to know I’m not coming back if it don’t work. So you tell whoever or whatever’s bothering you on the other side of the veil they better be ready to accept this offering or they can get themselves a real witchdoctor.” She spoke the next words out loud like she had mustered up all her courage. The clouds gathered, churned, and turned black over the rubble.
Idara was still speaking. “You can be the salt of the earth or you can be salt that turns soil to crap. And with this salt” she sprinkled some on the debris. “I release your spirits.”

There was a sound like a loud bang and then there were faces coming out of the ruins. They rushed past them into the shadow. One of the faces returned and whispered in Idara’s ear. It was just two words but it meant the world to the distraught women.
The spirit woman said, “Thank you.” And then it was gone with the wind.


Eneh Akpan
June 7, 2013



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