I would rather not get involved than tormented with such avalanche of destructive aftermaths. It’s a horror that live amongst us. It’s everywhere. Like the stale air we breathe, like the bugs on our skin, like the darkness of each night, fear takes on everyone, both the guilty and the innocent. They pass by us everyday often unnoticed, yet with them lay dark secrets they dare not divulge.
These are untold stories of young men and women who lived and live amongst us.
He is young, full of hope, the light of his noble family, the pride of his native land, blessed with great intelligience and absorbed by a strong desire to succeed. But there he is, cast beneath the shadows, covered by darkness and afraid of what he has become. He flees from daylight, hides from man and beast and exiles himself from all virtue. Haunted by consequence and grave deeds he never really meant to indulge, his life is reduced to obscurity and oblivion. His precious soul stands on the stake, threatened by foes and brothers alike. Peace is a distant relative. His education, his career, lies in the gloom. He seeks to escape this familiar bondage but there is none to help him. He grows thin from anxiety and his fragile soul knows no rest. He is alive, yet dead.
And now, there’s another crouching in the corner, he’s on the run, his hands stained with blood. Torn apart from all that could make him civil, he forgets the colour of the classroom walls, the hotness of the mid-day sun, he loses the taste of cashew. His shadows feel him with nightmares. He dreads the dawn of every new day. His sanity escapes him as he smokes hard at the weed to drown his misery. He is cautious, taking aback by every approaching figure, quickly retrieving his ruffled weapon. He has taking a life before, and he’ll do it again if it would save a life he’s unaware he already lost. He is trapped in a place far away from school or home. He’ll be running for the rest of his life.
Now she walks with her gang of uncongenial disdainful sisters through the morning traffic and yet feeling terribly lonely. Deep down, she knows she doesn’t belong there and is sunk in great depression. In her younger days, she dreamt of being a fulfilled paediatrician, to have lovely kids around her she could inspire. But now, she looked nothing like the dream or even close, a wild whore, thief and a murderer, reducing every night to immorality and blood, ripping down the walls of posterity and peace and disposing unsuspecting victims to pain and agony. The life of her youth evaporates like the morning dew as it slowly looses essence. She is only 20, yet trapped in the body of a 35 year old. She reminisces. In her mind, pleasant memories toggled with ugly pictures of her vain life. But tripping over a rock, catches herself, and then paces up to reach the sisterhood. They mustn’t notice her pain. She believes she is incarcerated by an evil that’ll take more than her will to overcome.
And now what? We see him jump the flower bed and run off round the back of the building block. He is not on some hurdles event practice for the Olympics. He’s being pursued. Six strong juveniles are after him and are not quitting chase. A pair of old rusted mutilated leather slippers go flying as he seeks to escape. He looks a sorry state when he finally takes to rest under a sparsely shaded tree; like the mad man of the abakiliki bush market. Unable to pay his tuition fees or even feed himself, he must pay his dues. This is the fourth time he has been on the run this week. And yet, on the run still he must be, and run he will, until he runs out of luck and finds his battered body in the hospital or in hell. But before the oblivion experience, soaked in his blood, nemesis buys him time to remember his old mother at the village, bent by age and labour, as she weeds her farm under the heat of the sun. tears mix with blood. Hopelessly, he wishes he gets another chance to set things right.
To be continued....
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