Greetings everyone!
Before now, I used to stay in a room very close to our street road. The compound was not fenced, and the block of my room was the boundary between the building and the road. In a nutshell, there was no literal boundary—just the block of my room acting as a big kerb to the road. On the street, we had one of the busiest lounges in town, as I have mentioned countless times in some of my articles.
The road was always busy with people moving to and fro, plus motorcycles and cars, and the busyness sometimes lasted until 4 a.m. I’m not the type that gets disturbed by noise that much, so even when the noise was booming, I would still sleep as long as my window—which was by the roadside—was locked properly.
Most times also, I got woken up by the shouts of people fighting and breaking bottles, but in all these, after the fight was dissolved, I would go back to sleep.
One particular night, I was deep asleep when I heard a very loud noise"gboooaaaah!" and another sharp, loud sound landed on my window.
I jumped up quickly and reached out for my knife because I had everything in the one room. My heart was beating very fast. At that time, I didn’t know what was happening, and all I could think of was that someone had just broken into my house because the sound was very loud—like someone had used a big rock to hit both my iron door and my glass window at the same time. I had heard noise or disturbances at night before, but that one was different.
Still in my very cautious mode, I picked the knife, and as I cleaned my eyes very well, rays of light from outside the window penetrated through the glass, and I could hear people shouting, “Jesus! Ewooooh! Jesus!”
That was when I knew that no one had entered, nor was entering, my house. It was an accident. A car had just hit the house opposite mine, and the noise that came from my window was from a part of the car (rubber though) that pulled off due to the speed at which the car hit the building, then hit my window.
At that moment, my heart, which had been beating very fast, began to calm down. I wore my trousers, opened the door, and went to the scene after I had checked the glass of my window to make sure it didn’t break. The guy who was inside the car had injuries and was rushed to the hospital.
When I checked the time that night, it was 2:40 a.m.
Omo! That night planted the idea in my mind to find a way to move out of the house, because I thought I had been coping—but imagine experiencing that kind of event every week.
That event that night really shook me to my core, both physically and emotionally. I felt like my heart had left my body, even when I held the knife and was ready to face anything in the room.
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry to Hivenaija prompt of the week
Images: MetaAI