The blaring siren ringtone of my 'chinko'(China) Nokia torchlight woke me. I had dozed off on the couch amidst reading a novel and couldn't believe I was still asleep till 8am.
With a sigh, I sluggishly scrambled for my phone on the side stool. Like a fellow over dosed on codeine, I answered.
It was Okete on the other end of the phone, requesting we meet up in Owerri. Ignorant of happenings in that town, I picked up my handbag, brushed my dreadlocks, and zoomed off trusting Okete to communicate his exact location by SMS.
I could smell the hostile air of Owerri as I alighted the bus at Douglas;the town had become a sparring ground for some time; the state governor turned her people against each other so I heard. the strength of the sun had begun to wane amidst the unrelenting heat. It wasn't business as usual. The road side sellers had disappeared and the place was almost deserted. Scouting around the place i looked for something to reassure me that I was not in the wrong town. I dialled Okete for the seventeenth time and this time he answered with stories of how he just left Owerri; I could feel words boiling inside me, at a hundred degree ready to burst, with a ghast; I rained vengeance shielded in words on him.
"You don't just leave vengeance for God, get a gun and lit his ass!" Ebony cut through my swear call, decades of inhaling marijuana had fine tuned his voice to a deep baritone. He stood about 6ft 2" with skin so dark that one would believe the dust from which he was molded from had a mixture of gold and charcoal.
"Thanks, you are far too kind," I replied. I couldn't believe a man had stopped in the mist of his personal chaos to eavesdrop on my frustration. My adversaries in these past weeks seemed to have overwhelmed me. I had gone from a broken relationship to a broken phone; from a lost phone to a lost route. I stood there at Douglas, praying that time would rewind.
I damned Okete for bringing me far out to a place where I knew no one. I damned him for leaving me in a town where peace had been abandoned.
The chattering footsteps of the crowd racing towards me dragged my attention off Ebony. Sliding my phone into my handbag, I mounted the culvert in order to own a view of what masquerade made the people run so hard that I could hear their hearts pounding loudly against their chests. Then bullets filled the air....
