Hey there this is my entry to this week's inkwellprompt, I would be using the prompt from last week which is shoe, mood and adventure. Please enjoy as you read.
Panic was in the air as Mr.Nicodemus had gone missing and his family , his wife and his three children Dikachi, Amarachi, Ebuka kept on the search for him, he was a miner at the Enugu State Coal Mine. He had gone to work like every other day to go and dig out coal but that day, some of the miners set up explosives that mistakenly blew out the entrance to the cave, so Mr.Nicodemus was trapped inside with absolutely nowhere to go. He decided to keep on going forward and find another exit. When he was tired he managed the rations he took to work, and took naps in between, he couldn't tell time from the cave so there was no way of knowing how time passed, but he had been missing for over 3 days. When he slept he would hear weird sounds in the cave and strange voices, he would play them off to be his imagination. He felt as if he knew where he was going and as if somebody was leading him somewhere. He kept on digging till he found something weird, it was in a wooden box that had a shoe in it and the weird part was that the shoe was in his size.
When you have given up on all your dreams sometimes a good leather shoe in your size can make you feel somebody is really out there looking out for you. So he put on the shoes he could feel an ache in his lower scapular from all the digging so he sat down and closed his eyes then he wished he was with his family at that very moment, he felt his heart beat lower as he could feel his breath become slower, then he felt fresh breeze on his face as if he was outside, he could believe his eyes, he sat on the floor on the street leading to his family house.
He felt goosebumps on his body, he couldn't believe what had just happened to him. He stood up and felt his body to see if he had been asleep or maybe it was a dream. He touched the floor and picked up sand. It felt real. He immediately ran towards his home, his wife saw from balcony that screamed on top of her voice and her children ran to welcome their father, when he narrated his story he sounded as if he had been crazy, and his family tried not to tell the story to be public to avoid looking at them like lunatics.
But Mr.Nicodemus believed that the shoe actually saved his life, so he made a hand crafted glass box and put the shoe on display in his living room, he gave the box a tag titled Angels feet, nobody in his home was allowed to touch the shoe. Years passed and Mr.Nicodemus died of natural causes and left the shoe to his children in his will. Amarachi was his only daughter so he treated her as though she was special, he loved his daughter, but since the death of her father she felt a sudden pull to the shoe, she would sleep walk and eventually wake up at the parlor in front of the shoe. Her skin will pull her like a magnet to touch the shoe but just before she about to touch it, one of her brothers would come to the rescue. But one day, Amarachi had a strong fever and nobody was home, she sweated all over her bedsheets till it was soaking wet then she enter a trace, where she stood up from the bed and started to sleep walk again, this time nobody was in the house to stop her.
So she went to the glass display where the shoe was being kept and broke the glass and wore the shoe as she put it on, the shoe became her size and changed to a black leather female shoe. She had wore the shoe now and had passed out on the sofa, when her brothers came back, they couldn't believe the shoe was gone, they were about to call the police till they saw their sister sleeping safely on the couch. Dikachi woke Amarachi up, she was confused by the look on Dikachi's face, he asked,"Where is our father's shoe?", he asked. Amarachi looked around the palour and saw the shoe display glass all over the floor like somebody had broken in. Amarachi felt shocked that she didn't notice when someone entered the house and made away with the shoes. As they spoke to each other, Ebuka from across the room wasn't to happy with Amarachi so he went to her and said,"Which kind sleep no go make you know say person dey thief in your house?" he said in pidgin. He blamed her for what just happened and him and Àmarachi had been in a heated argument now, she yelled on top of her voice and said," I wish we were not in this stupid house in the first place", as she said it, within the flash they disappeared from their parlor.
Amarachi woke up on a field she looked as though she was in a strange place, the shoe had taken them from 2003 to 2021, she looked around and her brothers were nowhere in sight, she decided to ask questions and investigate her environment as she walked to a group of people gathered in a small shop watchin the news on a small television, they looked so serious. The news article read, that a very notorious criminal had been caught by the chief of the police force, she stared at the screen and she couldn’t believe her eyes, the thief was her brother Dikachi and the man that stood as the chief of the police force was Ebuka. It seemed that the shoe had taken to the future but also wiped out her brothers memories, they looked at themselves as strangers, she started to panick as the news continued, it stated that the criminal was might to be placed on death role and will be executed in the next 12 hrs. She felt her heart skip a beat as she asked for the location of the prison where the prisoner was held, she immediately got on a stray bike and headed to the location.
When Amarachi woke on the field five years after her brothers, her brothers had come earlier than her. Dikachi landed on Thursday with no memory of who he was. He lived a life on the streets but later got involved with bad company just to survive. Ebuka landed on Friday with no memory of who he was, he became a market salesperson working under a boss who later introduced him to a family friend that took him into the police force. This world and time had formed them into different people.
Amarachi got to the prison just in time before the execution, Dikachi sat on an electric chair as he prayed for his life and Ebuka stood with his full police uniform as he adressed the little audience he had in front of him. He quoted a bible verse as he said,"The wages of sin is death". He then was about to press the button as he had a voice through the speakers in the room, the voice sounded familiar but he couldn't quite tell who had the voice. Amarachi recited a song that their father just to sing for them as kids, suddenly Ebuka saw his brother on the Electric chair and not a thief. He stared to shed tears as he hugged him. He loosened his straps and hugged him, Dikachi too couldn't hold his feelings any longer, he started crying too. They had an emotional moment and Amarachi walked into the hall and they all gave themselves a big hug as the begin to vanish little by little till they are visible no more.
After all, our father was not crazy, Amarachi said as they all stared at the shoe that glow deep red, as they vanish.
The End.
