The drug fed off him as he wandered thru the neonlit streets. It was 2. am and the clubs were still banging bodies together and apart. Every few mins, a stumbling quartet or more of giggling high boys or girls were vomited on the sidewalk—he noticed none of them. In front of him, the woman in white beckoned to him and all he could do was follow.
His body itched and his eyes were heavy with sleep. He held on to the walls, threw up on his shoes, wiped his lips and continued walking. He passed some girls hustling near a church but they avoided or ignored him. The sweet scent of cannabis rolled off them into his nose. He wavered, almost turning to them for a toke. The lady in white beckoned, so he left that behind and kept on walking.
Thru the trash piled up in the middle of the road, he climbed. Into stagnant puddles, teeming with newly bred mosquitoes hungry with teeth, he splashed. His coat grow dark with grime, his breads grew longer, his eyes wilder but he kept on walking towards that ever beckoning hand.
One day, at the bridge, he stopped, his shoes long gone, to stare at the sea. He watched the sea heave against the concrete and steel supports of the bridge. It wants to be free, he thought. He turned to the woman in white and asked for a hammer which she gave him then he jumped into the sea's spray. For a while, all that was heard was the sea's rage but then, a clanging shook the bridge. Of course, there were families on the bridge, going home from work, from holidays, from crime, and so on.
The man tore at the concrete with the hammer at the base of the bridge. He had never felt so strong. He hit the steel and the concrete on and on, hearing the thunder of his hits, waiting for the bridge to topple and the sea be free. The woman in white came down to watch him then other women in white came too. They stood in silence as he worked.
After several million hits to the bridge, he turned to the women and told them that it is no use. He dropped the hammer and swam to the top. He climbed on to the banks of the river, for the sea had died away from that place long since. He sat on the edge and watched the city wax and wane under the moon. When the moon began to set, he got and started heading back home.
As he walked he realised that he felt no itch, no urge to get high. He walked pass long forgotten places and he remembered each of them in spite of the changes. He remembered where he was beaten, where he was raped, where he got so high he nearly died. He passed an open space filled with cracked blocks and he remembered the crusade there, where he had eaten so much food, he gave his life to God. He remembered the dark room, full of men and women sucking on the drug juice, where he cursed God and prayed for death.
A stone pierced his foot and he realised that he was walking on barefoot and then he saw that his clothes was white. He smiled for the first time in a millennia. His walk became jaunty. He walked down the road, the only that had not changed, the only thing that remembered him, passed the old church, now dead, still entertaining the women who avoided him once again, passed the clubs still throwing out boys and girls like rolled dice on the pavement, passed the spot where he got his first taste of the drug and stopped before his door.
He knocked and a stranger opened the door. The greying lady looked at him then she opened the door wider and he entered. She was not his wife but he found her in the pictures on the wall, with pictures of other grey haired ladies. They were many of them. He turned to the stranger and she told him that she was asked to wait for him. The last instruction of her great great great great great great great great great great grand mother was to wait for him for he will return.
The man was astounded. He had been gone from home for that long? The woman said yes then she brought a cup of tea and a slice of toast for the man. He sat down at the table but he could not eat. He wanted to tell this descendant of his of what he had seen and where he had been but the words refused to form. He held the toast with both hands and stared at it.
The lady cleared her throat, opened a sheet of paper, she had removed from inside a plastic file and as if, she was a priest giving unction she asked the man a question. It was question that had been passed down from generation to generation by the one tasked with waiting in the house for him—
"was it worth it?" she asked.
The ancient man looked at the bread and began to cry. The woman sat there before him. He cried and cried for days and the sea fell from his eyes and the woman did not move. The last instruction was to witness. After years of crying, a lagoon formed on where the house used to be and the woman in white came to take the man away. Meanwhile, the woman got up from her chair, picked up the phone, called her siblings and aunties and uncles to inform them that the man had come and gone. After the call, she swam to the shore of the lagoon, boarded a bus and went to meet her family, get to know them again, maybe fall in love with someone, write a book, plant flowers or simply wait to die.
THE END
📸:pixabay
Yours always,
Osahon (warpedpoetic)
