An MSSE2015 production.

Mescopaul Short Stories Exhibitions 2015 presents TNS to her special readers..and yes! TNS is really short!
Just don't fall out with me cos of that, when i'm less engaged, the stories would come in tons, meanwhile sit back and let us plunge into this short "kiddy" story of TNS.


THE NIGHT SWIMMER
10th May 2014. Pentagon By-pass Ibusa.

[MSSE2015]

07:12pm

He hurried briskly down the path heading home, an exhausted young man. He thought about the football match, it had been good but luck had played a bad role to them today.
He knew he had tried his best, tried to score when he had the chance, but their opponent's defence line was too tight to weave through, and theirs too loose to hold back "The Solid Stars" excellent strikers from disgracing their goal keeper twice. "Sunshine Boys"hadn't adequately for the match and had based their failure to prepare on their ill coach who had scampered out of the training field in a fit of fatiguing drowsinesss. The Solid Stars had beaten them 2 goals to nothing and had sent all The Sunshine Boys in a rather angry and sullen mood.

As Steve walked home this very evening, he was full of regret and remorse. He would have listened to his mum and left out playing in the match, at least it would have saved him the boos of their opponent's fans. He remembered the booby prize they had recieved from a group of rogues on the field, the nasty grin on their faces had almost tempted him to dislocate their thin jaws with a hot calculated blow, but he had restrained himself, if not to save the day more bad news, to prevent a fight that would have ended badly. As he approached the gate of their apartment he felt a rumbling from his stomach, followed by a pressing urge to empty his bowels. To knock on the iron gate and wait for the gate to be opened seemed like an eternity to him. He would rather go down the path and deposit the "rubbish" in the bush before he soiled his pants.

Quickly he ran along the path towards the stream, the pressure tugged violently and he doubled his pace. Stopped at a junction and dashed into the bush, went further still, found a suitable spot, and with speed of lightening he savagely discarded his shorts, bent down and emptied his bowels! Great relief was the result!

When he was done, he plucked scrutinized leaves and cleaned himself, picked up his shorts and made to put them on. He was still standing astride the heap of "rubbish" that came out of him. As he tried putting one of his legs into the corresponding short's hole, his hanging leg got suspended mid air by a potruding nail in the big toe of his left leg, the nail was trapped to a strap of thread in the short's waistband. Pulling out his leg seemed impossible, as the thread held the nail fast, neither would the leg go through, still astride the deposit on the ground, with one leg hanging in the air, he tried to free the nail from the thread, then he heard a noise, swivelled swiftly, lost balance and came crashing down with his back on the ground. Under the faeces!

Cursing under his breath he managed to get up slowly, of course he knew too well enough what the slimmy pasty substance that plastered his back, buttocks, legs and his neck was. Playing a looser in a friendly match he knew was something he could handle, but not with having feaces painted all over his body, the sight and feeling alone aroused his agitation and he spat and hissed and cursed. Spat again and hissed. He repeated the process the third time, but by now he was fully aware that the nasty process won't help him out of his predicament. Cleaning his body with leaves was not a bad idea, but he was afraid of a serious itching and scratching that could result from it. Perhaps he could have beared an itching body till he got home, but an itching body coupled with the stench smell of feaces was something else. With pieces of twigs he angrily removed the "stupid" feaces he could reach from his body and pulling on his "damn stupid shorts" an idea struck him, he meticulously weighed the idea on an imaginary scale. He knew he was in for lots of ill-luck today, but all the same the idea seemed the most likely solution to his problem, for he dared not walked home like "this", what would his mother and brothers say? He would get a good slap across the face for a start. Agitatingly he got up and made for the stream below, he decided to keep to the bushes till he got to the stream, for farmers and labourers would be returning now, and he wouldn't want to present himself like that. How he would hate when he would passed by and someone would spit and grab his/her nose from the stench smell of rotten "shit". No! He decided he would go through the bushes away from the path till he got to the stream and he would emerge and have a good wash of his stinking self before heading home.

Before he could get near the stream, his body was sore, bleeding jolly. Sharp blades of talk elephant grasses had sliced him through, leaving his body bleeding all over. Now not only was he emitting foul and stench odour of stale feaces, he was also bleeding all over and the pain were suicidal. "Oh what a jinx he was" thought twelve year old Steve sadly.

07:35pm The cool rushing sound of the flowing stream reached him. Alas! he cried. He had reached the stream that lay about a few yards from his position in the nearby bush, but he still heard voices of women and children splashing, washing and swimming in the stream, he never wanted to meet anyone at the stream, he decided he would have to wait, though the night was coming swiftly he would stay still, till they had all cleared from the stream. Finding a comfortable sitting position, Steve sat down leaned his back against a tree and waited.

09:05pm He opened his eyes and could see nothing except thick darkness. "Christ! But why?". He heard no voices now, still his blurred sub-conscious could not decipher were he was or what was happening. A rub across his face brought the reality hitting him painfully. Waiting for the dispersal of the people at the stream had led him to a deep slumber, and now he had woken in the dead of the night or no it couldn't be. Presumably a few minutes past 8, thought little Steve.
Gladly his eyes slightly grew accustomed to the darkness, but now all sorts of thoughts flooded his mind. "What if ghost stories were true? And a savage ghost was just lurking beside the stream waiting for him?". If those stories were false, he would have little or no problem at all. As much as he tried to brush aside the thoughts, they multiplied and now he 'visibly' saw strange objects moving in circles, dancing and wagging their sagged bodies to the rhythm of a distant music. That gone, another figure like that of a dark monster stood in his front menancingly spinning a double-edged axe at him, emitting dark liquid from his mouth, that flowed, grew and turned into smaller monsters who did the same and monsters filled everywhere around him. Another white female with strands of hair that touched the sky, she was surrounded by fair maidens that sang and danced with long teeths that craved for his flesh like cannibals. The chain of hallucinations was endless and they kept seeming real each time. A rattle of a giant rat among the grasses jerked Steve out of his hallucination into reality and the strings of the grave imaginations cleared at once. He was sweating all over. He need not waste more time, as briskly as a cat he stepped out from the bush into the open portion of the river bank. Steve was a brave boy!