When I saw him, revving like a vexed horse and coiling like a pricked millipede, I just thought: oh hunger again. Was my presumption right? I think it was this time and relevant too. This was not just the first time I'm seeing him wearing such visage. In short it now occurs as many times as providence allows us to see. The lad, not quite looking more than five in age, lives close by, just next door but status and perhaps, age difference smothered through our tenancy relationship.

As it has happened many times, or as I have allowed it to happen many times, whenever he pegs at my door with such face betraying hunger; a kind of laying ambush for me, for my emotions, I'm often forced to dig into my purse and push a note into his palm. Thank sir, he would say, his demeanour indicating that I have performed my rituals towards him that very moment. I often feel it too a feeling that follows one's belief in and deep conviction about the correctness of ones sacrifice to his God. But watch out for his next step.

This morning, still groaning at the near sleeplessness that has been having a toll on me lately, I heard a soft knock on my door, a dent on the quietude of that early morning which of course has been to my very delight. But I pretended deafness, wishing I hadn't heard it in the first place. But the second knock came, with somewhat vehemence. The knock couldnt have been done with a fist, I thought. It could well have been done with a stone, a thick stick or anything hard but definitely not with a bare fist. I jumped up, leaving my deafness behind. When I opened the door. What! This lad again! He was already there, clad in unclothedness, making the same face, a hunger-laden face, a dreadful face. I peered into his eyes with rage, hoping he would understand the message but he challenged and charged at my rage with a daring eyes. Gosh, I muttered a little muttering that could barely make it past the walls of the mind. Guess what I did. I played my palm through his hair, wishing it would permeate his head too. Some moments later, I dissolved into my room and shut the door behind me. Not only that, I fastened the bolt and lay still on my mat-like foam, unconcerned, disconnected from that sombre theatrics.
Some few minutes flew past and silence maintained its course. And I wished for more of the stillness. I wished for non-existence of my very existence. But none of these wishes played out in realistic terms.

Unfortunately, it was no sooner than I had started laughing off my non observance of my perennial ritual toward the lad that I began to hear a cry, a menacing cry. The sound was as if it could perform a filtering through the eye of a needle for it radiated a needle-like shrillness. It was then that I began to hope to be immersed in absolute somnolence; hoped to kill that sound; that peace-shattering sound. But I couldn't. He maintained his stance through the cry. He protested with unrestrained rigidity, knocking into me, a forced knowledge of his presence.

Despite the force which his antics commanded, I remained bodily detached from his show but instinctively attached. As his cry turned to sobs, I began to melt into his plea; began to brace up for another ritual. But this time, I decided not to dole out any dough. Guess what I sacrificed. Just two packets of tummy-tummy noodles. When I gave him this, he casted a despising look on it and threw himself to the floor, reeling. Just from God-knows-where, the mother made an appearance, collected the packets from me and took his reeling lad with her.

What do I do the next time this lad appears?

I can't finish this whole text book

Try man