“…..Costain, Apongbon, C.M.S! Hundred naira Costain, Apongbon, C.M.S. Hold your change o, five hundred, one thousand, I no get change o. Costain, Apongbon…”

Anybody new to this city would struggle to make sense out of what the conductor hanging perilously off the rickety bus’ doorway was saying but to those of us that were born and grew up here, he might as well have been speaking Queen’s English. We understood it all, even though to the untrained ear it sounded like the unholy child of three foreign languages and a generator that’s about to go off. And this morning, my ears were tuned to listen especially because I was heading for a job interview. I couldn’t afford to be late, not after what happened the last time that I turned up twenty minutes late for an interview and the receptionist laughed and called me an unserious, jobless fellow and wondered aloud (the nerve of her!) if I had spent all night drilling my girlfriend like an oil well. Not again, I told myself. This time I made sure I slept early, set my alarm to wake me up by 6:00 am and even told my younger brother who stays up all night playing video games not to sleep till 6 so he could wake me up if both measures failed.

You know, there are some times you take all available precautions but life looks at your plans, laughs and sends a three-year-old child to rip it all to shreds. Not only did I fail to wake up early, my alarm did go off and I did hear it and half woke up and asked myself what the commotion was all about. Then I remembered: I had a job interview for 9:00 AM. Sleepy me however started a self-interview before the actual interview. Did I really need this job? To the extent of leaving the sweet, warm embrace of my soft bed (that normally feels harder than concrete when I’m wide awake) by 6:00 AM to start preparing for an interview that I still had three hours to burn before it was slated to start? However, the phone I set the alarm on happened to be one of those cheap “Nokia torch” phones which I had had to manage since my previous smartphone decided it really needed to swim in the bucket of water I had fetched to do my laundry and just the sight of it alone buzzing in the darkness convinced my sleepy self that yes, I did need to get this job and upgrade to a smartphone at least. Fine, sleepy self said. Do you really need to get up, like, right now? Why not just sleep till 7:00? At least there would still be two hours to get to the interview venue. It’s not that far. A bike to the bus stop then a straight bus from the bus stop to the island and from my destination bus stop to the interview venue. Thirty minutes max. If I even woke up by eight I would still be able to get prepared and get to the interview venue with time to spare. I turned off the alarm, turned over in my bed, wrapped myself tighter with my cover cloth and kept on sleeping.

After what seemed like ten minutes, I opened my eyes to see sunlight streaming in through the open windows. Why did the sun rise so early? I picked up my phone to check the time.

“Jesus Christ the savior of mankind!” I yelled as I leapt off my bed. How had two hours passed in ten minutes? Wasn’t it six o’clock like five minutes ago? Where did all that time go? I started doing more mental calculations than I had done for my SSCE. If I took five minutes to brush, ten to take a bath, five to dress up (I mean, I’m a guy, we don’t take all that much time to get ready to leave the house!), I would be out by 8:15 minimum. Walking to where I would get a bike to the bus stop would take another five minutes. Not to talk of how long it would take to actually get to the island. Christ in heaven. I began to realize that the Island was actually quite far from my house and all the calculations I did two hours ago was the type that would have made my physics teacher write “Wow! You’re the scientist we’ve been looking for! See me so we can further discuss this your breakthrough in time travel” on my test sheet before giving me a resounding zero. Maybe I should skip the teeth brushing and save five minutes, I thought. But what if I got there and my morning breath hit the nostrils of the interviewers and they were convinced that tiny creatures were running a cheap abattoir in my mouth? So brushing my teeth was non-negotiable. Skip taking a bath? And get there smelling like I clubbed all night at a Lagos Waste Management refuse pit? No way! So how could I save time? Take a bike straight to the island? I would probably have to pay the bike rider my first salary as fare. No bite. I would just have to do everything extra fast and hope somewhere, somehow, I saved time.

I glanced at my phone. 8:05. Crap. I had spent five minutes trying to decide how best to save time; five minutes I could have spent brushing my teeth. I dashed into my bathroom, almost kicking my brother where he lay on the floor snoring after probably having slept off texting one of those girls that at this point I was convinced were only up at night to perpetrate evil. Bloody idiot, I thought. Couldn’t wake me up by 6. Let me see him play video games or text anyone at night again, I fumed inside as I somehow managed to brush my teeth and take my bath at the same time. I took the fastest bath I had ever taken since I was born (including what had to have been a record setting bath time I must have set the day I had to write the UTME and I woke up thirty minutes to when the exam was supposed to start). I dashed out of the bathroom dripping water everywhere and picked up my phone.

8:24.

What the….! How come? I didn’t even scrub my body at all. I just rubbed soap all over, turned on the shower and told myself anti-perspirant would do the rest. Even the teeth brushing while bathing wasn’t comprehensive. I didn’t even bother to rinse my toothbrush and I’m quite sure I left it on the floor of the bathtub. How come all this time still passed. Was my bathroom the mysterious, unseen time-warp machine that projected one into the future by minutes? No time to start thinking before next thing I would check the time and one year would have passed. I had to start dressing up.

Boxers on. Trousers. Wait, I’d worn this pair of boxers for two days now. Did I really want to wear it for a third and risk showing up at the interview venue only for a smell to possibly emerge that can only come from a fridge with bad soup that had been off for two weeks? No way. Took off trousers and boxers. Wore a fresh pair. Wore trousers. Put on a shirt. Wait, I wasn’t wearing a singlet or an inner shirt. Did it matter, I asked myself. Oh, you want to turn up for the interview with sweat so evident the interviewers would be sure you were just coming from your other job at a bakery, ehn? – rational me asked. Mister man, take off this shirt and put on something underneath and be decent.

Shirt off. Inner shirt on. Shirt back on and tucked in. Tie on. Belt….

Where on God’s good earth was my belt? I could have sworn I wore it yesterday. I picked up the pants I had worn the previous day. No belt on it. I ripped the sheets off my bed and shook them. No belt fell from them. Neither was there a belt on the now sheet-less bed. I glared wildly round my room. No belt in sight. What evil spirit could have taken my belt, for goodness sakes? I looked at my sleeping brother, the fury in me welling up to bursting point and gave him a swift kick to the back that would have made any footballer proud.

“Ow!” he yelled. “What…?”

“Where is my belt?” I demanded.

“Ohhhh, I’m not with it!” he protested, rubbing the sore area and glaring at me balefully. “What would I be doing with your belt?”

“I don’t know o. You and all those useless girls. Wherever you people have hidden my belt better find it within the next five minutes or you will see the other side of me!”

The look on his face told me he was convinced that the latent madness he knew was in me had begun to manifest and he had better called our parents before I started eating grass.

“Will you get up from there and find my belt for me!” I yelled.

He slowly dragged himself up from the floor and stretched. At this point, I was two seconds away from knocking him out with the kind of blow that Klitchko delivered to Samuel Peters that got him seeing galaxies.

“Is that not it?” He pointed at the belt where it hung on the clothes hanger. Crud, I had put it there last night so I wouldn’t have to look for it while dressing up this morning. All the anger in me dissolved into puddles of shame at my feet. My brother obviously saw this transformation because he glanced at me and rolled his eyes as if to say “see your life?” and walked out of the room.

Fine, belt on. Socks.

Wait, where was one sock? I could see one in my shoes but the other was nowhere in sight. I groaned. What pot where the people in my village stirring this morning? They wouldn’t succeed. I would wear one of the colorful pairs in my sock drawer and hope it didn’t matter to the interviewers. I took out the visible sock from the shoe, took a pair of colorful socks from my sock drawer, put them on and wore the shoe the black sock had previously occupied.

Then tried wearing the other.

And felt the other black sock at the end of the shoe.

I felt like ripping all socks on earth to shreds. I cursed whoever invented the wearing of socks in my mind. That person deserved to be shot, then hung, then made to sleep under a LAWMA dump truck, in no particular order.

I took off the colorful pair and put on the black sock I had just extracted from inside the shoe.

Wait, where was the previous black one I had seen first? I could have sworn I had tossed it on the bed. Again I took the sheets from where I had previously unceremoniously dumped them and shook them. No sock fell out. No sock on the sheet-less bed either.

I let out a stream of pent up air in frustration. What malevolent witchcraft was at work this morning?

I glanced round the room, thoughts of what evil I would do to that sock when I found it dashing in and out of my mind, each more creative and elaborate than the last.

No time, I thought to myself. Back to the colorful socks. Shoes on. I grabbed my bag with my curriculum vitae and other documents in it that I kept handy for job interviews. I picked up the single black sock and opened my sock drawer to put it in.

There, staring at me like it was laughing at my destiny, was the other black one. I must have put it there when I went to get the colorful pair.

At this point, I felt like burning every pair of socks I set eyes on for the rest of my life.

I took it out and held it up with the other black one just to be sure one of them doesn’t disappear before I could make it to the bed to swap the colorful pair I was now wearing for the elusive black pair. I made it to the bed, took off the colorful socks and wore the black. Finally, success!

I wore my shoes and grabbed my bag to head out.

As I approached the door, my stomach rumbled.

I shut my eyes.

Satan, not today.

https://completelytier./2017/01/07/late-rush-a-short-story/

I can totally relate to the time flying.

Lol..

... What pot were my village people stirring?

...Wow! You are the scientist we have been looking for. ... And gives you a resounding zero.

Chai. Seb, seb. You try. Rotflol.

Lalasticlala
Ishilove
Ngwanu, over to you.

Awesome. I can totally relate to leaving things till you have to implement the fire brigade approach.... Lol

avicky:
...Wow! You are the scientist we have been looking for. ... And gives you a resounding zero.

Chai. Seb, seb. You try. Rotflol.

Lalasticlala
Ishilove
Ngwanu, over to you.

Lool, thanks dear

You just hit me with a Senkei Senbonzakura Kageyoshi. I was literally ROTFL. Kudos Senpai

Stori e aff finish??

debdave:
Stori e aff finish??

Lol, not quite

senbonzakurakageyoshi:

Lol, not quite

Ok. #waiting patiently#

Wow ur descriptions are do funy d witches r truly at work