This is good....I like

stdammis:
Segun, is that you?

Blooda na me o....2b2bd1d9, re-add me on bbm

This right here is the man/woman/nairalander that inspired me with his utterly hilarious stories to start writing comic pieces. Big ups senbon

Royver:
nice one nugges11!
Expecting to read more of your works boss

Thanks Roy, you'll sure get to read more soon enough.

Elparaiso:
I swear yours is the first literate joke I have laughed at in a long time.....

I'm glad I was able to make you laugh bro

MumZ:
Uhn Nugges11, u won a competition n disappeared. Expected so much 4rm u after, well Royver kept d flag flying. Hope u back 4 good.

Sincerely ma'am, I expected so much from myself too after the competition, but so many things happened in 2014 that I can't talk about here...maybe in stories.
I'm back now though and I must say Royver has been doing excellently well. Thanks. Hope you enjoyed this one

I must say that I almost jumped out of my skin when I came back here to meet my story on the front page, it feels so awesome iswear.

VanTee20, Fembleez1, Ishilove, ksslib, limibanti, chimera, wman, SirElaw....I'm grateful. Thank you all for your comments, wish I could reply each and every one of them, thanks guys.

Be sure that I've taken note of all corrections made here and will definitely work on them. Thanks again all.

HumbledbYGrace:
oh, I'll check it then.
Is that other story a short story like this one? If it is why don't you create a single thread like Efe did? Where you can post all your threads?

I've actually never thought of that

Bluestarry:
am here.. Go on don't stop na.....

I'm afraid that's the end of the story sir

kingphilip:

don't tel me it's d end o
I've always known u to have some hidden talents boss nairaland is Waiting to unveil u soonest

Hehehe....thanks boss

Fembleez1:
Am here,would take time out to read when it is dawn

You're most welcome

HumbledbYGrace:
Gone with 2014...did you reply my mail?

No wonder I couldn't find it. I did ma'am...late tho

HumbledbYGrace:
I don't have a diary

31 to be exact??

Fatalveli:
Hell yeah!

I'm glad you did

You should check this one out too:

https://www.nairaland.com/2071088/oh-sleep

protegesol:
I'll read up when I'm bored.

Pretty lengthy yeah? I know.

After my dad’s burial, his brothers took over his properties and barred my mum and me from even going close to any of his houses. My dad died without writing a will. My mum, having nothing left in Anambra, had to move us back to Lagos to pick up the pieces of whatever was left of her life. Her poor parents had died soon after she got married and had left her with nothing, and being their only child, she had nowhere to go.

On getting to Lagos, she found a local church that agreed to help us after hearing our unfortunate story. The church took us in and allowed us stay in one of the rooms in their boys’ quarters. They occasionally gave us food and gave my mum some money to keep body and soul together. After a while my mum decided to seek help from her late husband’s friends who had earlier promised to help her. She sought them with high hopes knowing her problems would soon be a thing of the past, but her hopes got dashed as fast as they were formed. The nice ones promised her heaven on earth only if she could agree to an affair with them, the ones that were not so nice simply threw her out of their offices. These were men that had appeared to be extremely loyal to her husband when he was alive. One night, after a visit to one of her late husband’s friends, she came back looking strange; her appearance was rough, her skirt looked a lot crumpled and I noticed some small parts of her blouse had been torn. When I asked her what happened, she drew me close and hugged me tight,

“Segun, I swear I’m going to get us out of this,” she said firmly. Her voice carried a lot of will and determination…and pain, even though it was only a decibel louder than a whisper. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot, but she didn’t cry.

After that night, my mum did practically everything she could lay her hands on; from selling bottled water in traffic to frying bean cakes by the roadside, sometimes she would wash people’s clothes to make extra cash. She’d labour day and night and barely make enough money to feed us. The more her stomach protruded, the more things got difficult. Moving about became excruciatingly painful for her so I eventually had to join in and help out. I was just four years old. I’d sell bottled water in traffic while she fried the bean cakes by the roadside.

When it was time for my mum’s delivery, she couldn’t afford a maternity centre so she delivered the baby at home. She was helped by some of the older women in the church we stayed. She delivered the baby and named him James.

The next two years proved to be the most challenging. After James was born, mum decided to learn fashion designing which took all her time and lasted a year. She could no longer continue frying the bean cakes and all we depended on was what the church gave us and the little sales I made. Things however started to turn around a year after mum finished her training and started her own business. She worked really hard and saved enough money to rent a three-bedroom apartment which we later moved into. I resumed school and James also started schooling.

It wasn’t easy on my mum at all during the trying times. She was still pretty young although her hardship had forced signs of old age out of her; the strands of grey hair on her head were fast dominating the black ones and wrinkles formed at the corner of her eyes whenever she smiled, although the wrinkles couldn’t bury the beauty her face wielded. There were days I’d see her almost completely broken, but with a stroke of daring courage she’d bounce back. She seemed to derive her strength from her children, the resolve to give them a better life being her main driving force. It was clearly evident that we, her children, brought her so much joy, especially James. James had always been the life of the family, despite the fact that he was born in a period when things were at their roughest. His warm and friendly disposition earned him soft spots with everybody, especially my mum. His cute young face seemed to have a smile permanently etched in it; people at the church even sometimes joke that while other children cried when they were born, James came out with a big smile on his face. I always had a feeling there was something about James that reminded my mum of her late husband; sometimes when he made her smile, her eyes would light up with a special kind of flame and the smile on her lips would linger a little longer while her eyes would seem to drift past reality into some ecstatic memories. James never gets punished by my mum, and that was why I wasn’t too surprised that he got us out of trouble with mum earlier that afternoon.

“Segun!” Mum’s voice jolted me back into reality. I scampered out of bed and made for her room.

“Yes mum,” I replied as I entered her room and sat on her bed, “You called me”.

She turned to rest on her back. “What would you like to have for dinner?” she asked, yawning. A drop of tear ran down the side of her sleepy face and I wiped it with the tip of my thumb. She smiled.

“Err…it’s been a while we ate fried rice.” I replied, a bit ecstatic.

“No problem, we’d have fried rice. I think we have all the ingredients we need. Oh, we’ve exhausted the green peas. Take two hundred naira from my purse and get a can of green peas.”

I picked the money from her purse which was on a reading table at the other end of the room. On my way out she asked what James was doing and I told her he was sleeping.

“That boy has been sleeping since,” I added. “Do you want me to wake him?”

“No, leave him, let him sleep. He must be very tired.”

Outside the house, I paused for a while. I was reluctant to run the errand alone. I wanted to go with James so we could play some more. A voice in my head reminded me that mum told me to leave him. I quickly silenced that voice and ran back inside, heading straight to James’ room. I wish I hadn’t.

“James, wake up. Mum is making fried rice. Let’s go buy green peas.” I said quietly, rocking him in his bed.

He stirred. “ooo…I want to sleep!” he replied sleepily. He turned, backing me.

If fried rice wouldn’t get James out of bed, I knew exactly what would.

“Stick sweets, James. I’ll buy you stick sweets if you come with me.” I was rocking him even more vigorously now.

He turned sluggishly to face me. “How many?” His eyes were now slightly open, a fine line of dried saliva ran down his left cheek.

I held three fingers in his face. “Three, James, three.” I replied smiling, relieved that the stick sweets was doing the trick.

He ran his eyes consecutively from one finger to the other as though he wanted to be sure they were not playing tricks on him. “Make it four,” he said, looking in my face.

“Okay, I’ll buy you four then. Hurry so we can come back early.”

He stood up and wiped his left cheek with the back of his palm, smearing the white line over his face. I took him to the bathroom and rinsed his face with water. As I was drying his face with a towel, he grabbed the two hundred naira note at the tip of my pocket and dashed out.

“James!” I shouted, running after him.

We decided to get the sweets first since the shop we’d get it from was at the other side of the road and required us crossing. At the shop, James took four stick sweets from the seller’s containers while I paid. He held the four sweets in his hand; he was eyeing them hungrily, considering which one to devour first. I grabbed the sweets from his hand and took off.

“Segun!” he yelled, dashing after me.

I was barely at the other end of the road when I heard it; a screech, a sharp piercing scream, silence…then noise. My neck jolted backwards on impulse, the image I saw would register in my mind forever; James body sprawled lifeless on the tarred road, a little distance away from a stationary black sedan car. People started trooping out of their shops in large numbers. The driver of the vehicle that knocked James down, seeing he could be mobbed, revved his engine and zoomed off. Some of the onlookers went after him on motorcycles while the rest gathered around James’ body, sulking.

I scurried to the spot of the incidence and made my way through the crowd that had gathered to where James’ body sprawled. His clothes were torn to shreds, blood gushed out from his wounds and every bone in his body appeared to be broken. His arms twisted awkwardly around him. I knelt beside him and grabbed his shoulders, propping him up. Hot tears quickly formed in my eyes.

“James, stand up please, let’s go home. Mum is making fried rice, remember?” I was gently shaking his body as tears poured down my eyes.

“Your stick sweets, James, you can have them now. I promise I’ll buy more, just stand up please.” A part of me actually hoped stick sweets would do the trick again, but it didn’t.

The people gathered around still stood watching. “Don’t just stand there, do something. He’s not dead!” I yelled at them, looking from one person to another, but none of them seemed to have heard me.

I was wailing uncontrollably. I just couldn’t imagine the pain that James’ death would bring to my mum. Those smiles would be gone forever. I grabbed him tighter and shook him even more vehemently,

“JAMES!”




THE END

It was a crisp, sunny Wednesday afternoon. I had just returned from school with my kid brother, James. We were both exhausted, our skin brown and sticky with the mixture of dust and dried sweat that coated our entire epidermis. Our school uniforms which were sparkling white when we left for school in the morning was now patterned with different shades of brown and our hair anything but tidy. Mother always got furious any day we came home looking like that; she would feed our ears with angry words about how she had to work for hours to make enough cash to buy soap and how she could have spent her time doing more profitable things other than washing dirty clothes every evening, but it seemed her young lads were hell-bent on becoming the youngest football stars in the world.

“Segun, I’ve told you to stop coming home looking like this. You and your brother.” Mother yelled, her eyes bulging and nostrils flaring. “Do you know how long it took me to wash those clothes yesterday?”

I stood transfixed, not sure if she particularly wanted me to answer the question. She stood so close I could feel her warm breath on my face, her upper body slightly tilted forward and hands akimbo – signs that we were most likely in for a serious beat down. While I was cooking up various lies in my head to bail us out of the situation, James, who had been holding my left hand all along, loosened his grip and ran towards her. He jumped on her neck and hugged her tightly, planting a kiss on her cheek.

“Mum we’re sorry, it won’t happen again. Can I have my food now?” James bantered, kissing her severally on the cheeks.

“Shoosh, J-James, you’re going to get me all m-messed up.” Mother protested amidst chuckles, but James just wasn’t satisfied with the response he got. He kept tickling and kissing her all over. “Okay James, o-kay…you can have your food now baby, but you’ll first have to get yourself out of your dirty school uniform and get yourself washed, okay?” Mother acquiesced, setting James down and still laughing gleefully.

James kissed her a couple more times before letting go of her neck and dashed to his room. I was still rooted where I stood, partly happy we didn’t get punished and partly praying mother would offer to bathe James herself as I was so tired.

“Segun, get yourself and your brother cleaned up and come to the kitchen for your food.” Mother ordered as she turned to leave for the kitchen.

“Oh crap”, I mused.

I dragged myself to my room, undressed and joined James in the bathroom. He had undressed too and was splashing water everywhere, as usual. After bathing, we got dressed and headed to the kitchen for our meal. Mother had prepared Amala and Ewedu soup for lunch, James’ favourite. No one prepares Amala better than my mum. I still marvel at the way she’d skilfully stir the yam flour in boiling water till the mixture formed a thick dark-brown morsel, soft and totally devoid of the tiny lumps that form in the morsel as a result of improper mixing.

We chatted away happily at the dining table as we had our meal. Mother always enjoyed listening to us talk about how we had spent the day. Sometimes she’d simply giggle as we narrated our puerile escapades. Most times she’d laugh so hard and have to take a gulp of water after, as though to quench the thirst for more laughter. James always had a story to tell, most of which were utterly preposterous, although the way he’d gesticulate while telling his stories would leave everyone reeling with laughter.

After the meal, mother and James went to their rooms, leaving me behind to do the dishes. There had been a total blackout for days, so our after-school cartoons had been replaced with afternoon naps since mother could not afford a generator. I washed the plates and went to my room.

I tossed and rolled in bed, unable to sleep. I hugged my teddy bear tightly and squeezed my eyelids shut, trying to force an intimacy with sleep. But sleep wouldn’t be coerced. It stood at a distance watching my futile attempts at relieving my voluntary muscles of active duty.

After several failed attempts at slipping into oblivion I was forced to open my eyes. My eyelids ached. I freed the teddy from my death grip and turned to my right side, facing the door. It was a fairly big room, at least for an eight-year old boy. The room itself was painted pink, beautifully decorated with pictures of my favourite cartoon characters pasted here and there; Simba of Lion King, Pocahontas, Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, and a myriad of others. The only window in the room was etched in the wall right beside my bed, facing the entrance to the room. A giant-sized wardrobe spanned the space between the door and the wall adjacent, down at the other corner of the room. A fluffy red rug ran the length and breadth of the space on the floor. My room had a slight touch of opulence, but it was nothing compared to what I used to have.

My dad died when I was three years old. His death changed everything. He was a very successful Igbo businessman based in Anambra state, Nigeria, although his business was such that required him to make frequent trips to Lagos – he was a car dealer. It was on one of such trips that he had met my mother, a Yoruba woman who was then a Law student of University of Lagos, Akoka. He married her when she was in her final year in school and whisked her off to Anambra immediately after she graduated. He didn’t even allow her attend Law School. Apparently, she didn’t need to. My dad made more money than he knew what to do with. He had a large fleet of exotic cars and had built numerous houses; the one he lived in with my mum was a mansion. All my mum had to do was be his wife. The only strenuous duty she had was to make sure the house was in order, which basically involved her sitting down and giving out instructions to her servants who would get the work done. She had married a successful man, a young one at that.

If there was anyone that my dad loved more than himself, it was my mum. The love was so strong that when his family members pressured him into having another wife after five years that my mum couldn’t give him a child, he vehemently declined. On several occasions he practically chased them out of his house when they came to discuss the issue with him. Word quickly went round the family that my mum had beguiled him by some fetish means, but that didn’t dissuade my dad from remaining faithful to his wife.

Seven years after my mum married my dad, I was born. My birth brought my mum peace, peace that her in-laws had all but carted away. Out of joy she named me Oluwasegun (meaning God conquered), and my dad, out of love, allowed it stick as my first name even though I had other igbo names.

I grew up to recognise a family adorned with love and wealth. Every weekend we would travel to different parts of the country visiting choice locations with breathtaking tourist attractions. We’d visit the Obudu Mountain Resort in Calabar to relax and enjoy the idyllic tranquillity and captivating scenery of nature at its greenest, where the trees and vegetation seem to thrill visitors with a breath of refreshing newness. Often times we’d travel to Jos to behold the beauty of alluring wildlife at Yankari Game Reserve, and later cool off at the Wiki Warm Springs. My favourite trips were those we made to the beaches in Lagos, were the cool damp breeze from the flowing seas seem to convey a magical aura that could purify your soul as you draw each breath, and the sand seemed to strengthen our family bond as we lay to watch the yellow sun descend into the horizon in the evening.

Three years after I was born, my mum conceived again. My dad’s love for her practically tripled, his joy knew no bounds. He couldn’t wait for his second child to be born, little did he know he wasn’t going to be around to witness it; he died two months after…and that was when our problems started. My mum’s in-laws had been silenced, but it was for a while. When my father died, they sprang up with renewed vigour. They came in large numbers the same way they’d been coming before I was born, only this time with a more ridiculous accusation; that my mum killed her husband so she could acquire his properties. I was very young then and it just made it all sound more ridiculous to me. I was at home with my mum the day we got news of his death; he was on his way to Lagos when he suffered a ghastly motor accident that instantly claimed his life. That day, my mum almost ran mad, she wailed endlessly in anguish. So my puerile mind found it hard to understand how my mum’s in-laws could come few days later to claim she murdered her own husband.

They locked the house and took my mum and I to my father’s village, where I saw her go through the meanest of treatments. First, they shaved every strand of hair off her head. Dressed in a black flowing gown, she wailed bitterly as some mean-looking haggard old women held her down and took turns to shave her head with a small razor. After that, she was made to sleep in the same room where my dad’s corpse laid for three days. On the night of the fourth day, they brought her out, placed a calabash filled with water in her hands and asked her to drink. At first she broke down in tears and totally refused, but later yielded when her in-laws threatened that her refusal to drink lends credence to the fact that she killed her husband, and that she was going to be stoned to death. I couldn’t understand how gulping down a bowl of water could exonerate her of her supposed crime, neither could I understand why my mum would so vehemently refuse a drink; after all she had been through, it seemed like the perfect thing she needed. It wasn’t until much later that I realised that the water was to serve no purpose of refreshment; it was taken from the water that was used to bathe my dad’s corpse.

At my dad’s burial his friends and associates swore heaven and earth to take care of my mum and me, and her unborn baby. She found comfort in their soothing words. Too tired to wail, she just allowed the tears flow down her cheeks. In the few days that preceded my dad’s burial I had seen her transform from the very beautiful woman that she used to be to a tired sullen bald woman. She had aged considerably, and her eyes had swollen from excessive weeping, although beyond the tears I saw a spark. Buried in the corridors of her glance was a burning determination to fight, to survive.

Great job Roy

HumbledbYGrace:
He never ever disappoint.
Thanks Nuges and welcome back

Thanks a lot HBG. Came back to meet a mention in one of the pages of your diary...come and complete that statement o

greysmith:
Now this is one funny write-up.....can't stop laughing

Lol....thanks

SirElaw:
Hahaha...as hilarious as I expected it to be. Laughs to start the year. Oshey!

Thanks bro.....glad you enjoyed it

No matter how hard I try, I just can't get myself past the point where my voluntary muscles get relieved of active duty. Its becoming more and more obvious that sleep has sworn bitterly not to have anything to do with me, at least not this night. I can see it standing miles away, even in the darkness I can see it's enjoying this; watching me struggle to get close when each step only takes me further away. Sleep, this is not fair o, after all we've been through together, after all I've sacrificed for you, or have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten the days when I'll be battling with an assignment around 10 pm and you'd show up, telling me in your sweet calm voice how you've missed me and would like to spend time with me at that same moment, and I'd heed your call even though the assignment was due the next morning?

How can you ever forget the day I was going to Ogudu from Ketu and you came to meet me in the bus, you spoke in your soft voice as usual, I heeded your call as usual and you enjoyed my company so much that you didn't leave me till the bus got to CMS? Do you even know the stupid conductor woke me up with a dirty slap? It took my left cheek 3 days to recover from the shock, only God knows what his palm was made of.

I can't believe you've forgotten one Sunday morning in church. It was Sunday school. You didn't even allow the teacher start before you came and took me away. The last thing I heard before following you on the journey into oblivion was Daniel, so when the teacher woke me up to answer a question I had not heard, thanks to you, I boldly replied "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.....and it appeared there was a fourth man with them". The whole class erupted with laughter and a screw seemed to fall out of the teacher's jaw; the lower one dropped mercilessly. The teacher's shock shocked me. "Ahn ahn....what I do?", I asked no one in particular, and of course got no response. It wasn't until after the service I learnt the question the teacher asked was who 'went in unto' Mary when she conceived Jesus.

So you've forgotten how my barber shop was closed down abi? I will remind you. I was sitting down 'jejely' in my shop that fateful evening, no customer had patronised all day and I was beginning to wonder if people's hair had just stopped growing. I was about taking my own hands into law by dragging people from the street into my shop and barbing their hair forcefully when this hefty man walked in, him and four other hefty men. At first I was confused; their heads were completely devoid of even the slightest modicum of hair and from the way their scalps glowed, I could have sworn they were born bald. Then in a moment of deific inspiration, the type that occurs only before an heavenly revelation, it occured to me; they had come to shave the hair on their manhoods. It made perfect sense. I always knew there had to be a group of people who go to the salon to shave their pubic hair, even though I had never heard any barber talk about it, they were probably just too shy to broach the subject. I decided I was going to charge them based on the size of their ding dongs and was about to tell the one closest to me to remove his trousers and sit right there when his voice stung my eardrums rather harshly,

"Are you the barber?" he bellowed.

No, I'm the executioner, kindly sit in the chair. Of course that wasn't my reply, although for split seconds I wished it was true, my eardrums deserved some justice.

"Yes".

He motioned to the four men behind him. Two of them left the shop while the remaining two stood at the door. I immediately sensed danger. Armed with my clipper and hair brush I stood alert, supossedly ready to shave the skin off the first son-of-a-goat to jump me (I still can't figure out what I meant to do with the hair brush).

The two men who left the shop returned, now with another man. I didn't need that deific inspiration this time to know he was rich; he reeked of opulence and I could smell his wealth from a distance. The hefty men were his bodyguards.

He strode in majestically without invitation and perched delicately on the chair without uttering a word, he didn't even reply my greeting. His hair was rich, dark and full, and you could tell he cherished it a lot with the way he kept checking it out in the mirror.

"So how do you want it done, sir?", I asked very kindly. Chai, if only this man would just notice my kindness and decide to help me just like I've been watching in Nollywood movies. He even looks like he has connection, he might just introduce me to top top people in the world to do their hair. People like Obama.....no o, I won't touch Obama's hair for anything in the world, that one would just send drones and war ships to take out my shop if I should mess his hair up. I prefer people like David Beckham, Bill Gates, David Cameron or even the Queen. Shut up slowpoke, the Queen doesn't barb. Okay maybe not the Queen, maybe Michael...

"Just trim it a little", it was one of his bodyguards replying me, "but make sure it doesn't go too low, dress it and then shape the edges, ok?"

I nodded and proceeded to work, wondering if the rich man was just too proud to talk or he was simply dumb.

I had not even separated the man's head from a strand of hair when you came, sleep. You sang your melodious lullaby, I danced to your tune and followed sheepishly behind you like it was some sort of somnolent ritual. Before long, I was in a realm characterised by snores and sweet dreams...but for a while.

I woke up staggering to the floor and landed with a bang, the left part of my face felt like it'd been hit by three speeding trucks. For a moment I lost control of my left eyeball, the thing was rolling everywhere in its socket. I had no idea what was going on, but the hefty men kept raining slaps and kicks on my skinny body. My attention got drawn to the rich man who was now yelling on top of his voice, I couldn't make out what he was saying because my hearing ability had somehow found a way to leave my body to escape the slaps, but from the way he gesticulated I could tell he was pissed, really pissed. With what was left of my right eye I noticed a kind of grand canyon had appeared in the middle of the man's hair, and it ran from the front to as far back as I could see. For the first time I, actually got the picture of what it looked like when God parted the red sea for the Isrealites to walk on dry land; there was hair to this side, and there was hair to that side, but the middle was but scalp. Not only did the men beat me to stupour, they also beat out my 'barbership' and I've never held a clipper since then.

So sleep, you better find your way here right now before I take this thing personal with you, I won't have you leave me now after all we've been through together. Respect yourself o.





HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

For all o' y'all saying you couldn't feel the touch anymore, I hope you can now stand the shove.
Roy...*in M.I's voice* you're incredible