11pm's not Night!

 A short story 🤫

The age-old alarm clock chimes 11. Outside, the darkness engulfs the Harcourt family house like a blanket. The crickets, in their organized choir give off intermittent chirps. The only source of light in the house, a kerosene lamp illuminates the sitting room, casting yellow hues on the aging cement walls. Mama Harcourt sits on the sofa, reading a women's magazine and sipping juice. It's her sleeping tonic. Countless times, she and her husband had had rows of contentions and brawls over what he called her mannerless spending to uphold an exotic lifestyle.

But nothing would stop Mama Harcourt from practicing what she learnt from the Women's Magazine which she paid a monthly subscription for. Her legs are propped up on the sitting room table, with a side stool by the side holding her juice.

She flips from page to page, reading silently and watching the black and white pictures on tanned yellow papers.

"Avocado oil" she said aloud".

"I've got to get that one."

Bomboy the last born of the house saunters into the sitting room, rubbing his eyes from sleep.

"Mom, I can't sleep." He said, observing his Mum with dreamy eyes.

"So what should I do about that?" His mom snapped.

"Should I come and lie down with you?"

You used to sing me a lullaby, Bomboy said to himself. But all you know now is that useless magazine.

"Maybe I'm sick, Mom."

He desperately wanted to get her attention for he was having a feeling, a sick feeling deep in his guts that he couldn't understand.

"You shouldn't be sick." She said, sipping her juice. " You just got treated for malaria last week."

"Mama, I don't know how I'm feeling in my body... Should we call Reverend Ingram?" He said.

The young boy was afraid something could happen to him if he went back to bed.

"It's too late to call any body. Go to bed. You'll be fine in the morning."

The young boy dragged himself obstinately back to his room.

************

Asha was in her room, sitting close to her bedside dresser and plaiting her hair in cornrows. A bottle of oil was open before her, and a large handsized comb too. She was singing slowly and parting her hair in places.

"I wonder what my friends will give me tomorrow. I just can't wait." She said to herself.

Soliloquy was Asha's way of communicating with herself. She enjoyed having conversations with an older, much advanced version of her which existed somewhere in her mind. This girl was Asha's confidant, friend; infact everything.

She stopped and took out her phone and entered the 2go app.

"Wow. Lots of people already saying happy birthday." She said delightfully.

"The chatrooms too are buzzing. Gosh! This year's really the best."

"Excitement for the wrong reason" Someone said.

"Ow, stop it, Girl. You should be happy for me. Five hundred friends on 2go, all waiting for 12 o'clock to wish me happy birthday. Something everyone dreams of."

She replied a few messages and put down her phone.

"And then think about how tomorrow's going to go down! Mary and friends should be here for our proposed hangout...and then we could go shopping. But that's if Ozil has other plans."

"Or what if there would be no tomorrow?"

Someone said again, and this time the tone of voice wasn't what she was used to. Someone else was on her mind microphone.

She brushed it off, as though she hadn't heard the disapproving remark.

"Drop it, girl. I don't like the way you are sounding tonight. There has to be now. The world can't end on my birthday, can it? That's not possible." She said with a whiff of confidence.

"What if your world ends instead of the world?" The sad voice replied.

My world???  Something in her snapped. She turned around. Had someone been eavesdropping into her conversation and offering dark and chilling replies?

Asha stood up, examined the room. The curtains were in place as was her wardrobe. Her eyes darted to the corner where her shoes were, everything was still in order, still neatly arranged.

She sat down again, picked up her comb and continued plaiting her hair.

"I'll really like to go to the Park. But Ozil...he would like to visit the Springs. Well, I'll tell him my mind. We visited the Springs last year and I almost caught cold swimming in those waters... 

"No...we are going to the Park.".

What if the Park becomes the graveyard? Human flesh scattered around like butchered meat, bodies separate from their owners, life gone like a candle in the wind?

Come on, girl. There's no graveyard at the Park!  Asha says. She picks up the oil and smothers some into her hair.

"Why are you even talking about a graveyard?" She asked, parting her hair with a comb.

"Death has no venue. The Graveyard simply is the destination of it's victims. All of them taken at the peak of life's expectations. Death calls. Death seeks." The voice says again and sighs in a tired way.

"Death? What death? "

"You stand on the precipice of life's gates and seek a passage. But you know not that your days have been numbered."

 My days have been... Asha trips off and jumps off from her seat in alarm. Wide sweat breaks out from her forehead and her heart is overworking itself, straining to it's last strength. Her head is hot, and her fingers are shaking. She's trembling like a house in an earthquake.

"Blood of Jesus..." she intones silently, going backwards and leaning on a wall.

What is happening to me? She asks aloud.

Nothing happens for a while, except for the noise outside. But in some minutes, the chirping of the crickets translates into the noise of a wide army. They are chanting and straining to enter through the walls. The girl begins to scream... but then all becomes quiet, quiet like a graveyard.

Or maybe it's her mind that became quiet.

For when she wakes, a woman is standing over her, weeping. But her tears aren't falling on the floor. They get suspended and return to her face, in an unstoppable flow.

Asha regards her a while.

"What...who are you?".

The woman shakes her head. It is then too, that Asha discovers to her dismay that the woman has no eyes, only a dark sunken socket.

"I'm Grief. Death's messenger to the living."

The girl sprang up from the floor like a confronted jaguar.

"Wait...am I ...am I dead?" She can't bring herself to pronounce the last words...they are swallowed by a realization. New information. One that says she has crossed over to the place of no return.

"They all ask the same questions when they are the answers they seek... Come, we must hurry. "

She grabs the girl with her talon like fingers. She tries to resist, but soon discovers that she can't will her body to do anything.

"Stop struggling. It's of no use. Your spirit is air, and air flows in the direction the Creator dictates, not its own." The woman intones, her tears still pouring freely.

"You don't understand. I can't die today. I can't die. My birthday is tomorrow. Please." She begs the woman. She looks at her, but without the eyes one can't actually say whether she's looking at the girl or acknowledging she heard her.

"You are a victim of time and space. Time has determined that you will exit from space realm or what you people call earth. Time is not in your control as is space. You are merely an object in it's continuum, a fickle of ashes and dust in it's power. Your destiny is it's plaything."

The girl began to see millions of people, in a long journey towards a destination she didn't know. All of them were chained, and heads were bent in silent thoughts. They all looked like the Arabs she had seen in her social studies textbook, sitting upon camels and traveling towards the horizon.

"Please, take me back. Please." The girl wanted to cry, but even crying couldn't happen. It was as though she was in a foreign skin, and someone had taken the controls. Nothing was responding. Everything was ...dead.

"You want to cry to appease me. Impossible. My name is Grief and I can't be appeased. I am Sorrow itself, the true definition of Pain. Nothing you do can move a hair of my being." She said, still holding tightly unto the girl.

They met the Sojourners, as they were called. Souls that had just recently died and were traveling to the Gates of Sheol. Their faces were expressionless, and save for the howling of death winds, it's manifest Presence, everywhere was silent. Bones of crushed souls lay by the roadside. People trampled on them and still kept moving. They didn't die, just reassembled and lay by the roadside again.

"Can you just give me one minute? Please. I promise..."

"Shut up, young girl. Stop begging for what you don't have control over. Time has ended your existence and therefore you can't beg for more time."

She said. Her face was expressionless, and the girl didn't want to look at it.

" I'm too young to die... I haven't achieved anything in the world. I'm just as JS3 student. Please..."

"What you call young is Time's gracious gift of existence. Young doesn't exist here. Everyone is a soul, heading to Sheol. You are not too young or too old. Just a soul."

"Then, allow me go back... I know I've done some bad things...like snatching my best friend's boyfriend from her and having sex with him to spite her...but please..."

"It's no surprise you are saying all this... Because we just passed Memories Boulevard. All souls relive their lives and for most it's a journey of regret, pain and shame. Petty if you ask me. They all lived thinking they had all the time. But they didn't know they were all dancing on borrowed clothes."

"She cried for days and had a heartbreak. But you should understand...the only reason I did that was..." She was saying"...baring her whole life to the spirit.

"Humans think evil is a card you play when you want everything to go in your direction. Grief interjected. "You cheated your friend to have her man, and you did it because you wanted the satisfaction of getting something that wasn't yours."

"Yes, That's very foolish of you." Grief said and sighed.

"So, what can I do to go back?" The girl asks hopelessly, now.

"There is no going back."

****************

Ma Harcourt had slept off on the sofa. It was 12 Midnight on the dot. Bomboy ran into the sitting room, like a messenger with an urgent message.

"Mummy, come! Mummy come! Asha...she..."

The woman didn't stir. A dribble of saliva was coursing down her open mouth.

"Wait! Mummy! You can't hear me? Mummy! Mummy!"

"Quit shouting." A voice said to him.

"My Mummy, she can't hear me." He turned around, seeing a Dark Persona standing a few metres from him.

"Sorry, but you have exited this Continuum. "He said.

"What continuum?" Bomboy struggles with pronouncing the words.

"Your family made a bargain with death. No male lives above ten and no lady lives above fourteen. Come with me"

The young boy didn't understand.

"Bargain? How? What are you talking about?"

"Seven men of your father's house crossed over to Death's Valley. They wanted to live long, because they had so many enemies round about them. So they made a deal with Death. That death would only come for them at Two and a half handspans. Their enemies tried everything to kill them, but couldn't. Death wouldn't send a message. Death always kept it's deals. But the men were foolish."

Bomboy was puzzled.

"Why would you say that?".

He laughed a mirthless laugh.

"They didn't know that time and space weren't under Death's control. They thought it was death itself that killed people. But it wasn't. Time was. So, when time demanded them, death couldn't help them. He was now their adversary, and they began to die in their numbers. To Time, their agreement of two and a half handspans meant something different. It was that nobody would exceed a certain time frame, or what we call life span."

"So..."

"So you are dead."

Author: Toby Toochi Ogbuchimalu

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