Chapter two: September 10, 2019

---SEPTEMBER 10, 2019---

I blink at the dark ceiling, gasping quietly now. The human world. I'm back... I hear steps coming purposefully from.the passageway and recall having heard my name.

"I'm up Sir!" I declare with a shout, jumping out of the bed. The door has been pushed slightly open with me and the rubble of luggages behind it, and I immediately know that Banny's on the way back with his big stick. His head pokes in through tye door in the dark, apparently glaring at me.

"Good for you," he grunts before departing.

Jeez, that was a close one. I sit up in the disarrayed bed and frown at the wall. A lot happened back there. Well, how well can it be summarized?

I think I can state ny findings this way;

I wake up always in this giant forest with the flying fairy thing whispering and hovering around me, telling me I'm safe there. I feel.strangely that she could.be right. Yet I escape her for the first time, discovering a cardboard-picture city into which I fly, in a sky hanging with giant boulders each as heavy as the Apollos and gravity combined together. The city is itself a sort of maze-game, made up of crossing lines and polygons, and apparently I had reached it's center- no less than a hundred miles from the point in the forest at which I begun -when the humanoid crashed into me.. The humanoid... Now there had been many of them, flying creatures with human shapes all around me, and I am made to imagine that perhaps we all look the same- myself and.the flying fairy and them. For some reason it appears whoever/whatever ran into me did not want me beyond the forest either. The safe place. And I had caught a few words from the humanoids dashing past me.

Fire Sacrifice.

I seemed to have been familiar with the term in a strange way. And with the word Kahani. So? what meaning or sense does this piece together?.. None I accept, frankly. Which means I'd have to go again.

Now I pull the bed away from the door completely with a small grunt, then stand straight and stretch out. Man, sleep might be a relief even when you don't need it. There was a whole year in which I did not sleep, when I was, say; eleven years-old. I was terrified to close my eyes for fear that I would appear in the other world- which I knee would happen -and be stuck with the flying fairy and her safety lullaby. I did not trust her then and I thought the entire thing could be some sort of imaginative nightmare- an extremely realistic one too, at that. Don't get me wrong though; I still don't totally believe it's not. But I guess the fairy thing soon grew more trust worthy to me and again I slept. That was in my twelfth year. Man, that year was one hell of a time; with Mickey the dullest and Banny the most active with hos big stick. I guess things gradually got better afterward. They always do, apparently because even if thy don't, you soon get used to it anyway. I slept in picks and breaks. like an addict treats his cocaine struggle. One month sleep..Two months none. Just get in and get out as long as you can without getting far. But then it was real. That place; Dreamland as I stupidly call it. And don't think.my stupidity has ever been sufficient to make me mention anything about all of this to anybody at any time or in any way asides now. I know already; I sound ridiculous already even to you, but it is bery fine as long as I know you wouldn't possibly tell it to anybody who knows me, because you don't know them and they don't know you.

My arms go stiff half way through the stretch and I wince painfully. My side. Where the humanoid thing rammed into me. I raise the shirt up and hold a dim, tiny light over the area. Nothing, but it hurts.

Mickey is probably all dressed up and seated waiting on her bed by now. Oh, such a good girl, as good as Mother Theresa herself... But me? heh, there has to be war for me to get up. War! Perhaps that's just the difference between our lives, the peculiarity of our lives.

In no tine I'm humming to myself, searching for the most retched stockings I can find amongst the rubble of clothes on the bed and floor. Why? This is Tuesday, very unspectacular. And nobody's about to pull my feet out of my canoe shoes any time soon to inspect them. So. quite soon to face the other folks for another day. I wear my blazers this time, amd button up to the neck as I've seen other boys do. That should be a bit cool- although it certainly won't help my cause much. I slept upon my trousers, and you can predict what they look like right now. Hahah, I wish Basketmouth could see me. He thinks he's a funny comedian.

My gaze tries to avoid the battered Eminem poster on the wall. Nice guy; that one. Only I've hardly ever really heard his songs amd the poster itself is a little too hand-me-down. I picture the former occupant if this room to have been some Channel O-loving guy who might just have been slightly too retched to encounter his songs and their singers as first-handedly as he wished. So he put up their posters on the withering walls in a year when they must have been clean and new and good to look at. Well, if I can't watch Eminem because I have no T.V. at least I can look at his posters and imagine that he's rapping his songs.... Heheh. Very bleak. Perhaps that must have been 2001 or sometime about then. Banny bought the house n 2003, when either the former occupants had gotten too severally burglarized or too terribly broke. Certainly Banny had been broke himself, just able to buy a dilapidating house when it could have cost only fifty naira alongside the land in which it stood- or rather; sat -and set up shop with old tools and an old father's blessing. I get to think about the "eat and die" Elijah widow in the bible when that idea comes to me and to a small extent I marvel. How could one travel all the way from his village into a sickly town in the middle of rainy season with an Isiagu shirt and a ghana-must-go bag and his slippers, with no dime n his pocket and survive that way? Maybe that could work back then, in Banny and Banny's father's time, but not today. Not armed-robber-ridden, scammers-infested, money-hungry 2019. He would die, I can swear on tha one.. Banny has a sepia picture of his father in a background of Ixora hedges in an igbo head-stocking with an outrageous, oldschool smile, which I fear he might have hidden from me because he can't risk "this boy" laughing at his Papa's short pants, dotted tie and native shirt. I saw the picture luckily once, years back when Banny and I were fixing up a counter by the wall of his room/workshop/ramshackle- the last A.K.A being for sheer honesty's sake. It had fallen out of an old magazine and I hid it away before he could notice. His red eyes just darted toward ne and bounced off, lik a dart against iron armour, and although he couldn't have accounted for the picture I knew it was his father because they had the same, Banny-face and he couldn't have been so bald-headed before then or so old as to be in a sepia picture.

Conclusively on that, from the picture incident this is what I learned;

(1) Banny is either resentful of his father or phobic of photographs

(2) Banny's father was presumably as beastly as he is

(3)- And the most important -the old Papa's photo isn't likely to be the only one hidden in that room/workshop/ramshackle. Accompanying it presumably are;

(i) More photos of the old man

(ii) Photos of Banny's young days- when he was eighteen, twenty... (which would be undoubtedly hilarious to look at, considering how he looks now)

(iii) Photos of Mickey's mother, and, very likely; my mother.

There it might sound a little astonishing to tell you that I am fourteen years-old, standing on my two legs, and I don't know what my mother looked like. Astonishing, but, yeah; true. Very, very true, even at that. And it's not like I'm about to blow off Banny's head for "not letting me know my Mama" allegations or anything like that, just that it's a bit far weird, when you add the fact that the lady has no living relatives whom I can point at on this earth's dry surface.

With all that said and the remainder preserved for later, may I proceed to care more about the present.

As I perambulate the tiny space in my room, battling rigorously with my tie, a glimpse of myself streaks across the worn-out, nearly blind mirror on the wall, and subconsciously I pause, retracing my steps back yo the mirror to look at the image a little longer. The mirror splits me in two, poorly rejoined, halves and the glass itself is a bit frosty, so that my face is almost a blur as I stare into the mirror with my grip on the stubborn tie. I freeze for a second, glaring at my blurry face. Where have I seen anything like that before?

... Okay. Yeah. The humanoids.

For some reason.they had all had no faces. I surely know that one. I saw them. But, was it not a bit weird? Yes, it had to be. Majorly weird. Especially because I knew that I was highly likely to have no face in their eyes, just like them. Then the humanoid which ran into me. Uuuurgh! my side still hurts from that one. I feel the ribs underneath my white shirt just once more before tucking-in and covering it all up finally. I look at myself buttoning the blazer again- I loosened it before -tightly at the neck and think fleetingly; Fine boy... Oh mehn see me now. Chhh. The moment I go out into the daylight all that illusion would end... Back to the humanoid. When it ran into me I think I heard a voice- not Banny's voice, I mean -yell my name- maybe not exactly my name, but something like a name, at me.The voice had been feminine, which suggests that the humanoid may have been a chick. A chick with no face.

I grab my bag, crammed with just as many books as I imagine I would need- I've no schedule table yet -which is about as may as you can carry along just without dying of exhaustion on the way to school. I hear the water run to the ground in the bathroom now. Banny would be off soon to get Mickey to school. Of course I'd take care of my own problems myself. I'm the man....

Wait, is Banny bathing there?

Hell, why yes. What else would anybody expect he'd be doing there? Which is horrible now because I accidentally drained the liquid soap and replaced it with some detergent... Not too much. Juts a little, little detergent. But noticeable all the same. Noticeable enough to have Banny's big stick in the center of your skull.

I'm off!

"Rrrraaaahhh!!" he screams just at about the same time as I yank the rickety squealing door out of the way and dash into the passage. I sense his head poke out of the bathroom and glare at me furiously with soap-blinded eyes.

"Lenuuuuuuu!!!! Foool!!"

I spin around the corner into the front room with more speed than Usane Bolt and leap out of the door before Mickey- who sits in the frontroom, reading a book -can turn her head to register that I ever dashed out. I shoot down the steps as daylight meets me. Mehn, running on an empty stomach has to be a bad idea. Let me stop.

Today is the madafarkin kind of unfortunate day which no reasonable boy in my shoes- I am a reasonable boy, mind you -ever hopes would come. Because today, to my great bafflement. we begin with Biology. And, my God! guess the topic. Come on, just guess.

Reproduction.

...Shet mehn.

The most irksomely baffling part is my expectation that this topic should not be expected till at least a year and a half's time. For God's sake, it's close to the end of every normal textbook on the course for senior secondary level in any part of this planet. I may be insane, bit not too culpable to wonder if the teacher- she is a middle-aged lady -might have contrived this whole scenario up. Teach the students reproduction and they'd be occupied for an entire term. You won't have to bother yourself appearing before them to teach again. I sit in a crowded room with a couple of sorry fans crying as they spin their emaciated arms listlessly overhead and I'm surrounded by imbeciles grinning and grunting and making ridiculous comments and winking and gesticulating, just name it. My fist is under my chin and I'm.burning and choking in my blazer and tie and wondering; How long is this lesson supposed to last. can somebody tell me there?

The teacher makes a little explanation and Henry bursts into comical laughter beside me. My nostril twitches in rage and I want to beat the madness out of him.

"Guy, you're a goat," I mumble.

Another boy looks back frim his desk in front of us and they exchange winks and handshakes.

"Hehehehe, my man!!"

Oh, Jesus Christ. I look around the rowdily animated classroom, pursing my lips with disgust. So far, I haven't written a word down, because I haven't heard any. Nearly at th center of the room sits another boy, who, like me, doesn't seem to catch the joke. He is on a desk alone and stares dully at the white board. This one I recognize to be the guy whom Henry called Dracula yesterday. Baliali.

He looks and sits certainly queerly, and appears like he's wearing a black turban- which he is -around the hair of his head. One of the dread locks stick out, like a rough, dark snake on his forehead and his gaze pierces into and through the teacher and the board and the wall and everything he looks at. He could as well pass for a hinker-hankef assassin from a bad eighties movie... Can someone call the police to investigate this guy?

"Jonsin' guy," says Henry suddenly, and I whirl to see that he's glaring at Baliali too.

"How come?" I ask.

"How come??" he declares ludicrously. "His brothers are bitchmen. They did this nonsense to me."

Only now that he turns a bit sideways do I see the bruised swelling on his face. It resembles a punch or a hard slap underneath the right eye and the area is reddened and only just recovering from.having been puffy.

"When?"

He turns down the corners of his mouth and darts his eyes around him, speaking under the rumble of voices that surrounds us.

"Those goats caught me at Hanana. Beat the madness out of me for betting ball."

'Hanana' has to bs the name of the gamble house where he was headed yesterday. Oh, boy; I think suddenly to myself. Yet I was just considering beating the madness out of him. Somebody else has gone and done the job for me already... Hrah, tough luck.

"They came to bet?"

"Yes," he mutters. Then he chuckles under his breath. "Of course they did. And beat my head up for doing just the same thing."

"You are not one of them," I say.

"Yes," he mumbles now, looking down. The noise all around us is almost drowning. "I should have known better than to go there alone... Flint is a senior boy and I'm a junior. He's a devil, too, like all of them."

...Flint.. Hmm. It seems people in this school characteristically bear very crazy names. A howl sounds loudly and we both return to the surrounding scene. No, hell. Hell. no. Mrs. whatever's hand moves with the marker to the white board and commences sketching a diagram. At the faintest stroke the students howl with elation.

"...Rugged you," mutters Henry, staring in dismay at the board. God knows, this isn't likely to end up good; I think to myself.

"What are you laughing about?" the teacher asks, turning to face the roaring class with perplexity written on her face. Oh, shithead, like you don't know. The students howl harder with the question, becoming uncontrollable. Maybe her expression is funny to them. "What?" she says again. holding both hands open at her sides. Then the voices die out suddenly and completely enough to make me suc in my breath and freeze with them, stiff with my eyeballs rolling this wa and that, looking around me. Henry sits still as a rock beside me, gritting his teeth hard as our eyes move toward the front. Now I can see why. The queer guy Baliali. He has risen from his desk and walks steely toward the door, his pouch-like bag clutched hard to his side and his gaze stolidly lowered.

"God, the bastards are here," Henry says now, in a tense whisper t no ne in particular, which I hear, as shadows crowd the doorway of a sudden the room stiffens more tightly with horror. He (that is; Baliali) does not seem quite to notice the boys who file in through the door, only lifting his face up slightly at the last moment as they pass each other. I frown as my eyes make close contact with the boys coming in. Between them and Baliali I sense an unsettling similarity. There are thirteen of them and like Balialu they are all turbaned; all dread-haired and lean faced, and they walk with the air of henchmen, far away from the appearance anybody would ever imagine to occur within the walls of an academic institution. One seems to take the lead, and rationally I am going to assume him to be Flint whom Henry has spoken about. The turban on his head does not disguise the shaved sides of it, or the earring in his left ear. These guys look like gangsters for as much as I can predict right now. And their blazers are all cut at the shoulder of one arm, baring a symbol, something like a leaf drawn somewhere above the wrist.

Flint looks at the teacher and she turns blue, then scurries out of the room, leaving us. Sorry old lady, almost terrified to death. But what about us? Where are the disciplinarian guys I saw the day before? There are baggars here to fish out. Help!

"Get up," says Flint now. He barely speaks aloud yet the entire class leaps to it's feet. Likewise do and Henry, whose puffy eyes roll around nervously as he trembles. Behind stand the other twelve whose faces I now look at. They are all very similar, almost identical, stern-faced as they look at and through us with dark eyes. What or who are they looking for?

Henry freezes completely as Flint moves closer to where we are, and only now do I realize the absence of Kaseem... Kaseem. Maybe his absence isn't a bad thing after all. He would never have gotten up if he were here and that might have been terrible, judging by the appearance and number of these guys. He has come within fifteen meters of the desk where we sit when Flint freezes, seizing his breath with a strained face... What? What now? He exhales slowly and his gaze drifts from the floor, tracing an invisible path as it climbs upward, stopping however before it reaches our faces. Then he backs away, blinking with a small nod which only I (apparently) notice, and walks back to the door. The other twelve follow when he has passed through it, filing out in the sane manner as they entered.

Henry sits down heavily now, sighing and gritting his teeth to steady himself as a gasp escapes everybody in unison. What is really happening here? Is this no linger a school as it should be? Who were those guys?

..."They call them 'Apostles'" says Henry. He seems to have read my thoughts "...Maybe because there are thirteen of them. Twelve followers and one leader. Like Jesus and his men."... he snickers softly in a sober tone of voice. "Deadly people," he adds. "Even the other bad guys are afraid of them. Everybody is."

Now we are hurrying out of the Acad. block, a herd of about five hundred of us, all Senior level one students. I haven't given any thought earlier than now to what I might want to do in, and with, my life, or to if at all I want yo do anything with and in my life. I am considering it now only because it is the Vocational course period, and I hear I'm required to choose a course on the basis of my desired future field... Like the future field thing ever works in this country anyway. And as Henry talks and we walk out of the block, down the concrete archway I try to give the matter a little ponder with my mind.

"Apostles... hmm," I mutter. "They look far from the name. Something like Bloodniggas or Sharpaxe or dmDryskull could do."

"Hehehe," Henry laughs at the suggestions. "...Dryskull. You are a complete comedian, guy."

I don't share or quite notice the joke. Yeah. Maybe I am. I am unconscious of the fact that he has left me a few paces behind already, because I have stopped walking now. dead in my tracks.

"... What?" he demands, likewise pausing abruptly, looking askance back.at me.

"Nothing," I say with a quick frown, looking at him. A few seconds are frozen and.confused for the both of us, people pushing past and between and around us in great numbers.

He nods after the short moment... "Okay."

We continue walking, till we are at the point shortly beyond which the archway itself comes to a sudden halt, leading to an adjoined, large building with the words ETF written somewhere high on it's wall in faded, black paint.

"I veer off from here," Henry says now. Very un-quintessentially he has spoken much less so far. Perhaps the gambling fallout still has it's sobering effect.

"Where to?" I demand suddenly, looking up.

"Automechanics," he replies. "You are coning?"

I barely say "No" before he is down another path, this time through a small ticket of wild flowers, and a small crowd of other boys surround him laughing and joking in spurts of rises and falls, with bags slung across blazer-covered shoulders and shoe soles tramping in a rumble upon the grassy ground... Well, till later. Here goes.

The room int which I force and fight and kick myself is something similar to the kind of place in which a man like Ben Franklin.could be pictured, holding some maddenng-ly antiquated implement over sone specimen of a mutated baby dragon by candlelight in the year before God-knows-when. Which means it is- or is most similar to -a laboratory. As the crowd of us struggle in to avoid getting crushed I hear muttered jokes and strangled laughter that may be to the same effect. The ceiling itself is mapped with large, darkened areas from overhead seepage and the thirteen fluorescents are all survived by one, who coughs and flashes and sparks above us and apparently would not survive much longer. Hell; I think to myself; Certainly nobody put a trowel or paintbrush or hammer t this place since nineteen twenty-zero when it must have been built. Maybe that is the 'stability' which Banny associate with the government. Very. very stable. Eternally stable. The laboratory attendant- a scrawny man who looks as old and abandoned as the room itself, snaps at the students, frowning disgustedly as he declares all that we baggars are forbidden to touch- which appears to be everything. So we huddle in the narrow spaces between the marble counters in labcoats (which I particularly abhor), waiting confusedly. An hour like this and there might be casualties. Labcoat upon blazer upon tie upon shirt,.in a crowded room. I edge toward a small cluster of them as the specimens- God knows what they are -are distributed amongst us.

"In twos!" the attendant screams. It appears every body here has to scream in order to say something. "Form pairs! Pairs!"

Okay. Pairs!

The cluster dissembles in no time, people moving aside in pairs which are then handed the blasted specimen things. The spot at which I stand is soon deserted, my surrounding rowdy with the crowd all around me. I move close to the single person who is left standing without a team-mate(if we could call it that), just like me. Out of the corner of my eyes (and he corner of my mind) I sense that this is awkward in an unfathomable way, amd I sense myself being shot awkward glances that suggest the same.

"Are you a group?" The question itself sounds as awkward as everything.

Why the heck? "Yes," I say.

Our specimen is passed on to us and as the other takes it, I realize that iy is but a bone... A bone??!

"You don't want to be here," my team mate says. I stiffen temporarily, then loosen uneasily out again. She does not turn, only holds the bone and turns it around in her left hand within my view.

"How come?"

"I know you don't. Nobody would."

Well, maybe it is as terrible as Henry and everybody thinks it is. Maybe not just with Baliali. Maybe with everything. I laugh quietly on spite of my thoughts. "Welcome to the club," I say. "Nobody would pair with me either."

She trembles a little and I guess it is with mirth. Somewhere in the front of the lab the teachr's voice instructs us. I adjust the heavy spectacles upon my nose ridge- I am short-sighted, though only a bit, mind you- and squint to see the specimen better. It looks like the jaw bone of a ruminant and bears a label inscribed upon it with black marker. "You are studying the jaw bone of Potamochoerus porcus," says the thin, strained voice. The instructor sounds like he's being strangled by a Potamochoerus porcus. My thoughts drift crazily to Samson and the jaw bone and I think about what kind of rough guy he could have been. I want to smile at the idea but I don't.

"Blantha," my team mate says.

"I know," I reply, then catch myself. Oh hell, maybe thar was a bit too fast. She turns now, her brows furrowed.

-"A friend told me," I explain, of course not mentioning Henry's name.

"Really," she mutters unde her breath.

"Lenelu," I say.

The teacher's voice immediately towers above our voices. "You would see the..."

I reach toward the bone amd she opens her palm so I can have it. For a long moment I stare conscientiously at it, turning it round between my fingers. When I relent and look up, she is staring fixedly at my right hand.

"What?"

She does not at once hear me. Her gaze is still with a nameless horror that piques me.

"What is wrong?"

"Are you missing a finger?"

I look at my own hand. "Apparently," I say. "Why?"

"Let me see it." Her voice is lowered almost yo a whisper and her eyes are narrowed. I have an instinct to jump through the window and disappear, like I do whenever Banny is in his craze mode. But I don't. I grit my teeth with a sigh, handing the bone to her, and pulling the latex glove off my right hand from the wrist. The missing finger is survived by a little stump of itself, next to the index finger of my right hand. She says nothing, blinking baffledly as she stares a it, then at me.

"What is the matter?" Now I've begun to get irritated. Oh mahn, maybe she's a spook.

"... How did it happen?"

I shrug. "I don't know," I say honestly. "I guess I don't remember and nobody told me."

She nods, apparently shaken, then looks away quickly. I wear the glove back and stare at the faint reflection of the overhead fluorescent in the marble counter, thinking furiously. A pair of white A4 papers are passed down to me for the both of us. I flip mine over to see the captions; the blank spaces for phylum and genus and species names, the space for candidate name and level, the space for labelled diagram. I bend over the paper, barely seeing it as I scribble and stroke all over it's plane surface till the one hour left is exhausted and the order comes to "Submit! Submit baggars!"

Why do people hurl invectives as easily as they do here?

...I've returned the labcoat and I'm scurrying off hastily for the next lecture. Henry catches up with me in the archway, saying nothing, and neither do I look at him till we are bac into the Acad. block and the room labelled; 'S.S.1 F'.

We sit in silence for long, in the rowdy room before Henry turns to me.

"Did you choose a course yet?"

"Not exactly," I say.

"Oh, okay... But you attended one."

"-Yeah, I attended one. Agric."

"Cheeh," he sucks in his breath mirthfully and keeps quiet. I think he sounds a bit hedgy.

"Lenu..."

"Yes?"

His eyes are critical, looking at me. What is wrong? I blink my eyes twice without saying anything.

"...I think it's a bad idea."

"What is?"

He arches his brows stupidly, perhaps unsure how to put it. "... I mean, we cannot associate with everybody."

"What do you want to say Henry? Tell me. I'm your man."

"That gal, Blantha," he whispers. "Stay away from her. It could harm you."

I frown incredulously, then shrug. "Who the heck said I wasn't staying away?"

He turns down the corners of his lips worriedly, looking for a brief second kike a ninety year-old man. "People. People are talking about it already. The new shitguy spoke to Blantha."

Oh, shitguy. That's the name for me.I shake my head.

"I think they're wrong. I barely spoke to her for a minute."

"They say you shared a specimen in Agric. lab... God, guy, for God's sake. Don't do that.."

"Do what?"

"That."

If I didn't know this guy and this wasn't a civil environment, he would have been beaten more.than yesterday by now.

"Do you want this to happen to you?" he says, turning the brutalized (slowly healing) side of his face to me.

"A gal didn't do that," I say. "Come on. What's the matter with you?"

"The matter with everybody, you should rather say. Look Lenu you are new and I am new here, and you are a really nice and simple guy and I don't want you to get harmed..." he looks surreptitiously around us, pausing from what he is about to say. Only now fo I notice Kaseem, seated on is end of our desk and peering onto a small novella grimly with his blazer buttoned up to the neck at an inverted collar.

"...What is it?" I.ask him.

"Come." I nearly resist as he grabs my wrist and pulls me up from the desk, amd as we bound out of the room I sense (or.do I imagine) a palpable change in the texture of the atmosphere that makes me feel like the committer.of a huge crime. We hurry into the passageway and he lets go of my hand.

"What, guy?" I want to butt him in the nose with my forehead till he collapses and goes to a clinic.

He looks back at the door from which we emerged. then turns, wide-eyed, to me. He shakes his head, laughing shortly and uneasily, with disgust and fear. Speak, you fool!

"Baliali," he says. And that is the name I expected that he would say. "...Did you, look at him yesterday, when he cane across you?"

I frown, trying to recall the day before. "...Yes... Why?"

-"Did you see how fast he appeared?"

"...Yes... Why?"

"Oh, holy goat," he mutters. "Don't say that that rings no bells to you."

I blink my eyes, my confusion only rowing. "It does. But nothing very clearly spectacular.

"Okay..." he says. "Now listen. Because I say you are a good guy and I wish the best for you and I mean it. Baliali and the Apostles have something in common."

I recall right now the moment when I saw them cross each other; Baliali. The rogue guys who beat Henry's head up. They seemed alike. yet passed like parallel walls. That couldn't be anything too much. People could be similar to each other-

"... and whatever they have in common, the girl seems to know. She is one of them, and they hate to have her associate with any of us."

"So you imagine she's hiding something for them?"

"Precisely," he says. He purses his lips, shaking his head slowly with worry. "I know it may sound unimaginable. But they could kill you."

His eyes look past me horrorfully and he visibly freezes, staring as I turn amd trace his gaze with the corner of my eyes. A figure comes slowly into view, walking through the wild traffic of students, toward us. Balilai. Henry looks away and grits his teeth as the boy's eyes stalk sideways to see us in a deadly, brief stare. That guy... He sticks his hands in his blazer pockets and faces the ground, and at the last moment (before I turn my own eyes away furtively) I notice the shiny shoes and the ring in his left ear. As usual the dreadlocks are in a huge bundle behind his head, like an extra burden in a black turban.

"That is him," Henry says quietly, shaken with terror and, perhaps, awe. Baliali looks fifteen or sixteen only, and should ordinarily be considered harmless, yet I sense that the crowd and his surrounding parts to him with the same fear as Henry's. That alone is about the weirdest thing I have ever personally encountered in my life. He leaves our view and we stay silent for a brief moment.

"They are killers, Lenu," Henry says now, breathing heavily and blinking his eyes grimly as he looks up from the pavement to my face.

"What makes it so?" I demand, only barely repressing disgust. He sounds like a propaganda cation in an old newspaper which nobody ever really read. He shakes his head. "I don't want you to find out."

....I try to get out today alone. I guess the Blantha saga is about the worst bullshit that happened to me so far here. And just day two since my debut as shitguy of the institution. Tough luck, that one. Bad, tough luck.

As I make to leave the archways and tarmac are all crowded around and ahead of me. But, since I can't see Henry or Kaseem ot any of the appalling faces which are unfortunately becoming familiar anywhere close, I think tha dies it. I'm alone in my own business, minding my own business.

As I hurry along I loosen the buttoned-up collar of my blazer and yank almost animalistically at my tie. Damn this garb! Somewhere around me I hear whispered words that makes my thoughts momentarily freeze,

"That girl... Blantha..."

I pause in mu tracks for a second with a quick frown. id I really hear right? Blantha. I cannot be so sure right now that it wasn't.ny own thoughts interfering with what I heard. But if it was not, then that sucks very disgustingly. I feel at once that I am being bored and booed upon by invisible mouths and invisible eyes all around me. Another voice passes fleetingly and it takes all my effort not to whirl.

"Yes, it is him. See him."

Oh, sheht... See him. If it is going to be this way, it's going to be hard... Well. easy. Don't imagine what's not there.

But, come to think of it. If this Blantha girl is in S.S. 1, she couldn't have been in Government College for any more than three years so far- assuming she didn't get admitted in the midstream, like me. And likewise Baliali. Well, so what the hell could anybody have done within the space of so little a time to be hated as they are? I prefer to use the word 'hated' because it is most applicable for me. I mean, everybody acutely avoids them. Henry considers them.killers. And the entire school seems all too eager to trample on my head for sharing a pig's jawbone with the gal at Agric class! An for that one, I k.ow I may have done it on purpose because I was stalking her. I've had an inkling to do so since my Mr. talkative told me about them. I know there's something with them and wonder what it could be. But killers? Oh, come on. They haven't killed anybody that we know yet.

I escape the denseness of the leaving crowd in tens of minutes. Although I have no access to the time, I've certainly botched Banny's 'Five' limit by now. Not at all my fault; things carried on pretty much late today relatively. He could only expect me to do so much... I've come within thirty-minutes reach of the second mile, where Banny's workshop is, and from here the atmosphere seems to even lighten palpably. Welcome to Kahiala, place for simple, personal business-minding people. The daylight is far faded to give appearance to the dusk and street lamps dot the wa ahead sparsely, illuminating tiny droplets of rain which fall past them to wash the tarmac. The street itself is rowdy as I approach the Trade Center; a massive complex as high and wide as a football stadium, circular and with it's name captioned in giant, fluorescent letters high on it's roof, in front of it. A car draws to a halt before the complex just as my eyes settle upon it. For a split second I glance casually at it, blinking from the tiny droplets falling in my eyes. Between myself and the Trade Center is a round, vehicular turning point the opposite direction of which I am meant to go. I make to head around the turning point then frown suddenly, looking toward the huge building again as a figure emerges from the parked car, headed for the massive glass doors. I yank out the spectacles in my blazer pocket, squinting to see better. Oh, indeed, I saw well. Now the doors slide automatically open and he enters, still wearing the blazer with it's collar buttoned up to his neck. The car- a dark camry - reverses out of the area and he does not look back, walking in with his head down and his hands in his pocket, stiff like a ghost... Baliali.

I remain still for a moment, watching, reassuring myself that ut is him, pitying him for being him- that is; Baliali, the utterly and irrationally despised, reserved guy -and this is, though not to be excused; as a result of the familiarity which my temperament feels to the state of being apart and licked in a dark, self-made, mental shelter, a mentally-protected disguise of a singular world... I look both sides of me thoughtfully, then head toward the building into which he has entered. Hell, I don't know what the need is, but I've got to watch this guy. I've got find out what he's about. Everybody thinks there's a lit of dark stuff about him... asides me for now. I unfortunately cannot buy such dubiously assertive garbage, at least not without proof.

Keep this for the records of my achievements in life; if you consider it with me as a achievement: It is the first the I'm ever entering into the Trade Center, or any thing like it. For us, purchases are made far from the malls, in smaller, humbler places fit for us. As the doors slide apart for me I feel a cold gust of air gush palpably into my face and I shiver with a quiet sigh. The rain and sand grains on the soles of my shoes leave faint prints on the white floor which are exposed brilliantly by the lights, and I look beyond me at the rows and shelves and staircases and escalators amd elevators and hanging screens and people, all moving and hurrying and walking at the same time. It feels somehow like a crime to be here, you know; knowing that you shouldn't really be. And there's Banny fuming in.the growing darkness somewhere close,.by now, waiting with his big stick already prepared for me. Yet I keep on going. Adults pass me on all sides, rushing around like they're chasing or being chased by something. Far ahead I see Baliali still walking, toward a sleek metal door with what looks like an indicator on it. I am yet to put the pieces of the present together whem.the door opens and he enters into the tiny, steel space. Hey! I think with sudden dismay and alertness. Sonebody's getting away! Somebod-

"You are looking for something, are you?"

I turn to see a face watching me; pale with a ghostly smile. The woman's chin is as drawn out and thin as all the rest og her features, and she seems strangely uneasy as she asks the question. I stare at her face, forgetting how I got here in the first place. Her eyes do not blink, bloodshot and dark and.. just, queer.... I guess, as everything seems to be becoming now.

I shake my head, still receiving from the fading bafflement of my mind... "I... am not," I say.

I only now realize the shelves beside her crammed with goods, and wonder if it was there before. All around is still as busy and normal as ever, and I blink, feeling that I'm being drawn under a vague kind of hypnosis from which I have no immediate idea how to break. I back away tentatively. Maybe I should head home now. No more snoopy-dogging, or I could.get jonzed- if you understand how disastrous it would be for that to happen in a brutal city as this, on an evening in the middle of nowhere. As I inch backward the strange woman shakes her head, still staring horrorfully at me. Hell,.maybe I've run into a witch from the nineteenth century.

"Go away from here," she says quietly in a voice only us both can hear, not blinking her eyes. "Run, Lenu."

...Lenu. How the?-

I take a stronger step backward. My inner instinct is tingling in that way it does when there's something coming. Run.

"Run!!!"

-"Ruuuaaaaaaagh!!!"

Jeeez!

I barely fall back to escape the blade when it flashes with lightning speed through the air at my face, glinting like the sun under the fluorescent as ny head and body hit the ground and I momentarily feel numb.

My... God!! I think to myself with utter shock. A human-like growl erupts and I sense with dismay the weapon swinging at me again. Crap! I'm about to be butchered by some stranger with an archaic, occultish spear.

The same instant that my eyes connect with the shadowy face of the assailant above me, he is hurled out of my view with a thud and a crash. I roll to my feet with fright. The assailant tumbles and screeches backward for many meters, smashing through shelves and glasses and adjoining walls and I blink my eyes, feeling for a brief second that this could all be ny imagination. And if it is, I would beat myself to death with a shoe for imagining anything so realistically horrible. But astonishing as it is to say, this is not my imagination. Because the assailant- whom I now recognize to be a huge figure in a dark, huge and flowing apparel like a black curtain which covers his head and shoulders -has recovered his stance and is rushing forward again, the blade in his hand. I see the reflection of the lights on the massive sword which looks like it was cut out of Troy, and hear the growl in his voice as he rushes purposefully. It resonates not from hin but from me; from somewhere deep inside a part of my mind that I have only known right now... Kahani...

With ine leap he rises into the air, crushing through the ceiling into the upper floor, and my eyes follow him with such shock that I am entirely frozen n my tracks.

You would die!!!

"Run!"

Another form crashes into.me from the side, knocking me gard through space so that I tumble into shelves, yelling. All around us people scream and scramble away, falling and crawling and shouting. The form which shoved me out of the way flashes it's left arm in a split second before the cloaked giant crashes again through the ceiling above me, making dust and rods and concrete rain down. The weapons of the two clash and the giant throws the other far off with a sudden, powerful kick frim his dark foot. I scramble backward and stagger to my feet, turning to run for my Goddamn life as the forms multiply, three more coming agai.st the giant who attacked me. They rush at each other with a roar and my pace quickens. I look back once as the giant fights off the last of his opponents, his sword slashing through it's form.which scatters into the air, falling as dark feathers to the floor. The earth trembles with the thuds of his running feet as they bound across the distance between us, coming for me. Hell, I don't know why, but this guy seems as bent as ever upon seeing I'm killed. Noooo!!!

I slide under a shelf when the spear's blade comes down murderously behind me, and strikes the ground with a loud, splitting sound and a palpable spark of fire. I leap out of the rubble; running madly. The spear misses me severally even though I don't know how I dodge it as well and fast as I do, smashing into everything, walls, shelves, pillars and glasses in it's desperation. The doors seem too far out of sight and the entire world is spinning kike a fokin top so that I rather head for the closing doors of an elevator which malfunctions under the influence of thr fluctuating power that makes the fluorescents splutter and the massive hall go black and white and black and white in quick succession. The doors close just at about the same time as I slip through then into the cramped, grey space and ram my face against the steel wall with a groan. "Urgh!"

A blade jabs in through the slit between the closing doors and I duck out of the way just as it hits the wall behind me. A growl sounds from the other side as the blade tries to pry the doors apart and I stare at the intricate symbols along the length of the spear's rod, amd at the shiny edge of the blade. Oh my Go!-

The floor of the cramped space moves up and I'm carried to the upper floor. After a few minutes the door barely opens again when I jump out of it, running, barely registering that I used an elevator at all. The roof of the building looms through the glass windows which I run toward now. I crash through them with a yelk and a spray of shards as the walls tremble and crumble with a thud. The giant reappears again behind me, covering the distance with the speed and power of an immortal and roaring in a gruff, dreadful voice. "Die!!"

This is where the fun and thrill ends, if there has bee any so far at all.

I bound the few meters left to reach the edge of the roof, of the eight-storey-high building and the world far below flashes fleetingly before my eyes. From this point you can see the other end of the city which nobody talks about; the dark places beyond the center of Kahiala where there is no light or water supply. Our end. A train horns as it rides along the rail, like a long black caterpillar from where I am and an empty, purple-black sky greets me as I leap without a moment's hesitation or thought. Hesitation and thought bring fear. If I am afraid to jump I would surely die. So I jump. I would die anyway.

"Ruaaaahh!"

The spear lungs again just a split second too late and I'm falling through the air. Up there I think of something funny which I cannot distinctly identify, perhaps because it is many thongs pit together. Banny's angry face and moustache shouting; 'Lenu!! Foooool!!:, and Mickey nodding mutely as she stands by the truck, and Henry turning his watch to my view and saying; 'Swag'. They are disjointed perhaps because I haven't had very many experiences at all in life; just most of tyem.beng repetitions of the exact same experiences over enfless.periofs of time. And now it is all about to end.

... All to end. Banny. The madness and the laughter and the silence and the escape from all that inward horror into the smallest glimpse (if you see it that way also) of light. To end now.

Now.

The wind roars into my eyes and hurts my cheeks and makes my teeth chatter painfully as I fall, my blood freezing like my pieces would surely be in death. Death. Finny and astonishing as it sounds, it is over. So much for snooping on a creepy, hated guy.

"Whhoooooww!!"

I scream as a mighty shadow materializes out of nothing, rather in my mind's consciousness than in my eyes- which of course are barely open -and the wind is knocked murderously out of my lungs as limbs bind me bodily and I am snatched up and away from the approaching earth at the last moment. I gasp as the both of us- I and whoever the saviour is -smash through the glass of a nearby two-storey, and only now do I realize I have lost everything with me- asides my uniform, which of course is torn enough to be considered lost as well. I barely see through the blur and shadows and the pain of getting your face smashed into a hard wall and the shock of sensing the crunch and flattening of the bone of your nose. I roll upon my back; barely breathing as the blood runs in two-way fashion; one stream running down either side of my face thickly and perhaps accentuating the sense of dullness in my head. The sound of more glas smashing and the thud of heavy feet jar me to a little more consciousness and I hear again the human-like growl of the die-hard giant with his spear. I groan, unable to do any more than pull my head a few inches up from the ground and then let it fall again. Why break my fall? I am bound to die in any case. This not-so-nice phenom would see to it. And I still have no idea who he is.

The mighty spear raises in the air over me and in a moment I feel that I am some.warrior of Echidime in the clan-conquering days of Okonkwo's great grandfathers, about to die at the hand of his enemy. But U guess my case is a little bit mire pathetic; a warrior would stand even the smallest chance to defend himself at least. But me? None.

"Die!"

His voice is vaporous yet purposeful, like a dream forcing itself to become real, and I jerk my shoulders up slightly at the same time that the blade stabs me, right through the heart and I am certainly that I am dead.

...Or am I?

"Come."

I turn now, more bewildered than I have ever been since I was born, and the voice repeats itself.

"Come. Hurrry,"

A boy stands behind me now, backed by the dense green overgrowth of a tropical forest. I blink my eyes with vigour and stare at him. Yes, a boy. A boy and a tropical forest.

"Come!"

He leaves me and runs, leaping and disappearing into the overgrowth. Sheer instinct makes me follow him, and soon I am running with as much astonishing speed as the last time I remember, trying to di so much as keep up with the vanishing sight if the boy, who runs and jumps as fast as Clark Kent and Flash put into one. I begin to leap too, as the obstacles become larger and more treacherous, and mighty, gaping gorges roar open under my feet, seeming to widen even further as I leap across them.

"Hurry!"

I sense it suddenly, coming now. I have always had the sixth sense for danger, and I am certain that I would be aware that I'm about to when I die- as I just did some seconds ago. The ground trembles and the little stones and dry leaves in the dirt visibly jump as we run further. I feel that this is familiar; all of it, in a strange, bewildering way. The leaves and the ground and the jutting, sparsely-placed outcrops. It is only when I- we, rather -dash past the barren center which attracts the greatest warmth and sunlight in the midst og the forest that I confirm it with a gasp. The fairy flying thing is no longer there, or perhaps I pass too fast to notice that she is. Ahead of me the bot leaps.with a frightening kind og agility such as no marvel movie series would ever be unrealistic enough to portray; and I can barely see when he leaps when he runs and when he climbs and when he tumbles, all like a violent specie of vampire-monkey. Wait!! I want yo scream it but realize that I have no voice, or maybe no actual desire to. I am now no longer quite me, but rather the other, grim guy whom I yet know little about, yet who is me. The boy has a fee features which I guess I identified. Thin limbs, dark skin, short, curly hair, bands and trinkets of corals around the head and ankles and wrists. Linen apparel worn across thin form. But face? That one I hardly remember having seen. I doubt there was any face at all.

With a little dismay I realize we are going the same way which I earlier went, on my own when rebelled against the singing fairy. He barely reaches thd steep edge when the boy leaps and I soon do the same, leaping after him. The rocks sway softly in their suspended positions from the force of our flight and I an astonished to judge my own appearance by that og the boy who is still ahead of me now. The form is basically humanoid, alright, but there are wings. Huge wi.gs which far outspan the body by several multiples,.spread wide on both sides of him, barely flapping as he waves and shoots through the air. I feel that I gear his voice now, telling me something.

...What?

Down. Down.

He plunges downward.like a shooting star with a slight curl of his wings, spinning shortly with great speed. Around us other forms dash past as before, only this time with seemingly much mite intensity so tha they seem to be getting out of our way, fluttering as far off as possible. I hear the words again come from them as they dash past us.

Fire... Sacrifice.

Fire Sacrifice.

What the heck is that?

The fire leaps to life out of nowhere before I can think through the question, and I brace myself, realizing with horror that I am plunging into it. Damn this plantation boy. He drew me to where I'd burn myself. I scream horribly as the fire rushes up with a roar to meet me, shutting my eyes before they cover me and everything.

..Or maybe, again, it is not quite me.

"Lenu"

I draw a quiet breath and know that it is my first in a while. My eyes blink slightly apart, but ot enough to see clearly, and above me is a blur of an inage which should be familiar, yet isn't really. Next to it is another, also a little familiar, and it's hazy eyes look down upon me with the same still coldness which my mind subconsciously associates to the face.

"He... Alive," I hear as a faint and vanishing echo as the wine blows me and them away. I close my eyes again; and open them to see genuinely familiar faces this the, faces which I can remember. Banny is the first to notice. He takes one crumbled. bloodshot look at me and sighs, sitting with his chin hunched between his shoulders which are curved forward. I blink.my eyes by squeezing them tightly shut for a moment, then allowing them open, and the daylight streaming in brightly from the window beside my head both dazzles and surprises me. Mickey stands stiffly behind Banny, her thick brown hair bundled up in pony tails on either side of her head, partly covered under a velvet veil... Okay; I think to myself as I see her. Looking like Mary Magdalene's aunty in-law, as usual. She barely moves at all and does mot make any sound, seeing me in one sweep of a glance and then staring at the floor. Mickey, if I haven't yet told you; is a small, brown girl with hair the colour of wilting maize husks in dry season; which is, sadly, the same colour as her eyes. So when I say that she looks like Mary Magdalene, it holds only if Mary Magdalene has the complexion of the animated Calibos from that nineteen seventy-something Clash of the Titans movie (I don't intend to be extreme.here at all, just a basic colour exemplification/citation) which I guess you ae too young to ever have watched.

"Lenelu."

"...Sir," I mutter, my voice suddenly too heavy to come out easily from my mouth. Banny's eyed roll wildly in their sockets and he seems to nod to himself slightly amd continuously, as hough to be self assured of something.

"You are fine now?" he says... Oh, crap. I see that this is very unusual and uncomfortable for Banny and wish he did not ask. His very tome of voice could make anyone become even sicker than in the first place. I don't want him to beat himself up in order to sound caring. Yet I say,drawlingly;

"Yes, Sir."

Mickey looks at me now and I stare at the ceiling dreamily. I hate the horror in her gaze, because I fear that it looks like what I must look like now. At the dame time, there seems to be a chisel somewhere in the middle of my forehead trying to pry the skull apart and let the fokin brains run out. I am drifting off again.

Fire... Sacrifice.

Fire Sacrifice.

A hand squeezes mine gently, very, very gently yet it feels like the jaws of a plier are pulling my fingers into bits and pieces from the joints. My eyes- they just have to -open again because the air becomes palpably mire still and fiery and chilly on my skin. My head moves of it's own accord, blindly, aad I see one of those nearly-familiar, hazy faces again, looking down upon me with a searing and horrible intensity which is upsetting, although not in the precise same way as Mickey's was. I want to speak as I did to Banny, and I try to. But such miracles happen in spurts of goodluck and rare opportunity, both of which do not always come around. So all I do now is produce an unintelligible sound which echoes in mu own, throbbing brain and reminds me funnily of a toad in a pond which nobody bothers about. II try to speak again and fail again, and then I close my eyes, deciding finally that perhaps the problem is the fact that I don't even really know.what I want to say.

I drift off again. But to nowhere in particular.

Because, in the place that I appear, I am doing nothing; only seated upon a mighty, horizontally-fallen log in a damp and dense tropical forest, in which I am surrounded by vines and leaves and branches and falling dew so densely packed together that there is no single crevice for the smallest ray of golden- or white -sunlight. I look at the palm.of my hand which is throbbing again and the welt of a scar os still there, so I know with some certainty that I have become him, the other guy in the other world, and even to my own bafflement, I wonder just why it has to be. I wonder why I have to know and be him, and why and how he could been when the two of us are so much in contrast with rach other on the basis of virtually everything. And I resent how much I feel sorry for this guy now- because I guess I have just realized that I do -and how continually it appears I must live such a secretive, crazy and almost shamefully fokin kind og.life which I can never, it seems. share with anybody because of how ridiculous it's reality is; how they would be both frightened and disgusted and may never believe anything I day again. I look up from my palm.amd see that the little boy is there with me, sitting on an opposite log with a little stream glowing in a white-silver trail between us. I know that this is about to become something beyond what it has always been; this hallucinations of another would and another life, amd that sooner or layer it would be forced to come to the fore. I don't really know how soon,.anyway. Because they are- my other self and the little monkey boy -looking at each other and saying nothing and giving away nothing. They seem to be hibernating, or talking, apparently all thr while awaiting me- my worldly self whom you know, of course -to.recover and let the horror continue. Somehow the horror appears to.be dependent upon the both halves- the real and non-real halves, of me. I try to say to the both of them that I know that what happened at the Trade Center is their fault, is related to their existence. I want to make them know that I am sick of seeing them and their world because of it. But everything is so unbelievably ridiculous that I don't. I fear that they might laugh, which would be really no fault of theirs, or mine.

I open my eyes again. After a very, very long time.

Fir the rest of the while I see no other strange things but bags; invisible, kiquid-filled bags hanging down from the ceiling, threatening to fall upon me. I see nothing more because I do not close my eyes again.

But there are the faces which I recognized, which I saw, when I saw them. I still see them in my head for a long time...