The buzzing of his phone against the mangrove polished bedside table just adjacent to his head resulted in an abrupt snap in its direction.
Ace reached for his phone after releasing a groan of annoyance as he wondered who could possibly have the effrontery to disturb his morning sleep.
"Hello," he said, with a hoarse voice seeping through cracked lips. With his eyes shut, he awaited to hear a voice from the other end other than ruffles from what seemed to be an aluminum foil and then the shattering of a what...a cup?
"Hellooooo?" he reiterated.
His patience was wearing thin. It was no fun amusing with someone's sleep but the person on the other end found it rather interesting.
Ace decided to do what he should've done a long time ago- view the caller ID- when suddenly, the familiarity of a tiny voice got him sober.
"Ace?" The ever so shy voice called.
"Nate, what's going on?"
Nathan, preferably Nate, was the fourteen years old family Benjamin whose shyness was a major call for concern. He reached out to Ace whenever he was in difficulties--which usually were tips on how to approach girls as the center of discussion-- rather than anyone else in the family. What an irony.
Before Ace left for the hell hole he was currently at, he and Nate had made a deal to reach each other twice a week; Mondays and Fridays. But for whatsoever reason, Nate hadn't reached him the Friday of the previous week.
"I heard something shatter down he...oh my God, my coffee mug, Nathan!" Another not-so-soothing-at-the- moment voice added to the scenery. He could picture the facial expression his mum had on at that very point in time.
"Mum, 'twas a mistake ok?"
"I'm not going to swallow that pill this time around. Why are you with that phone by the way, have you forgotten you're grounded? Gimme that,"
"But mum, I need to talk with Ace,"
"Ace is at school and right now, all you're doing is distracting him. Go to your room now," the bickering ceased after a faint 'ok', then the voice addressed him, "Hello?"
Ace sat up straight whilst struggling to clear out the hoarseness from his throat, but he knew his mum won't hesitate to figure out what he had been doing the previous day. "Hmm?" he hummed affirmatively though it won't be for a long time.
"Sorry for the disturbance. I hope everything is fine?"
"Uh-hmm." again, he hummed.
"What's your program today? I'll love to call you during your free time. There's something we need to discuss."
That was it. She was actually looking for every possible means to dig him out and it worked each time; it was time for him to vent out and if he did, he will be betraying himself but another thing was, he couldn't hang up the phone on her, lest she flies into town within the next four days, hunt him down and shower him the bickering of his existence.
Again, he cleared his throat, exiting his bed premises to the large veranda attached to his room.
The sun was burning in all its radiance; Mid-January was the dry season in the southwest of Cameroon. It was only ten in the morning but the rate at which the sun shone would make one think it was twelve midday in the desert.
Molyko in the southwest region of Africa in miniature--as it was worldwide known due to the presence of all four climatic zones in one with deserts and Savannahs in the north, tropical rain forests in the east, coasts in the west, and mountains in the center--unlike the one he had spent twenty years of his existence in, was almost not busy. The activities were shy at dawn and sharp at night. The latter was his favorite time.
He stood outside, bare torso, with the aim of using the little noisiness of the environment to mask his coarse voice. Luckily enough for him, a couple of cabs were already present, horning in full blast. A neighbor or two on the opposite side of the street had their woofer speakers as well in full blast. Also, the chattering of the local store owners was loud enough to aid his act.
"Err..." he cleared his throat again. "The class this morning had been canceled so I'm waiting for the next in an hour, you could make use of this time,"
"Ace, have you been drinking again?" his mum's tone was calm and worried.
Damn it!
"No, no I-"
"Ace, why are you doing this? What have we not given or done to you as parents?" he said nothing, which gave his mum the go-ahead.
"Where have your dad and I possibly gone wrong? The last time you requested a brand-new car if we needed you to stop with the alcohol intake and we shipped it without the slightest hesitation. Now tell me, what do you want this time around? More money? Another car? What?"
Ace swallowed, grabbed his shoulder-length unkempt shiny, brown, curly hair with sufficient strength that they seemed to have uprooted. "I want to return home, mum."
"You know you can't do that until you've learned your lesson, we had a deal remember?"
"I already learned it, mum, I'm sure of it," he pressed.
"No, you haven't."
"How can you even fucking tell?"
Zaphrina sighed. "Ace hun, I sent you there not only to learn 'that lesson' as you put it, but to as well see life from a different perspective."
There she came again with the same old story of perspective and lessons which he still hadn't had a clue to date. "I have been here for a year and I haven't seen shit, so what the hell are you talking about?"
"Ace darling, this life isn't all about money, alcohol, trending cars, and clothes. There's more to it and I believe you will see that during your stay there. You will thank me later, trust me." the line went silent for a while before his mum pushed on.
"Please, do me a favor. No, do the family a favor by staying away from alcohol. Is that too much to ask?"
His brows furrowed for a bit as he contemplated the probability of possibility. A habit was easy to build but almost impossible to destroy.
If the consequences of his actions couldn't stop him from getting any better than he was then what else could?
Ace heaved a sigh and began roaming the medium-sized veranda of the three-starred hotel he resided in-St Claire.
The place was pretty much getting boring and the suite seemed to be compressing by the day. The only advantage of the hotel was its closeness to the university.
"Ace, are you there?" his mum worriedly quizzed.
"I will, mum, I will stay away from alcohol," he answered in a bored tone.
"Thank you. Well...I have to go, your sister has a fashion show to prepare for tonight and I have to give her a helping hand. Nice day son, I love you."
"Yeah. Me too."
Ace flung his phone to the bed from the veranda and then, rested his elbows on the railing. He watched the street begin to fill up with students.
Two pretty girls who were walking abreast of each other, laughing at what the fairest of them both had said, glanced up at him with a smile.
He smiled back at them with a wink and they both giggled.
Their faces weren't new to him, they were club regulars and one-night stand chicks; Eighty percent of Molyko chicks sheltered beneath that classification. Slayers as they were commonly called as they dressed in almost little to nothing and required nothing but money after a one-hour bed workout.
Those who managed to have 'strings attached' detached them immediately one's wallet ran dry. That was one of the many reasons he never did attempt to date a 'Slayer'. The fling was where he belonged and would always be until he got his ass back home.
His phone buzzed, abruptly directing his right hand to his cargo pants pocket until realization stroke him then did he walk into his room for it. From the caller ID, Ace already figured out the reason for the call.
"Yeah G, what's up?"
It was Mike, the first buddy he made upon stepping foot in Cameroon. Mike was six feet, just like him, ebony in complexion. He always had his beards and hair reasonably short which made him look neat.
He was also called the njoka master* and also, he was fun to be with.
"G, Where you? You didn't show up in school today," Mike stated the obvious.
"Man, I was gone. Had too much to drink last night,
Mike laughed, "I know right, nonetheless, tonight's another night, boy. It's partey afta partey."
Ace chuckled as he pictured Mike doing his famous shoulder dance.
"I don't think I can make it tonight man," Ace rubbed his temples with a grimace.
"Yo! Hold on, I must be talking to the wrong person," there was a pause and then his voice, "This sure is Ace the fountain of shishi*, the god of pounds, dollars, and francs," he hailed.
"What's up with you G? You know they're gonna be girls right? A lot and a lot and a lot of 'em, there's going to be shisha too...your favorite, Almighty hookah master. Lavida assured us we are among the VIPs, men! Wake up, tonight's gonna be lit,"
There was no way on earth Mike would let him go unless he agreed to it. He thought about the promise he just made to his mother, no, to his family, just a couple of seconds ago. Damn, this was a temptation of the first-class order.
"Yo! G," Another voice echoed in the background. It was none other than Capello, another friend of his who was an aspiring DJ. "I'm expecting you. In case you have forgotten the lieu of partey, it's the almighty Burj Khalifa, 10 pm prompt. Do not fail me, abeg."
Ace roughly disheveled his curls. It was harder to resist than he thought.
"Fine, I'll be there."
There was no going back. He had just flushed his promise. They did this to him, they sent him away, far away from home and that was the result of doing so. Life's too short to spend it trying to please people and grieving.
Besides, it'd been a while since he had done some sexercise. His scrotum required to be drained.
If I perish, I perish.
*Shishi- money(pidgin English)
* njoka master- someone who likes parties and enjoyment.
Nora was all set for the night routine; with her once navy blue now whirling white bucket in hand, she exited home to the public tap. Now, the water she had fetched the previous day had magically vacated the 200-liters rubber barrel she had managed to fill up to the brim, how that happened? She couldn't tell. Yet, something at the back of her mind told her, or rather, pictured out just how the water had been used. With the existence of a malicious stepmother and daughters in her life, she had to expect worst; utilizing water unnecessarily and, or doing things which will result in her using water more than necessary, was their daily aim. The vicinity of the tap came to view, but unlike other days, it looked different: it was dried out of littering humans. The time the clock displayed to her before leaving home was past eight, which was the conventional time to see a crowd decorating the tap's concrete surroundings. Nora took it upon herself to walk clo
Ace wouldn't stop ruffling his hair as he impatiently paced from one end to another. His brand new costly tee had begun to soak up with sweat as he did with fear. He knew not what to think, was she really dead? Mike earlier said she was and Nelson confirmed. He, on the other hand, was too scared to even look at the gruesome sight. One thing he avoided in his existence was to take away human life, well, he couldn't entirely say he took away the young girl's life as it was, he wasn't the one on the steering wheel yet, he was involved."G, will you just chillax and stop pacing, it's getting me more nervous than I already am," Mike urged. "The fuck, it ought to, Micheal, you and your reckless driving is the reason we are in this goddamn mess anyway." Mike, Capello and two other guys—TJ and Nelson—he hadn't quite made acquaintances with, had come to his hotel room earlier for a little warm-up with some harmless bottles of beer after which Mike had opted to drive them to the club. He
The railway looked rusty and all grown with ankle-length bahama grass, elephant ear stalks, and fescues. The gravels on it and those which lined the borders were course and pointy enough to penetrate the soles of one's shoe. It was rather unfortunate that Nora was standing on them bare feet. She was in the middle of nowhere, standing on an abandoned railway. All alone. Nora struggled to take a step ahead but the piercing effect of the sharp gravels won't let her. She lifted a foot to examine her soles and as expected, they were cracked and bleeding as if she had been walking on them for ages. Had she? She could go no further ahead but if she persisted there, she might never find help. Nora ignored the aching whacks traveling from her feet to her gut and set on moving forward. She as well ignored the tremendously huge bushes on either side of her which seemed to contain a variety of living organisms in it judging from the noises they exhibited. Nora struggled through the flesh tick
Nine thirty in the morning and Ace was still asleep, not even the loud honks, blasting street music from Papa promo's to and fro parade, and the chit-chats from random street passers-by could do a thing to wake him up. But one thing did. His phone had begun chiming incessantly and disrespectfully at the corner of his head. He tried for the first two minutes to ignore it to no avail. It kept ringing non-stop. Ace knew there was just one person on the whole planet earth to bug him that way and he was going to give her a piece of him for intruding on his beauty sleep. "What in the heckarooni is yo' problem El?" "You, dumbass." Eloise, his baby sister is definitely the kind of person you won't want to trade even for a buck. She was a pain in the neck--in his neck, the reason why he never regretted doing certain things to her during their childhood like cutting off her hair in her sleep and adding some chili in her cereals when she wasn't looking. "I'm sleeping. Please let me be your p
'You definitely not a fraction of my type anyway' She never really thought she would be even a madman's fraction of a type of woman talkless of a filthy rich and gorgeous boy of his caliber. All she wanted was to portray her gratitude. The ten thousand note he offered her. An unforeseen act she must admit. She didn't want him to see her as desperate, unfortunately, her appearance flipped the coin against her. She wasn't going to use the money, she decided. She would keep it until when she laid eyes on him again--by a stroke of luck--and return the money to him. She picked up her bucket to keep on her journey back home until it was cut short by a vibrating stinging sensation on the sole of her feet. Nora acting on reflex got her bucket tripping off of her head and breaking into three irreparable parts. A sharp gravel had punctured her. She winced and clenched her teeth in pain at the sight of crimson oozing out of a gravel-stuck hole in her skin which she set free by pulling out t
He had just written his last continuous assessment paper and had just dashed out of class into the populated university territory with some friends and other students. To tell the truth, it's been hell for him for the past one week and three days struggling to dump into his head some unreasonable pile of notes and handouts equivalent to the volume of an Oxford dictionary. The worst part of the whole show was he had neither of them complete. "I swear, those lecturers need some hot beating," Mike said, "I couldn't even fill half of my answer sheet, I mean...where do they fetch those questions from?" "Notes of course," he shrugged, then opened the driver's seat to fling his backpack at the back of his car. "Yo! From the way you talk, bro it's like your paper's going to be the marking guide," Capello jutted in. "Why I no shidon corner you eh?" He regretted. 'Why did I not seat by your side?' "Far from possible," he simply said. He did what he could do but made sure to have given his
So comfortable. Nora switched her position to the left side, snuggling her body a little deeper into the lavender-scented sheets. Could she be in paradise? If so, now she understood why her mum didn't want to take her. She wanted to enjoy it all alone. Suddenly, from somewhere, an incessant beeping sound resonated but stopped abruptly. Too late the alarm had already shattered a reasonable portion of her world leaving her with just the comfort she laid on. Nora fought the blur out of her eyes to see before her nothing familiar beside the sun's rays bathing a luxurious room, the rest were expensive furniture littered in a spacious room: above her was a white elegant dream catcher-like crown molded ceiling donning a beautiful chandelier. On her very left was a fancy bedside lamp, inches away was a perfectly carved full-body mirror that reflected a rounded glass table with three fancy vanished chairs. Then a door too that probably led to the bathroom. On her very right was the double g
'I think this is the right time to cut it.' 'Not yet, he might wake up.''Look at him, you can drop him in the middle of the road like a bean bag, I swear he wouldn't bulge. It's now or never Eloïse.' 'You're right, it's about time for revenge.' "Bloody hell!" Ace jutted out of bed sweating profusely. He touched the first thing which came to his mind--his hair. Such a dream should never occur. He thought. "Nightmare?" he heard the velvety familiar voice behind him. Eloïse was standing before the full-length mirror in a pair of white shorts and a body cleaving pink tank top adjusting her curls. "Jesus, What the fu--" "Uh uh, no cursing. Mum's words." She twitched her index finger in a 'no' gesture. Ace rubbed his eyes in aghast, could he be double dreaming? "Where you from? How and when did you reach here?" His door flung open, "Is he finally awake? Oh, son, how I missed you so. How have you been? You look so pale." his mum rushed towards him with showers of kisses. "Mum, s