A RACE AGAINST TIME.

Lucky roughened his face as the harsh cold kissed him hard at the forehead. It has been a rough night. He dragged his feet but managed to walk across the boulevard that led to his place. It had never occurred to him that his last hangover would hand him over to the school of hard knocks.

Lucky has just awakened from a slumber beside a gutter. Life is unfair, Lucky concluded. He spat. He twitched his nose and gave a long sneeze. Bouts of fresh undefiled air caressed his nostrils. He had been abandoned by his friends after a long drinking spree.

As he staggered home, he could barely remember why and how he got there. He had been gulping few bottles and was slightly tipsy when his friend, Charles, threw a challenge at him, “You cannot finish 12 bottles of beer.

“Of course I can! Lucky shouted. “I know you can’t” replied Charles “What do you mean? Don’t you know that though all beer may be equal in volume, all men are not? Barman, bring me eight more.” Lucky ordered. “What! Shouted Charles… “My five thousand naira for a bet, Charles added as the other friends watched.

It was the sixth bottle that broke the Camel’s back.
He began to vomit and to misbehave. Before long, he was deserted by his friends who could not stomach all the trash. The swiftness of all the happenings was grossly puzzling to him. To him the gutter was most suitable for his state of mind. In the morning, he was home bound, weak, worn out and fagged out.

Everything had been the way he left them when he left the night before. His windows were still half open. His keys jangled in his pockets. He brought them out and began to try them. Silently, quietly and unalarmed, he unlocked the door, went inside and sprawled helplessly on the bed. He took a deep breath and his eyes roamed the rusty ceiling fan that has rarely functioned. The energy remaining in him would not allow him slip voluntarily into oblivion.

As his mind jockeyed slightly away from his weak body, he was startled by the sound of his mobile phone. At first, he sighed, turned away from the phone, like one in deep depression, and tried in vain to recapture the nap. The phone rang about 3 times before he decided to pick it up. The voice at the other end spoke with frenzied expectation. Lucky could not understand clearly.

“Are you not coming for exams? We are already in the hall”. As the caller at the other end, Chinedu, dropped the call, thousand of echoes began to reverberate through Lucky’s head.

Drudgingly, he stood up, brushed both his teeth and his hair, collected a shirt and fastened to his fat body. As he hurried to meet up, sweat trickled down his cheeks and his buttocks slapped each other beneath his flabby trousers. He resolved to use whatever residual knowledge he could gather to pull through.

In less than 3 hours, the examination was over. Students discussed in low tones. Friends moved in groups and consoled each other on account of the tough examination. At different corners, long faces were seen looking into thin air as though remembering a forgotten answer.

The boys discussed football, the latest Champions league encounter between Chelsea football club and Manchester United. Lucky heartily joined in the discussion in a vain deal to better his plight.

He knew what a dismal performance he had put up, yet he believed providence would lend him a passing grace.

Day by day, time dissolved, day and night chased each other in a viscous cycle of weeks and months. Life was miserable, to say the least.

To Lucky, his lecturers supported life in its miserable effort to frustrate him. To him, the lecturers were wicked, mean and some unfortunate academic misfits who stumbled unto the act of lecturing by a sheer stroke of luck. If anyone was Lucky’s worst nightmare, it was his lecturers. Hence he consoled his grudge with an addiction to alcohol. His five thousand naira drinking spree money was a factor that kept him afloat for days after his last hangover.

Six weeks later, on a warm Tuesday afternoon, the sun cast a lethal long spell on the earth below. Expectations were high as people went about their businesses. Lucky wore a long face. His spirit was in doldrums. He could only stretch the limits of his imagination for a possible explanation of his result. He had scored a mind blowing F. This was the first failure in his results. He began to hallucinate.

When he reached a nearby Convenience, he went in. Surely, he wasn’t pressed. Yet he felt he could urinate away his problems. He unzipped his trousers and began to urinate. Silently but loudly, the sound of the trickling urine aroused his curiosity and he suddenly felt he was urinating upon his very life. He sighed, zipped up his trousers and hit the busy road.

He could hear himself ask to no one in particular, “why now?, why me?, how come? Like a speck of thunder, everywhere went blank around Lucky. Darkness howled and embraced him in a careful intimidation. All around him, darkness roared, smiled and rejoiced in joyful triumph. Lucky had been hit by a car.

Different kinds of shouts rent the air, Jesus! Hey! Oh My God! He’s dead! What a wicked devil! Lucky’s hallucination had incidentally played a major role in the accident. While people shouted and gathered and tried to resuscitate him, Lucky could see himself looking at himself. He could see people crying, shouting and carrying him into a certain blue car. He could not understand the mystery. The only thing that puzzled him was how light he felt. He could feel his mouth muttering the same questions, “why me? How come?

He was hemmed in on all sides by loneliness. Suddenly, he passed through a dark tunnel and a speck of light carried him to a point where he met a man at the gate of a solemn assembly. Everyone in the assembly wore white clothes. Lucky looked around, he was scared. He could still not figure out where he was. He buckled some courage, went to the man at the gate and began to cry.

Tears flowed down his cheek as he tried to unravel the remote cause of his problems. When he narrated his story, the man at the gate pointed at a room and said.

“Go there and you will find the man who is behind all your troubles, the architect of your misfortunes.” He beamed with smiles at the emerging rays of hope and entered the room.

As he opened it, he saw a glass coffin with opaque sides. Fearfully, he went nearer and peeped at the clear glass surface of the coffin. Startled, he ran back to the man at the gate,

Sir, I don’t understand what I see.

“Go back and look closer”, the man said feeling unconcerned. Lucky came back with tears in his now weak onyx of an eyeball,

“What did you see? The Man asked “I saw myself” Lucky replied. “But sir, how could I have seen myself? “He asked sobbing.

“That which you saw is the answer to your problems. You have no right to blame anybody for anything. You are the architect of your misfortune. If a man can conquer himself, conquer alcoholism, smoking, procrastination, lust and other vices, he can rule his world; but woe to many a man who would blame another for his misfortunes. He is yet a babe and not worthy to stand. Life is a challenge thrown to you; challenge, it back and you get what you bargain.

Lucky was confounded. Hot tears serrated his chubby cheeks as he tried in vain to unravel the mysteries spoken to him. He mustered enough courage and asked, “Sir, but where am I”

The man took him to a smaller gate and continued

“Mend your ways

                                        Number your days

                                     It goes around, that which comes around

                                        And stays to abound 

                                       To recount stories once told

                                       That all that glitters is not gold.

               

After the man at the gate’s admonitions, Lucky took a few steps past the small gate and suddenly regained consciousness. He smelt realities. He found himself in the medical center under a life support. His sudden sneeze brought nurses and doctors around him and he could hear shouts from them,

“He made it! He made it”…

 (This short story was first published in 2009  when I was in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the Microbiology Student Magazine when I was the Editor)