A very blissful day in the land of Gambaga in the Northern part of Ghana, lived a happy and rich couple blessed by two set of twins. The father, Mr. Keanu is a prominent and well-to-do oil tycoon who had many businesses and industries in his name. These kids almost had everything their age mates will be wishing for. It came to a time a plague broke out resulting to three thousand kindreds including three of the kids by these couple. Keanu as he was always called grew up being loved by young and old because of his kind and pure heart. On Keanu’s 18th birthday, his parents died due to road accident when the couple were returning from the wedding of a close relative. Their demise shattered Keanu’s heart into pieces to the core since he held them dear to his heart. Life began to reveal its true self since he was to fend for himself in both school and also food since his parents were no more and his other relatives were forcing him out of his father’s house because his deceased father bui
Chapter 2At the prison entrance stood a young man, his hands buried in the pocket of his blue khakis, a wooden box –containing some clothes and a few toiletries– shoved in his armpit. He was eagerly waiting for someone.It’s been five years since Zane went to prison. He has really miss home and his beloved girlfriend. Living in the prison every day was like a hell for him.He is a care free man and had always wanted to spread his wings wide. His life has been wasted for five good years. Anyway he doesn’t regret it. He did it for his love one and he will do it again if the same thing happens. Its almost an hour since he stood at the entrance of the prison. He looked at his watch impatiently. “ I told Vivian I will be released today, why is she not here? Well let me wait for while maybe she has forgotten or maybe I should call her, he said these words to comfort himself and dialed Vivian’s line. The phone rang but no one picked it. He called for the second and third and eventually st
She was large as a human. She sat on the top of the swaying open door, ducking her head down so that it would not touch the ceiling. She swiped cobwebs from her hands. “Dirty corners,” she said.Cinderella winced. “Sorry. I can’t reach up there.”“Didn’t they teach you to use a napkin tied on a broom?”“I was tired. I’ve been chopping firewood, sweeping the house, carrying water, scrubbing clothes.” She sneezed, and gripped her skirt. “And I have catarrh.” She sneezed again and covered her mouth.“Complain, complain.” The fairy took a puff from her pipe, blew the smoke out into the shape of a sitting angel.Cinderella had a smutch on her forehead in the shape of a star. “Sorry. It’s my catarrh. I’m tired and unwell.”“So you said.” The fairy glided down. Her eyes took in the room, the fireplace with its dying embers, the tattered cloth over the window, the dented pot hanging from the nail. “Used to be cleaner.”“I know.” Cinderella let out a small cough, bent her head meekly, saw the
“I’ll give you some pills. Come back in a month,” the doctor says after I complain to him of my difficulty peeing. “Also, your PSA is too high. You may want to do a biopsy.”Later, my buddy offers some advice. “Don’t have sex a few days before you do the test. Your PSA will likely be lower.”“Oh, that’s easy,” I tell him. “I just broke up with my girlfriend.”“What’s wrong?” he asks.“You won’t believe it,” I smirk. “Political differences.”“Talk to Gary,” my buddy quips. “His liberal girlfriend recently dumped him. Maybe he can fix you up with her.”# # #“Your pills help only marginally,” I tell the doctor a month later.“Well, the good news is that your PSA is normal now. I’ll prescribe you other pills. They will somewhat shrink your prostate but they may kill your libido in the long run,” he replies.“Any other ideas?” I ask grimly.“Take the pills for three months. It will be easier to operate on you. Then we’ll have surgery.”“And what’s the prognosis for that?” I inquire.“In t
Christmas is great when you’ve got a kid but it was fine when it was just Becky and me too. We took everything so goddamned seriously, the first Christmas we were married, even researched what kind of tree to get. On Christmas morning that year I went downstairs when Becky was still asleep, thought I’d make coffee, but I looked at our Douglas Fir, moderately priced and valued for its sweet scent, hung with Our First Christmas Together ornaments and the whole thing was so bogus, me and Becky, my dirty girl, acting like an old married couple, that I went back to Becky, lay down beside her, said, “Santa is here to fill your stocking, little girl.”Cheesy, but we thought we were cool, rushing to get dressed for dinner at her parents’ house, Becky giggling whenever anyone looked at her.“I don’t believe in Santa now,” our boy said yesterday morning, sounding proud of himself. He’d done a handwriting comparison. “You’re Santa. Santa is really you.”I’d gotten a kick out of that shit, listen
He approached the young man, who was aimlessly taking photos of the artist’s exhibit with his phone. “Hello, there,” he said.Startled, because of the elder gentleman’s powerful voice reverberating throughout the room, not because he was a scaredy-cat or nothin’, the young man turned. “Oh,” he said. “Hello, sir.”The elder gentleman wasted no time, turning their attention to a painting occupied with various blues and black, but no real form. “Now what do you get out of this?” His hands held an imaginary brush, spreading paint every which way.The young man laughed. “Lemme see what it’s called,” he said. The young man contorted his back and strained his framed eyes to read the minuscule lettering. “It’s called ‘Night.’ I suppose it’s … a window?”“Yes,” said the older gentleman, “but you had to read the title. Now look at this one.” The elder gentleman guided them to another piece, this one bright, depicting a woman with a wildly dispersed color set conveying a headdress. “I can sense
Grand Re-Opening Soon! exclaimed the sign out front and above the heavily plastic-wrapped and taped double doors leading into the main foyer of Velvet Glove. I walked in and saw the place with its fragmented ghosts of Wildcats, the club’s previous incarnation, but the contractors working inside had assembled the Jazz Age elements and had started replacing the derrick- and pump-jack-shaped themes, mirrors, chrome, and sparkling décor on the remaining walls and booths for brass and gold sconces and polished dark wood and inlays that management bragged about to me months ago. I brushed past a lineup of blinking modems on the bar and new cash registers set up for wireless transactions. A man wearing a yellow hardhat lowered a pallet of frosted and etched glass panes a few feet from me. Fleur-de-lis.Management watched me sidestep a concrete mixer and a stack of lumber and motioned to me after I nearly tripped over extension cords. They sat at a small round table set between the main stage
No one could believe I found each of my old selves scattered across our past homes. Living and surviving as complete human beings, still answering to my name. I could trail behind them on streets, catching up on gossips like friends. Old friends, beware of traits of new iniquity.If I was before a congregation who loved mysteries, in lieu of executing my rabbinism, they would find out everything. How I began my trek to discovery on a day of searching for the secret which shrunk me, at our onetime home in Ire Akari. My old self alone at the lobby, clothed in my old cargo shorts and t-shirt, the one with a delineation of a boy riding his bicycle. His voice and shadow merged into my pre-teen face, widening into a set of yellow teeth and a smile which suggested both amusement and annoyance. He would stare at me to death that my leg took me out of his way. And out of the house, to the street, for good.Finding persons on the street conceding to a life haunted by the past would come to repl