I never would imagine that my classmates will miss me so much in the span of just two days. I wonder how they'll behave if it would be years . Will they caper around me in ecstasy just like right now?
" Hey foodie where the hell have you been?" Antony's voice rings in my ears before being drowned in the hullabaloo of my classmates rushing and pecking me in excitement. They corner me at the doorstep after they had seen me entering the class. It's both exhilarating and annoying.
" Hey we have some novelties here ...look.."
"Dude we elected a new knoller..."
"A football tournament has been announced and it's starting next week but one....."
" Listen you better start bracing yourself for a mountain of work....."
They prattle on what has happened in the two days I was off. Crazy with exuberance twinkling in those contemptible eyes that had looked at me maddeningly a few days ago , they tag at me from the sides as I stand their discombobulated. I am unsure whether to laugh or cry. Even though I am a mostly introverted person in class , I'm the type that most students will fawn on.
The interior of the classroom has changed drastically. It looks bran-new with desks , tables and the walls gleaming with fresh paint. The satiny vinyl linoleum is radiating the yellow sunlight coming in. Traces of repairs are visible to the eye when looking at the walls which had cracks and graffiti on them previously. Our school staff doesn't severely punish vandalism not because they don't have the power to but because of the mud of corruption that has smeared it since the last five years I joined it. It seems as though I am the root of all these fiascos. On account of the first day I stepped in Oyugis Primary a headteacher was sacked and the aftermath was a series of going-in and going-out of headteachers until now we have a probationary one that also shows signs of being blemished. Mr Dick's attempt to steamroller the school with his bedlamite rules has both been a blockbuster success and also has backfired considerably since he got promoted as the standing-in Headteacher. He managed to enact some rules and that has surely increased the performance rate of the school in the zone but the issue with lack of sugar in gruel during recess has seen an increase in wanton destruction of some of the school premises like the toilets which are marred to the gyst with graffiti. The classes are crammed yet he doesn't want to build more of them. There are bruits that he had been given funds by the CDF. Where have they flown to? We know not.
"Will you let me pass now?" I simper as I try to shove them away pushing away to my desk as hands jut out to seize me. I feel flattered and at the same time happy that at least I can be idolized. The linoleum is squeaking annoyingly as I shuffle on it . It seems as though it has been laminated with decrepit secondhand vinyl tiles but that doesn't tamper with the grandeur of the classroom.
As I sit on my flat-topped desk which is an archetype of the ones used in the Millennials-period ,my hands grope on the space beside me and I put a book there. A space that one of us have ever occupied and sat on. A space that I had laughed, joked and shared everything with him. Now I'm hoping against hope that I'll never see my best friend. My best friend who at first I never thought cared for me to the point of dying for me. How I wish I could see his innocent face again? How I wish that his death was just a dream and he could be back in our school life? How I wish I could laugh with him? He died to save me and yet I'm here doing nothing to honour his brave and altruistic death. How it feels poignant knowing that he gave up his precious life just for the sake of me? Will I repay this magnanimity? Will I ever unravel the penetralia of the gang and end it's tyranny as the measure of vengeance?
A wispy tear drop falls on my lap and I quickly wipe it with my handkerchief before wearing an unreadable facade.
"Are you ok?" Antony says as he sits beside me removing the book. I give him a dirty look but he doesn't notice it. I slacken my frosty look with an indifferent shrug .
"Yeah why so?" I ask looking at my Science's book .The class has now gone silent but a few catcalls and noises directed at me can be heard.
"It's just that I heard you got cornered home. So I was worried something happened to you."
"How...How did you know that ?" I tense up my body shakes unknowingly. My muscles are rigid and tagged with a bit of exhaustion. How the hell did he know ? Has it been already publicised by that stinking newspaper company? I'm just sick of them.
"Um..I read it in the daily newspaper." He says his facial features wrinkling. I brush it aside but deep in my heart I already know what had happened in my absence but I couldn't expect them to be so fast and reliable in transmitting news.
"How did you get away scot-free? I mean it's freaky how you survived. They're known to be barbaric and not lenient."
"Well that doesn't matter." I whisper and wave my hands but I detect his resolute gaze on me .
"Get ready for lessons Antony ." I say beckoning him to return to his desk.
"Please I need to know." He pinches the bridge of his nose and his unwavering gaze at me never flickers.
"It's none of your business." I say as I pretend to look into my rucksack searching for a book .However it's futile because he seems to notice it. It's implied right there in his conniving scintillant eyes. I feel my head throb , my lips flex and my nose flaring up.
"Just tell me what happened please. I need to know.Trust me." He says looking at me with cat-like, unblinking eyes.
"No! I won't tell you!" I snap with an elevated voice clenching the desk firmly with my right hand. I look sideways not wanting to meet those morbid eyes. I don't know why I shouted at him but I feel weird since Rodgers died. I can taste the tug of death on my life force tightening every day.
Why do I feel so strange?
"Are you alright?" Antony springs up from the desk his ocean blue eyes dilating . A whiff of his cologne flits by my wide nose and I feel like throwing up. I can hear his unsteady breathing as he careens to me running his shaking blarney hands on my shoulders. I turn to look at him and I notice a pained and hurt expression camouflaged in a concerned grin widening his slackened jaw.
"Sorry." I say licking my bitter lips ."I didn't mean to shout at ...."
"No no I understand Chris." He drops on the desk yanking his face away from me. He looks at the windows fogged by the frosty morning air and the hazy hue of the sun rising from the keeled skyline . His face is splattered by blebs give him a woebegone temperament and making him look like a hangdog. I feel my heart ache looking at his face.
"Ok, it's simple . We got blitzed by one of them but he died in the hands of a cop." I blunder out those sickening words with an indecipherable tone. I am still fearful of that encounter. The incident is harrowing and I can't help but shudder imagining what would have happened if the cop hadn't come. It is time I need to be very careful. But Can I trust him?
"Sorry dude, right did you ship in to another home?" He says raising his brow and touching them with his shaky calloused hands.
"Nope." I look at him quizzically. "Why?"
"Just worried over your safety." He waves his hand but still I can feel something that is unnerving, something that's creeping on my soul, something that is not right. The way he seems to be overly concerned about me today is queer. Even though he is my friend, is he not going too far?
It's strange.
"Ok I gotta go to my desk." He says deeply sliding away to his desk and from the corner of my eye I can see his eyebrows gnarling .
I open my Science book to read but I feel like I can't read. Sweat forms on the bridge of my nose , my heart hammering the insides of my chest and my hands getting clammy. I feel really peculiar. My eyes are sore and excruciating pain brushes through my temple. A burning sensation knots at my throat.
"Good morning class." The voice jolts my senses and the pain subsides. A blur of Mr Flakey's enthuses plunking herself on the wooden chair in front of us. She is wearing a silky gaberdine that glistens with the morning sun streaming in through the windows. Her smile is suavely charming and an air of tranquility envelops the class. She always exuded a charismatic aura that seemed to pressure others not to defy her.
"Good morning teacher." We boom in unison. She stands up from the chair.
"Today we're learning about Cell Physiology and...." Before she can finish writing on the board a panicked voice interrupts him and we all jerk our eyes to the doorstep.
"Someone ... someone's.. floating downstream ...dead." I roll my eyes as a wave of recognition sweeps through me. The image of her dances in my head but I can't grasp it. I must have seen this girl somewhere.
"Easy easy , what's wrong with downstream?" Mrs Flakey flops on the linoleum towards her – her sleek face contorted and wrinkled into streaks of confusion and shock . We gape at the intruder. I can see her panting clutching on the door with her vigorously shaking hands that could snap your neck bone in half if caught by accident. Her mouth is stretched and drawn back, minutely exposing her scintillating pearl-white teeth. And her face.. The face is oddly familiar.
"I saw someone dead as I was passing by the river." She finally blurts out after regaining her composure and steadying her breathing. I have seen her somewhere and the image of her is not blighted out of my memory. Sure. She must be her. She must be.
Contrary to the shocked expressions of class , I am agitated.
Mrs Flakey gasps as she looks at the sky searchingly and as if she has seen something she sighs dejectedly – A mixture of a sigh and huff .
A moment of short-lived silence passes as the class blink and shake repeatedly. I am trying to make sense of her muzzy, unfathomable image that I think I have seen somewhere but no matter how I try to familiarise with it , it proves futile. Is it an illusion?
"Take us there." Mrs Flakey says bitterly gesturing out as I banish off the thoughts to the deep recesses of my mind. We hop out of the desks and stream out of the class and in a minute the news has reached the whole school and now it is a steady parade to River Siany - The sepulchre and the hell on earth.
We reach the broad, inhospitable river. The bewailing cries of long-dead people welcoming our presence. The tree branches jut out eerily like the limbs of a phantom sending shivers down my spine. The place is queer and dark even though it is daytime. I wonder if am the one who is hallucinating. I look around me and the crowd appear to be normal and familiar. There seems to be nothing out of place but just being here feels like partaking in an unholy parody of life. I hack the tawny rotten boughs begrimed with dangling clumpy combs of wet moss. Spasms of tremor course through my veins as ghostly screams invade my throbbing ears. I think this is not River Siany because it doesn't have such big trees. I compose myself but a surge of pain smooth over my forehead and intensifies at the back of my head.
She guides us to a concealed place along the river. My vision starts becoming blurry and clear at short intervals.
She stops and points . Following the trail of her pointed finger ,we see a leaf-tumulated grazed corpse that emits a fetid odour. We cup our mouths but Mr Flakey doesn't. She just stares at it forlornly.
"Miss , here cover your mouth." I call her giving her my blue sweater. I'm starting to feel rundown and dizzy. The smell is truly nauseating and I can't think of how she is surviving it like that.
"No need for that. More will be happening and we won't have time to cower away from mere smells." She says with a look of one who has seen the vicissitudes of life. I feel pained. My head is pulsating. Sweat starts to form on my body. I don't understand why the words she has said can make feel like that as if my heart is being ripped apart and my head is being pounded on by an elephant.
For a while we stand there just gazing at the corpse and savouring in the nauseating smell. I am striving every sinew not to purge but I can't control myself. With a retching sound it comes out and others in the crowd also vomits. It seems as though they were waiting for the groundbreaker. Some of the teachers in the crowd shoot us with cold glares which strangely enough seem to agitate my stomach. Nevertheless I control myself.
A mini-ambulance with two police cars in convoy pulls beside the river. White-robed morgue attendants dash out of it heading to the corpse but Mrs Flakey stands in there way.
They look alarmed and the police officers nearby have wary and confused looks on their faces.
"What's wrong?" One of the morgue attendants grunts in annoyance.
"Can you do me a favour please?" She asks composedly unfazed by the piercing glares coming her way.
"What can we help you with ma'am?"
"I would like to see the corpse at close quarters with you turning it for me. Please I just want to verify something." She warbles pleadingly while staring at the body lying supine on the surface of the water.
The morgue attendants exchange looks for a moment before nodding to show their consent.
"Ok." The one who seems to be the leader of the trio says with a serious expression." But on one condition."
"Which one?" Her lips twitch and she closes her eyes subtly as if dreading what will ensue.
"You won't in anyway touch it." He says.
"Uuh..That's easy." Mrs Flakey grins and heaves a sigh of relief.
"Ok."
The morgue attendants approach the corpse with gurney sacks hanging on their gruff hands.
"So how do we turn it miss?"
" I want it to face upwards." Mrs Flakey says commandingly as she leans near the body - The zone where it's odour is concentrated sharply. She is now covering her mouth and nose . The morgue attendants pulls the body and a swarm of flies that ate into the corpse flutters disgustingly over it. They turn the body to face up. Its face is scraped and hideous with deep wounds sinking in its flesh.
"So?" They raise their eyebrows at her.
"Can you lower that shirt down for a bit?" She says in a pinched voice and seems as if she is struggling to keep off the odour.
The morgue attendants look at each other stupefied. What the hell is she up to?
"Ok." They nod and using a long stick they pry open the corpse's chest and then I see something familiar. I scan it attentively but damned I can't remember where I had seen it
I can sense her unsteady breathing behind her cupped hands as if she has discovered something.
"What next ?" One of the morgue attendants asks irritated that she will continue nagging them. It seems they haven't seen it or maybe they thought it is a mere tattoo.
"Thanks I'm done , sorry for that." Mrs Flakey says before retreating. Some of the police officers gaping at the sidelines approach her agitatedly.
"Miss did you notice anything?"
"I'm sorry no." She shrugs her voice laced with indifference. She starts to hobble away to the school.
The police officers seem disappointed but they don't show it. The morgue attendants wraps the body and throws it in the gurney sack before taking it into the ambulance.
With a rev of the engine , the ambulance pulls away leaving the police officers asking innumerable questions.
I get bored and start walking to school when I hear footsteps behind me. I turn sharply my heart racing wildly in my chest. I heave a sigh of relief when I see a familiar face.
"Jeff Chris, you will be coming to the station in the evening .Please don't be late." Reindo approaches me with a contemplative look on his face.
"Take this , we're planning to take you in." He casually hands me something that looks like a police insignia. I check it well and shockingly it is.
"For real." I shake involuntarily as my face flushes in excitement. I genuflect gratefully.
"Yeah. It's nothing." He shrugs as he starts moving towards his colleagues who are getting into their cars.
You don't how this thing means much to me . I sigh and turn back to walk to the school. I am going to be a ratified supergrass. It seems my dreams of vengeance can be achieved through this.