I’d only jumped two paces when the commandant opened fire.
MY SPIRITUAL WIFE
THE FINALE
.
I kept my eyes tightly shut and began to mutter words again underneath my breath.
Or so I remembered. Everything happened so fast.
I blacked out.
.
I woke up days later to the sight of my mother sleeping on a chair beside me. Her eyes were swollen from having been exhausted from crying. I stretched out my hand towards her. I wanted to hold her hand in mine. I wanted to look into her eyes and beg her to forgive me. I planned to ask her afterwards why she didn’t go with me “that day”.
Even though I knew and understood very well that my mother had no choice but to have left without me that day, especially since my father literally fought her; pried me off her hands that faithful morning, I still needed to hear her say it.
I wanted to ask my mother why she didn’t fight to get back to me, instead of leaving me in the hands of my stepmother (a woman she was chased out of the house because of) to raise me and eventually open the door to the part that’d led me here.
.
I’d just barely touched my mother when she woke up. She sprung out of the room that instant, in realizing that I was conscious, to get a doctor.
.
I tried to call my mother back. I tried to tell her that at this juncture, there was nothing the doctors could do for me, but I couldn’t form the words to.
.
At this point, I could only think about it. Muttering the words had now become harder than riding a bike.
.
By the time my mother and the doctor ran back into the room, I was so weak, I barely had the energy to turn over in my bed. My breathing started to slow and the gaps between each breath were getting longer and longer.
All of a sudden, I sat up, threw the bedcovers off and insisted that I had to get out of there.
I suddenly had the strength of ten men, and it took a few of the doctors and nurses to have stopped me from getting out of bed.
.
My mother tried to calm me down by talking quietly to me (with tears now streaming down her beautiful cheeks). She held me to her chest and began to stroke my face, begging me not to stop fighting for her.
“Please baby, fight to stay alive for me. I don’t want to lose you. Please don’t do this to me, Paul. Don’t do this to your father.” My mother said, as tears continued to flood down her face.
.
It was at that moment that I developed a rattled breathing. It seemed as though I was drowning. My breathing became very shallow and there were long periods where I’d stopped breathing and then started again. Nobody needed to interpret this to anyone in the room. They all knew what time it was.
.
My mother clenched tightly onto me, begging me not to do this to her. She went on and on telling me how sorry she was that I got caught up in the mess that her inability to stay with my father caused (as though she knew something I didn’t).
.
It was at this moment, I began to go down memory lane. The feeling of regret that I’d brought this upon myself soon took over.
.
If only I could get a second chance. If only I could turn back the hands of time.
.
As my body realized that it was dying, it pulled the blood away from my extremities to “the core”. This caused my toes, fingers, knees and elbows to become cold and had a purple lacy look, called “mottling”.
There was a blackout afterwards.
Then it wasn’t.
.
I woke up to bright lights. I looked around and certainly recognized where I was.
I was still in my room; in the hospital.
I had no idea what had happened. I just stood there like a buffoon, sensing something had happened and unsure of myself but certain something had suddenly changed.
I was correct, and no small thing, rather it was weighty.
.
That flesh, blood and water which I called ‘ME’ had dropped off and crumpled onto the ground like an old rag, soundlessly, and I suddenly felt really good, although I wasn’t sure why until I looked around, and then down.
.
On the bed laid this horrible corpse, and then I was swept with horror, realizing that that thing was me.
The commandant’s bullets really did numbers on me.
.
My body was empty and uninhabited.
.
What dwelled inside that cadaver was standing there, feeling quite fresh and that, to my delight and horror, was “ME”, the real “ME”. The “ME” in the spirit.
What is left of me anyways.
THE END.
Moshood Avidiime The Writer
R.I.P Paul