🧸🧸CHRISTMAS GIFT🧸🧸
🧸🧸EPISODE 5🧸🧸
The memories of what happened that unfortunate night started coming to me as if it happened yesterday. It was so fresh and vivid and the innocent teddy bear that was in front of me turned to a threat immediately.
I became unusually apprehensive immediately I saw the teddy bear and I froze as if the teddy bear was pointing a gun at my forehead even though, the teddy bear was lying down innocently inside the box.
I started sweating like an athlete that just finished a marathon race from London to Nigeria and the sweatdrops kept on proliferating even though I was in a air conditioned room.
I couldn’t move nor talk for about 7 minutes and I couldn’t even hear what my little baby girl was saying.
I was just staring at the teddy bear as if it is my long time enemy, and literally, it is. I just wasn’t sure if it is the same teddy bear that murdered my family years ago because my Mum burnt it in my presence.
“Should I throw this thing away, or should I burn it immediately. My daughter is going to cry and be disturbed if I take her most wanted gift from her. Am I being apprehensive for nothing or am I being subjugated by my past memories?”,these different questions kept pacing through and fro in my head until my husband entered the living.
I didn’t wait for my husband to get to me before I carried the teddy bear with the aim of throwing it away. My husband stopped me when I got to the entrance and he held my hand in order to calm me down.
“Hey dear, What’s wrong?”, My husband asked me inquisitively. “I’ve been watching you for the past five minutes when you were staring at the box I bought for Valery, and now you are carrying it to God knows where. Hope there’s nothing wrong”, My husband asked with a massive facial expression of surprise and concern.
“I’m just having a bad feelings concerning this teddy bear, and it is refreshing the tragic memories”.
“I thought we have discussed this and you are over it. You just have to put those memories away. It is your past and anything like that is not gonna repeat itself again. Just kill this fear you have for teddy bears and toys and moreover, there’s nothing wrong with the teddy bear. I got this from the shoprite. This should abate your fears”, My husband concluded eventually.
“Alright. I feel much more better now. I just afraid of the teddy bears whenever I remember those memories”.
“Don’t worry dear, trust me, nothing is gonna happen. See Valery’s face now, she got afraid when you carried the teddy bear. Let us just put all these behind us”, My husband concluded.
I decided thereafter not to throw the teddy bear away. My husband’s advice quelled a little, out of the fear I had for the teddy bear.
I decided to implement new rules in order to keep myself mentally stable and safe, including my child and my husband safe, from any unseen casualty and part of the rules was never to leave the teddy bear alone with my daughter and locking it inside the wardrobe every night before going to bed.
This seems to work for several days until I no longer see the teddy bear as a threat and at some point, I’ll forget to lock it up inside the wardrobe. I’ll just dropped it off anywhere and go to bed.
“My husband is right after all. That’s all in the past and it will stay in the past”, I thought silently to myself.
I started having normal days after those time and I no longer get afraid of teddy bears and toys most most times, I’ll be alone with it inside the house.
It’s a Saturday morning and I was at home at usual, I don’t go to work on Saturdays. I was eating some snacks while watching a movie. My husband and Valery has gone to the eatery to get pies and drinks and I was the only one at home that morning.
I was still enjoying my snacks and laughing at some hilarious scenes i see in the movie I was watching when I felt an usual sharp object on my throat. This made me staggered a little bit, thereby pouring all the snacks I was eating on the ground.
“Why did you repeat the same mistake you did twenty five years ago and why do you keep on locking me inside the wardrobe”, the voice said while holding a knife to my throat with the aim of slashing my neck if I make a wrong move.
© Elisha Kehinde Fagbemi
