SHORT STORY: LUCID by Abimbola Rita Abayomi.

 

     

             

LUCID

The buzz at his ears and sting of his skin was no new company for the night. laying on the hard concrete at a street corner with nothing but smug and dumb faces as company, the heat was oppressive, even under the dark sky. The wind blew softly raising no hairs but a gentle caress on his moist and gummy skin. He turned over as a sudden gust of wind had him hissing, coughing and spitting.

The night was still  and loud with an eerie silence, the serenity, interrupted only by his belabored breath. He moved to lay back down but a loud screech stops his descent and his hands fly to his ears.

A vehicle stops at the curve of the street where each pole held over three faces with the check sign boldly

printed on. He heard the doors open and saw two people weighed down with a sack run across to his end and drop their sack with a loud thud. Swift feet and the sound of slamming doors reached his ears followed immediately by another gut retching screech that sent his hands over his ears again.

He rose on shaky legs and walked towards the sack a few feet from him.

 

The sack was no sack.

He looked down at the odd form on the hard concrete. long braided hair at an end with stiff feet at another, wrapped in cream coloured lace that stopped just above blotted ankles. Away from the hair, downwards was a wine coloured splash across the chest area, breaking the flow of cream across the form. Further down another splash of wine across the abdomen, raised high above the form like an upturned calabash, from there on was a trail of deep crimson down the front of the form to its feet.

 

It was a woman.

 

He turned around, shoulders slumped, head bowed, as he dragged his feet back to his resting spot. Another gush of wind separated the cloth tied at his waist exposing his loins to the caress of the wind's moist hands with each step.

He found, again, his spot on the hard concrete, where he once laid his matted head, marked with folded brown cartons on which he slept.

As he lay down, hot tears cascade down his cheeks as he remembers the men who  dropped the woman and their horrible sounding car.

He looked down at his barely clad sandy form and shut his eyes against the pain in his head he could not will away.

He knew soon the night would claim him once again and his head would cease to ache with the rising of the sun.

So also would he know not again the terrors of the moon clad night.

He let his tears fall freely knowing that another day to own them may never arrive.