19/12/2015
07:21 AM
[b]"FACT OR FICTION ?? ......you decide
Ledum looked at the clock in her office, wondering what was so urgent that she had to drop everything she was doing in the office. But Baridor had sounded frantic on the phone few minutes ago.
“Come to Nina’s house, it is an emergency” she had said. What emergency, she had declined to say.Ah..well...!
Knowing her twin, it could be anything or nothing. Baridor had only one setting; Hyper.
She was an exact opposite of Ledum, whom was always calm and digested events before reacting. It always amazed people how different the girls were. Even as kids, you only needed to looking for the one who couldn’t stay at a place to know which was which.
Physically, they were exactly the same.
Ledum got to her partner’s office, to tell him she was stepping out for a moment. She and Ngeri ran a very successful medical practice.
They had graduated top of their class, and gone on to open up their clinic together.Business wasn't bad(if you looked passed the constant power failure and fuel/disiel strikes)
Just as she stepped outside the building, a strap on her sandals ripped. She hissed angrily, but decided against going back to her office.
She would use the flat slippers she had in her car.
She drove for about five minutes, listening to the radio and singing along and thus didn’t notice the car's temperature gauge rising until the bonnet belched,sending out thick black smoke.
She parked by the side of the road, and sat in the car for a few minutes wondering her next line of action. She had no idea what to do when a car was overheating.Her knowledge of vehicles didn't extend beyond;Start-Drive-Fuel-and-Lock-Car-when-you're-done.
She called her mechanic and waited for him to arrive.Took him about an hour.By then the car's interior was like the interior of a fully functional oven.
Then she handed her keys over to him, and got into a cab.
Ledum was stuck in traffic ten minutes later.
She was getting frustrated. The cab had barely moved three or Four feet in five minutes. Hence the term "Go-slow".She thought.
Traffic was at a standstill. Apparently the engine of a Large Fuel Tanker up ahead had a mechanical version of a heart attack.
She looked out the window, and watched how the Keke drivers were dribbling between cars like skilled footballers .
They seemed like her only salvation from the Hold up.
She had never boarded one in her life, but she was in a haste. She paid the cab driver, and flagged a Keke down.Funny how they always reminded her of those old Bollywood Movies.She half expected some Indian guy to Pop out of them,singing a Bollywood tune.
She haggled with the Keke driver for a few minutes, before boarding.
The driver started his engine, and she heaved a sigh of relief.For a second,the rickety damn thing sounded like it were about to explode.
She noticed him take a swig out of a plastic bottle from under his seat.
The foul smell of drunkenness permeated the air. Ledum was shocked. The man was drunk (or at least smelled drunk)and drove pretty recklessly.
“Oga abeg stop me, I no dey go again” Ledum said to him.
“Wetin dat one come mean eh? Madam abeg no vex me O”
“Oga no be by force O, If you wan die, die alone. Stop make I come down” Ledum yelled above the sputtering sound of the engine.
She was becoming agitated.
“Madam I no fit stop for here. You wan police to catch me? Abi dem send you?” He drove straight into a pothole...(or small crater) and almost collided with another keke.
“Ah....!Oga you no wan stop? I go jump O”
Ledum protested as the Keke flung her from one part of the back seat to another.
“Na you sabi” He retorted.
Ledum watched the road, deciding to jump off the keke at the nearest opportunity. She got one soon, when the Keke slowed down a bit.
She jumped out of the Keke and in mid-air realised too late that she had miscalculated her trajectory....and the speed of the Keke.
"Chineke...!!!"Was the last thing she heard the Driver scream before her head hit the pavement,cracking her skull open.
She didn't feel a thing.She died instantly.
The driver of an oncoming car, had to swerve into a ditch, to avoid running her over. She lay there,......motionless with her cranium broken,with blood oozing from her head.
People gathered around, and finally she was rushed to a nearby hospital(i.e Thirty minutes after onlookers had just stood there staring at her lifeless form,snapping fingers over their heads and saying things like;"Chie!!,..dis Fine girl..Nawa o!"
The doctor pronounced her DOA (dead on arrival).
Baridor wondered why it was taking her sister so long to arrive. She needed her to see this with her own eyes. She hoped Ledum arrived before Humphrey left.
“Ledum likes to doubt me” she said to herself. She had told her sister that their cousin’s husband was cheating on her, but Ledum disagreed, saying Humphrey was a perfect gentleman.
Lo and behold, she had come to visit her friend Nina, just in time to see Humphrey going into one of the apartments in the compound. Nina had informed her that his girlfriend lived there.
Baridor was excited, “Ledum would eat her words today” she thought to herself. Then she got the call.
Baridor was besides herself with grief. She stared at the lifeless body of her twin, and a shiver ran through her. “It’s all my fault” she thought to herself. Joe Ledum’s fiancé was also there, as were some other members of their family.
They decided to bury her that same day. “No need to keep her body in a morgue that is bad omen”, the elders said.
Ledum was buried that evening amidst tears from her loved ones. Joe was against the idea of such a hasty burial, but it was not his decision to make. “You are not yet married to her” her family members reminded him.
Later that night, Baridor jerked awake sweating profusely. She had seen her sister in her dreams, wailing. She didn’t sleep till it was dawn. Ledum’s voice kept haunting her.
“Why? Why?” Ledum asked.
“Why did you people bury me alive?” she cried.
The next morning, Ngeri rushed to their house. He had also seen Ledum in his dreams, it was the exact dream Baridor had had. The family called the grave diggers, and went to exhume the body. They opened the casket, and Ledum was there lying on her side, with her clothes torn and the insides of the coffin scratched and torn apart.
She was dead.
FACT OR FICTION ??.... you decide
SEE YOU NEXT WEEKEND[/b] :)
