I'm an old man who lives alone in downtown Magdoco, East country. Few hours before the fall of dusk a cop called at my flat. Sergent Peters was a large bloke; good mannered and his lips, trimed and pink was never seen without it spreading into an assumptious smile. Thats would be over three decades since I had known him at his birth. Obviously the demanding task of policing a rugged Afican community has done little to tint his courtesy. Peter was; beside being a young friend, remained actually one of my only contact in the law enforcing department and he tend to come divinely handy whenever I ran into troubled waters in my unending enterprises within the allays of survival.
While Peter sat on the only chair by the reading table in my one room apartment; left with just the alternative of my bugs laden mattress on the floor, I instead drew a stool from a corner and balanced my butts. It was made of a firm component of reddish mahogany merged together by adhensive. The four legs were carved replica of an African Lion's hind. Smooth and strong, my frame felt assured. Our coversation rolled on like strings of east wind. We discussed and sighed; we joked and laughed. And we did it all over again. Argument was pratically an hobby for me, of course, despite the age gulf that seperated our worlds apart we complemanted each other as two opposite pole on a magnetic field will draw in attraction. There was never a malice when we traded hot balls. Berely two hours later, I felt my spine ache. Rising, I stretched and yawned, sending hot not-so-pleasant gas via my open mouth and bulging nostril. My young friend conspiciously interpreted my wary movement. The belated symbol of a frail senior man doing his best to conceal reality was all he needed to see. Sadly, it was crystal clear. ''Pa 8ode is laible to crash any moment if I made him chatter further. It was time I probably leave.'' He must be thinking, I thought.
Moment later, I accompanied Peter through the gate and disposed him in a jiffy. Outside, It was already inky dark. The night was naked, I could berely see beyond my immidiate standing. My eyes had failed and I could tell the spectacles hanging on my bridge was failing too. A lot was apparently transpiring in the vivacious night life of this precarious cosmopolitant neigbhourhood. But I could tell little. Humans were like dark sculpture walking pass me. I could only see figures but could scarsly discern their sexes. I had to look at their chest for clue, if it protrude, female it was, otherwise it was male. It worked, but i had to look closely and surely straining what was left of my eyes.
I walked at a trotting pace towards my flat, feeling my way through the blackness of the corridor. With my out-stretch arms thin with a little tremble, I fumbled along, kicking and stepping on every elements that met my blind legs. I had to locate my room. Like an expired federal agent that I was whose mental imagery was yet as square as the oddies, I did. I felt the door, i knew the wood - smooth batterned beeche. Turning the latch, i walked in.
Suprisingly what greeted my sight chocked a part of my lung. There in front of me was an utter dissimilarity in the pitchness of darkness outside and the one locked in between the walls of my room. It was like all the lightings there ever was around have been soaked up with a black velvet. I thought, but, some nuturnal black magic may have triumph in bleaching all my properties too as everything I owned within the boundary of the room appeared dyed in a wicked colour of faded black. I couldnt even see myself but i knew, of course, I was there and that I was made of black skin too. It felt at this moment only quite agonizing.
For all the crueity this world has got to offer who would apparently desire to haunt a poor superannuated man? Had I wrong someone in my enterprise of late? Who or whatever would made me see these utter blackness? Oh! Could it be my eyes again at it routinal deception? I had only thought for a while when something move in the darkness. Whatever moved did it with suspicious priciseness; so slow it went yet as fast as necessary. It seemingly felt like a delibrate attemp supposing I missed it. It was meant for me to see but not to know.
It moved again, my heart gave a thud when I saw what it was.
To be continued. . .
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