Blood and Bombs

Blood and Bombs

(The Nigerian Situation in a nutshell)

She sat cross-legged on the porch swing, the mahogany wood groaning from her enforced mass and the steel hangers creaking slightly as she pushed forward, mindlessly humming a tune. A billion thoughts ran through her mind all at the same time, coming forward and lashing her in the face all at once and when they returned to lurk in the shadows, they haunted the very recesses of her thought process eventually catching up with each other and endless tumble.

And then she saw Red.

Pure red, the colour deep and rich flowing incessantly from a ball of white and black; it was an eye, her eye. It wouldn’t stop. She looked down through the dots of red in her vision to see large and round boiling bubbles of dusty-yellow clammed hard on her arms like a second skin. Her bleeding eye widened at the revelation and with this horror came an even bigger horror. The thousands of troopers streaming in all directions like the pool of red now gathering on the lapels of her loose elbow-length white dress, they were all headed one lace. We all are, she thought.

She saw him stop.

As he parked, in the very centre of the trooping crowd, sitting put, the engine still revving. If she didn’t kill them, he would, faster and quicker, he would kill even more people. Could she stop him, she would die anyway, why she would waste the last ounces of life she had saving others who would live while she would not was such a mystery to her.

She let it happen.

The car exploded into shreds of metal each piece pricking at the fibres of her heart before they even reached her. And when they did, she found the gore to be even more relieving than the disheveled state she was in so she embraced it. With arms wide open seeking more shards to prick through her, tear her to pieces but there’s only so much death you can receive when you want it; when it’s shared with others.

She felt the pain.

It felt as though all the agony of the thousands of screaming lips were pressed against her and as her heart hammered in quick succession trying to leave via her throat she understood that she didn’t want death, she didn’t wish to die. She was only a victim of an ailing society looking for a way out.

Black enveloped her vision.

“She is infected with the Ebola Virus and these shards are not going to heal quickly. Luckily for her, she is recovering well from the virus; the cure seems to be working pretty well. As for her emotional state, I really ever doubt she’ll be the same, the Bomb Blast hit hard and no victim gets out of it normally. There will be scars to remind her of the past.”

She awoke with a start.

The dream was vivid and so real. It was a memory and not a dream and she knew that. She felt around her arms and legs the scars as rigid as the day they etched their way onto her skin.

“These scars remind us that the past is real”

AN: Nigeria as a West African country successfully controlled Ebola to a minimal. There are 5, 232 cases of Ebola in West Africa, out of this number, Nigeria had only 21 cases with 8 deaths. This is a victory indeed over one national menace but then there is another; terrorism. As America and other Arab countries battle the Islamic State, Isis, Nigeria battles Boko Haram. Will victory ever be ours in this case? Someone once said, you can never fight all terrorism, I think I heard that on a Multi-Choice Ad, but can Nigeria fight against the norm like it always has? We can only watch and wait. In the meantime, the girls are still in captivity, the Boko-Haram have captured Kaliphates in the North-Eastern parts of Nigeria. With these realities, I have truly realized that there are many more important things in life.