Hardy

 Extract from my novel Hardy.

Enjoy.

In the world we live today, there are only two types of humans you can ever become, either you are happy or you are sad. I belong to none of this group, I stay at the middle, yes on the fence between been the saint or the demon. Sometimes I am the two at the same time or one to some and the other to others depending on which part of me you have met.

If you are courageous enough to ask me my side of the divide without getting yourself hit faster than the word  would ever had come out of your mouth then I might just tell you that I am a sadist but unlike most sadist who express it openly I express mine best inside.

For every smile I cast out there are a thousand expression of hatred flowing freely inside. What will it profit a man if he makes himself a sadist to the whole world? He will be a sucker for life and a thriving topic for public discussion.

I go by the name Micah Hardy and folks simply just call me Hardy and my surname is not Hardy but Glee. My father is a Frenchman by birth but still has Senegalese ancestry which dates back to the time of slave trade in Africa, a topic young teenage Historians like me just love studying and bragging about it to all who dares give a hint of doubt about the subject.

My dad keeps on saying I should apply for citizenship as a Senegalese but that’s not on my agenda, Africa is the second most-populated continent on the globe and Nigeria where we live is the continents most populated country with over 200 million people. I simply don’t want to belong to a country as poor as Senegal with little potentials of its own when compared to that snoring giant called Nigeria where I live. At least another addition of one to the number of citizens won’t overpopulate the country over-night. I would love to be a citizen of Germany like my mother but it just an impossible dream, I consider her an African than a European for my obvious reasons but the way it is I’m a citizen of France and I can speak Yoruba fairly well, far better than my French.

Dad keeps saying if he ever gets the opportunity to change his nationality he will grab a green card with both hands, good choice but my only two fears are one, everyone there carries guns even little kids and you dare not provoke anyone, an hobby I get A-star easily in because you will be died before you even complete the trick.

The second is that the country is a constant target for terror groups, though they have done well to curb most of it but as America gets more sophisticated in machineries so are the terrorists improving too at an even faster rate. Today you will here they have intercepted a plan to bomb thousands of citizens and tomorrow the bomb threat is still alive.

Sure, Nigeria do have their own large share of terror threats but those folks only operate in the North, as long as I stay in the south I have no fears. My future is bright and I believe in it, I dream about it and proclaim it even if presently it doesn’t seem so.

‘Hardy wake up.’ My mom kept hitting me with a stick. I opened my eyes wide enough to see her and shut them at once and made a brave attempt to go back to sleep. I felt pains at my back and my thighs, she must have increased the tempo as I tried to get up but ended up only re-adjusting myself to subdue the pain.

‘Wake up Hardy or I will flog your neck.’ She yelled still whipping me on my back and thighs. I heard the threat well and jumped up from bed only to sit down still feeling sleepy.

‘It’s 9am already and you are still in bed, get up and start cleaning your room now. Look at your room, it resembles a dumpsite, if I do come back and see you sleeping I will whip you seriously you will regret ever been my child.’ Mom left the room shutting the door with a bang, I followed her closely to make sure she was gone and bolted the door well this time so she won’t have an easy entry in any longer.

I laid down on my bed still feeling sharp stings at my back. Tears rolled down my checks, warm salty drops tasting like salt mixed with water as I rolled out my tongue to taste the warm tears. I got up from bed, removed my night wear and stood by the mirror naked but for pants. I felt the sting more sharply now.

A look at the mirror revealed less than what my greatest fears had been. Dark Purple bruises formed on my back like one of my mom’s make up powder. They formed three lines as they stretch to the length of a standard 30cm ruler each. Luckily there was no blood here, I took out some cotton wool from the top of my drawer and dipped it into a bottle of Methylated Spirit which smelt like pain and applied it with a soft touch to the affected area.

The pain was so intense, I dived in one move and crash landed on my bed biting my pillow harder and harder to try to reduce the pains I’m currently feeling and muffle the sounds that came with the expression. My hands grabbed my bed sheets too like it was claws and strangled it in a fashion only Hollywood super-strong actors can do.

I did everything within my power not to touch the affected area because of my fear of escalating the damage further. If only I was in Germany, I would have sued my mom for child abuse and happily kept her in jail till she crawls on the floor and beg me. Tears flowed more freely as I closed my eyes and engaged my mind in an active discussion.

I am a firm believer of the saying ‘anything your mind can conceive, you can achieve it.’ It just takes the mind and the body to agree on the decisions that will actualise the plan. I love making trouble but I don’t like been at the end of one. The pain still keeps stinging but at a slower pace than when I first applied hell’s own treatment.

I held my eyes closed firmly as the last drops of tears where forced out. I’m a firm believer in anything I set out to do, I actualise, I have set out to sleep for the rest of today and I must actualise it no matter the repercussion.

I closed my eyes more tightly, trying to force sleep to come my way but it seems sleep has been warned ahead about the danger that is yet to come? I rolled on my large untidy soft mattress trying to get the last frequency of sharp pain out. I must have been doing this for more than thirty minutes before the witch started banging the door again.

I picked myself up immediately to start tidying up my room in the fastest possible manner but there and then as the knocking increased to banging and the voice got louder than a blaring siren you only hear when the President is passing your street by chance with the presidential fleet, it dawned on me that I could not do anything to this room even if I was given an extra twenty minutes to do so and I didn’t even have thirty seconds. I quickly wore a Polo shirt and beach wear and sat at the edge of the bed faithfully waiting for the worst to happen.

The witch kept blaring ‘if you don’t open this door in the next ten seconds, you will be using a pop for the rest of the holiday’. I wanted to dismiss her threats to mean just some more few strokes of cane calculating the time I will be able to run out from the room without my mom smashing my head yet in her remarkable fury but then the banging stopped for a minute and just when I was about to head to the door to attempt a miraculous escape, the key already turned open, I heard a sound that sent my whole body numb.

If my mom had turned the door knob that moment she would be able to achieve two world class assaults that would make the scripts for Hollywood next big action film. The first assault would be her smashing of my paralysed body with the door with a supernatural force only the witch can produce and the other will be the smashing move with the lethal weapon.

She kept on banging the door with the lethal weapon I couldn’t control my body to move nor my mind to think. My supernatural ability to think was restored after a minute of her banging the door with the lethal weapon. It rushed in at such a pace I feared my brain was going to shut down for good.

A friend of mine at the military school where I study who goes by the name Christian Amarvi keeps pressing on to this point ‘when you are in danger, your thoughts are your best possession because they give you a thousand solution.’ I don’t know if the statement was ever going to be true but at this point the only re-occurring thought I had was of a third assault that will make a blockbuster movie in Hollywood.

Image the door falling on me and slamming me flat on the hard tiled floor and the witch jumping with the door on me to finish me for good with her lethal weapon in a Thriller fashion. Just that scene alone will qualify her as the next James Bond 007.

After ten minutes of battling to regain control of my numb body, it finally yielded. I could feel cramps all over my body. This is not the best time to deal with cramps. I still had to flee from the judgement yet to come?

I managed to get to my bed crashing my knee on the wooden frame of the bed. I screamed in agony almost louder than my mom’s lethal weapon and blaring siren voice of the presidency fleet. Why must today spin from bad to worse for me? Who did I offend that has sworn all this evils into my life today? I gripped my knee tight which was miraculously not swollen and limped on the mattress that has been my only comfort today.

My mom shouted, it seemed like the sound of my crash must have given up my next move. She then coughed which sounded as vicious as her temper before she gently said by her standards “Am asking you to open this door and you are sleeping? Wait till your dad comes back next week and see what I will do to you. No. Today I must deal with you. Your mates are helping their mom’s doing their chores and you are there still sleeping? I will chase out that demon of laziness from your body”.

I could hear her cursing under her breath as I tried to stand up from the bed to open the door for her. At worst, she would smash my head with the pestle and then send me to the hospital for brain surgery, luckily Ben Carson will operate on me. I screamed louder than the presidency blaring siren as another cramp attacked me, I felt I had broken my vocal cords and I didn’t care my voice no matter how it is operated on will never be melodious for singing.

For the next five minutes the whole room fell silent, the banging on the door stopped, the only sound I could hear was my own groaning. Immediately the next question that gripped my mind was where was my mom? I thought I was suffering from a panic attack a few while away now I can’t even describe the fear gripping me. Naturally my mom unusual quieting game will make me the happiest teenager in the world but it’s the direct opposite. The next question my mind produced was what is her antic now?

With the cramp easing off a little I began to relax. I laid comfortably for the first time in an hour and half since the stinging cane was introduced into my day. I will rest for some time then think of the next move to make. My phone began to ring under my reading table where I hid it from the witch touches.

I stood up without pain for the first time in a long while today, moved past the mirror and my scattered dirty clothes on the floor to the reading table. I took time to examine my new look body in a mirror like a model does when applying special lightning creams. The marks at my back where dark purple like an avocado fruit. I moved nearer to the mirror and bent down without feeling much pain to rub some cream Jacob my pal says heals wounds fast and removes scars. He probably didn’t know I took one from him on my last visit to his house a year ago and must have gotten himself another one now.

I rubbed the invisible cream that resembles the liquid gel of an Aloe Vera plant on my back with care and caution. When I was satisfied I had used enough I moved to my reading table which is five short strides from the mirror. The phone call had stopped before I completed my fourth stride. Just as I brought the phone out from my hidden spot I had another phone call.

I looked at the screen and it was a girl I knew. I walked gently to my bathroom and shut the door because I didn’t want to take any chances on if my mom can hear or not. The last thing I wanted to give her now is another negative thing about me to add to the I am lazy, a stupid boy, a mad man, fool, thief, good in eating only, dull statements she throw at me every day to try an remind me who she thinks I am. I guess the next quotes will be ‘Look at this good for nothing boy, lazy thing, the only thing you know how to do is to keep girlfriends and those stupid girls too who are daughters of useless men are following you blindly, you better start doing my chores or else I will castrate you and your girlfriend together. Idiot who told you that you can have a girlfriend at your age, better know what you are doing or else I will send you to be an apprentice at a mechanic workshop and if you ever bring a girl to my house I will first kill you then devour your good for nothing girlfriend. Hardy get out of my sight.’

Sometimes when she starts this her regular insults, because of the repetitive nature of the words, I complete the insults in my mind before she is even done. If I was to ever remember my mother for anything, the first thing that comes to my mind is her routine abuse.

I took a look ahead at my caller Zaynab and picked up the call. ‘’What’s up Zaynab?” I said in low tones that sounded more like a whisper.

She must have heard me because she said immediately “Are you not coming to take me out again?” she sounded depressed.

In my mind I was like ‘girl I have a serious emergency to deal with here, can’t you think of anything life changing than a date?’ but all I just said was “I will come and get you as soon as I get out of my room alive”.

She must have misunderstood what I meant as she just laughed and said “Come on Hardy, I know you are still on your bed, your voice sounds weak and shallow. I called you so you could come and take me out on time this time”.

I could sense her smiling, at least someone is in a good mood this morning. “I am in the middle of a very serious emergency here. I will count myself lucky if I leave this room with a coma”. I said noticing the increasing tone in my voice. If mom was still waiting at the door, she would have heard me and smiled to herself more determined than ever to grant me my wish.

Again she misunderstood me. “I’m not joking here, Hardy. Look am already dressed up and waiting for you to come pick me up and you are busy sleeping. What sort of lazy guy will give a girl a date for 10 and quarter past 11 he is still sleeping” she shouted angrily.

I looked at the big clock, the time has indeed gone. It says 11:12am. She is three minutes wrong in her timing. I got so upset I almost smashed the phone on the ground, if you want to stress a point especially with time don’t add a single minute to the time because anyone who does that is guilty of time forgery and terrorism offences which are punishable under the Acts and provisions of the Fundamental Global Time Management Constitution.

All I said was “I’m sorry Zaynab. Let reschedule for another time. Today is not very convenient for me”. As I finished the last word of my statement it felt like I had added lava to an already erupting volcano.

“Can you imagine? I Zaynab wasted my time dressing up to look good for you and all you can do is sleep and reschedule our date. Look I give you thirty minutes if you are not in my house to pick me up then forget the whole affair because it will be over” she ordered.

I tried to plead for mercy “But Zaynab have mercy, this emergency is serious, it is health threatening”.

I heard her hissing or doing something worse “You will tell me if my name is mercy. See I have said my own, if you like let the emergency be life killing I don’t care, just met my timing, I’m giving you till 12 to meet up unless this relationship is over”. She hung up.

I didn’t have anything to say so I dropped the phone back in my secret hide-out. Even if I did have something to say knowing Zaynab now for the past two years she won’t pick my calls even if I sent a voice message that I’m dying right now and the only person that can save me was her. The ferocity of an angry woman kills faster than death.

Anyway I had more life threatening matters to deal with now than to deal with the tyranny of the legendary Zaynab. She could go to hell and come back but as for me I’m facing my own hell in my own room!!!

I sat on my reading table and for the first time in a long while I felt the need to keep my room clean. I don’t know the exact size of my room but the only size I have in mind is that it is as big as some folk’s living room. I love to measure things with my strides so in such measures my room is about 10 long strides by 10 long strides.

My room can be called a prefect square room, a room where the only perfect thing that happens there is perfect humiliation. My mom keeps on complaining to my dad to allow me use the smaller room since I live like a King in this one and she says it’s the root cause of my laziness.

I have my own TV screen connected to my PS4 and my DVD player. The TV in my room is as huge as the one in our living room, I hear it is the biggest plasma TV available. If I stand close to it we share about the same height and it is even broader than if I stretched my two hands horizontally.

My bed is a wonder to my friends who risk visiting me whenever the witch is not around. They say it has the capacity to hold ten people and make them comfortable. I doubt it can make me sleep comfortably as I always end up on good days on the tiled cold floor.

In my wardrobe, I had what many will label a collection. I have lost count of the number of trousers I have and the countless shirts, the suits, blazers and jackets I have. Most times I dash out my clothes that had become smaller for me brand new as it had first been bought. I have about fifty pairs of shoes most of them gifts from my siblings and their spouse. Expensive wristwatches and chains abound in my wardrobe I hardly wear them all in a month even if I wear two different ones in a day.

A family portrait hangs on the wall directly opposite my bed where I can see it. From the left to the right is my eldest brother Matthew who is now married and living in Senegal, next is me who is struggling to survive from the witch brutal conception of discipline, then the witch followed by my father and lastly my elder sister Paris the eldest child in my family who is now in France married to one of the richest men in France by name Charlie De Gaulle who owns the one of the largest growing e-store ‘Gaulle stores’ in France and beyond.

Of course my room has an air-conditioner, a shelf containing novels especially all of Timblaze novel, the teenager who has become a giant in the creative writing world, I have a large fridge which is always stocked with drinks and ice-creams by the maid in the house and that’s all they do for me. I wish my mom would be more tolerant and let me live in the class I find myself but no she insist I clean my room, the master bedroom, wash her clothes and my fathers with my own and iron them, wash her and my dad cars and of course wet the garden so all the maid does is just to restock my fridge with drinks, sweep the house expect the rooms I’m assigned to and cook and clean the kitchen. Sometimes the witch insist I wash my plate after eating!!!!

 I am a serious writer of friction, my role model is Timblaze the famous kid who is conquering the book world for himself. I work a lot on my laptop at nights and that explains why I wake up late in the mornings, I work during the night and sleep during the day. I keep on writing interesting pieces but I never finish it to the end. I just close it up and move to the next idea in my hand, an attribute I constantly possess.

One of things I like about Timblaze books is he has a liking for suspense, drama and common sense which makes him totally in a different world from others. I’ve read a lot about this kid and I have heard him say many times that when he starts writing, sometimes he doesn’t have a story line, he forms a beginning and he then allows the story to mature into an end product. He says a story is a living being and should be allowed to mature because it’s only a story that can make a story.

One of the books I love reading a lot is the ‘Sanity of Brother Sagnol’. That book is just incredibly ridiculous, I’ve never read a book written in such insane manner like that. Sagnol a teenager and his many flaws not only highlights my own flaws but makes it look like what am going true is just a rock off a mountain. Too many people keep making the mistakes that a young handsome, fun, talented and lively teenager is all he seems to be but when you enter the thoughts of Sagnol and his many problems you will immediately be contented with who you are and what you have.

I must have been sitting here for so long because the clock struck 12 o’clock. There goes the end of my relationship with Zaynab. Hardy you are young, there are more girls out there who are worth a lot more than Zaynab in beauty and character so find yourself another. Easier done than said, I will try.

My large room which my friends envy is in a terrible shape. For the first time in a long while it dawned on me that I wear clean clothes always but inside I am as dirty as the savage kid on the streets of rural Lagos. I made a conscious decisions to give this room some shape. I got up from my reading table, I started to arrange my room, picked up my dirty clothes and deposited them all into the laundry basket, properly hang my clothes, arranged my shoes, picked up books from the floor and put them back on the shelf and I even re-arranged the shelf. It was fun and I was loving it.

I shifted my attention next to my bed, changed the bed-sheet that must have been on for nearly a year now, I changed the pillow sheets. I laid the bed till I could no longer spot a single line of untidiness. I felt satisfaction at my new look room now. I looked around for any part I could improve and yes my drawer was in a bad shape. I arranged all my cosmetics properly, the dozens of lightning creams, lotions and exotic perfumes that choked better than a smoked room. As I was about to pick the last glass of perfume from the back of the drawer I met an object that make me perform a quick U-turn in shame.

I opened the drawer took out a glove and picked the object feeling irritated. I opened a polythene bag and dropped the fungus infected object in the polythene bag. I went round and round my room trying to remember where I had hidden more of such odious objects. I raised the mattress up and spotted seven more of such objects in more terrible states than the first one. I rushed to my bathroom/toilet to throw up but it was just an act I couldn’t throw up. Do you throw up for a mess you knowingly caused? Well I don’t do that.

I quickly picked all twelve, feeling more ashamed than irritated, these things must have been here for the past ten years. No wonder my boxers also remains the same number each year no matter how many new ones are bought for me. I put them quickly in the polythene bag examining each one carefully, the least had a stretch of faeces stains covering the back of the boxers where the buttocks is covered and the worst was soiled in faeces like as if it had been picked from a soak-away pit. As I dropped the last one in, the smell of my room got better than ever before, the AC that is always on must have suppressed the smell combined with the Aero electric air fragrance machine. I could now breathe in clean oxygen and not oxygen combined my vicious odours.

Luckily for me no stains where under my bed. I put the last one in and removed my gloves and put it in and went back to the toilet/bathroom to wash my hands with soap and water. I dried my hands with a towel I’m not sure I’ve ever washed it in five years since it was given to me as a birthday gift by Uncle Jerry from Canada. I applied Purell Hand Sanitizer and mixed with Aloe Vera Hand Sanitizer and my school’s own produced NABOL Sanitizer and I robbed it together happy I had murdered any bacteria/fungi trying to spread germs into my body.

The root cause of this stains is simple, I hardly wash up after I finish using the toilet. I wear my boxers like that and when I start feeling uncomfortable, I remove it and throw it under my bed and where a new one. Please note it is very rare for me to soil by boxers even though I always wash my buttocks when have my bath, a talent I’m proud of.

I left the bathroom/toilet and entered my room, dropped my mattress and laid the bed neatly and smoothly like it is done in the luxury five-star hotel Palacio Nazarenas in Peru where I had my last summer holidays. This year I’m waiting for my dad to take his leave and let go on another trip maybe to Brazil or Sweden. 

My eyes again met the polythene bag and there and then I decided to dispose of them. I walked the door with the bag in hand and as I was about to open the door with the key, I noticed the door had not be locked all along and I locked it at once in fear. The thoughts of my mother waiting behind the door to perform an assault kept me more tormented than the demons could ever do. If only Brother Matthew had agreed to take me with him to Senegal, I won’t be suffering here.

I ran my nose around the edges of the door and the keyhole to perceive my mom’s Apple smell. My mom loved everything about apple, she uses Apple hair cream, Apple Shampoo, Apple flavoured lip-stick, ate apples as an appetizer for every meal eating at least twelve apples a day, rubbed Apple Hair cream twice in a day, used Apple spray starch to spray her clothes to enable it smell like Apple, washed her clothes with Apple detergents and shinned her shoes with Apple shoe-shiner. If my mom was Eve, she wouldn’t need the serpent to eat the apples on the tree of good and evil she would had eaten the whole tree long before the command was given.

 I smelt some Apples alright, she is at the door. But why didn’t she attempt to turn the knob and finish me for good? Is it true the moment we stop trying to open a door and wait for someone to open the door is the moment the door is unlocked just requiring only a turn of the handle?

Anyway if I will open the door gently and make it out, I will dash to the living room to take cover and if I make it in time to the door without her already at my back then I will give testimony in church this coming Sunday.

I unlocked the door, held the knob as I prayed for success and luck in my escape mission. I tried to turn the knob too gently and my hands cracked. I turned again a little bit harder and the knob turned as I pushed the door open waiting to see what will become of me.