This is part two of a short story I’m still working on. You can find the first bit in an older blog post called Dynamite. Click Here

10:02am
Central Bank Headquarters, Abuja

Life feels shortest when you’re fighting for it. Then, every point in a second is trying; breathing seems a deliberate waste of time as your mind buzzes with a thousand alternative uses of a minute. Bamidele’s mouth felt heavy with the tangy taste of blood, her nose full of the coppery scent of the same. Was this THE death then? How long had she been in that position? Minutes? Hours? Death had always frightened her; that unobstructed timelessness, that spacious aridness of eternity. She couldn’t help the disjointed words that flitted noiselessly into her brain to form the question, “Maybe I am dead and I don’t even know it.”

*********************************************************************************************************

Bamidele woke up with her back on the floor, she could feel the weight of something heavy on her stomach keeping her down. The pain in her thighs was unbearable. She could not move legs. She was so tired yet too afraid to fall back into unconsciousness and never wake up, to close her eyes again. Tears fell in rivulets down the side of her face. She tried to focus on her surroundings. As the picture of her environment slowly set in place, she wished to be swallowed by unconsciousness again. An arm, a tiny human arm devoid of fingers lay on her chest. The sickly skin grazing her left clavicle. She tried to sit up quickly. Nothing moved. “Move. Move. Move!” She silently commanded her hands. Nothing. The panic bubbled, nauseating her further. “Bamz, calm down. Calm. Down.” She repeated her mantra. Trying to distract herself from the soft grazing of the severed palm as she breathed. She focused on trying to find her bearing.

“Grenade. Car. Gates. Reception. C.B.N. Niyi. Abdul. Zola’s. Wait, GRENADE?!?!”
Why was her body outside? The impact from the explosion must have shot her through the glass at the back. She remembered running towards the glass and wondering where the emergency exit was. She could not feel any injuries on her face although she suspected the blood in her mouth was from the initial impact of hitting the glass. Her head hurt though and her right eye felt very heavy. She kept calculating her injuries and their potential causes to keep her mind alert. She was NOT ready to die and would be damned if she’d be cajoled into leaving the earth via unconsciousness disguised as a dreamless sleep. She was only 25, with a family that was the centre of her joy, friends she adored and a man she loved. Besides, she’d never been to Tokyo.

It was on her bucket list.

“God don’t let me die just yet. Please. Don’t let me die. Please. Don’t let me die. PLEASE. PLEASE. Pl…” she continued begpraying like that, tears silently sliding into her ears. A silly thought came to her as she lay crying, I better stop now, “…drowned to death immediately after surviving a bomb blast” would look ungrateful on her tombstone. She could feel her face embracing a mild smile. She refocused her energy on her surroundings and waited for the evaporation of her tears in the humidity. She thought she heard moaning from her right but no other sound registered clearly although she suspected -hoped- that a rescue team was on it’s way, the pain in her thighs was becoming excruciating.

“Olilanya di gi nso!…” maybe she was going crazy too but she was certain she could hear singing, not actually moaning coming from her right.

“Who is there?!”

The voice grew weaker as it continued.

“If you’re singing, stop it! You need to conserve your energy!” Bamidele told the phantom. Trying to focus on anything to distract her from the pain in her body.

“I don’t need energy. I’m going to die” the phantom answered.

“No! We will be rescued soon, we’re just a little farther from the reception. There will be people looking for us”

“I’m already dead. It is only a matter of minutes. I can feel it.” The voice sounded old. Or maybe just resigned.

“Don’t give up….”

“Oh Toju. I didn’t say goodbye.” Bamidele could not see her but she knew the phantom was crying now. “I shouldn’t have brought Timi here with me today but he cried so much when I was leaving the house. And he’s on holiday you know” it finished pitifully. “Harira my precious baby, she’s lost her brother and mother before she even turned three months! Oh God!” Bamidele could hear the tears in her voice. “Anyi was re ihe oku mana ife rere oku!…”she continued her mourning song.

Bamidele almost left her to grieve; she seemed to need a few minutes with her Maker before meeting Him, convinced as she was that she was headed to His.

Before she could speak, phantom continued.

“My friend, my name is Ahasanma Kessena, if you survive this please find my husband Toju Kessena, he is the senior manager at Access bank in Wuse zone 2. Tell him he is the love of my life, every day married to him showed me God’s love for me and if I could come again, I’d come back as his. Maybe with a little more time…” Her voice broke on a sob. “Tell him how sorry I am. So, so, sorry. Oh Timi” Her quiet sobbing began again.

Bamidele knew how to distract her “Madam, you have to take my own last bequests too! In case I don’t make it.”
That distracted the phantom from her sorrows. “I am not leaving here alive but your voice sounds strong, you might. Tell me.”

“Tell my fiance Niyi I love him. More than he knows, more than I understand and much more than anyone thinks. My heart belongs to him, always. And my friends, I want them to know that they made my life rich. So so rich”. She sobbed as fear returned. She’d never seriously thought of dying. She was not even 25 yet! The tears kept falling as she continued. “Please, please tell my family I love them. With everything I am. They are the best part of me. And…” she was sobbing heavily now. In the middle of her sobs she noticed the eery quiet. Where was Phantom?
“Hey!….Wake up!….Hey, hey you can’t die on me! Come on….” she was sobbing too hard to speak clearly now.

Her voice had alerted some rescue workers. She heard footsteps.

“Oga, I think say pesin dey under that block! I dey see small blood for ground” Chioke gesticulated wildly.
“Don’t touch anything!” Doctor Ibiso gingerly stepped over patients in his bid to reach the destroyed back wall. His careful movements belied his racing heart. He stopped short of the bloodied rock tempted to scream at Chioke for his understatement. The staggering amount of blood seeping from underneath the rock assured him that a mangled corpse awaited him beneath that rock. He continued to stare at the rock for another second, transfixed by the sight of the bloodied stone; a weeping, pulsating, actual heart of stone. The rescue team around appeared equally transfixed by the horrific site of the bleeding rock as the tile of the surrounding area soaked up seeking blood, changing to a rusty brown. The depth of the horror registering, Ibiso snapped back to life, waving Chioke and the other incompetent paramedics aside as he bent and began to unearth the smaller stones around the trapped body.

“Hello Beautiful” Ibiso said when he finally stared down into Bamidele’s face. She looked unconscious yet silent tears chased each other merrily down her face, oblivious to her distress, uncaring of their very purpose.
He was about to wipe them when she spoke.

“Please, my friend on my right! She’s about to die! Please help her!” she whispered with a surprising urgency.

The worker quickly directed two other men to search for the other person alive in the area.

“No problem, we’re going to rescue her but let’s help you out of here now, okay?”

She could only blink her thanks as her eyes slowly opened and registered his face.

Her relief intensified her weeping.

Slowly, they removed debris and shrapnel from on top and around her body and carefully carried her. The pain magnified when objects she was pinned under were removed, and multiplied when she was carried. They had limited supplies so they could not afford to give her the requisite painkillers just yet. Her body felt like a motor caterpillar was crushing it.

As they carried her out, one rescuer stepped on something, jolted the stretcher and Bamidele saw her. Phantom, bronzed and beautiful even in death clutching the severed torso of a toddler.

For the first time in her life Bamidele Briggs fainted.