New Gang

Frank could hear his faint whimpering behind him. Moses was talking to someone on the phone now, crying and saying: "Big brother, I have been badly injured."

Frank ouldn't care less about that. He walked home.

Immediately he opened the gate of his uncle's compound, someone ran to him, panting frantically. There was fear in his eyes.

"Mason, what's the matter?" Frank inquired.

"They are coming...they are coming..." Emeke said, quivering with fear.

"Who are they?" Frank asked, already feeling fresh paroxysms of panic welling up in his solar plexus.

"They are many!" Mason cried in fear.

"Who are they!"

"Moses' gang. They are armed with cutlasses and guns." He was weeping now.

Frank felt a lump in my throat. He remembered Moses crying on the phone and saying, "Big brother, I have been badly injured." No doubt Moses' people were coming for revenge now.

"Go inside compound now! I want to lock this gate!"

Mason dashed inside. His 12-year-old body seemed smaller now. He heard him yelling, "Ogechi! Tamara! They are coming oh!"

Just then Frank heard the sound of machine gunfire blasting in the distance.

Jesus Christ.

So Mason was right when he said they were coming with guns, Frank thought.

Pandemonium broke out in the street. People were shrieking and scampering as the gunshots blasted.

They were coming at me with guns? Moses wondered in fear. Why? What did I do? Did I kill anybody?

He couldn't breathe now. He ran into the house and waited for doom. He knew he had put his uncle's family in danger and I almost cried out in terror as the gunshots got closer and closer to our compound.

Then he heard loud banging on compound gate. A lot of people were yelling all at once. Someone's voice rose above the hubbub.

"Open this gate or everybody dies!"

Frank was shivering now. His uncle wasn't around and cousins had locked themselves up in the toilet. What was he to do now?

Another person shouted: "Jump over that fence!"

Moments later, Frank heard a thud, thick and menacing. And then another thud. And then some more.

God. They were inside the compound now. It was all over. Frank knew he was done for, and he collapsed on the ground, paralyzed with stark terror.

He hought to himself: "So this is to be my end?"

Then, strangely and surprisingly, something came alive in him, something alien and enormous and forceful, like a surge from volcanic depths. It jolted him from my resignation, from every fear, from every consequence. It was perhaps the bravery that comes with knowing that death was certain, and that no matter what you did—sit still or fight back—death was going to get you. So it was better to fight and carry some honour to the grave. Or perhaps it was the conviction that he could do something, one tiny little thing, to change the course of things, to avert this imminent doom, to wage a last-ditch war against a destiny that he believed wasn't his.

Whatever it was, it got Frank to my feet. He stood shoulder high, with his face burning with unalloyed courage. Gently and confidently, I walked to the kitchen and took a knife. Death had come calling and he wasn't about to let him steal his last breath without a fight.

They were in the compound now. But there was only one entrance: the entrance to the living room. Someone shot a bullet and it flew past the window and hit the screen of black-and-white TV. Frank heard someone chuckling. And another person said, "I will kill that guy!"

Outside, the wind blew and thunder roared. It was about to rain. Perfect moment for a climax that would end in bloodshed.

Frank stood behind the living room door, poised to draw blood. He miled and then shook his head, already feeling some mischievous sympathy for the first person that would come in.

Someone was hacking at the padlock with the butt of his gun. And then Frank heard the sound of metal hitting the ground. The person had broken the padlock. He would be inside any moment now.

Frank smiled a wicked smile.

The unfortunate gunman dashed inside with obvious fury.

"Where's that bastard?!" he said.

But those were to be his last words, for Frank's hand moved swiftly from behind, sinking the knife into the back of the man's neck.

The man fell down, convulsing as spikes of pain shot through him. His eyes bulged, looking at Frank as though in wonder. After a moment, he came still. He would take the knife on his neck as a souvenir to the land of the dead.

\*\*\*\*

Frank woke up panting for breath. Who does this dream mean? he thought. What's its significance? He hadn't seen Moses in nearly 15 years? So why was Moses coming to his dream? And why was the dream set in his teenage years?

Frank wanted to think a little more, to find new associations, to connect the dots, but his mind was could not longer function. He realized at that moment that it wasn't just his heart that had been broken; his mind has also been broken. Heck, his life had been broken, destroyed. He could not live and he could not die. He was suspended in between, wedge between two worlds that were alien to him, made to suffer a fate that was never his design. How would he solve this problem now?

He picked up his phone and dialed that number again. The phone rang four times before the doctor answered it.

"I normally don't pick calls by this time, Mr Frank."

"I want to believe her body hadn't been interred?" he asked, ignoring what she just said.

"I'm afraid it has," the woman responded.

"Noooo!" Frank shrieked. "Damn you! How could you do that?"

"Last time I checked, you're not married to her mister," she said. "We informed her family and they had her interred the day she died."

"I don't believe this!"

"You had better believe it," she said calmly, "because it's true."

"Jenna had no family!" Frank barked, "I was the only one she had in the world!"

"Completely false!" the lady said, and then she hung up the call.

Immediately, without bothering to think about what he had just been told, Frank began to will himself to appear in Denver.