Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E23

2 years ago

Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E23

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 23

Seeing Double

I was still clutching my life to my chest, cowering by the door and trying to stop and think clearly, when Janet called Brother Jeremiah.

“Hello? Hello? Brother Jeremiah, it is me, Janet… Francesca. The mirror has broke o!” she said. Then: “It is not me. It is one of them. She broke it!”

She was distraught and altogether not together. I was the ‘one of them,’ but I didn’t mind. The way I saw it, Brother Jeremiah was the one person who could help. I wanted to take the phone from her and talk to him myself but I couldn’t move away from the door.

“No… No… She did not do it on purpose… She look at it and she shout… I don’t know what she see… No… Yes…No. She is here… You want to talk to her?”

She handed me her phone, and at the same time, a dirty look. I, with trembling fingers, took it, and still unsure, put it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hello my sister,” came a low drawn out voice over the line, “What is your name?”

“Amaka.”

“Sister Amaka, why did you break the mirror?”

“I dropped it. I didn’t mean to.”

“You look inside?”

“Yes.”

“What did you see?”

“I’m not sure. I… I’m not sure.”

“My sister, please think carefully. Did you see anything in the mirror or you just broke it to offend your friend?”

“No! I saw something!”

“What did you see?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

“Is the mirror still there?”

“It’s broken.”

“You pack it away?”

“No. No, I didn’t touch it.”

“Please, my sister, if you know you did not broke it to annoyed your friend, help me to look inside it again and tell me what you see.”

“What?”

“Just look inside the glass and tell me what you see.”

He wasn’t helping me; he wanted to kill me!

I flung Janet’s phone at her and she caught it into her belly. Thank God – that would have been the second of her property I would have destroyed that day.

Somehow, talking to Brother Jeremiah had calmed me down, but why?

My ability to think was still beclouded, but slowly, like sleep clearing from one’s eyes, I was gradually finding it possible to focus.

Why did he want to know what I saw in the mirror? Isn’t he the one that made the mirror? Then it hit me. He didn’t believe I saw anything in it. He didn’t believe me because he knew there was nothing to see. It was snake oil, sort of; a scam, a fraud, a mirror and nothing more. It was a dupe meant for Janet, and she had been totally mugunified by it. But what did I see?

With Janet busy trying to call Brother Jeremiah again, I slowly walked to the broken pieces of glass on the floor. I looked for the largest piece and picked it up with the hesitant fear of one handling a dead snake, but a snake nonetheless.

I held the piece of mirror up to my face and held my breath to look into it. I sat on the mattress where I’d sat before and I took another look. I was confused.

Janet had Brother Jeremiah on the phone.

“Look, Amaka, me I don’t know what is happening to you o! Brother Jerry said I should bring you so he can do prayers for you. You too, why did you look at the mirror? Did I ask you to look at it? Amaka? Amaka?”

I could hear her but my brain had decided that a more urgent task was at hand. I was busy trying to make sense of what I’d seen in the mirror. I was turning it here and there, holding it up and down trying to recreate the exact position I was in the first time I held it. There had to be an explanation..

“Amaka? Eh! Amaka? Me I don’t know this one that you’re doing o! Amaka? Amaka? Amaka!”

I remembered holding the mirror out to her and sneaking a peep. I tried to do exactly what I did before.

“Amaka? Amaka, talk to me nau. Amaka?”

Then, still holding the mirror in my outstretched hand, I turned my head to look at the wall behind, without shifting my body too much.

“Amaka! Amaka!”

I adjusted the mirror, looked into it again, and burst out laughing. Uncontrollably. That kind of laughter that you can’t stop; that bends your belly and waters your eyes and makes you start to choke.

Janet watched silently for a few seconds, then, as if she’d heard a starting gun go off, she jumped in a spot, swung round and bolted out of the room faster than you can say Usain Bolt.

Later that night, about nine or ten, with all the girls present and a few more, Janet called Mama’s phone.

“Hello? Mama?”

“Janet? Wey you dey?”

“I travel. How everybody?”

“You travel? Why you no tell anyone say you dey travel?”

“My Papa call me say make I come. You dey house?”

“Yes o, I dey house o.”

“You dey house? Who dey house with you?”

“We plenty for here. When you dey come back?”

“When I’m coming back?”

“Yes.”

“I never know. So, everybody dey house?”

“Yes. We all dey here.”

“Amaka nko?”

“Ah! Amaka! She don craze o! She don run commot ! They see her for C.M.S. She dey there dey disturb Okada people say she want to drive Okada! We wan go catch her now. You for come with us o, as you be her friend too. Janet?…Janet?…Janet, you still dey there?”

But Janet was no longer on the phone. Mama tried to call her back.

“Winch! She don off her phone!”

We all burst out laughing.