GHOST WORKERS(2)

GHOST WORKERS(2) 👻👻 

Genre: Speculative.

Duration: 5mins

A food hawker found her way into the construction site. The first set of laborers who patronized her all commended her rice and stew to the extent that two of them paid for another plate. Ejaita’s appetite was whetted, he was forced to try the hawker's food. He walked up to the girl. She was about attending to him when she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.

“You must be Ejaita, right?” 

Ejaita feared she could be someone from his past. But for the men who stood by, he would have denied himself.

“Yes,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“Sir, your bravery is being talked of around town. I am Esohe, pleased to meet you.” 

“The pleasure is mine.”

Ejaita shared the food he bought with his mother. Afterwards, they were relaxing on a bench under a shed when Esohe came for her plates. 

“Mind if I join you two?”

“No, we don’t. Please have your seat,” said Ejaita's mother, gesturing at the space beside Ejaita. “You must be Esohe the food hawker. My husband spoke well of your food. Indeed, it is delicious.”

“Thank you ma. Actually, it’s my mother who does the cooking, I only support by hawking around.” 

That was all Esohe could spare Ejaita’s mother, obviously she wasn't interested in her, she turned her focus on Ejaita.

“Sir, those thieves have eluded arrest in a long while now, how did you manage to catch them?” 

For a moment, Ejaita was lost for words. He felt shy and uncomfortable in the presence of the fair, pretty damsel of not more than twenty seated by his side. She sat so close the strands of her long, dark hair would sweep across his face should the wind blow. No girl had ever come that close. They always run away on sighting him, or keep a long distance. For the first time, he felt like running. After answering her question, he hoped that was all. As she came up with another, Ejaita thought of a way of escape.

“I need to get back to work. Excuse me,” he said, stood and walked off in quick steps. 

Esohe rose to her feet immediately.

“Goodbye ma, ” she said and went after Ejaita.

Ejaita’s mother perceived what was happening with him. She burst into a laughter that graduated into tears as she watched Esohe run after her son, caught up with him and both moving on side-by-side. That a girl could bear to stand his sight really gladdened her heart. She hoped Esohe would come around again the next day.           

As she had hoped, so it was. Each day, Esohe stopped by at the site. Ejaita and his mother became a company she looked forward to. Gradually, Ejaita made another friend aside his mother and Casper.

Later on, the community’s elders offered Ejaita the job of vigilante, a one-room apartment, and salary of  ₦10,000. He jumped at it without hesitation.

The family of three—Ejaita, his mother and Casper moved in at once.

Heaven seemed to have smiled down on Ejaita till one evening.

He returned home from walking Casper and found his mother still and cold on the couch. As he raised and shook her lifeless body, a folded paper fell off her stiff hand. It revealed how she met his father at a bar that later became their lovers' hangout. Under the influence of alcohol one night, they staggered into a shrine  where he was conceived on its altar. She believed that explains the reason for his strangeness. 

After a loud wail, he went for a carton of Vodka his mother had stored, downed two bottles with hardly a break. He was on a suicide mission. Seven more bottles, yet it was as though he hadn’t taken a drop. Everything was alright with him except his eyes that felt odd. He looked and saw his mother’s ghost being escorted through the roof by five others. In his head, he'd floated after them. Casper’s howling barks knocked him back to reality.

The thought of  life without his mother gave way to more tears that put him to sleep.

By dawn, the town's youth paraded a young man who confessed to raping and strangling Ejaita's mother. When they went past Ejaita’s house, he was shocked when the culprit turned out to be Ovie,  dumbfounded when he learnt Ovie’s penis had grown to his trouser length overnight.

Later in the day, Esohe came by to express her condolence.

“Sir, sorry about the passing on of your wife. She was a kind woman.”

“She was my mother.”

Ejaita didn’t know when he said that. It was now too late he had to reveal the mystery that surrounded his birth to Esohe, and how they came about referring to each other as husband and wife.

Ejaita thought that was end to their friendship. He was surprised when she visited again the next day, bringing along a pack of food for him, and bones for Casper. Ejaita was glad when he learnt Esohe no more hawked. Few days after he and his mother stopped working at the site, a good Samaritan helped her mother. They now own a big canteen and had to employ sales girls to effectively serve patrons who poured in daily.

It was the fourth day since Esohe had been visiting with food and bones. Ejaita was beginning to develop feelings beyond the ordinary for Esohe. Thinking of it was embarrassing enough, not to talk of putting it into words. It would certainly ruin things between them. That day, he saw her off to the entrance  as she took her leave. He was expressing gratitude for her care when she pressed her soft puckered lips against his cheek. She ran off before he could recover from the peck. Ejaita stood rooted to the spot like a lamp post, it seemed like a dream.

That was the last time Esohe visited. Ejaita couldn’t stop thinking of her, he wondered if he would ever be able to look her in the face again.

Everything around the house reminded Ejaita of his late mother—the neatly arranged kitchen utensils, the couch she loved to sit, her portrait. He walked into her room for the first time since she past on two weeks ago and was engulfed by her warm, heavy scent as though she were there. 

“Mother!” he called, but got no response.

“Mother!” he tried again, but it was the same stillness and silence.

“How am I suppose to live without you!” he screamed, broke down in tears and cried till he lost his voice, drenching the cold, empty bed with his tears.

When he could cry no more, he went into the night, located a bar and drank to his mother's memory. Since then, Ejaita became a perpetual caller at the bar, shutting out loneliness with the company of fellow drunks.

 

Due to  his unbalanced state, the community employed someone else in his place.

Ejaita went on recklessly till he drank himself to a pauper. When it got to a point where he couldn’t afford to feed himself, he thought of Esohe. His mind strayed to what happened between them and was going to fantasize about it when some hungry worms nudged the walls of his stomach.

For me to go and beg at her mother's canteen? Never!

When hunger had flayed Ejaita’s lifeline to thread, and it seemed he was going to die of starvation, he reconsidered his resolution, tossed aside his shame and headed to the canteen.

Esohe was the first to sight Ejaita as he walked in. She called one of the sales girls to help finish up with the patron she was attending to and ran over to him.

“Ejaita!” she screamed his name and almost startled him. He was flushed with embarrassment when all eyes swung in their direction watching as she hunched over and hugged him, took him to an empty space at the back and sat with him.

“Ejaita, what are you doing here?”

“I am here to see you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I need your help. I lost my job and can't even afford to feed myself any more. Please sell to me on credit.”

“Ejaita, why did you wait till it got this bad before coming? Give me few minutes, I will be right back.”

Ejaita watched as Esohe walked over to the selling cubicle. In less than 5 minutes, she returned with a plate of rice and stew with assorted meat.

“It’s on me,” she said as he placed it before him. 

Ejaita stared at her with amazement.

“Thanks, ” he said and began eating, managing to go easy with the spoon and not use his hands instead.

“Let me get back to work, I will be with you again shortly.”

As soon as Esohe  left, a fair plumpy woman walked in. She greeted patrons to her left and her right. On spotting Ejaita, she was taken aback, took hurried steps towards the selling cubicle. Ejaita watched as she called a sales girl, pointing in his direction while she spoke to her. It became a drama when she gestured Esohe over. He could tell Esohe was distressed.

The woman soon came over to him.

“Excuse me mister, I own this place and not Esohe. Don’t ever come here again for food without money. Better still, don’t come at all.” 

Ejaita took his leave to avoid further embarrassment. The woman forbade Esohe to follow after him.

 

The next day, Ejaita went job-hunting. He learnt the liquor manufacturing company down town was in need of a Vigilante, went over and was employed at once. 

Within the space of two weeks earlier, three men had been employed. All three didn’t stay past a night.

Ejaita had safeguard a community, he wondered what could be tough in securing an enclosure. He was in for the shock of his life.

On his first night, he checked around to make sure no one was in, flipped off light switches and barred the entry to the building. 

After, he laid on a bench by the building’s wall from outside to get some rest. At 1:45a.m, he was jarred awake by a continuous clinking movement from within. The upper part of the walls were made of fancy bricks with holes. He got a ladder nearby, leaned it against the wall. On reaching the top, he couldn’t believe his eyes.  Everywhere was illuminated, and activities were on as though it were working hours. From the filling, down to the packaging, the various machines involved were working with no one in sight. He was taken aback  when sealed cartons of liquor began moving through the air, and out the entry gate he’d barred earlier. A while after, the machines turned off, lights went off, the gates closed up and everywhere became as before, excluding the missing products. 

The following night he went with Casper. Things were no different from the previous one, except for Casper that almost poured out his gut barking all through.

While in deep thought, a way to  see whatever Casper saw occurred to him.

The third night, he went with a carton of liquor. After the routine check, he waited a couple of hours, and began to drink. From the first down to the tenth bottle, he saw nothing strange. After draining the remaining two, he gave up.

What took place the day his mother passed on was a one time experience he’d never be able to figure, he concluded. 

Between his thought, he heard Casper bark repeatedly, pacing back and forth. Ejaita looked at the direction where the dog focused and saw the ghost form of a  man in brown overcoat, holding a bottle. The man stopped by the building’s wall, drank from the bottle, sprinkled part of its content on the wall and walked through. 

Ejaita climbed the ladder. Unlike the previous nights, he could see the men behind the strange activities, five of them by his count. He noticed each time they walked in and out of walls, they’d a bottle  from which they sprinkled their passage medium. 

He waited till they were through. Then he went into the building, located the room he saw they frequented and found some bottles of mixture in a box. He picked one and went home with it.  

As he uncorked, he broke out coughing. Notwithstanding, he drank half of the green, concentrated mixture. Casper growled and began barking. Ejaita felt something strange erupt from within. He could see all around him, but couldn’t feel his body. He tried passing through the wall but failed. Then he sprinkled the wall with the mixture and gained access. Four hours after, the effect wore off and he reappeared in bodily form. He went to bed in anticipation of Nighttime.