shooting stars

When the wall clock chimed twenty-two hours and an owl hooted next to a window, Muchona rushed to try to shoo it away. He was holding a glass of whiskey in one hand, it was almost empty but he was still drinking from it and in the other, a Rothmans cigarette smoldered between two fingers.

After chasing the owl, he took a long drag on the cigarette to steel his nerves; no one hears the sound of a hooting owl and goes on with business as usual. His shaking fingers showed that he was still unhinged, anyway. He was just about to pour a gulp of whiskey into his dry throat, maybe hoping to clear what the cigarette hadn’t, when three meteors zipped across the sky, right in front of his eyes.

Watching the parabolic curves streaking across the sky like fireworks, reminded him of a legend, sustained from childhood. It now raced in his mind like a bolt of lightning, very reassuring, away from the hoots of an owl. It was like; wherever shooting stars hit the ground, they leave a fortune.

Hurriedly he emptied the glass and slammed it on the table, then raced out of the house with a keen interest in some of nature’s strange ways. He was praying for the grace to see where the stars would land and find himself some gold. But as all fears of a hooting owl vanished without a trace, something unexpected reignited a new horror.

To his unbridled delight, the screaming meteors swung from their path and zipped downwards. He was now racing, very excited, and probably happy that he had stayed late. He hoped they would land in his homestead so that the gold claims would be beyond dispute. He even started calculating how many mansions he would build and how many women-aha women-when suddenly someplace was hit. The stars had hit the ground or somewhere near the ground. The place would not make Muchona happy at all; in fact, it would be the source of his terrible suffering.

Like avenging angels, the balls of fire struck his shop from three different points, as if to make sure it was a thorough hit. Within seconds, huge flames rose angrily, followed by thick billows of smoke engulfing the area. Where the fire came from would be a subject of speculation, meteors don’t carry enough heat to start a fire or none has been known to start a fire. Muchona was not interested in whether meteors could burn anything or not as he watched the fire of hell burning like in Armageddon. It was blazing in his heart as well, and twisting his mind. 

The way he twisted his mouth reminded one of a dog howling in pain. He was in pain, but not as a dog, as he ran madly to the burning shop, his eyes failing to believe that it was indeed burning. “Mawee! Maweee! I am now finished,” finally his lips were able to coordinate with the vocal cords to produce a wailing sound, it was the most pitiful sight.

There being no firefighting equipment in the whole village, he had to pick anything, even a meter long stick with which he started fighting the fire. It was a useless effort, but then, his brain was also useless, completely clogged with horror. The decision-making process had crushed like IBM computer software. Even common sense had fled the random access memory; probably it was tucked away in the deep freeze.

Upon realizing his mistake, he dashed into the nearby bush, snipped a branch with trembling hands, and came back to continue fighting the huge flames, now raging angrily like an American nuclear attack.

However, his new efforts were equally useless. The combustible materials in the shop; the curtains and the grass roofing, fed the fire with relentless fuel. It was not a job to be done by one man, maybe several, and even they armed with better materials, not leaves. The whole issue was put beyond doubt a few seconds later and Muchona would have watched helplessly.

He was whipping down the flames with one hand while covering his face with the other and moving closer to the entrance when something inside the shop hissed angrily and exploded. It was a container of petrol. He had no container of petrol inside the shop, but that didn’t matter now, in fact, he couldn’t even remember what was there. The explosion in the next ten seconds made the debate of whether petrol was inside the shop or not unnecessary.

The container fired into flight by pressure, slammed the door, tearing it off the hinges. The ejected door flew horizontally at great speed like a cruise missile zipping over a city and slammed Muchona on the chest with great force. He grunted in shock and pain, but not for long. The force hauled him further into the bush, away from the raging inferno. There, he crushed to the ground and fainted.

When he regained consciousness, the fire was gone and so was his shop. His eyes, flooded with unquenchable tears, looked at the blackened mess of charred remains.

“This is terrible,” shouted Bana Kazana, his elder sister. She was pouring water into his mouth in a resuscitation effort. To Muchona, it appeared, she, like everyone else, had waited for the fire to finish burning the shop before turning up to offer condolences.

“I don’t understand it either,” Muchona was a broken man crying like a baby, “burning my shop a day after restocking it with such expensive merchandise,” he added shaking his head mournfully.

“I can smell some petrol,” someone said, “maybe it was the cause of the infe….”

“That is rubbish, I had no petrol in that shop,” Muchona now remembered what was there and not there. He answered the jibe with needless violence. He was even embarrassed to mention the possibility of shooting stars causing the inferno.

“But where could the petrol come from, if you didn’t put it there?” Anderson Mweete was strolling into the yard, incredulity clouding his brown face. He had heard people shouting that Muchona had died in the fire, burnt by unknown people.

“I swear by Jerusalem, the Holy City, I had no petrol….” Muchona’s sacrilegious oaths were cut in a mid expletive by a shout from a kraal. Someone had seen three penguins hopping about inside Muchona’s kraal. They were unmistakable in the daylight glare of a moonshine.

“Now, this is even worse,” Mweete shouted, “penguins in Zambia, a landlocked country, in the tropics? Don’t we find these birds in cold regions?”

“This is stranger than fiction,” Bana Kazana said with tears in her eyes, “you men go and chase those penguins, won’t you?”

The whole group hurriedly left the burning shop and trotted to the kraal and found the herd of cattle packed in a small corner, shivering like small chicks. The cows meowed endlessly, an eerie sound that drilled into Muchona’s skin like a hypodermic syringe.

His fears worsened as he looked at the penguins hopping about as if they were at there home in Antarctica. Muchona was not the only person smitten with terrible dread; all the people were gripped with panic-they started fleeing one by one until he remained alone-where would he run to? Was this not his home?

When he realized that he had remained alone, Muchona became even more scared, his knees crushed against each other and he shivered like a high fever case. He almost collapsed as he left the strange sight to go back to the little shack. The problem had just started.

As soon as he entered the shack, several owls descended on the roof and started hooting and dancing like vultures sharing a corpse.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Pwapwarararra!” the parliamentary service gained momentum on Muchona’s roof. At every verse, Muchona would jump like someone receiving a jab. He was shaking like a reed, barely holding out on crying as his mouth trembled violently like a diaphragm and his belly rumbled endlessly like a diarrhea case. The dawn break was late in coming and when it came, his heart leaped in joy.

“Good morning, Gideon,” Chikoolo had arrived very early to offer sympathies to his friend on the terrible losses he had suffered.

“Denis, my friend, I don’t know of any morning better than this one,” Muchona answered the greeting barely failing to mention the terrible ordeal he underwent that made him pray for dawn.

“But do you know who has done this?” Chikoolo went on. He was walking on the ashes, picking and examining the charred items. “I mean the one who sent the three shooting stars to burn your shop?”

Immediately Muchona became alert, he had not told anyone about the falling stars burning his shop. How did Chikoolo know about that?

“Chikoolo, I don’t seem to get you,” Muchona started, getting very angry, “just how did you guess the cause of the fire that burnt my shop?”

“Gideon, this village is small,” Chikoolo said idiomatically, “I have it in my palms, and this is a small matter for me.”

“That is a stupid thing to say,” Muchona stood up, it was clear he wanted to fight the visitor. “You seem to know something about the fire that gutted my shop, don’t you?”

“I just came to warn you, Gideon,” Chikoolo said looking into Muchona’s angry eyes closely. He was not scared at all; he looked at his host with eyes eloquent with pity.

“Warn me about what?” Muchona was now becoming scared. He dropped his fists and went to sit down. No, he didn’t sit down, he flopped down.

“If you don’t make the sacrifice hurriedly, death is next,” Chikoolo said and turned to go but Muchona grabbed his cloak.

“What sacrifice?” he asked, his eyes popped wide in fear, “and to whom does that sacrifice go?”

Chikoolo used savage force to break Muchona’s grip on his cloak; “get yourself a black chicken, a white sheep, and a tortoise, offer them to the star that shines brightest at dawn,” he shouted and was gone without looking back.