Your Future

Your door creaked and the sound of someone pushing it made you open your eyes. You were drowsy but you managed to sit up on your bed, your blanket still all over you. It was night and the room was dark because you had turned off the lights before going to bed. The pastor had averted any bad luck that wanted to follow you to America, but now you wondered if the prayers worked at all. America. You had come to America for holidays with your Uncle. He was your Mother’s younger brother and she told him that you so desperately wanted to go to America. You really had wanted to see this America everyone talked about. A friend had said it was too beautiful, almost as beautiful as heaven. You wanted to argue because nothing was supposed to be as beautiful as the Lord’s Paradise, but since you had not been to America, you did not argue. You only nodded and smiled. But right at that moment, you had made your decision- you would have to see this America for yourself. So when Mother told her younger brother that you wanted to visit him and he said yes, you were so happy that you cried. You did laugh at first…and then, you cried. Now, here you were in this America you so eagerly wanted to visit. You heard someone creep into the room.

“Hello…is anyone there?” You said, but no one answered.

You breathed in and out. You wanted to scream on top of your lungs in fear. But you knew you would not. 

You suddenly heard someone switch on the light and it blinded you for some time because your eyes had to adjust to the blindness. The person gently sat on the end of your bed and you felt your legs touch the person’s hips. It felt small.

“Ken?” You muttered.

“Hey”, he whispered. He was the littlest child of your Uncle’s children. Small, cute, chubby cheeks and had a tiny voice. He was the playful type, always laughing and crying over petty things. You liked him.

“What are you doing here?” 

“Oh, I thought you would be awake.”

“I am now,” You told him. You didn’t tell him that he had interrupted your sleep. Instead you laughed and tried to figure out what was in his hands. He put a package on your bed, kept the other in his pockets and smiled at you. Then he tiptoed to switch on the lights. 

“I wanted to play Chess with you,” he said, opening the carton. “You want to play too, right?” 

Chess in the middle of the night? How wonderful! You wanted to slap him for waking you up to play a game. You wanted to tell him that he should be sleeping now. But he was smiling, a flowering of hope in his eyes. You did not want to play Chess and so you stared at it for so long that Ken sighed and got the message. But it didn’t make him go away though. He brought out another box from his pocket that said- DISCOVER YOUR FUTURE. It held your interest. You wanted to know what your future held in America, if you would go back to Nigeria big and rich, if you would marry a white lady from a foreign country…there were so many things you wanted to know. You knew it was like sorcery, because you remembered the Sunday that the Pastor preached against seeing your future from other sources than God and he had called it sorcery. But curiosity led you to pick up the box. When you turned it around, it read: 

IT NEVER LIES. GET READY TO GO AHEAD OF YOUR PRESENT.

You decided you would try it out. As you opened it, Ken snatched it from your hands. He opened it slowly and cautiously. It had small papers in it, papers probably containing one’s future. You were to randomly pick any one of the papers and whatever it said inside was your future.

“You have to say the magic words.”

“What magic words?” 

He told you. It sounded like gibberish in your ears.

“Do I really have to say it?”

“Yes. When you say it, then whatever it says will come to pass.”

As much as it excited you, it frightened you but, you decided you would do it anyway.

“Repeat the magic words with me.”

So you did, not minding that you were still scared. When he was done, you brought your hand forth and picked a paper. You turned it around. It was blank.

“What’s this supposed to mean?”

“I…I don’t know,” he stammered. “It has never happened to me. Let’s try again.”

So he made you repeat the magic words. You said the words with more violence, even angrily. You couldn’t have a blank future. When you picked up a paper again, you closed your eyes before turning it around to see what was written inside. You imagined something really positive, and then you opened your eyes and turned it. It was blank. Again. You hissed and tore it up to pieces. How could it say that, when your Mother and Father had said you had a bright future? The Idibia had prophesied that the day you were born signified you would have a bleak future but your parents had refused to believe it…and so you too did not believe it. Now, you wanted to forget that you ever tried to discover your future. You wanted to decide that it was just a game after all, and that it was meaningless. But the words you had read earlier- IT NEVER LIES – came to your memory.

“Maybe your stars can’t be read,” Ken muttered.

You said nothing. 

“Let’s play Chess instead,” He smiled from ear to ear as he told you this.

You wanted to knock his head and tell him your future had just been predicted to be blank; you wanted his senses to come back so he could see how serious the matter was. Your life could be like a plain grassland stretched forth, going on with nothing but the same. That was what blank meant to you. 

Hours after he left, you tossed around the bed, trying to sleep. And when you finally closed your eyes, you could see it- a red monster holding a blank paper and laughing at you.