The Crazy Man

  “Yeah, I whipped myself everyday since that day,” he told the therapist who was looking at his scar-decorated body. The therapist traced the thick and swollen lines with his fingers. “As a penance?” He nodded.

“I would like you to recap everything that happened again, though I read your case file left by your former therapist,” the therapist said. The crazy man laughed in derision “I still whipped myself this morning.”

 “I know, you have been telling me that since you came here today, so I would request you to take a deep breathe and tell me what happened. Mr Anthony.”

  The crazy man took a deep breathe just like the therapist suggested. The silence in the room became solidified, the crazy man's eyes became microscopic at that moment and he could see the air molecules moving haphazardly. They were colliding with each other blindly and the eagle's eye of the therapist was keen on him. He doubts if the crazy man was truly crazy as per his case file suggested since the man was fully sombre. The crazy man envisioned the past and stood up abruptly. Though shocked, the therapist stood up at the same time and held the crazy man's hands in his, he looked into his eyes and told him to calm down and take another deep breathe before they sat down. 

  The crazy man started. He told the therapist how he woke up on that fateful day like every other day. He was a coast guard. He went to work that morning but not without an altercation with his darling wife. Their burning love suddenly and surprisingly waned when he took to drinking and shagging. He wanted to tell the young therapist how they had started with a relationship which seem unquenchable and perpetual. He wanted to tell him how their eighteen and half years of marriage started stumbling after a day she caught him in bed with another woman. He had plead with her that he was drunk, that he wasn't himself that night. But she felt betrayed and wouldn't trust him at all. All his words became lies to her, but their everyday quarrel had started when she caught him the second time, he was also drunk but was still in control of himself at that time. She had been tipped by a friend of hers of the location.

He wanted to tell him how he had wished she would ask him what was wrong and understand each other maybe their relationship would have returned to normal and beautiful as it was. But the therapist cut him short. “Mr Anthony, we are still coming back to your relationship. Now I want you to tell me only what happened.”

  The crazy man became quiet again, he twitched his eyes and ears as if he had snuffed cocaine. He rubbed his unkept hair with his hands and clamped them together, tightening them between his thighs. 

 “Are you cold, Mr Anthony?” the therapist asked.

“Aren't you cold?” he said mischievously trying to return to the happy and excited mood he wished for. But the flashes of the dead faces always manage to drag him back to reality. "He has mood swings, sharp mood swings," the therapist noted.

  He told him how after so many years of working as a coast guard, the job suddenly grew so boring to him that he took to drinking, but he couldn't just leave the job because it kept him off debt. Things started going awry and he started misbehaving at work. He was warned and sanctioned several times and he knew he might be sacked if he continued like that so he tried giving up drinking but the incessant fights with his wife gives him headache which he couldn't shrug off, so he continued. He told him how he had treated all his co-workers that were on nightshift to drinks and soon they were drunk. Few minutes past 1am in the morning, there were flashes in the sky. 

  “See those colorful flashes, so beautiful,” He had exclaimed. 

 “Is it Christmas already,” a co-worker joked and they all laughed. If they weren't drunk they would have known that those flashes were distress signals and it was an emergency situation but they stayed like that till early in the morning when they became sober. 

  “Am I the one imagining things or distress signals were fired up the sky last night,” The crazy man asked as he rubbed his eyes looking at my wristwatch. It was 6.30 in the morning and the fog wasn't moving. It was heavy and still, it evidently hung over all parts of the city. 

  “Am not sure, but I think so too,” another co-worker said pointing doubtedly to a distance from where they stood. When they confirmed that there were distress signals, they fired up the rescue boats and split into several sets each with three people and soon they were on our way with their flashlights searching the water. They searched around till about 7.20 when they grew tired and decided that the flashes were just their illusions and went home. He slept again after shower when he got home that morning. His wife came after the mid-day when he woke up.

  “Am famished, please can you prepare something,” he had pleaded with her. She hissed and he got angry and became defensive .

 “What is even wrong with you, have been pleading with you to understand for countless times to just understand me. What's wrong. Why do you want to do this to do us, ” He said dragging her closer to me. He tried kissing her and placing his forehead on hers but she pushed him back. “Am smarter than that now, you can't deceive with those lies of yours.” 

 He almost fell into their centre table but took control of his body before the call came in. It was one of their superior officers on the morning shift.

 “Hello, come down here right now,” the officer said briefly before cutting the call. He didn't look at his wife but grabbed his car keys and was in few seconds was on the road. He got there and saw the workers busily searching and pulling out bodies out of the water. He wondered when a boat, ship or canoe had capsized that morning that all its passengers were already dead. He greeted the superior as he got to the office and and the superior told him to walk with him to where the workers were working. 

 “You see those bodies being bought out of the water. Report shows that their bought capsized at a range of time under your watch and the time of their death also corresponds. It also shows that distress signals was fired but you guys paid no attention to it. A total of 21 people had been brought out and we are still counting,” He said. The crazy man stood, shocked as he muttered in sorrow. He knew that he and other co-workers on nightshift that tragic day would surely be brought before the tribunal and their jobs were as good as gone. He saw the small ship which had capsized, Homecoming was written on its body. It was been dragged by one of their boats. As he came closer to look at the bodies, his body shook. “I killed them, we killed them , I killed them by drinking,” he muttered. Then he stopped, he looked at the body twice and he grew agitated. He tried to ransack the body but he was stopped. He angrily punched and threw the people holding him down. He was already crying, he went back to the body and searched its pockets and found a wallet. He took it out and looked at the card inside. It was who he had suspected- his son. He staggered and fell back. He looked at the body beside him and saw it was his daughter. They were coming home and they had planned to surprise him and his wife-their parents but they were surprised by death. He held his head in my palms and ran around before he blacked out.

  He was already exhausted at this time, he was holding his head also in reality, in front of the therapist as he struggled to catch his breath. He had been speaking fast and he wondered how the therapist understood all he had said without interruption. “Take your water, Mr Anthony and please go on,” the therapist said. The crazy man didn't move a muscle but stared at the therapist who was had also been staring at him

 “Mr Anthony,” the therapist said thinking the crazy man was lost in thoughts. But the crazy man spat blood into his face and laughed deliriously. He wiped it off not taking it as offence but the act humbled the crazy man. 

 “What happened next.''

  The crazy man told him how he had woke up in the hospital. He had went into a comatose state, his wife had left him and his co-workers had witnessed against him so as to save their jobs. He was tried but he neither plead guilty nor innocent and since he choosed not to get a lawyer, he was convicted and sentenced. He had grew leaner on the bed and was allowed to visit his house a last time before been taken to the prison. 

The house looked forlorn and lonely. It bade him to come and see the truths within- it gossiped to him of how his wife had cursed him and the day she met him. How she had cried herself almost to death until her Aunt came and took her away. It had saved their happy memories, filtered off the bad ones and delivered it to him. The little garden his wife had been tending had grew weeds. The weeds gave him kisses while the flowers and vegetables were sad, gloomy, they were crying. 

 “The flowers were crying,” he said again and again to the therapist.

 “Yea, I know, you feel for them," the therapist asked.

 “I caused their woes,” the crazy man muttered. 

 He took notes and all. “How did the blood get into your mouth, do you have a disease or what.”

 “I bit my tongue and all parts of my mouth close to my teeth,” the crazy man said standing up and spitting mouthfuls of blood into his face again and laughing mischievously.

 “Would you stop that ,” the therapist shouted this time standing up before wiping his face. But the crazy man flew on him and bit his ear. He screamed like a woman. “You are truly crazy!” he exclaimed as he hurried out of the room. The guard locked the room immediately. The crazy man became grave immediately and went back to his sit. He would remain in a sombre mood till the next day out of the guilt that filled his heart. He would talk to no one until the therapist came.

  He was found dead a month later in his seat before the arrival of his fourth therapist.