WAKING UP AMONG THE DEAD The title of this story, ‘Waking up among the dead,’ was not an ordinary phrase for Kristen but rather an astounding, rude event of his sudden waking up among the dead bodies inside Heaven Bound Mortuary. It sounds like the tales told in the blues. Letina was such an exceptional woman who possessed such a presence that could calm a raging storm. She was a disciplined type with such a rigid and stoic countenance. However, she held her own quietly with an affectionate warmth. She approached life with a beautiful economy, attracted by her deep-seated smiles. She rarely spoke, but when she did, her words were calculated and pleasant to the ears. Letina was a visible living epistle on patience and good living; as such, many men had sought to congregate around her, desiring to hear her solemn sermons. However, Letina had eyes that portrayed the colour of rich earth and were abundant with insight, which was a reason for many suitors flocking around her because they saw inner virtue in her, not with ordinary eyes but with the eyes of their spirit. She did not give in to any of them because she keenly observed most of them quietly and saw hypocrisy. She kept aloof from them all until Kristen came onto the scene. Kristen attended school at Oxford University and was trained as an economist. He was a man who seemed to have been ordained and prepared for prosperity in life. Not only that he have a job, but he also has a good career, which was a reason for public discussions among people. He had a reputation for principled interpretations of events and situations. His mind was not idle and dull. These mental characteristics were resting upon broad and strong shoulders good enough to support anyone in emotional turmoil. To Letina, Kristen was more than handsome looking, but her place of rest and preservation. On the day he proposed to her by holding her hands in his large palm, she felt secure in him for a lifetime, and his confident look was to her a dream come true. This reverie of a fantastic life was sustained. The home front was a place of quietness and joyful fulfilment. Letina, most of the time, would silently be watching Kristen from the kitchen doorway while he was busy balancing this account or that. Such moments of reverie filled her heart with contentment, and she told herself she could not ask for more. Kristen had fulfilled enough desire. One day, the anchor that held everything together suddenly snapped. The corporate world needed constant battles to sustain itself. The battles were fought and won with weapons both seen and unseen. Kristen had a competitor in his office, Hicks, who was bent on replacing him in his position. There was an advertisement to fill the position of a managing director and Hicks swore to himself never to be alive and see the position slip from him to Kristen. He gathered so many arsenals, both physically and spiritually, to destabilise Kristen. He consulted shadowy spiritism and took up many charms. Whether one believed it or not, the effects of such medium consultations were palpable upon Kristen. After a while, Kristen began to lose his mind, faltered and became less of his personality. He was full of errors and lacked meticulousness in his former flawless approach to his work. At the end of the day, he lost the position to Hicks, who eventually became the managing director because many board members voted for Hicks, who was more articulate and calculative. Consequently, he became unemployed because he lost his job as a result of the office in-fighting. To her chagrin, Letina realised terribly that the job was the key that held everything around Kristen. With the job gone, his good name crumbled as those who had whispered about him in awe at social gatherings before were now shaking their heads in pity. His broad shoulders that once manifested strength began to shrink under incessant hunger. His strength was not enough to endure the rigours of his former daily walkouts, so he stopped attending the gym. He missed important meals because his conscience was nagging him each time he ate the breakfast, lunch or dinner provided by his wife with no contribution coming from him. Therefore, within a short time after losing his job, he lost so many pounds of weight and diminished in strength as a consequence. Kristen became a regular visitor to Mama Kevin’s shop and sought to comfort himself by consuming many bottles of beer. The indulgence started gradually but graduated within a short time into a full lifestyle of drunkenness and debauchery. Letina repeatedly tried to make him retrace his step from relapsing into a total life of recklessness. Her voice was a constant and steady pleading: ‘Kristen my love, the present predicament is a temporary setback, it would not last forever, do not allow it to break you.’ But despite such passionate pleas, it seemed that his down fall was imminent and he fast towards the abyss of hopelessness. The bright eyes that were radiating with intellect and calculation are now dulled with stupor and drunken dizziness. He would on one of such occasions of regular admonitions from Letina had responded from a pit of despondency: ‘Tina, dear, everything is finished and I am done. There is no light anywhere anymore. You don’t understand anything. It is very bad now.’ Some of his loyal friends like Kenneth, Kpakol and Promise who had enjoyed magnanimity from him Kristen in the past felt indebted to him and had therefore promised to set him on his feet again if only he could restore his dignity by casting off the reckless life of drunkenness. Every promise of dropping the lifestyle was reneged upon. Each night, sympathisers would drop him after he was soaked in a sea of alcohol. at the doorstep like goods bought from a shop. Another night, he would be drawn out of public gutters filled with dirty water. On those occasions, when sympathisers would bring him back in a noisome wheelbarrow that was usually easily recognised by its onomatopoeic chattering sound: ‘chiki cha, chiki cha, chiki cha’. Each time Letina hears such a sound late in the night, she would know that her sorrow was still much around her because something ominous would immediately churn inside her stomach. On other occasions, the Police would call her to come to a certain place in a dark alley for collection of her husband who was discovered face down inside a gutter. The weight of her shame was very heavy on her shoulders and was suffocating her at the same time. This heavy weight was coupled with an atmosphere of childlessness that pervaded around them, thereby making the loneliness and frustration doubled, releasing an echo of deep mournful sound in the big mansion that had once been a place of joyful laughter between the couple. Most nights Letina would lie awake deep in thought on the way to wriggle herself out of her quagmire. Since repeated admonitions did not work and warning Mama Kevin to stop selling drinking did also not work, what else would be done. Mama Kevin had however exonerated herself by saying that Kristen had on most nights been knocked down by gifted drinks. Letina later agreed to Mama Kevin’s alibi because Kristen could not afford to buy himself a drink because he did not have money. It was on one of the nights when Letina heard from afar the usual onomatopoeic ‘chiki cha, chiki cha, chiki cha’ sound of the courier wheelbarrow coming to deliver her husband that an idea of what to do to stop this nightly trauma dawned in her heart. She accepted the idea and firmed it as the only and final thing to do. In executing what she had decided to do, she did not need to consult anyone or even request the services of a taxi driver, but an old wooden cart that had made severally deliveries of firewood would do the job simply. As the sympathisers were depositing Kristen, Letina hauled him into the wooden cart and was even surprised by where she got the strength to carry such an adult man all alone. She covered him with an old tarpaulin and headed towards Heaven Bound mortuary, a green painted small building located isolated from other buildings in the town. The mortuary attendant, Pere, a short man with cunning eyes and a dark face that can frighten even the devil himself approached Letina with suspicion in his eyes after observing that Kristen was breathing. He queried: ‘madam, this man is breathing. Do you want to deposit a man that is alive into the mortuary? Letina looked at him with a frown on her face. ‘Yes, he is breathing, but he is not much better than those who are in there,’ she pointed towards inside of the mortuary with her face expressionless and voice lacking emotion. Pere though, hesitant at first, but when some good money was squeezed into his palm, his hesitation disappeared immediately like wind. He said: ‘you are the one that said I should deposit your husband o, my hands are clean o’. He moaned in pretense of being sympathetic. It was when the first cock crew that Kristen began regaining consciousness. He felt his head pounding, his chest feeling a little congested and bad stench of hang over welling up from his stomach. He tried to lift his up a bit to have view of where he was lying in. He observed that he was lying on top of a cold metal slab. That makes it strange and difficult to grasp where he was. However, he felt seeing what looked like human beings that were rigid and immovable, all of them facing up. Kristen made a last-minute effort to raise his head up and was able to take effortful glance through the breadth and length of the hall. Fear gripped him the moment it became clear to him that he was lying inside a mortuary and had just woken up among the dead. I am in a mortuary. He declared. He brought his whole frame together and sat up. The metal works he was still on were protesting and creaking in agony under his weight. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he started to shout and banging on the door: ‘I am alive, I am not dead.’ Pere took his time in opening the door and was not in hurry to allaying his fear of waking up among the dead. ‘Please, let me go home. I want to leave here and go home.’ Kristen said. ‘You are not leaving here until your wife comes. You were properly deposited and documents signed by her. Your wife is the only person who is in the position to confirm you are alive and can take you home.’ Pere admonished him. ‘My wife brought me here, why?’ Kristen queried. ‘When she comes, you can ask her that.’ Pere replied uninterestedly. ‘Why would she bring me to the mortuary?’ ‘Ask her when you see her.’ Pere allowed him limited freedom to walk around the long-wide passage so that he could take enough fresh air into his lungs. Kristen pleaded with Pere: ‘Please let me go from me.’ The brief hours he waited before Letina arrived, was like the moment a soul had to wait in purgatory or limbo before being admitted into heaven. When she finally arrived, she looked unperturbed and extremely calm not showing any sort of emotion. Kristen hurried to her asking her many questions at once in a babbling manner. He appealed, ‘Letina, my dear wife, please take me away from here. I am begging you.’ She quietly listened to his babblings not showing any sign of having heard him, but she was calm and calculative. It was when she began to speak that it was clear that she did not miss any word from all that Kristen had babbled, said and even muttered under his breath. She began to speak exercising a surprising calmness and her words flowed cohesively and coherently. ‘Kristen’, Letina said: You have caused me much pains and regrets against every reasonable advice and much pleading. I am not ready to tolerate further recklessness and debauchery from you. If I must take you home, that will be on one condition… Before she mentioned ‘one condition’ Kristen interjected: whatever is the condition, I am ready to take it, only take me away from here. Please take me home.’ The one condition is that you will change from your drunken recklessness, not for one week or one month. But permanently, because I deserve peace. I have not done anything wrong to attract this unending torment from you. It is like to me that the Kristen I cherished and married had died and been buried inside green bottles. Kristen, still trembling and exuding a ghostly smell and that of formalin, nodded ten times to every condition Letina spelt out. When he and Letina finally walked out of the mortuary, one did not need a prophet to tell that the man who was deposited last night was not the same man who had just woken up among the dead. There was a palpable calmness and maturity evident in repentance that had come from an all-around heart. Consequent upon the deep-seated repentance, his friends: Kenneth, Kpakol and Promise made good their promises to set him again. Money, in fact good money started flowing into the family again – even bigger than before. Kristen became a good husband again even better than when their marriage was first consummated. He committed himself to respecting Letina and making it up to her. The redemption of all that was lost was fast in restoration. His good name returned – mama Kevin lost a customer and Kristen’s drinking friends lost a pal. The shrunken shoulders began to broaden again. Tales began to be told again some in hushed tone and some others told it wildly and loudly. This time the home had become lively once more and the atmosphere around was convivial and filled with genuine love, hearty laughs echoed regularly and warm hugs became a common thing between them. Long and mutual conventions of sitting out in the balconies persisted. This union though that resurrected from fire and severe trials, became a perfect marriage made in heaven but lived out on the earth. The peaceful and soothing marital environment naturally began to attract children. Within a short period of three years, they had had two children, Marvellous and Joyous. Marvellous the son, took calculative and thoughtful eyes of Kristen while Joyous was a joyful daughter indeed to her parents. She on her part took after the quiet and calm strength of her mother. The couple was happy to any time either replacing a destroyed Television set or changing the screen of a broken mobile phones by their children for those were the things they had envied among their friends who would complain to them on how their kids destroyed this or that in their homes. When people made comments to Letina about how perfect her marriage to Kristen was, when she told the story that change came when her husband woke up among the dead one morning. It was always hard for the hearers to believe the story of ‘Waking Up among the Dead.