HOPELESS.

By Brian Nzomo.

No one could really point out exactly why despair seemed fond of her. They say that everyone was born to experience the sweetness of life to its cloy, and also experience the bitterness of it. But boy oh boy! Milkah’s life was just one hell of falling tower.

For this flower, there could never be reprieve. At twenty seven years of age, this woman of caramel complexion and Semitic features; from hair to eyes, from height to visceral innocence _ this girl, was better off dead and mortified. For the enclaves of life had shown her all its talons.

Delving into the past in detail is a boring venture I would not desire doing. All my readers have to know, is that she was and is an orphan. A victim of strings and strings of rape and a poor woman with little material possessions. A polythene bag, a pullover, a pocket-sized new testament bible and a palm-fit mirror. All these she had gathered from her life battered by turmoil. And sadly, these would be the only things she would leave.

Her bible told her that there was a home up there. A home bright and white as pearl, with golden gates and mansions. A home with roads aurelian, and crystal rivers sweeter than wine. A home where suffering is unrife, unimaginable.

Her bouts of hunger experienced under a cold bridge with damp walls and dank smells, she sat calmly, unmoved by the lurking individuals in the gruesome darkness. And visualized the magnificent home that awaited her. Earth is just a stage of preparation for the infinite bliss to come. For one can never know true bliss unless they suffer and know its lash.

Milkah shivered. Twenty seven years of nothing. Could that mean she would receive an equal measure of happiness when she is received at the gilded gates, weary and torn. With the comforting angels bringing her home.

“My daughter, it is well. You have finished the journey well. Come home and take rest. Come. Come dine from the table of the Lord who tested you. In whose perfect plan, you endured endless suffering and sorrow,”

They would dress her wounds, sate her sores and fill her belly with the fruit of her endure. For very few trust in the Lord, when their barns are full, and even trust less in him when their bellies groan in sojourn for a meal.

All these years she had prayed. Not for blessings or alleviation of her distress. But she had prayed that her soul may find recompense at the home made for her up there. She had dropped out in standard seven after the education center went broke and was closed for good. All her educational dreams ended there. And her future became bleaker than the dark age.

My very educated mother, just serve us nine plates. She tried hard to remember those nine bodies that the teacher said existed in the skies above her. She wondered which one of them would be heaven. But definitely not Saturn. That must be hell. The place of fiery torment and torture for all the departed from good deeds.

Memories, memories fleet fast and furiously when inevitable death hangs in the air. It is like one collage of films running unstoppably in one’s mind in preparation for erasure before final mortification.

Milkah had lived far too long than she desired. But she finally smiled for she knew she would not make it that night. She breathed hard and summoned a whisper,

“Take me o Lord. Take me when I get there. My pain dies with me tonight. Oh, take me Lord,”

She wheezed, still laid on her side on a dismantled carton box, her ghost left her body and floated invisibly on the air. The realms of the physical have passed, and now enters the realms unseen by men of flesh.

Her bouts of hunger experienced under a cold bridge with damp walls and dank smells, she sat calmly, unmoved by the lurking individuals in the gruesome darkness…

***** ****** ******

That beloved paradise that was prophesied for ages was not what Milkah’s spirit met. She had gotten to heaven but it was far from what she had expected.

The city of gold was in ruin. Rubble, destruction and despair. What happened? She was in heaven, but she was not in heaven.

“My child,” uttered an angel with a haggard ashy face and torn garments, “It is all over. Humanity is doomed forever…”

She gazed around her and there was nothing but tears of agony by heaven’s inhabitants. Blood everywhere. She was confused. Very confused, and her mind could not resonate with the sight she was seeing.

“Where am I?” She asked desperately, almost tearing up, “And what happened here? Who are you people?”

The angel gazed to the heaps of rubble by his side and broke down. Milkah stood there helpless. Wondering what she could do.

“My child, My name is Angel Michael. And you my child, are in heaven!” He paused and gazed at her feet, “It is over my child. Humanity is doomed!”

“What do you mean?” She asked anxiously.

“You are in heaven. Unfortunately, seventy days ago, the devil himself. That ancient angel of light called Lucifer, waged a second war against the armies of God. We fought bravely but this time, he was more prepared and hardened for battle. With the help of his demons, he won and God was beheaded in the melee. God is dead Milkah!”

Milkah thought she had not heard him well. God is dead! No, it can’t be. He was all-powerful, untenable. He could never die. He was an infinite being.

“God is immortal, isn’t he? How can he die?” Milkah asked ludicrously.

“My child, that’s what we thought too. It seems we were wrong all along. God died. A horrible, shameful death. Please, sit down. I will tell you what the future holds for us now. If humanity realizes that they have been beguiled all these years that God is indefensible, the world would know chaos beyond measure. And no one shall fear that they would be judged…”

Hildah saw what he meant. But she found it hard to believe that God would die. That his powers were a farce. But when she looked around, it was all too clear that what she was told was no where near a prank.

For long, they sat at the foot of the mighty gates and sang hymns of sorrow. Nothing Milkah ever imagined. She wondered why life had to be unfair to her, and even the afterlife supposed to grant her hope of infinity was already a place of torment. Why did everything she hoped for always degenerate?

“What about Jesus? He is the son of God who reigns on his right hand?” She asked.

“Oh, poor Milkah. Jesus is not the same man again. Since he ascended two thousand years ago, he had already inculcated a terrible habit of drinking too much. He did not listen anymore. God had to put him in prison for all these years till the day he got better and intended to send him reap his sheep…”

“What about hell? Is there a fire there already?” She asked.

“Yes. A big fire. A very big one. But he and his folk no longer live there. He stole the keys to earth and are now causing havoc there as never before. Unrestrained and undeterred…“

Milkah asked what had remained. Where would all the righteous people go? Where would all those who trusted in God go? Would they perish only to come there and realize he was no more?

“Anyone to save us?” She asked hopefully.

But when Michael shook his head and sadly grunted, she knew nothing could be done. Half of heaven’s agents and angels had been wiped off in 20 minutes. Just twenty minutes was all it took to defeat God.

Night was falling. Milkah had always thought heaven due to its infinite element would have no time or measurements. But now everything was different. There was time, everything had passed and this was a new realm. Heaven turned hell.

“What happened wrong?” She asked again.

“My daughter, there is no hope here. Everyone turned away for it was to great a disappointment. Imagine living with suffering only for the afterlife to be desecrated this way…”

Milkah understood him very well because what he said was what she had experienced…

“Am I supposed to sit here and cry with you for a whole day,” she asked muffledly .

“Daughter, you have the choice to return back or stay here with us as we lament over this calamity that has befallen us…”

“I will be a dream. I will be somewhere in someone’s sleep causing him to smile in the middle of his slumber…”

Michael laughed. Partly because it could never happen.

“I wish you would be able too ,” He said walking to a lot bonfire at the center of chanting as the cold bite.

“And I wish you will find peace,” she said after him.

“There is no peace anymore. Think about what I told you…” He said and disappeared. Heaven looked like the aftermath of a bloodbath. It was sickening to think that reprieve was far from existing… Never existing.

***** **** ****

When her spirit returned to earth, her body was nowhere to be found. It was gone. Somebody had taken it away. She was tensed. Milkah was worried. Had someone taken her body to the morgue? Which one?

She floated about where she had first laid and there was nothing. Just the carton box and her polythene bag.

“My body!” She cried. “Where is my body?”

And for long would she hang around like a cloud. Unable to be seen or perceived. Another downward spiral. Heaven was dead. Hell was no more. And now on earth again, she was reduced to a nebulous Milkah.

“My body!” She roamed crying for days and days. “My body! Somebody hear me out…”

It was useless. She was dead and did not belong anywhere.

Brian Nzomo is a second year Communication student at the Kenyatta university. Contact him via e-mail: bryonzoms505@gmail.com