Failed Suicide(Original Week 3 story)

“Why are you hesitating, if you want to jump, just go ahead and jump. You’re still gonna die anyway” was the voice that gave me an unwilling inertia as I trottled backwards. The refrain was so impromptu that I almost zoomed off from the metal bar when I wasn’t yet prepared to die.
The sun was still looking above the horizon as the evening tide tried to drown the golden beauty in bubbles of clouds. The golden yellow radiance it casted on the still waters was rightly serrated as the waves beat against the seamless banks. I could only watch the river in her prideful beauty for a short while as my mission -which was going to help me miss nature forever -was interrupted by an intruder.
“Aren’t you going to jump? There seems to be others on the queue, mister”. The voice calmly ordered again.
I was taken aback. The calmness in the voice would make one say it were a plea but the accompanying strictness only reminded one of the orders that rang above the roofs of military barracks. As I carefully watched my steps to prevent my death before I was ready, I managed to maneuver my way down the bridge bar.

“Finally. Coy coward”, were the words that effonterily flew past my ears. Gutted. I took a gross slow look at this ‘bold brave man'. Unexpectedly, my eyes caught the image; hifemalele figurine. There stood a girl with inquisitive eyes, hands pivoted on her waist. Bold eyes. Brown puplis. Tattered dress that clothed a worn out body.
“You don’t even look like one that’s ready to die. Your eyes are full of fears, are you sure you wanted to do this or you will chicken away like a kid.. “ she blurted, making jest of me as she pointed her unsteady long nails at me. Her nails were blackened, maybe from a black film of cortex but it was pale as if it has been there for ages.
“You can go ahead” I finally gestured to her.

Something wasn’t just right about her. There I was, a suicide victim to be, and I really looked like that. I was visibly depressed, sad and fed up with life. But here was a lady. A beautiful lady. Her smiles had cutting curves that dug prominent dimples on puffy cheeks. Although her clothes could be passed for rags but it couldn’t hide the beauty that radiated from her strides. Endowed with an even light chocolate skin of a creole, glossy brown eyes and sensual lips; she was as beautiful as a movie star. But on this occasion, she was more –an epitome of African beauty. A smiling beauty at that.

Why should a beautiful lady whose strides seemed to make the air around her still, want to take her life?
I couldn’t still wrap my head about this as I watched her climb the metal bar on the lonely bridge, while staggering, she managed to steady her legs then slowly she raised her hands at full length into the cold air. It felt like watching a beautiful rose blossoming with the morning dew, watered and polished by the noon day sun then dying with the evening twilight. A waste of nature.
Watching this lady who was about to die felt like a momentary pleasure. A waste of nature. I wondered if death felt no remorse engulfing this beauty in its cold hand. But then, it wasn’t really death, right? She was the death herself. Just like me, we were our own assassins -the men with the axe.
I picked up thoughts like this -thoughts about why she would want to die. Caress it between the index and pointer fingers of my thoughts.

Was her life more miserable than mine? But she looked too beautiful and happy to have problems. But then, do beauty give assurance of zero worries?
Are smiles sure proofs of happiness? I didn’t want to believe that. I had knew people could hide pains behind smiling façades and within they are dying away, bits by bits. I picked up these thoughts, carefully. I would dwell and swell my imaginations in them, trying to make a sense out of this act.

With a quick one from impulse I could say, she jumped. I ran over to see her body racing down with gravitational velocity and at such moments I wondered what would be on her mind. Happiness? Regrets? Smiles on her face? Or disdain in her soul?
I stood there gazing at her image below as she went down with eerie silence until the splash of water welcoming her body splashed my senses back. For a moment, I felt a salty tear trek down my cheek, touching my lip, I slowly licked it off with my tongue while taking out a second to wonder why it was so salty. I soon drop that thought after I roamed about it in my mind for a second -a minute actually. I then picked up another thought -this time about a life that just sinked amidst waves. A beautiful life -at least that was the façade I saw. But façades are deceptive right? My instinct asked. Beauty too is deceptive -I unwilling confirmed the notion my instinct threw at me with another notion. What could I do? That was the truth that played out like a smokescreen before my thoughts, hindering me from any other possible reason a smiling beauty could drown lives in her. Lives, because personally, I always held the idea that a life is laced with other lives which one exhausts daily.

I stood over the metal bar that fenced the edges of the bridge, with my arms rested on the brown rust-rich surface. A surface that was not only a symbol of an entrance to eternity but also a symbol of a government that failed to maintain her infrastructures as well. This was not the only depleting lacuna in the governmental system I thought. With news flying on the screens and taking the front pages of newspapers, lamenting how that bridge was prominent for successful suicide attempts, maybe the government would have done something about it. Maybe station life-savers there with blue uniforms.. No, white uniforms. Blue was more of law enforcements. I guessed. White looked more of hope and positivity, just like the white clothed doctors and their antiseptic auras. Stationed there, with out stretched arms and warm sincere smiles that curved over their cheeks to radiate the beauty of life to someone who has lost all the glamour in theirs. Lives could be saved. Yes, Lives.

But here was I, thinking positive for a the first time in a long time. What if the government only toed my same line of thoughts for the past few months? -Negative thoughts. Pessimistic thoughts. How can the city be bettered? I shrouded. Maybe I was worse than I thought after all.
Looking below, I could see that a lifeless package that was once an embodiment of goals, ambition and beauty already floated carelessly. Swaying to the beats of the evening waves willingly with no goal of its own now. I could see pity in the open eyes that faced the skies as if to ask why life was so meaningless even after death. This made me wondered if bodies have souls, and if they have, where this one could possibly be now. I never really base my reasoning on spirituality but right now, it was an philosophy to be reckoned with.

However, these people who take out time to take their lives aren’t really the ones who are supposed to die I thought. Of course, I was right or wasn’t I?
There are still cancerous prominent figures in the society who made sure their actions or inactions paved way for more suicides on this bridge. At that moment, a cloud of remorse rested on my shoulders. My eyes got reddened. And the government didn’t really care about it as far as the system is corrupt enough to make lacunas for them to loot money and lives. Good lives.
Rethinking, I remembered how I almost took my own life but thanks to my sacrificial savior. I wonder how it would be that it was my body floating there, just because I impersonated someone in an examination and subsequently got expelled from school?.

There would be better opportunities and better lives, I concluded. I could cry over this spilled milk but I didn’t have to try cleaning it off. It needed to be there as a reminder how of precious and fragile how is.
It was a long trek home. Everything suddenly seem to be lively in my eyes. Even the unnecessary impatient honks of road farers sounded like music to my weary soul. The dying evening sun casted a yellow glare on the earth and it all became like roses in summer. The road was jammed with workers coming back from the works, students retiring from schools, traders displaying their wares, beggers earning their living their own way, bus conductors shouting locations as if everybody's going to their stops; the world was just living a normal day as everyday.

Passing by a black tinted sport utility vehicle, the tinted glass slide down, slowly. It showed a man in puffy green agbada clothing that proudly hung on his heavy body. His face was wrinkled yet seemed ironed by a striking appearance of wealth. I could only imagine that he was a politician because of the smiles he gave a hungry begger that hovered just a metre away from his polished car. His smiles were too familiar, just the same type he gave when he was campaigning a few months ago for the office of local government chairman. He said he is the people’s servant, he even demonstrated it by going to schools and eating with kids. He spent hot afternoons discussing with the market women about how he can improve and give them better market incentives. He trekked around the slums, meeting everybody with a smile and promises of better things if he climbs that position. But here he was, only showing up for the first time months after his successful election.

He flinched and scribbled a dirty one hundred naira note over to the begger who hurriedly picked it up. Maybe he didn’t really want the market women to see him. But I did and the pain his sight caused stuck to me like glue. He was one of those cancerous figures on the higher table. Those ones that get firsthand taste of the nation’s currency before they spat it out for the masses. I was vexed so much that a three kilometer trek that I easily made while coming seemed so long now.

Getting home, I slammed into the couch that sat as a citizen in the vintage corner of my one room apartment. I had this strange feeling as if my room wasn’t expecting to see me alive again. The walls seemed to be gazing in surprise at me as the cold evening breeze ushered itself in thanks to my opened window. I gave a ‘I-won-this-time’ look at the walls while smiling. I was however, remorseful because I had wanted to drown my life . But nevertheless grateful that I learnt a big lesson from my failed mission. Sitting down, my hands coldly rested on the arm cushion that fancied the brown skinned couch, thoughts raced through my mind. How can I make the society a better place? How can I make sure suicides like this don’t happen again?
I regrettably dropped the thought -what could I do? I’m just a poor college boy who lost his father and brother and only had his mother to lean on.. Or rather, only had a mother who lean on him. I didn’t want to disappoint her again, not this time. I thought that trying anything stupid can abruptly end my life and that was the last thing I wanted not only for myself, but for my mother. I wondered why I didn’t think about my mother, her fragile and lovely heart before I embarked on that journey.

Now I was drained in regrets over what would have become of her if I actually died. Now it made sense she knew of my expulsion and rain her words of regrets and disappointment on me than absorbing the shock and pains of the death of her last hope. Yes, I then decided to go back home and face my fate.
When I entered our compound which was fendered with dried palm wine tree leaves stuck to the ground held by a locally made wire and sticks. I ventured straight into my mother’s room. My heart was made up however, to stomach any anger my mother would mete out, I deserved it.
Kneeling before her, I poured put my heart troubles before her feet. Right from when I started impersonating and writing examinations for my student clients to my expulsion and failed suicide, I rightly laid everything before her in words pleading for forgiveness.

“Get up” She said in her very strict voice that was used to mould my childhood. I was afraid to look her in the face. She put her wrinkled palm under my chin and raised my face. Her palm had a soothing calm that came with the chill. It reminded me of childhood days. Looking at her face, tears were streaming, slowly, painfully while she tried fighting them back. Her sobs were the strokes that broke my hardened heart into bits, no matter how hard I tried to hold still, I ended up hugging her in a very warm embrace with her hands tightly wrapped around me, as if she never wanted me to leave her sight again.
Later on, she told me she had always been proud of me. ”No matter what dear, I’ve always been proud of you. After losing your father and your only brother to death, I’ve taken solace in the fact that you are alive. Even though your decisions may not be ideal or perfect most times, it only proves that you are human and as human, your mother loves you more than any other thing or human in her life. Live for me, son”
My mother said while holding broken pieces of my soul together in her embrace.

This is an original story created by @rexdickson and all pictures were taken from here

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This story is week 3 of the weekly story series created by @rexdickson. Make sure to follow for more of the stories.

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