‘But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand.’ Ezekiel 33:6

• 

“You know, I could tell this story over and over again but what’s the point? You might not believe me…I wouldn’t believe it if I heard it from somebody else. But it happened! It really did! I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. You can ask Toby…oh yeah, Toby jumped again. I mean he’s… he’s in kind of a… what do I call it?…hibernation? …second life? You know what, think of it as a game where you have three lives, but you live each life differently, then after your third life, you’re gone…or I think you are…I really don’t know how this whole thing is set up. You know what? Lemme take you to where it all began….

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

It was Saturday the 17th of September. There I was seating by Starbucks drinking an iced strawberry caramel latte I got on the house. With a little wink, a pout and a side boob, the new barrister would give you his heart on a platter. Geeky nerd with a bucktooth and an overworn retainer, dude gets giggly anytime a girl walks through the door. He soon might be out of a job because I and my friends come here every day to get a drink or two. Anyway, I’m going off track.

So I’m seating by Starbucks waiting on my friend Lacy. It must have been a hundred degrees because I was wearing a tank top and bomber shorts yet I could feel sweats roll down my back folds from my full afro bun, and wash off the glue from my lace frontal. I was a bit uncomfortable but the new iPhone 7 just came out and I and lacy planned to check it out.

I was playing the new update of the temple run and a loud thud nearly knocked me off my chair.

      “Jack broke up with me today!” Lacy jumped in out of nowhere. “He just broke up with me for no reason.”

I sighed with relief before turning back to Lacy who had taken a seat in front of me.

      “You guys always break up. At this point, I’m not going to listen to you.”

       “But this time is different! We are done!”.

But as Lacy rambled on, something caught my attention. Past Lacy’s head, just across the street, there was a circus canvas tent, with red and white stripes. I have lived in this town all my life, I have never seen a clown circus before, except in movies.

       “Hey, have you ever seen that before?” I interrupted Lacy. She followed my intense gaze and saw the tent.

       “Huh…the circus came to town.” She joked. I stood up and headed towards the circus to check it out. “wait…are you going there?”

       I nodded but I didn’t stop. I swear I could hear eerie voices coming from the inside. I might be crazy but it sounded like something straight from a fairy tail…no a sci-fi, it sounded hypnotic…

       “Steph!!!” Lacy shoved me away from the road and I fell on the sidewalk, but not before a black mustang sped past me with its horn on full blast. My heart skipped a beat, then rushed on with fear. I could have been dead in a second.

       “Are you trying to kill yourself?! That car nearly ran you over!” Lacy snapped me out of my shock. I was still trying to make sense of what just happened.

       “I didn’t….I mean…I wasn’t…”

        “Get up girl. You scared me to death” Lacy helped me to my feet. “Are you alright?”

I was about to nod but the wincing pain from my knee disagreed with me. I bruised my knee but I brushed it off. I turned back to the circus tent, and it was gone.

       “Where did the tent go?” I pointed. Lacy followed my direction.

       “Hmm…It’s gone” she said.

       “Wait…but you saw it right, I’m not going crazy.” I started to panic.

       “Chill. It’s over a hundred degrees out. We probably have a heat stroke and hallucinating stuff.” Lacy tried to calm me down. “It was probably a mirage. I mean on my way here, I thought I saw a floating ice cream cone, turned out to be Denzel in an oddly shaped, multi-colored hat. Boy did he look like a fool!” She laughed and chatted on. But my concentration was still on the empty plot between the pharmacy and the bakery. Suddenly all the horror movies I’ve ever watched came rushing back to memory. I live in a small town. Things don’t change without people noticing. Lacy tugged me back to reality.

     “Let’s head to the mall. There’s this new line of VS that I’m dying to get my hands on,” she said with excitement. I brushed aside my worry and followed her. The mini-mall was a few blocks away, but the heat made it feel like a Jerusalem journey.

Two blocks later we crossed a wired fence where some teenage boys were playing basketball. One stopped, looked in my direction and gave me a side smile while brushing the sweat off his chin. Ty. I’ve heard of him around school. Head of the basketball team with an ego as deep as his pizza cravings. All the girls wanted to be with him, but I figured only girls with nuts as brains will fall for someone full of hot air and pizza.

But as we passed by the fence, I saw a little girl on the road. She seemed pale. She had a little dirty teddy bear in her hands and was looking right at me, but I could barely see her eyes. They looked dark and hollow.

Just then the black mustang came back at full speed. In a second, I ran with all my strength to pick her up…only I couldn’t touch her…she kind of faded before me. But in trying to figure out what was happening, it was too late to save my life. The last thing I remember was the shrieking sound of rubber dragging against black tar. You know when people say before you die, your life flashes before your eyes? That’s bogus. You see nothing, You feel nothing….just cold empty space, and a deep drowning realization that you’re all alone.

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

The loud irritating sound of my alarm woke me. I groaned and scrambled around my bed drowsily. It took a few blinks and a wide yarn to get me up and turn off the alarm. The rest of my bedding followed me out of bed. I wiped the cold sweat from my face and I winced with pain. My muscles were sore, my torso felt like I was hit by a truck…run over… I tried to remember my dream but all I could remember was a black and white blur.

      “Ty! Your friend Tarik is here!” I heard my mum call. Tarik? … a flood of memories about Tarik rushed to mind like a water wall. My head began to buzz, my knee weakened. Voices overlapped voices in my head and pictures of strangers turned loved ones circled my conscience. I held on to the steady table until the buzz feeling began to subside, and my head quieted down.

      “Ty! TY!!” someone shook me by the shoulders from the back. Still, a bit buzzed, I turned around and a zigzag figure cleared up, forming a concerned face looking up at me. I could immediately put a name to the face.

      “Tarik?”

      “Ty, are you ok? Man, you’re freaking me out.”

      “Yeah,” I straightened up, away from the table. “I’m ok. I must have slept wrong or something.”

      “Brush it off dude, we have a game in half an hour.” It took me a while to realize he was talking about the b-ball game at the Pit. I took a quick glance at my bedside clock…9:32 AM…and reached for a nearby jersey and matching shorts. I gave the combo a quick sniff, it stank a little, but I still had a good 3 maybe 4 more wears before tossing it in the laundry. I quickly got dressed and I and Tarik were on our way.

The Pit was only 5 blocks away from my house. We lived in a small neighborhood so we hardly had the need to drive around. But today the sun was so scorching that for the first time, I wished I had a car. Luckily we got to a Starbucks, few blocks away from the Pit. A pale skin dude was behind the counter, my grandma would probably pump him with mashed potatoes and cream cobbler at first sight just to put some meat on those frail bones. He looked geeky too, with a bucktooth…and oddly familiar. As I and Tarik approached the counter, my curiosity took the best of me.

      “Hey man, have we met before?” I could see he was taken aback by my question.

      “Not really,” he shook his shriveled head “unless you’re into quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics.” He giggled hoping we got his joke, but when he saw our puzzled look, he cleared his throat to cover up. “Can I take your order?” He fished out a notepad from his little apron.

       “Gatorade…the green one,” Tarik said

       “Ice strawberry caramel latte.” I was shocked immediately I said it. I don’t think I’ve ever had ice caramel latte before now, but I had this strong craving for it. I was still trying to make sense of it all when I realized Tarik was staring at me in shock, I straightened up and cleared my throat.

         “What?” I asked defensively.

         “Dude.” Tarik shook his head either mockingly or disapprovingly. The nerd came back with our orders; a Gatorade and caramel late. As I saw the pink hue color of my latte topped with a cloud of foam, I felt nauseous and thought of returning it. But I felt worse sending back an order, so gathered my ego, took my drink and we were back on our way.

As I sipped my latte, the taste was strangely comforting against the heat. Tarik made faces and told jokes attacking my ego but the latte blocked out most of his tease. We hadn’t moved far from the coffee shop when I caught sight of a circus tent. I stood and studied it for a while, its red and white stripes, its faded canvas…somehow it seemed to whirl me into a trance. A sense of urgency hooked my heart….something bad is about to happen…I looked frantically from left to right, expecting something horrible to happen.

      “Wow! The circus!” Tarik shouted in excitement and started to cross the street. Panicked, I dropped my drink and pushed him away from the road still searching for anything suspicious.

      “Tarik, why don’t we hang out here for a bit.”

      “What are you talking about?’ Tarik was already excited. “I’ve never seen the circus before. I wanna see those…” Tarik started pushing me away.

      “Hold on man, I feel like something bad is about to happen.”

       “Really Dude? Come on.” We must have been struggling for a while, but what brought us to a complete halt was the roaring sound of a speeding black mustang driving past us. We stood there for a moment with shock.

       “Where did…How did you know? I didn’t even hear him coming.”

I didn’t either but I knew it was coming somehow. The car looked very familiar. I looked across the street and the circus had disappeared. I shook my head and took a few deep breaths. This day was becoming a very weird day.

Although I managed to save both our lives, my panic did not wane. In fact, the harder I thought about it, I started to see hot flashes. The pictures were blurry, I couldn’t make up what they were but I kept having a sense of Deja Vu with every step. I didn’t even know when I and Tarik started walking again, but we soon reached the Pit. The basketball court was already full of people now. We were five minutes late but just in time to meet the first game. I and Tarik were split into the two opposing teams and we started the game almost immediately. It started slow but it quickly picked up steam because the competition was fierce. In the middle of the game, I had caught the ball from the opposing team and was about to dribble and make a basket in two steps. But the hair at the back of my neck began to stand again, the flashes returned and this time I could make out two girls from the blur and the black mustang. I stood in a trance, the ball was dribbled from my hand but I didn’t notice. The panic feeling was back, the mustang was coming back. I heard my teammates yelling for me to get my head back in the game, but I couldn’t. Again I frantically searched the road for anything out of the ordinary. But all I saw was a pale girl standing in the middle of the road, not more than 4 or 5 years. There it was again, the feeling of Deja Vu. She looked wet and cold but she held on close to the brown bear, dirty brown. But at the far end of the steep road, I couldn’t see it but I could hear the car coming. It was the mustang.

         “Hey, Kid!” I screamed and running towards the wired fence that guarded the Pit and pushing everyone in my path away. “Move off the road a car is coming”

But the girl didn’t seem to hear, she just stood there staring at me. I pushed myself against the fence to be more audible.

         “Kid!! Get out of there, you’re gonna get run over! ” Still no reaction. The car was very visible now and coming at a high speed. I started to run towards the exit, my eyes still on the little girl.

         “Hey!!” still shouting at the top of my lungs “Hey get out of there!!!” the car was just a mile away now. Luckily I found the exit, but I felt hands drawing me back. My team was trying to hold me back. “No stop!! I need to save the girl!” They didn’t understand, the restraint only strengthened. I struggled against their control. “Let me go, she going to get run over.” They pulled me away even harder. I couldn’t make up what they were saying. ‘save the girl’ rang over and over in my head. My attention was focused on the girl and the speeding car. “No!!! No, wait!! Stop the car, STOP THE CAR!!!” But it was too late, the Mustang drove right through the girl without stopping. I closed my eyes and fell to my knees in horror. She was so little… so little and so frail. My bones felt like jelly, I had just witnessed the death of a child. Fear gripped my heart, I trembled so much, hot tears ran down my eyes. The noise in my head began to clear now, and the restraint the guys had on me loosened. Tarik stooped to my level,

          “What’s going on with you man? You…”

          “You let her die!!” I shot up with anger to face Tarik and the others. “You let that little girl die! I could have saved her!!!” I screamed with so much revulsion. But they all exchanged a confused look.

           “Ty, for the 100th time, what girl?”

            “What do you mean ‘what girl’? The car just…” I turned around expecting to see a lifeless body and possibly a pool of blood, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing. There was no trace of evidence that an accident took place.

            “W-What?” I stuttered in shock “There was a girl…and th-the car ….the bear…” I slowly started to replay the incident in my head but the scenes didn’t add up. Tarik placed a hand on my shoulder.

             “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. There’s no girl.” he whispered, “You were about to jump in front of a moving car.”

I looked at him in disbelieve, hoping this was one of his twisted jokes or a set up of some sort, but I could see the honesty in his eyes.

              “So you didn’t see the little girl… none of you saw anyone,” I asked one more time and he shook his head slowly, watching me like I was about to crack open.

              “Look, I’m worried about you man. You’ve been behaving strangely since you got up this morning. Why don’t you go home and have some rest?” Tarik suggested. I was still shaken up but I took his advice, I needed to figure out what was wrong with me.

 It was getting dark now. I decided to take a different route home for fear of running into stranger things. I was deep in thought and confused. Was I finally losing it? I mean there are traces of lunacy in my family traced back to my great-great-grandfather, and every once in a while it pops up in a generation. Is it my turn? Will I end up demented? The more I thought of it, the more I became scared. I was no longer conscious of where I was going and ended up in front of a bank. Just as I was about to retrace my step, three guys rushed out the bank exit, dressed in all black, black bag in one hand and a gun in the other. I didn’t get time to panic, as soon as I was spotted I was shot between my eyes and everything went black.

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

The sound of a single stream hitting a puddle woke me up. I woke from a cold surface with a sharp pain at the back of my neck. I sat up from what I quickly recognized as a cold concrete. A bit startled, I did a brief survey of my environment. A bunk bed, a small lidless toilet, a hobo looking boy, probably 16, in the corner, blue jumpsuits, sturdy-looking bars.

        “I’m in prison?” I asked out loud, in shock. The hobo looking man at the corner laughed.

        “Man they really must have hit you hard, Jay!”

‘Jay’…that seems to be my name. Familiar, yet a bit off. But that didn’t explain why I was in prison.

         “Why am I in prison?”

         “We robbed a bank dude.”

Just then the images of lost memories rushed back to me in a second. I remembered being a gang leader, planning the bank heist for months, checking out security cameras, watching out for the financial managers…I even drew up a blueprint like in a sappy marvel movie. For a minute I was dizzy, my heard hurt and I started to see spots. It felt like I had amnesia and I was just beginning to recall my life. It was terrible. I had visions, I saw myself shoot innocent bystanders between the eyes, slit the throats of noncompliers, and steal over and over again. I started to shake from fear, shame…disgust. What have I done? Why will I do such? I looked at my hands and all I could see was the blood of all my victims. Why?… Why would I kill? I search my head for a valid reason, but the deeper I got the louder the baritone in my head screamed, leaving me in pain. I didn’t even realize the hot tears streaming down my face. The shabby man in the corner crawled closer to me like a curious George. He

ran his eyes from my head to my toe, watching me tremble in cold sweat.

         “What?!” I charged at him a bit irritated.

        “You’re not Jay, are you?” He said

          “What?”

         “You’re one of us…a Traveler.”

         “….what?” my irritation only grew stronger. What is he talking about?

         “Relax,” he said and found a comfortable sitting position beside me. “You must be new.” He pointed to what looked like a birthmark in the shape of a lumbering ax at the top of my arm. I took a second look at it; the mark was strange, it felt familiar yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.    

         “My name is Toby.” He introduced himself. “I’m originally a 30-year-old male and I’ve been a traveler for 18 years.”

At this point, I was convinced I was talking to a deranged person. I started to move away from him, but he grabbed my hand. “Wait!”, and with his second hand, he circled my ax scar three times, anti-clockwise and murmuring inaudible words and a sharp piecing pain ceased my forehead. It hurt so bad I screamed out till my throat hurt. It felt like every vein in my head split open…  but something else was happening. More visions, more images, clear as day flooded my mind. Memories began to clash…I could see a basketball field, a coffee shop…the circus. The memories began to float above my head like a rising tornado, the noise…so much noise…I started to feel a rise from the pit of my belly and in a split second, I was at the toilet throwing up what seemed to be my previous meal. I had thrown up my entire guts, but my head started to settle.

           “My name is Steph,” I said with so much clarity. “I’m a girl…I’m sixteen.” The realization dawned on me minutes after I said it out loud. I pushed my self up from the toilet and look a second look at my middle-aged self from my hands to my feet. My hairy knuckles, stubby fingers, flabby torso, bushy face…as I continued my feel around, an overwhelming wave rushed through me. Where are my acrylic nails?…my jewelry…my curves…my big beautiful curves! With my hands on my hips, I felt the loss of my curves more.

             “What’s happening to me? What’s happening to me? What happens to me?…” I repeated over and over again in panic, walking in circles.

            “Calm down,” Toby grabbed my arm from nowhere. I jolted and my girly instinct kicked in…Stranger Danger!  I kneed him in the nards out of self-defense. In pain, he recoiled himself and hopped on one leg for a while. His crablike position was so funny I giggled, but instead of a soft giggle, I heard deep grunts. I tried to clear my deep voice away but that was a total fail.

           “Just sit down,” Toby grunted and straightened up. I searched around for a clean spot to seat. Everything grew goosebumps from my skin.

           “Ewww!!!” between the shabby bed and the dirty flour, i chose the cold concrete to sit, arms away from anything and waited impatiently for an explanation. It took a while for Toby to understand the change in personalities.

            “Look it’s not like there’s an official science behind this yet but once in a while a new traveler pops up….”

            “You say that like I should know what a traveler is…” I cut him off.

            “Let me finish. While others sleep and dream. We sleep and jump into other people’s bodies.” He paused and waited for the information to sink in.

            “But why?” I asked a bit confused

            “As I said, there’s no actual fact behind this, so no one knows what causes it yet. But some people use it as a medium to start their life afresh, some use it predict the future, some just enjoy experiencing life from another person’s perspective or try new things …think of it as a second or third chance at life. For instance, I’m here to experience life as a criminal.”

That answer didn’t sit well with me, but it explained why he was so comfortable in a cell.

            “You mean I’ll be… jumping constantly?”

            “Actually you can only jump three times per dream. If you jump a fourth time, you might not be able to return to your body.” He paused and studied my troubled face. “Don’t panic, it’s not as terrible as it seems. The more you jump, the more control you’ll have over it. It’s like riding a bike for the first time. The more you practice, the more control you have. You will be able to control who you jump into and where you go.”

 I took a second to sort out my memories when it jumped at me.

            “A dream! That means this isn’t real. We are in some sort of dream world, right?”

            “Yes and no” Toby said frankly. “While this might be a… dreamworld as you call it, it is a prediction of what happens the next day. Whoever you jump into is a real person with real lives and memories, you feel what they feel. Everyone you meet and talk to is a real person from the real world. You can choose to wake up as anyone other than yourself.”

             “But my experience isn’t as dandy as you make it look.” I started to panic. “I died twice!! I was run over and shot. I felt the pain of each death as my life slipped away!!”

Toby placed a hand on my shoulder to calm me down.

              “Be rest assured, you cannot die in a jump. You are still new. I presume you jump into the last person you see?” I nodded. “During your jumps, there might be one or two things out of place. Don’t pay attention to them, they are only there to remind you, you are still asleep.”

 The circus and little girl came to mind. As I would love to brush them aside, they felt like something straight from a horror movie. 

The information was too much to handle, I had more questions to ask. What happens to the person I jump into? How do I get back to my body? How do I stop jumping?…so many questions but then a prison warden came to get Toby.

              “Toby Montez, it’s time for your trial.” He announced while opening up the bars. Toby looked at me one last time and said.

             “This is where we say our goodbyes lad. You’ll have to figure out the rest yourself. You’ll do just fine”

I was about to ask more questions but within a split second, he revealed a sharp object from his back and jabbed it into his throat. I jolted in shock as splashes of his blood landed on my face. I closed my eyes and ears, trying to block the noise from the warden, the other prisoners, the backup wardens…

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…then I woke up, at 6 am Saturday the 17th of September. I was back in my small pink flowery themed room, everything still in place, like I was reliving the same day again. I don’t know how but this time I knew I was fully awake. There were several things I wanted to do differently but the one thing I had to do was warn you, Ty. You might die today. You will die today if you go to the game.”

Ty who was woken too early to an unusual visitor stared with so much disbelief and annoyance. He retreated to his house, slamming the door behind him.

Author: Peace Okei