Your Neighbor, The Hypocrite

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You close your eyes and hiss like the biggest snake in the city as the intense shouts of ‘die by fire’ reverberates and shake the very core of the old building.

The noise is too loud everywhere. It is present in your sleep, in your pillow, in your mind. How can a human be so annoying?

It was Neighbor Festus. He was at it again. Ever, unrepentant neighbor, Festus was doing his thing again. This timely shenanigan to bind and cast and rebuke the forces of darkness that were targeted at his progress.

Funny how all the demons had still not stopped tormenting and demonizing him from the clutches of poverty 2 years down the line.

You hiss again and open your eyes. You close them one more time. You try to find focus. But there’s no peace in the little self-contained apartment. There’s no peace from this noise. You are not getting any sleep tonight.

The Thunderbolts of “Evil powers from my father’s house” begin again, just when you think he has given up this diehard incessant massacre of his village people and grand tormentors, from within the tiny shared walls of the apartment building.

You should be used to this by now, but there is no getting used to screams and argumentative prayers that wake you up with a loud startle in the middle of the night.

Some other nights, you would wake up to heavy blows and kicks against the wall.

A battle between neighbor Festus and invisible powers.

His room was a battlefield and your ears, the victim of his accosted unending battles against spiritual powers.

You curiously wonder to yourself if it is the same powers from “his father’s house” that he has always stayed up at night to combat, since his first arrival in the compound two years ago, that was still after his life, till date.

That was a lot of consistency, and you had to give it to those unrepentant demons, who for some reason have become resistant to the bouts of fire, storms, and brimstone from the red sea that neighbor Festus kept raining down on their necks.

They should win a prize for tenacity because they had refused to let neighbor Festus go. Despite his loud shouts against them at night to set him free from poverty.

He was still poor. Very poor. Those demons, especially the brand from his father’s house, were not to be bothered about Neighbor Festus’ nightly rants. They were the real G.O.A.T.

You steal a glance at the old wall clock, the same one that was passed down from your parents. The one they said must be passed down to your children simply because it was a blessed family heirloom from your great-great grandfathers before you.

You stare at the hideous clock and wonder why you have to bear this thing that diminishes the aesthetic view of the already hideous-looking apartment you live in. Simply because it was termed an ancestral heirloom important enough to protect the family’s posterity, taking it down was clearly out of the question. It’d be like giving a hard slap to one’s ancestry.

A cursed event.

It was a family pass-me-down after all, and as long as you didn’t have enough money to purchase a new one, you did not have any business discarding it

No matter how hideous it looked, it still saved you the hassle of getting a digital clock. You remind yourself that these things are quite expensive these days. Unaffordable for someone who lived in the same horrible block as a madman who was subjected to religious debauchery.

You stop and turn, and try to remember the details of the dream you were having before you were grossly interrupted by the incessant firebrand prayers being uttered by your neighbor.

You had been in a boat, in the middle of a thick forest, floating across a lake. You squeeze your eyes tight and try to drag out the details of the dream. It was fast becoming like a haze in your mind. Dreams, they were always like that. Strong and potent at the time they were occurring, strong enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone. they could fast become like gas, and vapor, floating away like tiny fragments that were never meant to be present in the first place.

The clock strikes 2:00 and a sharp sound is emitted from the analog.

“Stupid clock,” You mutter to yourself.

You close your eyes again and try to go back to gather your thoughts.

You soon realize that the first effort of recalling your dreams is now useless. You can’t remember anything anymore. The memory had evaporated again.

Your spiritual dreams and physical dreams were all the same. Always vanishing before attaining fulfillment.

So you, sigh, stop, and resign your fate to your bleak blank mind.

This night was not any different from every other one you had to bear under Neighbor Festus shenanigans.

So you resign to listen to Neighbor Fetus’s midnight prayer charade.

You try to listen to his words so that you can understand why the devil was not still letting him go.

Wasn’t it said that prayers and supplications should be offered in secret, and not in a hypocritical way, as this? Didn’t Jesus give that command?

“God, this man is such a noisemaker,” You say to yourself. You wonder if the entire charade is even worth it.

You go on to wonder what you would do if you could be God for a day.

You’d snuff out the living breath from individuals like neighbor Festus who went on to disturb your ears with supplications for money and prayers against the devil, like they were agemates quarreling.

You would also go on to punish him for being so hypocritical during the day. And hypocritical at night simultaneously.

You would have seen him coming and going every other afternoon with one girl or the other, in and out of his apartment. You would strike them when their moans were becoming overbearing.

Neighbor Festus was just as incredulous. Man! He was just as loud as a snorting sex-starved pig during the day, and a hypocritical believer with many devils and village people to be killed at night.

You would have thought of many ways to kill him and would have followed through with every single one of them, cause he was deserving of it.

How could a man who drank and slept with all the ‘women of the night’ during the day, be so fervent with the matters of the devil and God at night?

Seemed like double standards if you asked me.

Neighbor Festus would be a professional with vices where the devil was ranking.

You hiss and turn away from the fervent sound and the irritating analog clock, and face the other side of the room. It is there, you stare blankly at it. You can spot your book, that book. That book reminded you of your first kiss and your first love with Lola. The very same book she had given you the day after you both had first had sex.

You stare and begin to wonder where Lola would possibly be right now. You two had broken up because she had stated clearly to your face that she didn’t want to be anybody’s “come up woman”. You remember the fierce look in her eyes as she had said it at the beach on your 4th anniversary together as a couple.

You remember how you had begged her to endure for one more year. One more year, with you, and things might just turn around for the better. Your finances, you were sure, would grow in the new year. Even though that was the same thing you had declared to her in the first two years of your relationship.

My Choice

Lola had countered in anger and demanded that she had made her decision. She had other suitors who were available to make her their wife the very minute she said ‘yes’ to their proposal. And that was something you could not offer her in the next 3 years with the way things were going.

She was a woman after all, and her biological clock was ticking.

You had watched her that day in shock. She had been your first and only girlfriend. Life would not make complete sense without her for a while.

It still hasn’t.

You pick up your phone and decide that you would distract yourself from Neighbor Festus madness, and your racing thoughts with a few celebrity gossip and memes from social media.

You open up Facebook. You hate that app. It reminds you of everyone you wish to forget. It reminds you that you have nothing to show off to your family and friends. You want to close it up immediately because you do not want to lose your peace as well.

But you stay because social media is addictive. The flashy pictures, the nice cars, and the stories about people’s lives littered all over are too engaging to be put aside.

You try a few scrolls and notice that you’re staring at something you do not want to stare at.

It is Lola. Her arms are draped around an unknown guy’s face. Her ass is readily scooped into the man’s hands like he is claiming his ownership and possession. You spot a big ring on her finger.

The caption reads, “Finally got hitched, congratulations to me!”

You look at her smile and happiness and get very angry. Surprisingly so.

Angry at Facebook for recommending this post to you, angry at life for cheating you, angry at Neighbor Festus for waking you up in the first place with his incessant prayers.

Angry at the ancestral clock that would not stop ticking as if reminding you that your days are numbered. Reminding you of your uselessness.

So you get up, you pick up a broom in anger, and start to flog the wall.

You are angry at life, and at yourself, maybe also at God.

Maybe Neighbor Festus is right after all. Maybe you need to deal with traditional demons that may have vowed to make your life a sorry case from your father’s house.

So you join Neighbor Festus and mimic his words. This time you want to go a bit physical.