The Hit

They say one is not yet dead if the sound is heard, what use is life if you can see its end?

Differing thoughts ran through his mind. A Map of an unknown world was being drawn on the floor, it freely flowed, fluid like Tai Chi movements on canvas. It wasn’t the sexy he had come to adore on his woman’s lips, nor the gorgeous he saw in his mother’s rose chintz gown. It was a pool of his blood, a map of death.

Oh, that faultless woman, where had she gone wrong? Where in her ethics did she not teach well?  He remembers the strokes, the 12 on his bare back. “Tunde, I love you, ” she’d  say; “But you won’t hold a Gun someday, not on my life”. Her prophesy was fulfilled. He never held a gun as long as she lived. That wonderful woman passed away couple of years back under circumstances that are still sketchy in his thoughts.

He feels his fingers go cold, stiff and numb. His heartbeat hastened, then began to slow as the seconds passed by, each getting shorter as the interval between heartbeats grew farther apart, just like his mother’s ethics had departed from him.
“Ibro, I get this hit wey dey confirm, 700k easy for us to share.”

“700k, for where?” “Where this info come from? ”

“I been dey gist with Garba when him mention say him oga go withdraw money for share for them boys whey help am beat that opposition man.”

“Nice one, the kind brockage wey dis change era don put man pikin for, I no mind any kind package now fah.”

As Tunde listened to Ibro and Dolapo converse making no bother to involve him, a surge of hot blood sprang up his throat. A need for adventure. He had joined the gang not long ago and isn’t due for such big projects. It did not matter that he was always there to help put the plans together for them.

“Guys, I want to go out today, I need the high.”

He takes in another breathe, laboured as it is, blood and air splash out off his chest, he should be dead by now if the bullet had passed just an inch lower through his heart, he probably would have started his judgement, with Angel Gabriel bringing in his book of wrongs,  that is, if those stories his mother told were true or probably, just passed away into nothingness, a dark abyss of the unknown. Which ever would be prefered, saved from this moment of pain.
No one knows how it went wrong, the sirens were heard, a husky voice had spoken into a megaphone or whatever Nigerian police use to make announcement and from there, panic set in.
“Ibro, did you set us up?” Kunle had asked in the frenzy.
“Me? Which kine yarn be this? Why I come dey hold gun with wuna?  abi na so I foolish reach?”
“My children, just drop your gun and surrender.”
“Shut up old woman!” Kunle had commanded.
“Your end is here, surrender and face the mus…”
Her sentence ended midway as Kunle, in his “Let-The-Bullet-Talk” mood fired a shot.
“Guy, if today is the day I die, I won’t go down alone.’  Four more shots were fired, two children and a housemaid.

He tried to move a limb but the weight of his own appendage could not be beared. His sights got blurred and just as he was about to give up the ghost he heard his name.

Kunle! Kunle!! The voice initially sounding from a distance was now close by.

Kunle!!! That was when it flashed across his face.  Light.