Latest / Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories / Childhood Mysteries and Cultural Wonders

Transcript

Childhood Mysteries and Cultural Wonders · Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories

• 0:04
  Your door creaked and the sound of someone pushing it made you
• 0:07
  open your eyes. You were drowsy, but you managed
• 0:11
  to sit up on your bed, your blankets still all over you.
• 0:15
  It was night and the room was dark because you had turned off
• 0:18
  the lights before going to bed. The pastor had averted any bad
• 0:23
  luck that wanted to follow you to America, but now you wondered
• 0:26
  if the prayers worked at all. America.
• 0:29
  You had come to America for holidays with your uncle.
• 0:33
  He was your mother's younger brother, and she told him that
• 0:36
  you so desperately wanted to go to America.
• 0:39
  You really had wanted to see this America everyone talked
• 0:42
  about. A friend had said it was too
• 0:45
  beautiful, almost as beautiful as heaven.
• 0:48
  You wanted to argue because nothing was supposed to be as
• 0:51
  beautiful as the Lord's paradise.
• 0:53
  But since you had not been to America, you did not argue.
• 0:57
  You only nodded and smiled. But right at that moment, you
• 1:02
  had made your decision. You would have to see this
• 1:04
  America for yourself. So when mother told her younger
• 1:08
  brother that you wanted to visit him and he said yes, you were so
• 1:11
  happy that you cried. You did laugh at 1st and then
• 1:16
  you cried. Now here you were in this
• 1:19
  America you so eagerly wanted to visit.
• 1:22
  You heard someone creep into the room.
• 1:25
  Hello, is anyone there? You said, but no one answered.
• 1:31
  You breathed in and out, you wanted to scream on top of your
• 1:35
  lungs in fear but you knew you would not.
• 1:39
  You suddenly heard someone switch on the light and it
• 1:42
  blinded you for some time because your eyes had to adjust
• 1:45
  to the blindness. The person gently sat on the end
• 1:49
  of your bed and you felt your legs touch the person's hips.
• 1:52
  It felt small. 10, you muttered. Hey, he whispered.
• 1:59
  He was the littlest child of your uncle's children.
• 2:02
  Small, cute chubby cheeks and had a tiny voice.
• 2:07
  He was the playful type, always laughing and crying over petty
• 2:11
  things. You liked him.
• 2:14
  What are you doing here? Oh, I thought he would be awake.
• 2:18
  I am now, you told him. You didn't tell him that he had
• 2:23
  interrupted your sleep. Instead, you laughed and tried
• 2:26
  to figure out what was in his hands.
• 2:29
  He put a package on your bed, kept the other in his pockets,
• 2:32
  and smiled at you. Then he tiptoed to switch on the
• 2:36
  lights. I wanted to play chess with you,
• 2:40
  he said, opening the carton. You want to play too, right?
• 2:44
  Chess in the middle of the night.
• 2:47
  How wonderful. You wanted to slap him for
• 2:50
  waking you up to play a game. You wanted to tell him that he
• 2:54
  should be sleeping now, but he was smiling, a flowering of hope
• 2:58
  in his eyes. You did not want to play chess,
• 3:02
  and so you stared at it for so long that Ken sighed and got the
• 3:05
  message. But it didn't make him go away
• 3:08
  though. He brought out another box from
• 3:11
  his pocket that said discover your future.
• 3:14
  It held your interest. You wanted to know what your
• 3:17
  future held in America, if you would go back to Nigeria, big
• 3:21
  and rich, if you would marry a white lady from a foreign
• 3:24
  country. There were so many things you
• 3:26
  wanted to know. You knew it was like sorcery
• 3:30
  because you remembered the Sunday that the pastor preached
• 3:33
  against seeing your future from other sources than God, and he
• 3:36
  had called it sorcery. But curiosity LED you to pick up
• 3:40
  the box. When you turned it around, it
• 3:42
  read It never lies. Get ready to go ahead of your
• 3:46
  present. You decided you would try it
• 3:49
  out. As you opened it, Ken snatched
• 3:53
  it from your hands. He opened it slowly and
• 3:56
  cautiously. It had small papers in it,
• 4:00
  papers probably containing one's future.
• 4:03
  You were to randomly pick any one of the papers and whatever
• 4:06
  it said inside was your future. You have to say the magic words.
• 4:11
  What magic words? He told you it sounded like
• 4:16
  gibberish in your ears. Do I really have to say it?
• 4:20
  Yes. When you say it, then whatever
• 4:23
  it says will come to pass. As much as it excited you, it
• 4:27
  frightened you. But you decided you would do it
• 4:30
  anyway. Repeat the magic words with me.
• 4:34
  So you did, not minding that you were still scared.
• 4:38
  When he was done, you brought your hand forth and picked the
• 4:41
  paper. You turned it around.
• 4:43
  It was blank. What's this supposed to mean?
• 4:48
  I, I don't know. He's stammered.
• 4:50
  It has never happened to me. Let's try again.
• 4:54
  So he made you repeat the magic words.
• 4:57
  You said the words with more violence, even angrily.
• 5:01
  You couldn't have a blank future.
• 5:04
  When you picked up a paper again, you closed your eyes
• 5:07
  before turning it around to see what was written inside.
• 5:11
  You imagined something really positive and then you opened
• 5:14
  your eyes and turned it. It was blank again.
• 5:19
  You hissed and tore it up to pieces.
• 5:22
  How could it say that when your mother and father had said you
• 5:25
  had a bright future? The Adibia had prophesied that
• 5:28
  the day you were born signified you would have a bleak future,
• 5:31
  but your parents had refused to believe it, and so you too did
• 5:35
  not believe it. Now you wanted to forget that
• 5:38
  you ever tried to discover your future.
• 5:41
  You wanted to decide that it was just a game after all, and that
• 5:44
  it was meaningless. But the words you had read
• 5:47
  earlier, it never lies came to your memory.
• 5:51
  Maybe your stars can't be read, Ken muttered.
• 5:55
  You said nothing. Let's play chess instead.
• 5:59
  He smiled from year to year as he told you this.
• 6:03
  You wanted to knock his head and tell him your future had just
• 6:06
  been predicted to be blank. You wanted his senses to come
• 6:09
  back so he could see how serious the matter was.
• 6:12
  Your life could be like a plain grassland stretched forth, going
• 6:16
  on with nothing but the same. That was what Blank meant to
• 6:20
  you. Hours after he left, you tossed
• 6:24
  around the bed trying to sleep, and when you finally closed your
• 6:28
  eyes, you could see it. A red monster holding a blank
• 6:31
  paper and laughing at you.