CONFESSIONS

When I set out for work this morning, I was only thinking of the end of the day. Opus Dei taught me that work is not a curse. That we glorify God when we work diligently and cheerfully, loving that which we find ourselves doing. As much as I agree with this theory, I hate my work. What joy is a man supposed to derive staring at numbers on white screen, sorting out errors and fixing numbers to balance a bigger number? If you've ever heard that life is a Jigsaw puzzle, that's my life.

End of the day holds no joy, but so long as it's an escape from numbers, it's a welcome. The Sales Manager of Consumpton PLC, Mr Clinton, is sitting across the office in an opposite chair. The monitor hides my face and I consider it a blessing because I am royally pissed. I can control the emotion from pouring out through my voice but not from my face.

"Sir, the transaction you're talking about, what date did it occur?" Mr Clinton, asks.

"It took place on Friday, 5th August 2016." I repeat for the fourth time.

"That must be an erroneous input, sir. Our primary documents have no such sales on that day."

I resist the urge to turn the computer and show him what the devil looks like on a good day.

"Who inputs the figures once sales is made and Sales Invoice issued?"

"It's a subordinate officer, Miss Titilayo."

"Exactly the name I've got here for almost all transactions."

I move the mouse to the transactions with missing Invoices and scribble down the names of the customers whom goods totalling N1.25m were sold to. I tore out the sheet and handed it to him.

"Do you know any of these customers?"

"Of course. These are our regular customers." Mr Clinton lets out a huge sigh of relief and smiles sweetly. "I knew it, this explains everything."

"Explains what?"

"The whole thing, sir. You see, when you deal with the same customers day in, day out, there's high tendency of recording transactions for them erroneously."

"Do you mean to tell me that one point two five million was erroneously recorded in the software?" My voice is rising now. "Please get me the staff that inputed these entries."

"All due respect sir, but these things happen everywhere."

"Can you please get me Miss Titilayo?"

"I told you earlier, when we began our discussion, that Miss Titilayo has been absent from work for a week now. Where is your mind, sir?"

"My mind?" I finally turn the monitor to face him. "My mind has been actively seeking explanations to why transactions worth such amount were recorded only into the system software. No such entry in the Company's Bank Statement, no Sales Invoice issued with these dates. I would also like bring to your notice that Invoice number 01135 to 01138 are missing. If you can provide me answers to these, you'll get my mind off reporting a fraud here."

Mr Clinton's eyes are huge balls after my speech. He remains speechless for a while and I catch the quivering of the paper in his hands.

I get out of my chair and look at my watch. It's past 2 in the afternoon. I've been sitting since 9 a.m when the staff of Consumpton PLC finished their Monday meeting and fetched me the documents I needed to work with.

"I'll go for a break now. Please have these things sorted out before I get back."

"We'll chill out like friends later tonight at one exotic hotel you'll like when all these are over."

I stop dead on my tracks and turn to look at the man. At this moment, I accept what intuition has been sending me - Mr. Clinton is a thief. I'm forced to remember our politicians and how they syhon public funds into foreign accounts. These people pop up on the news frowning like their five generations to come haven't been catered for already and say without shame what little things they've done shabbily. I wonder what has become of the money and am almost sure I'd see more entries like the one I've uncovered as I proceed. I've only completed inspecting a quarter of the documents in the office.

I say nothing to the Sales Manager. I mutter a short Aspiration - Lord Jesus, teach me to love - then make my way out of the office.


**********
Unlike yesterday, everything I'm served at the staff canteen is fresh. There is the lively green of the ugwu, the near red of the beef and the fresh yellow of the egusi. The akpu is hot, a testimony of recent, homemade preparation. You hardly find small restaurants in Lagos that don't buy their akpu in wraps from the market.

I eat happily and think of how such meal could be extended to the soul. The kind of joy I'm getting from it is the inner type that resides in the soul. I can rightly say this is food for the Soul.

My mind only drifts back to work and the possibility or near certainty of fraud on nearing the office I'd been assigned to perform my job. I've learnt that every accounting error should be seen as error until at last it can't be sorted. In one of the organisations I audited two years ago, a refund from an unknown account had happened few hours before my report and the company's bank statement tendered to me. The more you see a potential fraud as error, the better for your state of mind.

I take off toothpick from my mouth and breifly consider my next course of action - probe the manager further or dig for more of the inexplicable. The thought is an instant sickener. I grow queasy as I get a momentary flash of the mess the good meal I just ate has become in my stomach. My mind is back to thoughts of end of work day as I place my hand on the metal door handle, unknown to me that today would register the end of my days in Earth.

A huge tremor courses through my hand, makes it way down the rest of my body, lifts me off the ground but doesn't achieve flinging me. My hand is eternally glued to the metal door handle. I'm being electrocuted, my brain registers as a white burst of light displays before my eyes. My teeth rattles and I feel every liquid in me drain out and into the door handle.

"Oh Lord, Oh sweet Jesus." I think, but can't can't say it out loud.

I want to look sideways to check for Saviours but my whole attention is to the door. I'm a rat on a Papergum Trap. I can't move even though I'm doing it quite freely in my mind. I can only hope I'm screaming, or that the electrocution action is making the sound electricity makes when high tension wires spark from poles.

My eyes, my nose, and my mouth hurts like hell. Blood is flowing down my nostrils.

"Plug my nose with cotton, somebody." Still an inaudible thought.

I'm drying, I'm dying. I wonder if I'm now black like a chicken forgotten on the grille for a whole day untended.

I'm fading, my thoughts are shading. I'm finding it difficult to think when I'm suddenly discharged. I shutdown the moment my body hits the floor.


*********

I come to moments later - minutes, hours, days, I don't know - in darkness. I'm moving, but not with my feet. I'm being conveyed. There's the steady drone of engine and blackness - rolling blackness.

I'm dead, I think, and this is the passage to  eternity. I remember saying an Aspiration today. Today? Hell, I can't be sure of anything. I wonder if that puts me at right with God. I tell myself the truth - it doesn't.

Nights ago, I'd gone over to my sister at sleep, raised her nightdress and masturbated at the sight of her nudity... Months ago, I'd killed Jonas my best friend that ran away with our combined savings. He'd return the weeks after disappearing with the huge sum of money, our savings, to ask for forgiveness and I was to grant it to him with a God-fearing heart. However, I'd taken him to a dark bar and stabbed him to death. The bar man had witnessed it but together we disposed the body and afterwards he became rich, never to work in that bar or any other bar... I'd worn a mask again some nights ago and visited my mom. I find her too sexy even at old age not to be having regular sex. I'd cuffed her hands to the bedpost and came on her from behind... Just a couple of days ago, I'd killed the slut I brought home for preventing me from sucking her breasts and buried her in the backyard... I'd oh God, I'd...

Heaven is not mine and I surely have no right to mutter another Aspiration. I'm not sure I can even move my lips. I think of Frankenstein in this darkness as I think of my looks.

The movement stops, same as the sound.

"What now?" I think.

My mind supplies me the most logical answer. The devil is what's next. He's coming in his pitchfork glory to take me to the fire that never dies out. If I think I'm badly burnt, I'm such a fine joker.

"Oh God, oh Bloody Jesus, save me." An aspiration at last.

The doors swing open and bright light bite into my burnt flesh. I can't open my eyes to this light, to this fire. All I can do is relate with Paul's experience on his way to Damascus.

"Get down." A voice commands.

I'm stunned. It's a familiar voice. It neither is the voice of God or Devil. Those two, when they speak, it sounds like rolling thunder. This one is soft, almost cajoling.

I slowly remove my arm from my face and realize three things - I'm alive and still on Earth; The light is the sun and not hellfire; and the devil is no devil but Mr. Clinton, Consumpton's Sales Manager.

He must be a devil for putting me in this point, I thought, but with my dark past, wasn't I a greater devil?

Mr Clinton smiles at me, so soothing, like encouraging a baby to walk.

"Get down. I won't say this again."

"I'm sorry for any trouble I've caused you, Sir. I take everything back - the accusation, the manner I'd spoken to you..."

"Shhh!" He places a finger on his lips and that knowing smile appears. "You've physically taken back a lot, but fortunately there still more to be taken."

I am surprised to find I can move. My body is not the pinnacle of pain I thought it was. My heart still beats, only harder and arrhythmically.

"I'm ready to chill out like friends with you at that exotic hotel you talked about, sir." I plead as he takes my hand and leads me off the highway, away from the van that brought me here, and into a mature forest.

"That's where I'm taking you to, baby."

© The 'S' Hub


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