The roar of an engine cut through the London drizzle. Not
the gentle hum of a city car, but the hungry growl of a tuned M65, its
headlights slicing through the grey afternoon.
Behind the wheel, Taiwo's face was lit by the glow of his
dashboard. A wide, unstoppable smile played on his lips as he spoke into the
wireless headset nestled in his ear.
"Yes, Mama. The real one. The one in Lagos. They just sent
the offer."
The voice on the other end was pure, crackling joy. "Ẹ ku iṣẹ́
o, ọmọ mi! (Well done, my child!) Thank God! I told you! See? You listened to
your mother!"
Her triumphant scolding was the final, perfect note to a
six-year symphony of grinding work, visa anxieties, and London's endless, damp
chill. He wasn't just getting a promotion. He was getting a return. A
reclaiming.
"I know, Mama, I know," he laughed, the sound almost lost
under the engine's purr. He eased the powerful car through the traffic, the
wipers beating a steady rhythm against the rain. The future, bright and
sun-drenched, felt so close he could almost taste the Lagos heat.
He didn't see the lorry's indicator fail to blink. He only
saw the massive wall of grille and steel suddenly filling his window.
The last sound was his mother's voice, mid-laugh, turning
into a sharp, digital "Taiwo—?!" before the world dissolved into a symphony of
tearing metal and shattering glass.
A low groan escaped his lips. "Hnngh…"
Taiwo's vision swam, darkness fading to a bleary, fractured
view of the crumpled dashboard. He tried to breathe. A sharp, sickening crunch
came from inside him, and fire flooded his lungs—it felt like he was inhaling
crushed glass.
His gaze drifted down.
His chest wasn't just injured. It was destroyed. The
steering wheel had been driven into his torso with the force of the impact,
leaving a horrific, concave cavity. It looked less like a car accident and more
like his mother's giant pestle had come down, once, with finality, to pound his
ribs into paste.
"Hel—" he tried to call out. The word died, a wet bubble of
blood on his lips.
'How do you call for help,' a distant part of his mind
wondered, 'when your chest looks like pounded fufu?'
'I can't die here. Who will take care of Mama.'
He grabbed the steering wheel—what was left of it—and
pulled. His muscles screamed. Something inside him tore further. A sound ripped
from his throat, raw and animal.
"UGHAHHHHH!"
It came out. The wheel came free.
But there was no relief. No hope. Only the sudden,
horrifying rush of warmth as the blood it had been plugging poured out of him
in thick, steady waves.
'Fuck. Who send me work? I for just leave am as e dey.'
The thought was almost casual. Exhausted. His strength was
draining into the soaked upholstery, and he could feel the cold spreading from
his fingertips inward
His eyes grew heavy. He tried to keep them open. He
knew—with the clarity of the dying—that if they closed, e don be for am. Game
over.
But as he fought the weight of his own lids, he noticed something.
A shape. A figure. Sitting cross-legged on the crumpled
bonnet of his car, as calm as if it were a park bench.
A man. Dressed in a flowing agbada of deep indigo, rich and
ceremonial. A polished staff of dark wood lay beside him. And in his hands,
casting a faint, ethereal glow against his face, was the unmistakable outline
of a—
'Tablet?'
"Kò sí gbólóhùn síbẹ̀. No network in this place. Always the
same." (There is no signal here.) His voice was like honey and gravel, a Lagos
baritone. He glanced up. His eyes weren't eyes, but shifting kaleidoscopes of
dark and light. "Ah. Ẹ káàbọ̀ sí orita, Taiwo. Welcome to the crossroads."
(Welcome to the crossroads, Taiwo.)
Taiwo had no breath to scream. His chest was a ruin. The
words came anyway, clawing up his throat with the blood.
Who the hell are you? A hallucination?
The man's laugh was sharp, short. "Hallucination? After a
life of ignoring us, now I am a figment? Ọdẹ ni ńpa ẹja tó ńṣorò lókè omi." (It
is the hunter who counts the fish still talking in the river.)
The words slithered into Taiwo's fading consciousness,
familiar and foreign all at once. He knew Yoruba. Enough for market banter, for
Mama's rapid-fire scolding, for the prayers at family gatherings he
half-mouthed along with everyone else. But this? This was something else. The
meaning moved like oil, impossible to grip.
What do you want?
"Want?" The man pressed a hand to his chest, feigning
offence. "I offer you my presence, my time, my excellent company—and you ask
what I want? Taiwo. I am hurt."
He didn't look hurt. He looked amused.
You're not answering my question.
"Your question," the man said, tapping the glowing tablet,
"presupposes that you are in a position to demand answers. You are not. You
are, in fact, in the worst possible position to demand anything." His
kaleidoscope eyes glittered. "You are between contracts. Your lease has
expired. Your warranty is void. You are, to put it in terms your generation
might understand… in arrears."
I don't even know what that means.
"No. You don't." The man sighed, a great theatrical exhale.
"They never do. All those years, all that education, and not one of you thinks
to read the fine print."
He stood then, unfolding from the bonnet with a casual grace
that made the twisted metal beneath him seem like a throne. The staff floated
to his hand without being touched. The tablet vanished into the folds of his
agbada.
He looked down at Taiwo—at the ruined chest, the blood
pooling in the footwell, the hands still weakly trying to stem the flow—and his
expression shifted. Not to kindness. To something more like professional
interest.
"Here is what you need to know," Èṣù said. "There is a door.
Usually, when a soul reaches this particular crossroads, the door opens to one
of several… conventional destinations. You've heard of them. Your mother prays
to them. Your grandmother actually knew their names."
He paused.
"Your door is different."
Different how?
"Different in that it is not a door at all. It is a crack. A
gap. A… loophole." His smile returned, sharp and pleased. "I like loopholes."
I don't want a loophole. I want to go back.
"Back," Èṣù repeated flatly.
Yes. Back. To my life. To my mother.
"Your mother," Èṣù said, "is currently on the phone with
emergency services, speaking so quickly that the operator has asked her to slow
down three times. Your body is being extracted from the vehicle by men in
high-visibility jackets. There is a great deal of blood, Taiwo. More than you
think."
The words landed like stones.
Stop.
"The 'back' you are asking for," Èṣù continued, merciless,
"is a mortuary slab. A phone call. A grave in a cemetery that your mother will
visit every Sunday until she joins you." He tilted his head. "This is what you
want?"
Taiwo had no air left to respond. His hands were growing
cold.
Then what do I do?
Èṣù's voice softened. Not with pity—pity would require
distance. This was something closer to acknowledgment.
"You do what every soul before you has done, when faced with
a door that should not exist." He raised his staff. "You walk through it. And
then you figure out what comes next."
Wait—
"The paperwork is filed. The door is open." Èṣù's staff
began to glow, a low, pulsing red-gold. "Try not to be a boring sentence,
Taiwo. The universe has enough of those."
WAIT— WILL I REMEMBER?
Èṣù paused.
Any of it. Her face. My name. Who I was.
"You will remember," he said, "like a dream the morning
after. Fading at the edges. The colours bleed. The sounds warp. But the
feeling—" He tapped his chest, where a heart would be. "The feeling stays."
That's not enough.
"It's what you get." No mockery now. Just fact. "Some souls
arrive at the crossroads and ask for forgetting. A clean break. You'd be
surprised how many." He tilted his head. "You don't strike me as the forgetting
type."
No.
"No." Almost a smile. "Didn't think so.
He raised his staff.
Wait— one more—
"The door doesn't stay open forever, Taiwo."
I know. I just—
Will it hurt?
"Yes," he said. "But not forever."
The staff came down.
The world TORE—
And then, nothing.
Not darkness. Not light. Not the void where Èṣù had sat with
his tablet and his teasing. Just… waiting.
He was aware. That was all. A point of consciousness
suspended in absolute nothing, with no body, no senses, no sense of time.
Is this death?
No answer.
Is this what comes after?
Silence.
He waited. He had no choice but to wait. Seconds? Minutes?
Hours? There was no way to measure. Only the endless, weightless suspension
between what had been and what would be.
How long does it take to be born?
The thought came from nowhere. He held it, turned it over.
How long does it take to become someone else?
Still no answer. Just the waiting.
And then, slowly, gently—like a feather drifting toward
water—he began to fall.