THE WEIRD ARCHANGEL MEDIA.

ANGEL OF DEATH © Wallpaper Safari, 2023.

PART 1

“How tragic it would have been to die in such a manner; so cold, full of regret, so dejected and oh so tired!” I thought to myself when i came back to life.

I am going to take you back, way back to July 31st of 2022. Unless you remember every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year, or something really tragic or incredibly amazing happened to you, that specific day should ring no bells whatsoever.

Unlike other times where death and I had met and exchanged pleasantries, I could see him winning on this particular day. Like most of Africans caught between Christianity and our own Religion, I have a sixth sense for lurking doom and death.

Death knows I see him and I know that he knows that I see him.

The day started just like any other day.

I woke up, sat on my bed for about five minutes contemplating my existence, drank some water( looking this good is a task by itself), prayed, tidied my bed up, did 10 push-ups and sit ups, took a quick shower and finally stood outside my door listening for any or no noise coming from around the house, in the form of my mother or my brother. The last step has always been an important part of my routine as it helped me figure out whether or not I was the last one to get out of bed.

Like most days, I was the second person awake. Not bad for a person that regularly wakes up at 8:00am.

Nothing fun happened for most of the day, other than me slipping and falling on my ass and a few laughs here and there with my family, obviously. The really fun part starts in the afternoon, when it begins raining. July has always experienced some amount of rainfall so this was not out of the ordinary.

What felt out of the ordinary was the amount of rainfall that came crushing down on the land given to us by The Almighty Ngai, and with it came an intense cold. So intense was the cold that I had on two coats and two pairs of pants.

Rain, depending on a number of factors and variables is an immense blessing, but after about two hours of heavy down pour, flickering lights and gradual flooding, I began to think of it as a curse. This feeling was solidified when two perfectly fine heaters broke, my brother’s very well behaved cat suddenly started acting like a toddler throwing a tantrum and I stubbed my toe on couch. This last one hurt way more than the others.

This signaled the beginning of what would eventually be a long, tedious, disastrous, almost fatal shit-show of a night.

With the heater in my room being one of the victims of this curse, I opted to sleep in the living room. I had after all planned on re-watching the then John Wick Trilogy. Things turned from good to worse when at about 9PM, the living room suddenly became as cold as the winters in the Arctic.

“Oh shit! I guess the whole heating system is dead,” I thought to myself as I sat there planning my next move.

This only meant one thing; emergency family meeting. After much deliberating and debating on what to do next, I decided that I would not heed the advice given to me on the best strategy but I would instead do what I wanted. I settled on lighting a jiko, and using it for its heat, this being the second wrong move of the night.

“Nyumba ikijaa joto utoe hiyo jiko nje (Take the jiko outside once the house is well heated),” my mother said as she left for bed.

I realise now that I should have probably listened to her, but I am a grown up and no one tells me what to do. This sort of idiotic thinking was the first mistake of the night.

Other than the heating system dying on us and the lights going on and off hence interrupting my very important movie, everything else seemed to be going great. The rain sounds on the roof were like a perfectly sang lullaby conducted by an orchestra of the greatest musicial talents to ever walk the earth.

All this was about to change in a couple of hours.

I remember falling asleep while rewatching John Wick 2, at around the point where Jonathan and Cassian are enjoying a drink in the Continental’s bar after trying to murder one another. Looking back, sleeping was the greatest mistake of the night. I should have just stayed awake and just finished re-watching the movies, but sleep just like most things is very rarely controllable.

To be continued...