Lesson 2 Assignment Part 1

The Twisted Version

'Pawns in a Twisted Game'

Falling Action
My breath choked me. The whole world suddenly became the vortex of a hurricane.
My entire life flashed before me, flickering like pictures from a projector on a mental wall.
Of its own my eyelids began shutting down. All my life I had lived by the power of my will not today my organs possessed a will of their own.

RISING ACTION
          'In a few weeks Nigeria decides!' Femi (or F.M as I preferred to call him) exclaimed.
The gubernatorial election was just around the corner but how on earth was F.M involved? He wasn't 'running' was he?
          'Maga don pay!'
I struggled to demystify his slang and decided he must be referring to the political drama that was now a trademark of the Nigerian elections. Politicians paying the youth (labeled political thug) to activate mayhem during the electoral exercise.
How many young dreams perished on that fateful day? Lanre, James, Yellow, Rebecca the Tomman, what else could we call her? She would not permit anyone call her 'boy' or 'girl' after she hit puberty.
We were all from the same villa (neighborhood), had attended college together and had arbitrarily dropped out, each on personal terms. The point? Who wanted educational qualification or decent employment anyway only to be made slave of corrupt godfathers?
          'Kasala don bust! Baba don arrange something for boys', (The political fathers had dished out loads of cash to the youth) F.M appealed. 'You in or out?'
Of course I was in.

EXPOSITION
F.M was my bossom friend and the catalyst of my predicament.
He was a man driven solely by one fierce obssession:
          Desire for quick wealth.
On this day he was all wrapped up in his customary agbada {a traditional Yoruba attire} and... blinging from all angles.
So I had made a pact with a personality that couldn't be reckoned with (according to my parents' psychological state of mind anyway). Who possessed the key to every financial lock that human greed has ever invented.
I had pictured this encounter as another opportunity to paint the town red. I just never had an inkling of idea how literal that imagination was to become.
I've read it someplace before that 'Death and danger do not have to come with trappings'. However, some wiser guy had rightly stated, 'Don't believe everything you read'. Needless to say the latter statement stuck like glue...

RESOLUTION
Now here I stand at the beginning of time. The judge and jury of a wasted youth; a victim; a pawn in a twisted game. . .



CLIMAX
Here we are on the D-Day (the day of the gubernatorial elections). The hope of a young nation, seeds of the future.
You know they say, 'Everybody got to have a dream'. But what do you do when all you have is a dream deferred?
We manned one of the polling centers. Our group had split up and set camp at various polling stations across the state.
Our mission: If the opposition gets the higher vote count snatch the ballot boxes and never let them get to the Electoral Commission office. Piece of cake han?
If fate was a script writer or a movie director he would have been above all, a master of suspense.
There was electricity in the air as the voters proceeded toward the box like hell's own option.
Apparently, we were not the only local observers who had plans. Cos suddenly, a man, a thing, something grabbed one of the ballot boxes (which was made of glass) and slammed it against the ground...
          Pandemonium!
Hell would have freezed up in fear of the little thug war detonated by that single act.
My team moved swiftly into action. Our weapon, broken bottles, 'Captain-Caveman'-sized clubs and every other thing that could inflict bodily injury.
          Everybody else was the enemy.
If society saw a criminal in me then it was high time I display the art of a criminal mind.
          There was blood!
An endangered specie caught up in the struggle for survival now consumed with hate for society and all it stood for.
At the height of the fracas I felt something like a metallic tablet pierce the skin of my back...
          A bullet?
Did some psycho bring a gun to this local fight?
The tablet channeled its way through my flesh, tissue, to the bone and through the marrow to finally lodge in my heart.
I see them now as they lift my lifeless body on a stretcher covered with blanket into an ambulance. Yet I couldn't really say that I regret the life I had lived.