THE DAY IT HAPPENED
I can still remember how unreal it felt, adrenaline was still rushing through my entire system, sweat beating down on my face. I could feel the hairs at the back of my head stand one end with only one thought in mind. What would my father do to me. I knew I was in hot soup, and if I wasn’t careful, I would get burnt by something of my own making. I could feel my head spinning, looking for a way out but deep down, I knew there was nothing that could be done. After what looked like forever, I finally snapped out of the shock, that was when I realized I had cut myself. But to be honest the pain I felt in my left hand did not compare to the one I was feeling in my heart.
No matter how hard I thought, there was just no solution registering in my brain. I knew it would take something big to explain what I had done, but in reality I could not find anything to cover the lie. I couldn’t lie on our dog, because Funda was always outside. It had its own house and everything it needed outside the house because my dad did not like having animals inside and Funda could be very mischievous on his own. I needed to think of something, and I needed to think fast before someone sees the mess I had created. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that no one would cover me for what I had done.
Then it finally clicked, the only thing I could do was to create a natural disaster, or maybe an artificial one, just anything to make me look like the victim instead of the orchestrator. I looked up, and then my idea was settled, looking at the ceiling fan at the top, it looked like the perfect corver up story. It had been shaky for sometime, producing some strage noise, but we used it anyway. All I needed to do was make it fall and place it at the scene of the accidient and I was good to go. But then the question remained how do I go up to make the ceiling fan fall.
I had already committed one crime, in my mind committing another one wasn’t such a bad idea. I took some tables and some paint buckets stacked up. Setting it up, I decided to climb. Getting to the top I realized something I never put into consideration, the crews were tightly fixed to the rod holding the fan. 12 year old me never thought about that, but that little obstacle only strengthened my resolve. Luckily I kept all the spanners and screw drivers intact because my dad would always ask me for them. It was a hassle finding the right spanner, but I finally did and loosen the fan. At that point, I knew my plan was all set.
With a wide grim smile I pushed the fan down targeting that exact chair. It was my dad’s chair, the chair only he sits on. It’s an African thing that a lot of homes practice as a way of giving honor to the head of the house. He just got that one, and had warned us not to come near it. But since I knew I was the only one at home, I decided to do what I do best, jump around out of boredom. I was jumping around when I landed on my dad’s chair, and because it wasn’t as big as the others and was new and a bit slippery, I slipped and fell face down.
Using my hand as a shield, it took the brunt of the fall making me bleed from my left hand. I was filled with so much energy from jumping all over the place that I fell and fell really hard. Knowing I could not tell my dad what I had done, the only thing 12 year old me could come up with was the master plan of creating an accident. Throwing the fan down, it landed exactly as I expected, but that was when I heard the horn at the gate, my mum should be back now. Thinking on my feet, I quickly positioned the fan in a way that it would look as though it sliced through the leather chair taking scissors to widen the tear a bit. Then I returned everything I brought out to climb, scattered the screws from the fan, and lay down clutching my injured arm ready for my mum to walk in.
THIS IS MY ENTRY INTO THE INKWELL COMBINED WRITING PROMPT #41
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