LOST CONTROL
Self-Control is an admirable thing, The Spirit of Clemency a sterling virtue. Men like to see their fellow men exhibit it. God himself delights in it. Someone slaps another thrice across his or her cheeks and the fellow replies to it with tripled laughter, further doubling up or holding “pleased ribs.” Automatically, this is glorious in Heaven and here on Earth bound to attract complimentary remarks. In recent times, self-control has come to be The Index of Masculinity of people already accepted as Men by reason of their gender and physiology. Very few families see a point in releasing their female member to a man for a wife or to live with under the same roof, if he has inflammable temper or one that he cannot put under check: something volatile, something quick to register!
“No! he might end her young life and only end up in prison himself”
“No… No. leave that Quick Tempered Thing to keep living all by himself”
Nonetheless, there is a point beyond which a human should not be driven, save at the risk of precipitating violent reaction from him or even a move to silence or tame their tormentors.
Well, a Michael Achupu, twenty-seven, had contracted to serve a Chief Ezekiel Gentle for three-years-and-a-half, after which he would become his own master. Already, Michael had put in two-years-and-eleven- months under the most unendurable circumstance. Thirty-five months of dedicated service that was not withheld A True Servant’s Honesty. Unfortunately, Michael’s Master’s Wife, Mrs. Euphemia Ezekiel was doing all within her power to break his willpower and the patience he needed to effortlessly sail through Blameless Apprenticeship.
Steadily, Euphemia was fishing out Michael’s mistakes in performed duties and seeking to convert every minute of his stay with them into Hell Fire. It was her particular wish that Michael commit a contract- terminating act that should show him the exit door from their duplex. As a set goal, it had had to demand from her keen watches of Michael from behind slightly parted window blinds while washing her husband’s Volvo or cleaning, refueling and freshly lubricating his 220v Gasoline Generator Thirty-year-old beautiful-like-a-serpent Euphemia had felt no qualms paying a neighborhood mechanic close to N5000.00 for guides to the use of a single-phase gasoline generator with special emphasis on smart detection of the little faults in manual operation of the machine.
“I quite understand what you want”, Neighborhood Mechanic had assured Mrs. Euphemia Ezekiel with the right mischievous look, mischievously adding that her down payment of their Agreed Five Grand had as good as bought her The Richest-Lecture Ever one could receive from an expert user of all makes of Gasoline Generator.
Honestly She, Mrs. Euphemia Ezekiel, needed to stop this man of nearly her age from finally grabbing in the next six or seven months half a million naira of blameless apprenticeship! If only she could bring off some Reputation killer: lure Michael Achupu into enacting a piece that would spoil a little what had been all along a blameless service of her husband in his offices and at home to now make it fittingly blame worthy!
Oh! How infinitely she would love it! Contract-keeping God-fearing Ezekiel would no longer feel the pin pricks of the guilt of a deliberate non-keeper of agreed terms, if he finally chose, on account of the blunder to not push a single currency note into Michael’s sure-to-be itchy palms. Not altogether A Heart of Steel, Euphemia got herself pondering what can have fanned the flames of her resentment towards Michael and not long alighted on what could qualify as an acceptable answer to the question puzzle. Michael whose appropriate designation should be “Servant,” for what his assigned role is in their house, hasn’t been living it; rather cleverly taking the liberties of Some Sort of Lord and Master in it. Or hasn’t he for these thirty five months been cocooned in a clearly cozy annex to their duplex: a listener to his own radio and stereo, watcher of own cable, drinker of The Ice-Cold from one’s fridge and operator-user of own laptop?
A World of Classic Privileges too bogus for a Vertable Servant right under her Euphemia Nose, because her God-Fearing Liberty-Granting Chief Ezekiel could afford to shut his eyes to exercises of such privileges by workers under his payroll besides Emancipated Slaves allowed to answer to Servant.
With satisfaction, Euphemia remembered that the last time she struck Michael like Cancer it was for the sweet untouchable reason that Michael had elected to begin the washing of Chief Ezekiel’s Volvo from its dust-laden tyres and thence proceeding to its body, with all the implication that a dirtier brush would be reserved for the cleaning of the more decent parts of the Volvo between its velvety seats and glasses. Twenty- Seven-Year-Old Michael Thirty-Year-Old-Euphemia had kicked and kicked and also clawed at like True Beast, later literally springing on him for a succession of blows before formally pointing out his shoddy discharge of a taste he should have dutifully carried out. Throughout the punitive discipline, he was A Michael Spectator, also for the most part An Unmoving Michael, except that he sometimes found it irresistible rubbing calming palms on received wounds from the assault. Plastered on Michael’s face was A-Serves-You-Right Guilt, remembering that he had had to be grimly flogged by his mother for an observed bath he had as a child started feet first and taking it to his groins and lastly Trunk and Head. Clearly, the washing of the Chief’s Volvo beginning from its four tires up to Glasses and Seats was the same absurd reversal of a procedure laid down and accepted. Euphemia’s Single-Phase Gasoline Generator classes with Neighborhood Mechanic served to sharpen her appetite for The Malicious and Mischievous. Euphemia could now afford to instruct Michael to start their Gasoline Generator in an enclosure or even indoors and after his reluctant trusted compliance with this bait get badly hollered at shortly afterwards by Euphemia for A Planned Carbon Monoxide Poisoning of her Young Family of Four. Also, Euphemia could afford to, unseen, riskily spill some quarter pint of gasoline on the body of the generator after Unsuspecting Michael had started the machine for intended brazen attacks on his Hidden Motives of Cold Murder in The House of Chief Ezekiel Nazo.
“Sorry, Madam, I have no motives in Chief’s House, let alone hidden ones,” Michael promptly said to make clear to Euphemia, but for this effort collecting a Half-Dozen humiliating raps on his head with a finishing unbearable twist of his right ear.
“No-no-no. This shouldn’t happen to me.”
Still, it was A Michael spectator who stood before Euphemia Ezekiel Nazo, not in a hurry to sum up that she had meant ill. Not until he formally denied responsibility for the Gasoline Spillage on the already started and functioning generator and Euphemia dared a fresh pull of his right ear in the manner of a mistress-detective trying to stop an untruthful servant from putting on smart airs of innocence.
“Please, madam, I’m nearly Thirty-Years for these twists of an ear” pointed out An Apparently Still Calm and Collected Michael. But, inwardly, Michael was battling with a snapping control; fast losing that which makes a man steady himself in the face of debased treatment. “Then, you don’t need Jehovah any more to tell you that it’s all over,” Euphemia flung at Michael in a voice of steel declaring him “Fired!”
“No, Euphemia, I ain’t fired, retorted Michael, suddenly American with this staggering Euphemia, then almost as soon staggered her again this time with a Chinese Kung Fu and a punch which should have been landed on the body of a professional boxer. When Euphemia’s next angry action was to storm Michael’s room for a pillage of his belongings, she received a flattening punch reply to it from Michael followed by emergency appearance in a not far-off clinic.
Michael knew that he was not going to get out of it, that Contract Years had come to an unprecedented end, that the enacted scene was The Epilogue of The Entire Long or Short Drama…
Unperturbed, he got his One-Hundred-Ninety-Nine Body Pounds Weight out of the place with just A Supporters Good-Bye of A Witness to the incident, who could sense that what he had done was in The Spirit of “A worm will turn.”
Can you guess who?
Mrs. Euphemia’s Gasoline Generator User Guide!
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