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The curse of the freaking sad smiley

Thomas, probably concerned about the continued muttering from my end had leaned back to peep in my cubicle and see what was going on. “Bosco, what the fuck man? You are beginning to freak me out. Stop this nonsense before the supervisor starts doing his rounds.” His concerned tone was only met with intensified muttering as my gaze remained transfixed on the screen,

My nana wasn’t a bad guardian by any standards. My only problem with her parenting skills was the bedtime stories at the fireside. To this date, I don’t know how many of them were even remotely close to being true. From the migration of the Bachwezi, to the formation of the Bunyoro Kitara kingdom, she had her own version of events every time I came home with a story I had learnt in the history class of that day, and the theme for most of Nama’s stories was always witchcraft. By the time I was 12 years, my mind was filled with tall tales of creatures and mythical humans that had powers, and semi gods.

If only she had stopped at the stories I might have survived growing up into the highly superstitious human I am, but she still practised witchcraft. I grew up bathing in and consuming herbs and potions to ward of the all kinds of spirits. When I think back, I suspect she was using me as a lab rat to test on her different herbs. Thankfully I survived all this and came out with my physical and mental health intact. Well, the mental health is still debatable but till today, I would like to think I had been a socially adjusted human by any standards.

Thomas, poor soul, was currently shaking me and shouting my name with rising concern as a crowd of curious workmates gathered around the desk to watch the unfolding drama. I was frothing at the mouth, which made my muttering even more incoherent.  A few workmates had even pulled out their smartphones to capture the moment. Their amateur filming skills were sure to go viral. “Someone please call an ambulance” I heard Bridget, the office sweetheart, shout. “Wapi, that one has been bewitched” was the next statement my jumbled brain managed to pick out. My thought on this last statement was relief that I wasn’t the only superstitious one in our cramped office space.

The charismatic sweat bead had managed to convince enough smaller beads to join forces and it was sufficiently sized to meet the conditions for gravitational pull. It began its decent down the side of my contorted face with the kind of confidence normally reserved for those asshole types at the bar trying to get their pens wet.

Random suicidal thoughts were now going through my head and my brain did a memory scan to identify possible ways of executing the suicide in the location I was in. The results of the scan and some additional calculations left me with the conclusion that I would be stopped by workmates before I successfully killed myself.

My mind then wandered to the night of my grandmother’s death. The night smileys became taboo for me. I began wondering if this was similar to what she was going through her mind that unfortunate night.

My Nana died when I was 12 years and I was waiting to join secondary school. Like the rest of her life, the bit I had witnessed anyway, her death was full of drama. By that time, she had taken on a habit of smoking some herbs, which I later discovered were cannabis, to dull the pain from her bones. I used to partake in this smoking too, like the good companion I was, and the resultant vivid hallucinations often left me questioning what my actual reality was.

We were having one of these smoking sessions on a rather hot Sunday evening, and laughing at nothing in particular and everything in general. I learned later that hysterical laughter happens to be one of the symptoms of marijuana consumption. Her animated toothless mouth was the cause of my mirth this particular night and her magnified laughing technique only resulted in further jolts of uncontrollable laughter from my side. Nama’s laughter was characterised by bouncing movements that made her resemble passengers in a shock absorber deprived taxi traversing a road with particularly well developed potholes.

During one intense laughter bounce, Nana almost fell backwards off her stool. As she was trying to regain her balance, she froze while facing the sky and started moving her mouth as if to say something, but no sound was coming out. The transition from overflowing laughter to colour draining shock on her face killed whatever traces of laughter that were still trying to escape my throat ,and I worryingly inquired what she was trying to say and what the problem was. “The smiling spirit has come for my soul” is what I finally managed to make out from her struggled speech.

“HELP!! HELLPPP!!” I screamed in the general direction of the neighbours as I tried to help up my Nana who had now fallen to the ground. I felt my Nanas coarse hand grab my arm in a grip I didn’t think her frail frame was capable of. I turned to face her and her eyes were piercing me with such intensity I was sure fire bolts would shoot out of them. “Bosco, this evil spirit has overpowered me. I don’t think I will be able to survive this time. Watch out my boy. BEWARE OF THE EVIL FACE SPIRITS!” The last part of that sentence came out as a wail that silenced all living organisms in the vicinity, including the neighbours who were running over to see what the problem was. With that, she shuddered violently for a few seconds, her body stiffened and she died in my arms. I had never heard her talk of this evil face spirit, but her final moments where enough to instil severe fear of said spirits in me.

As if her death wasn’t peculiar enough already, her other hand that wasn’t clutching my arm in a vice like grip was now achieving the impossible feat of being vertically upright. There was no support of any kind in sight, but it stayed upright, with her bony index finger pointing to the sky. My eyes followed the direction of the finger and that is when I noticed the sky had turned an eerie shade of red during the chaos. In addition, the moon had been covered by a sad smiley shaped cloud that was floating northwards with uncharacteristic speed, considering there was only the slightest of winds.

As the neighbours, who were still frozen in the positions my Nanas eerie scram had left them, and I watched, the cloud did a spin that ended in it taking on the shape of a cyclone. Thunder, which almost made my bowels release involuntarily, rumbled across the skies, followed by a lightning bolt that originated out of the cloud centre and zigzagged to my grandmother’s stiff index finger. By this time, I had released her body to the ground unknowingly as I stood to look at the weirdly behaving cloud. I therefore survived the worst of the lightning strike but I was thrown backwards several feet through the air and my fall was cushioned by the neighbours who were still frozen in place.

When we finally successfully extracted our various limbs from the pileup caused by my fall, we turned to see if Nama’s body had been roasted by the lightning bolt. Our eyes were greeted by an empty space where my Nanas oddly positioned body had previously been.

I had since been terrified of all smiley shapes that are formed by non-living objects. With the advent of social networks and texting as major means of communication, avoidance had become increasingly difficult but I was still managing.  Every time I saw one, I got small tremors of fear and due to the increasing popularity of smiley, these tremors where making me wonky. Through the use of some draconian methods, I had managed to almost eliminate all forms of smileys from my communication. It hadn’t been easy and I was happy with my efforts. I could also predict, with surprising accuracy, when I was about to encounter a smiley. This Windows 8 Blue Screen smiley had therefore caught me by surprise.

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Written by Rolex (6)

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