The Missing Point; Chapter 1 Part 5

Clipp was too weak now. He could not resist more struggles. He leaned against the wall, holding his broken arm while his thigh aches fiercely. His forehead had torn open and he could not stop the bleeding. He managed to pull the bullet out his thigh and strapped the wound with a cloth he was torn from his shirt. With his back thrusting the wall he sliced his weight down. He looked up and wandered his gaze desperately about the ceiling. He shuddered as he smelled the darkness that stank fear and terror. The underground room had no exit by any means. And the wound on his forehead had gotten wider, letting more blood run like a stream. He stuffed a piece of cloth he torn from his shirt to stop the bleeding. The pain in his thigh was getting worse and his arm was fierce enough to make all his muscles shiver in agony. Clipp was ready to die peacefully. He lost all hope and waited for his death. He changes his mind, however, as he saw Master pulled out of the mysterious exit. A set of fluorescent flickered and Clipp could not help but cover his eyes. He stared at Master desperately. Master was still holding his bleeding eye and his lips were still twisted with rage. Clipp conjured up a picture of himself, Master smashing him on the wall. It will soon become true if he continues sitting like a frightened rabbit. He ran his fingers on the floor. And to his surprise, he grabbed an iron. He threw it toward with all his energy. He succeeded on hitting Blue but nothing happened to Master. Clipp was on his feet before Master could see him. He started running as fast as his remaining energy could bear, looking for anything to help him get out. He saw a lifter but he was too weak to get to it. He fell down all of a sudden. He was hardly breathing. His wounds began to ache all at once. For a moment he wished he was dead. He changed his mind as he saw Master approach. Clipp wanted to die but he knew Master would not let him do so. At least not without splitting his brain on the floor. Clipp dragged himself on the floor. He started crawling as he saw Master loading his gun. He was on his feet at once, ignoring the aching thigh. He ducked to escape from a bullet. As Master approaches he threw himself and fell inside a door-less lifter. He pushed a button inside. And there he was, in a glass which curved like a ball. The lifter went up so fast. Clipp was free in the air inside, smashing harshly as the lifter exceeded its speed. He reached his destination, a good hope it was on earth. The lifter left him in a middle of a desert as it took its way down.

He wished he wasn't out. The sun was burning and Clipp was bare feet. His wound scald from the blazing sun. His blue jean was ripped away harshly. His white shirt torn in every direction. And he looked filthier with blood all over him. He looked around and he was in a middle of a desert. He decided to run forward as he remembered Master would be here shortly. There was nothing in the direction he was running toward. Well, there was nothing in any direction for that matter. He continued running, his thigh aches like hell. After a long desperate run for half an hour, he saw a car passing by. He shouted as loud as his remaining energy could bear. But it was in vain. The girl inside the car had pulled up her glass, easing herself from an air conditioning. As she pressed the engine she saw through her mirror, a man in dirty clothing waving his hand back there in the middle of the road. She reversed. As she reached Clipp she pulled the car aside and run to him. Her eyes were full of care.'' What happened to you?'' she demanded to know. Clipp could not talk. The pain was too much for his twenty-four-year-old body. The girl helped him through the car and they started off the road.

Click here to read Part 4                                                                               to be continued...

Yazar: Bilal Rabiu KOLO

The Missing Point; Chapter 1 Part 4

In that darkness, Master ran his fingers around a bubble-shaped device that looked like a drum and a series of fluorescents flickered to life. The light was so dazzling that it had immediately woken Clipp from his short-time death. He saw Master running toward him still pressing his right eye, his mouth twisted with rage. Master could have to bandage his wounds in the kitchen. The Kitchen- that was what Master wants to call the underground room. But he has more important concern than that. And that was the boy's escape. If Clipp gets out, then everything they had built might be at stake. And Master would probably be dead if Friend heard about that. There is no need of anyone to report to Friend, though. Master believes he is inside him as Friend had told him several times.

Clipp was too weak to run; so he yielded. But as he remembered Master would never allow him to live, especially when he knew Clipp is as pigheaded as his father and after the damage, he has done to him and his friend, Ivy, Clipp counted it an obligation to run. All of a sudden he started moving his head eagerly in search of anything to help him get out. But it was all in vain. Now he runs his fingers on the floor in an attempt to find something solid enough to take Master down at one hit. He gave up when a metal opened a wide wound on his hand. The floor was clustered with sharp objects. Another mystery of this underground world. Probably it was one of those metals spread intentionally in case of an occasion as this had happened.  Master was a few steps away when Clipp spotted a ladder glistening. It disappeared all of a sudden. Clipp locked his gaze on the spot and he saw it reappeared again. As it appears and disappears, Clipp decided to run to it. He was climbing right in the middle when Master presses a button and he was down. Such a hard fall it was that he had broken his left arm. Master took him from his neck and threw him away letting him smash on the wall. Clipp fell down twisting on the floor in pain and terror. He began to shake, to jerk in an uncontrollable spasm. A sudden pain overtook him as Master pulled out his gun and shoot him on his left thigh. Clipp has never been a weak boy. He would always fight to the last atom of his strength. A sudden force took control of him and there he was up in the air. He smashed Master's head on the metal-spread floor as he falls down. Master grabbed for his gun blindly, still in the ecstasy of the crash. He saw it beyond his reach. As he made a feeble gesture to take it Clipp kicked him on the ball, letting him twist on the floor in pain. As Clipp took the gun and headed for the ladder, he saw Blue running toward him, pointing a gun. Blue fired at him. Clipp ducked to escape the bullet. Hiding behind a long wooden box, he fired back. He moved to the ladder as he continued to fire on Blue. He pressed the device he has taken out of Master's pocket and the ladder descent. He fired one more time at Blue as he took his way to the room above.

Clipp slammed the heavy oblong-metal on the rectangle space that serves as an exit. He pushed some buttons on the oblong-metal and there two cylinders on every edge of the oblong metal started to curve with a robotic movement. The oblong-metal moved back and forth and left and right making a robotic buzz that made Clipp covered one of his ears with his right hand. Suddenly he uncovers it to hold his broken arm as it began to ache. After a few minutes of robotic hitches and some movements of metals, Clipp was surprised to saw the exit had vanished. It adjusted itself with the floor and Clipp could not tell where it had been before.

Click here to read Part 3                                                                         to be continued...

Yazar: Bilal Rabiu KOLO

The Missing Point; Chapter 1 Part 3

Master was out of the patient. ''Listen to me boy. I am not here to listen to your courtesies. Finish it off and tell me the god dammed location.

'' As you command'' said Clipp.

''I need another favor if you don't mind'' said Clipp looking up at Master like a little child looking at his giant father.

'' I'll ask stronghead here to open up your brain and send it to your father in his grave. 'You have eaten enough, now tell me where the damnable key is” said, Master. Clipp could feel the tightness around Master's mouth, the lust to possess what seems to be a treasure of a great expense. Clipp had a different concern, though.

‘‘Send Blue to get a glass of water for me and I swear I will tell you everything after I slaked my thirst'' he said.

Master was puzzled. He could not make a sense if this.

‘‘You said you will give me what I want if I gave you what you want. Is that what you what?-food?'' asked Master.

'' I'll tell you what I want as soon as I slaked my thirst'' said Clipp mischievously.

In the course of his stay here, Clipp had noticed that it takes thirteen minutes before someone could get to the kitchen which he thought was just behind the door. Few minutes after Blue was gone, Clipp started to shout with fury saying ''if I give you the key would it bring back my father? I've waited for this moment. I swear to avenge him. What do you get by killing people for some worldly pomp?'' shouted Clipp.

''Enough with it. What do you know about the death of innocents?'' Master shouted back.

Master could still see the face of that cruel man twisting a knife in his mother's stomach, laughing like a maniac, kicking Master's dead little sister.

"Do you know how many innocent people had died for nothing?'' he carried on. '' Your father got involved in something much bigger than him'' he said turning his face to a rectangular space on the wall which serves as a window. '' Besides that, your father shouldn't be alive after being here'' he said after a small pause. To that, he is telling the truth. Clipp could feel that. Master himself doesn't know all the secret that lay in this underground world. ''Everyone has his limit'' Friend would say when he speaks with Master over the phone. Master had never seen friend yet friend sees him where ever he is. At least that was what friend had told him. So Master calls him the almighty. '' I'll get you the key'' Master had promised. 

Now, as Master turned his back facing the place which looked like a window, Clipp grabbed the knife and the fork hitting away from the table in front of him.

It was so sudden that Master found it impossible to believe. Clipp had stabbed the knife through Master's right eye and had butchered Ivy's throat with the fork. Clipp went out of the Meeting Room. But that was only the beginning. Clipp found himself running through an endless darkness- dark as hell. His heart was pounding fast as ever. He was aware that if he keeps running it will push out of his breast. But he had to see the end of the darkness before Master could reach him. He did not see the end of the darkness, however, then he saw Master running toward him, holding his bleeding eye, a torchlight on his hand. A sudden blow hit Clipp so hard that it made him collapsed on the floor. He touched his forehead and felt some liquid running down. He runs his fingers around his chin and felt where his teeth supposed to have been. The pain was so fierce that he was no longer feeling anything. He could not tell whether he was alive or dead. The darkness swallowed him and for a moment he lost all sensation.

Click here to read Part 2                                                                           Click here to read Part 4

Yazar: Bilal Rabiu KOLO

The Missing Point; Chapter 1 Part 2

It was said that his father looked a mess when he was spotted dead in a stream. His skull was without content. One of his eyes was a trench, the other one nowhere to be found. The image haunted Clipp in his dreams for days. That was four years ago, though. Now his father is dead and he alive in an underground room. His limbs were tied and his mouth gaped while the murderer of his father stares at him with unmovable eyes. 'It shouldn't end like this thought Clipp. If he refuses to give info about the key, he is a dead man. Yet he knows nothing about it, nor did he hear his father talk about any key during his lifetime.

So he said'' If you give me what I want, you'll have wanted you to want.’’

‘‘Good'' said Master. ‘‘You are not as pigheaded as your old man. Now tell me, what is it you want?''

Clipp cleared his throat and began. '' First, untie me and then give me some food and a drink to wash it down.''

''Clever boy. It seems they never feed you in the library. Some books are to be tasted they said, others to be swallowed and a few to be chewed and digested. You ought to have eaten those few.'' said Master mischievously.

Blue laughed, Ivy Stronghead chortled. Ivy Stronghead always laughed at Master's jokes though he never finds it funny.

''Blue!'' shouted Master ''see to his demand''

Blue hurried to a door that opens to a large kitchen. In their secret meeting place, Master had made a kitchen and brought three servants to make it alive. The kitchen was two floors below the Meeting Room whereas the Meeting Room was five floors below an outhouse in a midst of a desert- invisible for the human eye. Master had made it invisible by burring it and then covered its surface with a mix of tar, soil, and coal; and on top of it, he spreads a dark color of sand- making it appeared like a rock. There was a set of patterns on its surface- a set of patterns which ancient symbol that can outsmart even the greatest of symbolism. But to get to the Meeting Room it must be solved. Master has always proud himself of this appeasable skill.

There inside the Meeting Room Blue brought a plate of rice, one fork, one knife and a plate of dessert. ''Wolf boy'' said Master '' and be quick about it. Clipp was startled when he saw the knife. He only needed a fork to cut Master’s throat and his friends’ thereafter. Blue the idiot has made it easy for him.

''And here is the juice'' said Blue extending a bottle of plum juice.

'' You are most kind, Mr. Blue'' blurted Clipp over the hot rice.

Click here to read Part 1                                                                        Click here to read Part 3

Yazar: Bilal Rabiu KOLO

The Missing Point: Chapter 1 Part 1

I'll put this metal through your heart' said Master looking down at Clipp, red with anger.

They had kidnapped him an hour ago when he was returning home. Clipp is a gentle youth not more than four-and-twenty. He has been studying in the library for the last three weeks. These men cut him off as he was coming out of the library. They had taken him to somewhere very strange that he could never have imagined existed in his hometown. They had been asking him about something which he doesn't understand;

‘‘Just tell us where your father keeps the key and maybe we will give you a chance to live'' they would say. Yet Clipp has no notion of where this key might be or even what means is. Even if he knew he would not tell. Pigheaded they call him. He never does what he doesn't feel like doing. Everyone in their family is like that. His father was killed because he didn't tell Master what he wanted to here. ''Alas, you could not know what is in my brain by opening it. You would have learned where the key is. It is in a place you would never know'' Clipp's father would say. He would close his eyes and say '' I can feel it. It is in a place you would never expect it to be.'' Master likes jokes but not of this kind. And now he knows this man will tell him naught. Pigheaded they call them. So he said '' sir, would you be so kind as to let us see whether we can find the location of the key by opening your brain?

Master has never hesitated to kill a man since the incident that happened on the second of March 1976.

Master was furious that he couldn't get the information by opening Clipp's father brain. Years later he started following his son.

Master's crew has been waiting since eleven AM and now it's 12 at night still no sign of the boy. They sent one of their men to check on him. Clipp was inside lost in a book. They waited for another hour. Their eyes were fixed on the entrance. Ivy Stronghead hesitated as he saw the boy. Clipp was on the phone giggling with delight. Ivy cast a long glance at Clipp. He failed to come up with something that will convince Clipp to get into the car without any inappropriate practice. So they drove toward him, jerked him in and disappeared off the road.

They waited in the Meeting Room for the master to come. Clipp was tied and gaped yet he was calm an unperturbed. ‘‘You don't have to die so young. You must have a dream as I am seeing you in the library trying to eat all of the books in a few days.'' said Master after his unexpected entrance to the Meeting Room. He pointed the gun toward Clipp's forehead when the boy laughed at his joke. '' I'll split up your brain and see how much is alike to your father's.

Clipp shuddered his mouth a hard line. He cast a hateful glance at Master. A whisper inside him told him to get up and rip up the man's throat. The whisper, however, has forgotten how he was strapped from head to toe.

Click here to read Prologue...                                                  read Part 2 by clicking here....

Yazar: Bilal Rabiu Kolo

The Missing Pearl in the Life of a Beautiful Girl

There was this beautiful girl who lived in a village. She was the most beautiful girl to have ever lived in that village. She was so beautiful that everybody in that village and even people from the nearest villages want her hand in marriage. Because of her beauty, she attracts interests from both the rich and the poor, the kings and princes, the ugly and the handsome, the businessmen and the local workers, but the interesting thing about her is that she always denies everybody.

Whoever proposes to her, she will go like “No, thank you.”

One day, a handsome poor young man in her village proposed to marry her. She looked at him from head to toe and said: “No, thank you.”

This poor young man felt sad and was disheartened by the looks and the answer she gave him.

He thought that maybe she said no because he wasn’t that rich and that he decided to move from that village to the nearest village with the aim of working hard and becoming rich. Having the thought that, he will be rich, come back to the village and propose to this beautiful girl again.

After years of hard work, this handsome poor young man came back to his old village as rich as he aimed to be and asked about the beautiful girl and where she lives. He was directed to her house. Without waste of time, he went straight to the house. He knocked at the door but there was no answer.

He knocked for the second and after the third time, there comes a very short, dirty, and ugly old man opening the door and right after the ugly old man follows the beautiful girl.

This handsome young man was astonished and kept looking at her with a strange face. The first question he asked her was, ‘Who is this ugly man?’ and she answered: ‘My husband’. She made him more surprised and astonished.

But he continued with his questions ‘Why him?’ after all, you are beautiful and you could have married any kind of man you wanted, rich and handsome.

The beautiful girl said to the young handsome man: I will answer your question but before I answer you, I want us to play a game and after the game, I will tell you why I had to marry this ugly man.

So the beautiful girl took this handsome young man to a big garden full of wonderful and beautiful flowers. She said to him, I want you to go into this garden of flowers and get me the most beautiful flower you could find. But the rule of the game is, if you bypass a flower without picking it, you can’t come back for it again.

Meaning you can only pick from the ones in front of you and you can’t come for the ones you have already left. So, it was agreed, and the handsome young guy went into the garden of flowers and started the search for the most beautiful flower he could find for the girl.

The first flower he saw was beautiful and smells good! He wanted to pick that for her but something came into his mind, that, what of if he moves a little bit further maybe he could find more beautiful ones for her.

So he kept on bypassing all the flowers thinking that the deeper he goes into the garden the more there is a chance for him finding the most beautiful flower for her ignoring all the other ones. He continued moving until he got to the end of the garden where the flowers at the end were all dead flowers and not even nice to look at.

He wanted to come back and pick from the previous beautiful flowers but then he remembered the rule of the game which was, there is no going back.

So at that point, he couldn’t afford coming back empty handed so he decided to pick from the dead flowers and he brought it to her. She asked him why the dead flower when there were a whole lot of beautiful ones.

He said: yes I could have picked from all these beautiful flowers the first time I entered the garden but I thought the more I move the more I have the chance of finding the best for you. But before I realized, I was at the end of the garden where there were only the dead flowers and according to the rule, I can’t pick from the ones I already left. So my only option was to pick from the dead ones for you.

Then the beautiful girl said to him, in fact, this is the answer to the question you asked me about my husband. Actually, I know that I am beautiful but I always thought that I will be finding someone better than the people who proposed to me so I kept saying no to everyone. It got to a certain point where I had no other option than to choose from the ugly ones because no one was interested in me again, thinking that my answer will always be a no to them.

THE END

Now it’s your turn…..tell us what you’ve learned from the story in the comment box. Have you ever experience anything of that sort in your life? Let’s learn from each other’s experience.

By: Yaqoub Ali