DAY 12: High-Octane Version

This cute, your-everyday-type-of-chap sashayed to a fairly-used exotic rugs merchant shop. He was keen on getting his hands on one of the lovely Kurdistan, spread out like tapestries to conjure up imageries of a gothic landscape in the mind of the observer.

            “These are all exotic hand-woven masterpieces from far away lands,” the merchant who looked like someone caught in the act of napping with his half-open eyelids, said. “I got a special collection right out of the A Thousand and One Nights.

Our guy whom we’d call Hall wasn’t really impressed. He didn’t have to say so; the expression on his face was a neon sign. But an odd looking rug among the lot caught his fancy. He reached out to touch it and his mental siren went off. Hall, not a superstitious fellow like most men, almost thought he felt something. A protective alien presence perhaps, around the rug.

Hall swayed on his feet. It was undetectable to the merchant who mistook Hall’s lingering about the rug as customer indecision. He seized the moment and moved swiftly into action.

            “I was told by my Arab friends that this rug took Aladdin to paradise.” Disney’s Aladdin and Jasmine were woven through traditional embroidery in chain stitch on the Kurdistan rug. And in the background (elementary, my dear Watson) was Abu, Aladdin’s puckish monkey friend. “You probably never heard the story I didn’t believe it myself when I heard it.”

            “How much does this go for?”

            “This is a state-of-the-art fabric you got here. I’m excited it’s fallen into the hands of a worthy customer. Why, a man of your stature could really make this thing . . .”

            “How much?”

            “Oh, now we gotta talk money. Did I mention this thing got Aladdin to paradise then, returned to earth? Some fool argued Aladdin’s rug never returned and this might be the one made by the evil sorcerer, Jafar. You never want to hang around their type for long or it rubs off on you.”

            “You can stand there and spin your yarn or we can trade.”

The merchant didn’t pause for breath. “I was getting to that part, just trying to let you see the worth of the thing. It’s still quality though, and you know nothing beats quality. Fifteen grand and we have a deal.”

            “Twelve,” Hall said, not taking his gaze off the rug. “Twelve grand. Give or take.”

            “Show me the money or do you gatto use the ATM?” In Lagos, it’s not unusual for customers to get to the ATM after pricing goods, what would be unusual was if they came back for said goods.

Hall paid cash.

The merchant didn’t believe one bit of his own version of the Aladdin story. He just sold himself an area rug, that’s all. As for the rug being of Arabian origin, fair enough and true enough.

Hall went to his house with his exotic rug, a proud and happy customer. Hall lives alone in a low-cost housing project. He set the rug down and spread it out on the floor of his room. Something was different about the rug. At first, Hall couldn’t make it out. Then, gradually, as he grappled with it like a man coming out of deep hypnosis, it came to him. The color of the rug had changed. The Disney characters retained their color depth and warmth except the monkey. Hall believed the monkey was brown, the color of wood when he bought the rug. Now the monkey was pitch black, the color soot.

Hall, who as we know, wasn’t well acquainted with superstition, was a trifle skeptical. “Oh well,” he said. “Sun got in my eye is all.” He spread the rug on the floor in the center of his sitting room. The embroidery of the Disney characters vivid as daylight in the tropics-Aladdin and Jasmine together with arms locked like a couple on their wedding night; the monkey in the background, almost a silhouette.

The next morning, Hall awakes to find the monkey’s color restored to tree-brown. But the monkey is now curled up around Aladdin’s neck in a death-grip.

            “That’s a trifle odd,” he said, as he doubled over to have a closer look. “That monkey . . .” He let the words trail off, shrugged as if that settled all manner of issues then, set about the day’s business.

The monkey bugged Hall the whole day; he found it impossible to take it off his mind at the office. He just couldn’t accept the reality of what he saw before leaving for work that morning.

A week later, Hall got a call from a friend.

            “Hey!” the friend said.

            “Hey!” Hall replied, now the rug came to his mind and he wondered if he should talk about the monkey he had on his back. The monkey that came with the rug. He argued his friend could be trusted. After all, they were childhood pals.

            “Hey, Darrell, I sort of have this cool antic rug. Although, it’s fairly new for an antic.”

            “Huh, huh,” Darrell intoned.

            “Just bought the thing and when I got home, the color’s different. Weird stuff, huh? I thought it was the sun, so I waved if off my mind. The next morning, you see there’s this monkey from the Disney world’s Aladdin in the background of a bigger stitch work . . . in the background, I say. The next morning, the monkey’s around Aladdin’s neck in a death grip.”

            “Quit staying in the sun for extended periods, Hall. You catching a new type of cancer-cancer of the mind.”

Hall couldn’t tell if his friend was serious or just teasing him. He didn’t push the issue. There are times you know a problem won’t go just be talking about it. Hall acknowledged this had to be one of those times.

            “Well, you are sure you saw that monkey someplace else, Hall?” Darrell asked.

            “Yap!”

            “In the background. And in the morning it was gone? Is that what you said?”

            “In the background, yeah and in the morning around Aladdin’s throat, squeezing like it had unfinished business.”

            “Better watch that rug, Hall. Watch the rug and especially that monkey. I gatto go but think about what I just told you.”

Darrell was gone, leaving Hall with a lot more fear than hope; with a truckload of anxiety than courage. “Better watch that rug. Thanks, bro. Thanks a million.”

Anyway, by evening when Hall got home, the rug was totally off his mind. He cooked himself dinner and after watching television a few hours into the night, fell asleep on the sofa. It was more like on purpose since he brought a bed sheet out to the sitting room.

That night, Hall walked the corridors of a nightmare. The feverish, high-octane version of a nightmare. In his dream, the monkey came off the rug and turned his house into the aftermath of a brawl. Hall had a rack where he kept stuff like magazines, the papers and several novels. The monkey was fascinated (God knows why) by these and scattered it all hell to breakfast. At a point in his dream, the monkey leaped on the bed where Hall lay asleep. Then, it peeled back its lips to reveal unearthly fangs and went for Hall’s jugular.

Jerking and writhing like a man strapped to a railroad before an oncoming train, Hall awoke suppressing a scream behind his lips; swimming in his own sweat and his sofa a total jeopardy. The monkey was nowhere in sight. Of course, Hall thought, it’s a dream. He reached out and flipped on the side lamp and this time it took all his willpower to keep from screaming.

His room was a perfect picture of his nightmare. Everything the way he had dreamt it. Hall hurried to get out of his sitting room and his feet got tangled in the bed sheets. He is spilled to the floor backward, the hard impact rocked his body and, his head exploded in pain like a munitions dump set off by a stick of dynamite.

Hall opened his eyes and his head seemed to have been cleared by the fall rather than clouded by it. It’s amazing how things like this worked themselves out, sometimes. He was on his face with a monkey on his back. Hall’s mouth is on the rug and on Jasmine’s mouth. Then, she’s French kissing him. He feels the softness and wetness of her lips; she was real in a way he couldn’t imagine. He yielded to her prodding. She smiled at him and then, something else happened.

The gloss in Jasmines’ hair faded to a hag’s whorl; it became coarse and began to fall off in nasty clumps. Her cheeks caved in and peeled off in layers like an onion bulb in hot oil, to reveal charred gums and rotten teeth. Finally, she disintegrated-imploded and became a bag of bones.

Meanwhile, Hall had backed up from the corpse-like thing. He cawed like a rook, as he tried to vomit. He only managed to slobber. The monkey however, was still on his back and as he attempted to push it off, it took a big chunk off Hall’s arm. He yelled and rolled over. Blood spouted from the wound. He got up to run and hit the floor dead on as the rug shifted under his weight. The carpet riffled like the aftermath of a backwash and then, tossed Hall in the air. He landed with a heavy thud. This set the monkey off applauding and chattering in monkey-speak.

The irony was not lost on Hall; the monkey was like the audience in a circus watching an acrobat perform. The carpet wrapped Hall up and started to squeeze the breath out of him. The monkey leaped on top of him, Hall’s face and neck are exposed. The monkey bares its claws and slashes Hall across the face with it.

He tried to free his hand and get at the monkey but of course, he’s wrapped up like Cleopatra on her way to visit Caesar.

            “Get off me, you pesky monkey. Believe me, you’re one dead monkey, when I get out of this piece of shitty rug.”

But Hall was losing so much blood he felt dizziness encroaching on his mind. It would take a miracle to get him out of this situation alive. Blood, fresh and healthy, gurgled from his wounds in an untidy spray.

The darkness deepened.

Abu, the evil monkey was not done with him, yet. It dug all five claws into his scruff and hung on. Hall yowled, the pain was thunder. And then, the monkey turned his head slowly like a lover in the wake of a deep, passionate kiss and sunk its teeth into his voice box. The blood was the sea, furious and free.

The scream confronted the pain and they intervolved and made misery out of the man. Hall snapped to and realized he had blacked out after falling off the sofa. And all his woes were mere throes of a nightmare.

            “Damn it looked, felt so real. I died in that dream. I felt dead.” Tears fell from his eyes as he realized his trauma was mostly imagination. He was still alive. It felt great to be alive. He got off the floor and the world spun like a wheel around him; he had to hold on to the back of the sofa to steady himself. When he put his palm to the back of his head and looked at it he saw he’d conceded a bruise from his fall off the sofa. “Damn you monkey!”

He shot the rug a momentary side glance and saw the monkey standing in front of Aladdin and Jasmine with its paws raised like an innocent puppy’s.

            “You don’t fool me, you little twerp. You devil monkey.”

There was a glint in the monkey’s eyes.

Hall saw it.

And now he was enraged. “You brought this whole drama on yourself, fool.”

He grabbed up the area rug and took it to his backyard. He poured kerosene all over it and torched it. The flames tasted the fuel and then lapped it up like a ravenous kitten.

He headed off to work feeling good for the first time since his encounter with the carpet.

When Hall returned in the evening, the Aladdin’s rug was back in its spot. Jasmine stood beside a man who didn’t look anymore like than a dog looked like a cat. Hall crossed the threshold and reached the rug. The image of the monkey was still on the carpet, alright. And blood dripped from its mouth and paws. But in the place of Aladdin stood a man in the exact outfit Hall had on him at that very moment. Hall couldn’t tell who it was because his face was a mess.

It had been chewed off.