Emotional Arcade

7. MONACHOPSIS

Monachopsis. That was the exact feeling that engulfed Tunmise's being that Thursday evening as she paced all over her room. She had this subtle feeling of something being out of place. She knew what caused the feeling but her mind had refused to accept it. She wasn't ready to take such a blow, though something in her kept telling her to prepare herself for it.

"Where is that girl?" Mrs Banks asked, her chest heaving as she breathed heavily, coughing in the process as she took large strides to search for her daughter who was somewhere, hiding.

"Elizabeth Tunmise Enitan Banks! If you don't come out and I find you by myself ehn!" She hollered, moving her cane frantically in the air. She stood akimbo, glancing around the house from the balcony in the house, where she stood.

Tunmise felt the hair on her neck and arm rise, causing goosebumps to appear on her skin as her mother's voice reverberated around the house. The way her mother called her name, she knew she was in deep shit.

The smell of burnt food which circulated around the house, further infuriated Mrs Banks, fuelling her to 'knock some sense' into her daughter's head; which was her way of indirectly saying, beating her senseless. And her daughter's hiding was not helping matters to ease her angered state. If anything, it only aggravated it.

Tunmise hid behind one of the shelves in her library which was situated at the grand floor of her house. She couldn't stop her 12 year old self from biting her nails, a habit she picked up when she was younger, doing so whenever she was nervous.

"I pray the Lord my soul to keep." She muttered over and over.

Tunmise felt minor aches in her body due to the way she stayed and as a result, decided to change her position. But then saw it as a wrong move when a few books came tumbling, making a loud noise as it came in contact with the ground.

"Oh shit." She mumbled, as tears stood in her eyes. There was no way her mother didn't hear those books fall, coupled with the fact that she had left the door open, thinking that her mother would've probably caught her if she had wasted her time closing it. At that moment, she regretted not closing it.

"Ehen! Very good! Ọlọ́run mi ti sọ ọ́ di mímọ́!" Mrs Banks coughed, her agile self running down the stairs in a bid to get to her daughter.

"What were you thinking of ehn... You this girl? What were you thinking of that made you to almost burn my house down? Omo asiwere! Answer me o." Tunmise stared at her mother, all shades of fear written all over her face. The tears which stood in her eyes had begun to roll down, drop by drop, her heart beat accelerating. She coughed.

"It was just meat! It was just meat I told you to steam for crying out loud! And you burnt it... Why... What is..." She struggled to talk but couldn't do so properly due to cough.

"What is your problem ehn?" She managed to say. "How many strokes should I give you so that next time you won't forget bayi?" That statement alone caused tears to flow uncontrollably out of her eyes. If there was one thing she dreaded, it was cane and her mother knew it and that was why she did this. She only used the cane on her children whenever they had done something extremely wrong.

Just then, she remembered Feyi and Jason, her elder siblings. 'If they were here, they'd have talked mom out of this,' she thought as she nervously rubbed her palm together. She wondered why they had chosen that particular time to go out with their friends. Beads of sweat had already formed on her head.