1000 Short Stories

Story 5: New Normal

New Normal
Inspired by Khalid

Tayo's first routine after pushing his eyes open every single morning was to reach for his iphone XR and his last routine before closing his eyes to sleep at 4am the next morning was to drop a meme and his phone righ after. One morning he was demon scrolling through Instagram while brushing his teeth in front of the mirror when his phone fell into the Water closet and disappeared into the bottomless pit of the ceramic sewer.

He froze.

For a minute, he felt like his life was completely over.

He began to shake, then his brush fell from his hand right after his phone but he didn't flinch.

"Ah!" He screamed and fell on his knees right in front of the water closet.

Awero his mom was having a silent prayer for her son in her room when she heard him scream. She flew up and ran straight to his room in panic.

"KILOSHELE! OMOTAYO! KILODE!" she yelled in panic but no response came. The only thing she got near to a response was small sniffles and it came from her son's bathroom. She pushed the halfopen door and found her son's head bowed in front of the water closet. "OMOTAYO! Are you alright?!" She began to reach for him but he looked up at her before her hands could connect to him.

"Mummy, please help me call the plumber!" Tayo pleaded and his mom immediately wore a confused frown on her already wrinkled face; from the look of him, he was perfectly fine and his eyes were dry.

"Why did you scream like that?" She inquired in Yoruba.

"My phone; toilet. My phone has entered the toilet mummy!"

Awero froze for a second. She scanned the bathroom, waiting to see a sign of blood or something.

"Are you serious? That's why you screamed like that? That's why you made me stop my prayer?"

Tayo paused to look at his mum like she was the crazy one.

"Mummy I said my iPhone just fell down the-,"

"You're not alright!" She cut him short and thundered out of the room in rage as she insulted him endlessly in Yoruba on her way out.

"Ah!" Tayo watched his mother dissapear in awe.

'does she not understand the gravity of what has just occured?' he pondered with his eyes glued to the water closet.

"What is she supposed to understand exactly?" He heard a voice out of the blue. Tayo froze and began to look around, there was no one in the three bedroom apartment asides from his mum and the voice he'd just heard sounded nothing like her. "Hey! Look inward, I'm you...I'm your head voice."

"What the hell?" He said in shock, still scanning the room for the prankster.

"Seriously, Tayo, stop being extra  ridiculous than you already naturally are. I literally just told you that I'm your head voice, no one can hear you aside from me and vice versa.

Tayo started wondering if his phone going down the sewer had sparked up some sort of mental break down. He began to panic.

"There's no need to panic Tayo; relax, I mean it's not as if you have a choice anyway; anyone you talk to about this will literally think you've lost your mind." The head voice informed him with with an additional chuckle at the end of the sentence.

"What do you want from me?!"

"Will you believe if I tell you that I'm actually here to save you from having an unnecessary mental breakdown?"

"The hell?"

"There he goes, repeating something he heard on Instagram simply because it sounded cool and the person who said it appeared cool."

"What are you talking about?' Tayo paused.

"I'm talking about the fact that I've watched you spend an entire year acting like a million people every single day; believe it or not, but we used to have conversations like this before you knew about technology. In fact, you loved having conversations like this-- your mum used to think that you were possessed; I remember how she informed some pastors to pray for you about your addiction to speaking to yourself, it just beats me how she literally hasn't called a pastor on you these past years."

"Why would she do that?" Tayo began to wonder and for a minute he began go wonder again if he'd lost his mind but then, the nostalgia of how he used to talk to himself 10 years ago hit him and he started wondering where everything went.

"Are you seriously asking why she should call for a deliverance into your life? Bro! You are addicted to technology! It's almost like witchcraft! Think about it! You've graduated 2 years ago and all you've done since then is scroll through instagram--do not even tell me that you're gathering a skill or something, you can decieve everyone around you, but you cannot decieve me and you should come to terms with that fact already, I mean, I ma you and you are me. You spend hours comparing your life to that of other people who probably deviced better means to butter up their messed up lives better than you; you literally have no time for anyone or anything, all you do is press and scroll. When last did you actually speak with your mother and enjoy the conversation? Have you forgotten that she is a cancer survivor? When last did you call up that good friend of yours and have a reasonable conversation that didn't have a single thing to do with money or wishful thinking? All you do all day is fill and clog your head up with insignificant things that have zero values--and before you tell me about how the world is now an internet globe or whatever, ask yourself if that has ever applied to any aspect of your life asides from your phone. In fact, the only thing you've enjoyed from the internet asides from monitoring the life of other people has been Uber and delivery, unnecessary expensive expenses that you can easily avoid by getting the FUCK UP and doing the work! Oh! This is a dream by the way."