DISSOLVE TO stage. Lights, camera, action! Adrenaline pumps! Music swells! Strobe lights intersect at the gaping entrance of the runway specially constructed for this event. No one could feel more powerful striding down the columns of seasoned mahogany strips if they tried.
DISSOLVE TO backstage. Shrill commands and curt directions ring through the air. Frazzled assistants make last-minute adjustments to the ruptured seam here and the missing button there. One model by the mannequin sizes up another by the mirror as the latter pulls her thick plaits into place and reapplies a fresh coat of blood-red lipstick. A designer, renowned for his out-sized ego at odds with his diminutive height, storms past, well into another of his infamous tantrums. His ill-used assistant trudges behind him miserably as his curses rain through the air, searching for a target and landing heavily on her. She snarls angrily as another lesser-known designer pats her bottom lecherously as she passes by.
DISSOLVE TO audience. The hungry paparazzi snake through the rows of the seated elite, hoping for a golden shot, or shots, that will land them that aggressively coveted bonus. Raucous hoots and guffaws emerge from the very front of the room where the club of executive billionaires is seated. The eligible rich men—-unmarried and married, young and old, wise and foolish—-exchange boasts and bets about who among them will be taking the latest most-wanted model anywhere but home tonight. In the first row, the commissioner and his entourage down yet another round of the vintage champagne ordered and reserved months in advance for the occasion. The corner beside them is filled with ladies of all colors, shapes, and sizes, hoping to luck out on a payday. If not the commissioner (never mind that he married his fourth wife mere weeks ago) or one of the many political elite scattered here and there around the room, then surely, a member of the billionaires’ club could be settled for. The rest of the room is filled with people who do what they know how to do best – make money at the expense of a great number of unfortunate others.
DISSOLVE TO stage again. The host climbs onto the elevated platform and the many conversations die down in muted anticipation. The heralded dinner-cum-fashion show is being held in honor of the opening of yet another refinery in the Niger Belt, and it is about to begin.
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CUT TO less than a mile away from the venue. The plaintive cry of a child rings through the sounds of the fanfare in the distance. His mother sighs in worry as she places yet another wet rag on the child’s burning forehead. The doctor, who visits every two months from the neighboring community, has diagnosed the child with some big-name disease, cholera, he called it, from drinking polluted water. She chuckles bitterly. Where else were they to get water from? Heaven? There has been no water supply for seven months running. Her older child lights a candle and murmurs something about it being the last one in the house. There has been no electricity supply for the past year and a half. The father sits outside, staring unseeingly into the distance. He has been jobless for three years and counting. All the crops he had sown earlier in the year on the minuscule plot of land he inherited from his great-grandfather are ruined. Another pipeline ruptured yesterday.
CUT TO the ramshackle house two doors down where a middle-aged woman sits alone in the darkness. The Bitter Widow is what the neighborhood calls her. A month ago, a mob of zealous youths had gone to ravage the pipelines and the resulting fire had wiped away her whole family in the space of a day. Her husband and the two elder sons had died instantly, their corpses yet to be salvaged to date. The youngest son, barely breathing, had been rescued and his tarred body brought home where he died in his mother’s arms minutes after. They say her mind has not been right since. She sits in the same spot day and night, staring blankly into an invisible void. At rare intervals, she wanders to the market, unwashed and unkempt, laughing wildly, calling for her sons to come out from their hiding places, trilling their pet names as though they were playing a morbid game of hide-and-seek. Would death not be better than the life she is living now? Even her worst enemies wish that for her.
CUT TO the parking lot of the expansive luxury hotel where the event is being held. A sizable number of young men gather around the shadowy curb at the back of the hotel. Anger and longing fill their jaded eyes as they take in the expensive cars decorating the lot, cars with price tags much more than all of their lives put together. This is the life they should be living, a life these rich elite have snatched away from them. It is their land, their birthright, their oil…and yet they are starved in the mouth, in the stomach, in the mind, while the strangers feed fat. Their gift has been turned to a curse. The soft, pretty, silky promises, handed to them by the government they have entrusted the land to, have been sharpened to hard, ugly, iron lies that stab them in the front and back. Death, poverty, starvation, the suffering sickens them. Someone swears on his mother’s grave in bitterness. The emotion mounts and resonates through the group. They are hungry men–hungry for food, for drink, hungry for life, hungry for something more, something better, hungry for what they believe they deserve. Hungry men are angry men.
Cutlasses scrape on concrete, kerosene slicks onto the ground, the reek of local gunpowder in the air. The paths of oil and fashion are about to collide.
© Lara Brown, 2020
Photo by Dave Morgan from Pexels
Worlds via Words 