Way back Then… I was lost.
There is life as we know it. Existence as we have written down in history.
Then, worlds exist simultaneously because time and reality are subjective occurrences.
The time you are in will never interact with another time. It is not because it can’t interact but because you believe it cannot.
Worlds, spiritual, physical, mental, and celestial, are categorized thus because of your beliefs. There are levels to the ability to think, and how you think is directly proportional to your geographic location.
Sometimes, these worlds interact briefly.
Sometimes, time ‘times out’ to embrace time. Time and time again.
The Power That Is allows an interaction so otherworldly (at least from your usual reality) repeatedly come into your experience that you know you are supposed to learn from that glitch in the behaviour of time.
Whenever time stops to kiss time, I call it a portal.
Portals are a doorway to another dimension. A window that allows you to access the improbable.
We step through portals every day. Every human being encounters the miraculous several times a day. As I enlightened, I now believe that as a race, humanity is actually more advanced than we think. We should collectively show more gratitude for how easily we have subdued a planet.
And it came to pass that time came upon another time and decided to stop and exchange pleasantries…
There is an area called the Rift Valley.
The Rift Valley, more specifically called the Great Rift Valley, is a geographic trench that runs north-south down the eastern side of Africa. It results from tectonic movements that have gradually pulled the Earth’s crust apart, creating a series of rifts, valleys, and volcanic mountains. This geological process is part of what is known as rifting, where the Earth’s tectonic plates move apart.
The Great Rift Valley stretches over 6,000 kilometres (about 3,700 miles) from the Jordan Valley in Southwest Asia, through eastern Africa, down to Mozambique in the south. Its formation began in the Miocene epoch, around 22 to 25 million years ago, and it continues to evolve today. The valley is characterized by steep walls, flat valley floors, and a series of lakes, many of which are saline. It is also home to some of the world’s most active volcanoes.
The African portion of the Rift Valley is traditionally divided into two sections: the Eastern Rift and the Western Rift. The Eastern Rift is home to the Ethiopian Highlands, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Mount Kenya, among other features. The Western Rift is noted for its deep lakes, including Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi.
The Rift Valley is a significant geological feature and an important ecological and archaeological region. It offers unique habitats for various flora and fauna, including endangered species. Moreover, the area is a crucial site for paleontological research, with numerous discoveries of human ancestral fossils that have provided critical insights into human evolution.
I was on a safari with a few good men. We were there for personal reasons. We were fellow sufferers of wanderlust that happened to get along.
I was in the location for a ceremony. I was there for an ayahuasca ceremony.
I am a student of thought. I celebrate the mind and its vastness. So when a brother from another continent told me about a rambunctious messenger who had led him through the ceremony, I was interested.
This brother of mine was facing an existential crisis at the time. He pretty much had suicide on the menu. He was looking for the end at the time. Fortunately, what he was looking for was looking for him, too. On-site in the Ethiopian Simien Mountains National Park. A snakebite ushered him into one of his three options – death.
The messenger was gathering mushrooms nearby when the cries of distress from my brothers team members summoned him. What they did not know was that from Nepal to Peru. From Nigeria to Ethiopia, the messenger retrieved souls from the afterlife using his knowledge of healing herbs.
The messenger nursed my brother back to life. It had taken three days, and in that time, my brother went through death, his lifes purpose and an awakening.
I got my brother’s email a week after he departed from the messenger. The messenger was headed toward a religious site within the rift valley. He has assured my brother that if he were to give anyone a message, the message would find such a person.
The person writing this story now is not the man I once was. I usually detest ambiguity. I once stoicly believed in the economy of action and motion. But something about how my brother articulated his email compelled me to buy a ticket to Kenya. It was synchronicity at its finest.
It was obvious that my path led to being part of the safari.
I asked the tour guide about the UNESCO Heritage site within the valley, and we negotiated a private tour to and from the campsite and the religious site. The tour guide brought two armed rangers because I planned to stay the night. This meant that we would be using two off-road fortified pickup trucks.
I prefer to travel alone. But I was not going to drive. I just wanted to sit back and reflect. The cabin of the car I was in was air-conditioned. The other truck was not. It was carrying the security personnel, provisions, gear and first aid.
That visit cost me two thousand dollars and an additional one hundred and eleven dollars for an air-conditioned vehicle.
The heritage site was less than ten kilometres from the safari campsite. Apart from poachers, lions, factions of Al Shabab and ISIL terrorists, it was not too arduous an adventure.
But I was determined to meet the messenger. I was at a crossroads. I had to make an essential choice for the next fifty years.
I’m strange like that; I typically chart projects over decades before chopping the project duration up into two to five-year timelines… Then, I set goals from days into months. My cornerstone was missing. I was flummoxed. My ‘plan’ could only be built with the cornerstone.
We set off one minute behind the advance team at six pm. We were there within ten minutes. The security fanned out to secure the perimeter before clearing my exit from the vehicle.
The religious site had monoliths everywhere. It spanned a circumference of four hundred and twenty meters. It was overgrown around the fringes with banana trees, waist-high grass and saplings.
The middle of the clearing housed a dilapidated mud hut. It must have been a curious edifice because it looked like a house without windows or doors. It had caved in years ago. The locals were terrified of the entire vicinity.
It was considered consecrated ground. Animals that ran into this vicinity were allowed to live. Blood could not be spilt intentionally here. The locals had stories of instant judgment that had befallen transgressors in recent history.
Another lore spoke of women who dared step into the site for whatever reason whilst on their monthly cycle, becoming non-menstruating ever after. Rendering them childless after that. And so the porters, rangers and tour guide all sat outside and assured me that they’d be there whenever (if ever) I emerged from the ruins.
The sun was setting behind me. The skies were reflecting hues of burnt orange and yellow gold.
The air was full of gossip; rotting fruit and carcasses, Queen of the night, citrussy-smelling fragrance from flowers or fruit, dust, petrichor and something else.
Something else like dead air. A stillness.
For me, ‘something else’ reach me, like a vibration.
This ‘something’ radiated toward me like ripples formed when you drop a stone in still water. It is easy for me to locate the epicentre.
That is where the magic is, the point of original contact. That is where the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is. They are all metaphors.
Simply put, always look for the starting point in everything you do. That is where the magic is. Every ripple outside that point of original contact is incidental. They’re like the afterblast shockwaves of a nuclear bomb. Still deadly and pervasive, but imagine the power available at the epicentre? Someone or some people created that type of portal and stepped through that veil on their way to their next waking dream.
If you don’t believe me, ask the moth. The living legend dives into the fire, aware it is a portal to another dream.
Ask anyone you know with an addiction; they all seek the original contact point. That’s all it is; addiction is the karma of an unused portal.
And there, on that day, I approached the epicentre. I knew it was there innately, but a small fire was ahead. It looked like a campfire.
And I could hear an adult male calling out, “Hello, hullo… Can you hear me? Hello?! (insert your preferred curse/swear word here)!”
I had anticipated a different premise than the mystic journey currently unfolding.
And I arrived within sight of the fire. The man on the phone was portly.
I am lying. He was fat.
A fat slob.
And he was short. He had no neck, I could see. And he, for some reason, opted for nudity.
Because I love you, I will spare you a regurgitation of my trauma.
He was so morbidly obese that I had questions. Like, ‘Dude… How? Why?’
He was pacing back and forth, almost stepping on a heap of blankets every time he walked past it.
It was a small fire. Around it was a funny assortment of items.
There was a small bowl of the vertebrae of a small animal. The skull was still attached, but the skeleton looked clean and white. It looked like somebody had painstakingly cleaned it for a particular purpose.
There was a feline of some sort trussed up with fibrous twine and gagged with a rolled-up wad of tyre rubber and twine. The black elastic rubber was rolled around the twine till it was about two inches in diameter. The wad was placed inside the open jaw of the feline and tied with the twine behind its head. Another hangman’s knot went around the animal’s neck, pulling it backwards. I presume that the rest of the twine from the neck stretched to the back of its legs to commit further depravity.
There was a cocoa pod split open.
There was a gourd which had a milky liquid that looked like milk.
And then he noticed me. And froze like he had seen a ghost. The phone slid from between petrified fingers and his ear. I watched it titter on his moobs before bouncing off his sweaty tombstone of a belly and into the fire.
As the flames surged, it lit up his grimace. He now bore verisimilitude to a fearful person who had seen a ghost that had now called him by his first name.
His antics made me turn around to see if something else was happening behind me.
But as I got closer to the fire, it was apparent to me that it was I who was terrifying him. Which was a shame because I came in peace.
Since I saw my approach was causing him distress, I stopped walking forward. I was about a meter from the fire, and he was about three meters away from the fire on his end. The blankets were closer to the fire than he was.
This was different from how I pictured it. And I am one of those people afflicted with silence when I know my words will hurt. This scenario was about to look like a waste of my two thousand dollars (with one hundred and eleven dollars).
I have conquered anger several times. I am a god of consequence, so for yet another poignant reason, I kept my mouth shut.
And as lovingly as possible, I looked in expectation at who I was starting to hope was not the messenger.
And he stood rooted to the spot like a deer trapped in a car’s headlights. His fatty rolls were quivering as he shook in terror.
Listen, I’m a quick study. I know guilt when I see it. I’ve been here and there; human psychology defies divides. And it’s outcome is inevitable. This man was up to no good here. This riffraff could not be the messenger!
The blankets moved when I thought about turning around and leaving this… whatever he was to his tomfoolery.
His eyes opened so much wider that I was concerned for his well-being. And as we all know, when it rains, it pours. Because the blankets suddenly stood up and shook off the wools with a shriek of terror.
This fat fool began peeing himself. Long ropes of fear, the first two sprouts actually touched the fire.
It was a young woman of about my age. She was about five feet two inches tall. The first thing I noticed was that she was wearing fuchsia pink bomb shorts and that she had fantastic legs.
The second thing I noticed was her diastema and her white teeth.
She glared wildly. She tottered and snarled crazily. She looked like she was having trouble focusing, shaking her head and then wiping her eyes with the back of her hands.
She was crying, drooling, coughing and afraid.
No fat man.
No, you sick barrel of evil.
No to hurting people.
No to assaulting this obscenely hot damsel. Not on my watch.
I raised the flare suddenly and fired it in the air.
Between the fact that he was naked and peeing himself and the abject lack of confidence he was displaying. Unsurprisingly, the woman chose to run toward me. She was hugging herself as she staggered toward me. When she got to me, she managed to stop short of bowling me over with her shoulder.
I felt her shudder and shiver as Matthew and the other rangers responded with warning shots in the air. I could hear the shots closer and closer as they rushed in to secure me.
With every shot, she whimpered and then screamed. I held her around the shoulders, and she clung to me so tightly it was impossible to squat and take cover. She was much shorter than me and was hanging on for dear life.
“Here!” I hollered in response to Matthew’s call. As I turned my head to acknowledge Matthew, I saw fatso’s obscene behind disappearing into the dark forest.
THE END.
This short story has been developed to about 50% completion. The whole story, alongside twenty-one others, will be released in my upcoming compilation of short stories, “22 Portals”. Please let me know what you think about the story in the comments.
Buy my most recent book? It is titled ‘111’. The audiobook version was launched on the eleventh of January. It is available here.
