1 A BEAUTIFUL BEFORE AND AN UGLY AFTER.

It was 9: 15 pm, cold December Tuesday in Caritas Ville, and I was just born a young adult with a scanty mind, although a few items were selectively registered on it

Nestled against the teary bosom of an unfamiliar lady who looked far too young to have given birth to anyone, I stoned another quick glance at her flushed face. This time, I was sure I didn't know her.

Although I felt enervated, my mind was active and curious.

"Where am I?"

I darted my eyes away from the lady's face and flicked them around the dimly lit room, speculating to capture every entity in sight in a covetous swoop. But there were a few more strange faces than I could scan in just a glance. Expectedly, I lingered some inquisitive gaze on them.

"Who are these people?"

As my eyes breezed on, searching for nothing, the LED-light monitors were the most conspicuous of the things I had seen, so, it deservedly hosted my attention, albeit for a few seconds. I didn't try to make sense of the values they displayed because the chiming from the ventilators continued to meddle, slowing my mind the same way it was subduing the whimper of a bearded-faced man in tears who just crumbled into a mound.

He looked as one in a great shock, turning pale as the moment aged. Above his head at the end of the wall some foot away, was an inscription in caps neighboring a shimmering silver clock that accurately declared how old the day was. It read: Intensive care unit. That registered.

My mind got even busy, piecing that to whatever else my eyes had seen, and busier trying to make some sense off them.

My eyes flew up my left shoulder but would slow down when they saw two more in white robes, fingers in gloves and faces masked securely off. In addition, there was a faint smell of antiseptics coffered in the chilly air whiffing around the room. That also registered. Now, it made sense where I was. The next task was much harder - to resolve my identity and link it to these lugubrious countenances around me.

"Who am I? I cooed feebly.

No surprises, babies' first words are usually treated differently. The question was attacked with multiple answers, in unison. The suppliers stated how they were related to me with the urgency that left me thinking that I had died as a result of unanswered questions in my first life.

"I am your sister" ejected the lady clinging onto me.

"I am your father" the old man with spongy beards chipped-in in a hoarse voice.

"I am your brother" the younger man imputed too, harmonizing the chorus with none of them beating each other to it.

"Apparently, I am not a baby. I must have been sick…maybe dead" I thought after I processed all that I had gathered. At the thought of death, my head swum badly; It seemed the initial energy surge that I first felt when I woke was depleting fast. I must have used it up taxiing the question from the realm of thought.

Maybe I gulped it gathering the loads of other questions that littered my mind, because it was becoming increasingly hard to live the life I had barely got. Laboriously, I dragged a look in the opposite and there stood the young man - a younger version of the man who still heaped him-old-self on the floor. He was Lyon, he earlier identified as my brother.

I mustered what was left of me to switch glances between him and my father a few times as though I had to choose between his boyish charming face and its bearded older counterpart plummeting in one big morsel meters away from the spot he stood.

I alternated glances between them a few more times before resting a lazy-hazy gaze on the older man.

Preferring to tape my gaze on his rather less attractive face wasn't unconnected with the tears I saw streaming down his cheek. He had stopped crying after I spoke. However, his pale face had almost assumed the same color of his dense beards - gray. I made an effort to say something to him but it ended in a big heave. I hoped it translated to "so, where's my mother?"

A hand in white gloves wasn't done placing back the nasogastric tube over my nose when my eyelids tripped and fell, shutting me off light. I felt weary and soon, the beeping and the silent sniffling of the lady sounded miles away.

I would wake a minute later to brighter illumination in the open yard beyond the room. It became less cold as the day matured. It even became sunny when the day peaked.

The blue curtains were unfurled and the windows slid liberally open. A mild breeze twitched an errant strand on Martha's full bunch. I looked pass it and stared into the maturing daylight. Instantly, it dawned on me that I had actually slept into another day.

Apparently fascinated by the beauty held in the landscapes, colorful flowers and well-tended trees compelled to bow in respect to nature, I stared on curiously.

Although none of the things outside of the room looked particularly familiar but nothing did look absolutely strange compared to the faces that hedged me about in the room; even after they had brightened considerably.

I wished I could have them answer the question I asked earlier one more time. It felt a repeat would help me in being sure they were a people I was supposed to know.

"I don't understand any of these. If I hadn't died, I must have lived before." My first thought after I woke. There were quite some other random thoughts that didn't make so much sense as they trickled in. Like I said earlier, my mind wasn't altogether empty. I knew numbers, followed orders, and had developed senses; even a grown body-one they said to be beautiful.

"Hey, beautiful…good morning." Martha greeted servilely still sitting in a chair next to me, interlocking my fingers with hers. The salutation confirmed my initial thought of having slept into a new day. In response, I let out a low sigh, as my mind raced off. "I like this lady. I like how much of warmth she exudes towards me."

Erratically, it drifted quickly to "what brought me here and how long have I been here?

I am sure that I have lived some part of this same life before where these people knew me.'' I convinced myself in the exhausting end of the heckling journey.

********************************************

Life for the greater percentage separates into a 'beautiful before' and an 'ugly after' or vice versa with only a smaller fraction having it differently. Pertinently, what side one meets first on arrival depends largely on the roles of the agents of fate mediating the extremes, and especially, the eventual choices of an individual. Let's detour and tie up my rebirth.

The doctor deemed me fit to go home weeks later after close-monitoring me for good signs. "The results of her tests are positive. She relates cognitively alright. She could go home whenever you are ready. Remember we are just a phone call away, Mr. Albert" He suggested after making a carelessly written list and handed to his second.

He slacked the gloves off his fingers and disappeared behind the shut door after dumping the gloves in the bin.

Before I left the hospital, my father surrounded the room with photos - photos that captured the stages of the lives of everyone thought important to me, strategically displayed in their numbers. Some other ones were mounted on the tables on either side of the bed, which held the memories of every stage of my life before the present.

Noticeably, most of the latter had horses or dogs clinging to my side. I, a kind of love how it made me feel.

Furthermore, conversations were subtly tailored to dwell more on significant events of the past. Again, lots of questions and counter-questions trusted to help retract me to the status quo were asked.

During these periods, they painted my life for me in brilliant words to resemble one that shot off in privileges- all beautiful.

I was said to be happy, energetic, loud and witty growing up.

A host of images captured in a thousand pictures in the family album corroborated the tale. I was described as having the surest quick-witted dance steps that pasted grins on the glummest face- facetious.

And to that also… I trusted the tangible proof of the photographs that aptly captured the moments so described.

I have since returned from the hospital; driven into a dreamy beautiful place with everything to die for.

Seated at the front next to my father, I took some liberty to look and appreciated the beauty held by the airy and greenery environment the car glided into. He could barely kill the engine when stewards flooded around us.

Two men who could easily be seen as more important judging by the crests pinned to their suits at breasts region swung the car doors open and held them.

They took a bow and made ways for tens of beautiful ladies who swarmed out, dancing lively to a din of samba percussion, towards us.

They casted some glittering foils materials in the air and along the entrance as we trailed them into a glitzy banquet hall.

The rest of the teaming stewards flanked the aisle as we walked through to the foot of the elevator. Frankly, they were everywhere, or, they were cheering from everywhere as we drifted leisurely on.

While procession lasted, I was unsure about how to respond to all of that, given that I had no experience to consult. All I wished for was to follow the impulse of the moment and hop down the car, run around, basking in the scented open yard after a kaleidoscope bunch of little creatures drifting randomly about.

It had been two weeks and I relived daily the warm welcome of the first day each time a steward reverently bowed to ask if I wanted anything. I have known no wants and nothing suggested I ever would.

Life at home emphatically bequeathed credence to what I was told, although there were questions that hadn't been answered. No, whose answers didn't add up. I simply ignored the undying nudge to ask them again and rather focused on the beauty that capped off these eyes twinkled with light and the many lips twisted in smiles everywhere around me.

Interestingly, just a little afterwards, I found out that I could be, almost involuntarily, one or all of those things I was called. Then, I knew I was ready to be that whom I was told I was. I embraced all the love I was tossed with. By the mid-February, I had started to live in the direction of the tide of the life I now knew a young adult.

I did just little to add deliberateness to the innate propensities I dabbled into daily as they manifested. I prioritized laughter and funny behaviors that spread fits of laughter to light up the most scrunched faces. I made my giggles to cause good-intentioned humor that didn't make a jest at anyone or situation.

Additionally, I did find out that I was as adventurous and confident as I was carefree, maybe deviant. So, I explored, sailing through my beautiful after giddily and people were easily swayed by my charm.

However, my father wouldn't stop walking on the egg shell. He feared that such buoyancy made a dangerous combination with a loss of memory.

"Such level of flair as you have, pitched together with your inability to recall even an enemy is unsafe for you, my angel."You need a totally new environment. He said thoughtfully, dragging the 'totally' unusually longer to emphasize its importance.

The condition chiefly formed part of why he was never going to let me leave his sight when I first returned.

I was home-schooled to finish from the High School hampered by the death that made a bargain for my life. He also moved weights and brought other comforts closer home, equipping the gym house and restocking the library.

Furthermore, he beefed up the security necessitated by the event of my abduction.

Afterwards, he would do everything he could to keep my siblings and me together and under personal close watch until when he grudgingly conceded and let my siblings go to Caritas a few years ago, when it became glaring that he no longer could keep them.

I have probably made you wondered what happened to me, aimed a pinch at it far too many times that I should have told the tale already, right? Let me let you into the account from Martha's viewpoint according to what she heard from steward.

"Your affinity to the animals tracks back to Light as a baby. In other words, at different stages of your life, you have had a dog that you walked about or a horse you rode, daily. There was this little Bernese mountain puppy called Opah, he was your favorite whenever you took a walk.

So, on the fateful November evening, you walked Opah through the garden, tugging on the end of the leash. The steward whose narration served as your last seen testimonial had it that Opah and you hopped after the butterflies around the park, playing happily. The play subliminally led you both heading to the boarders of the ring and the safari."

"They hopped jubilantly around the park for a while before the dog made a run towards the stadium. It barely was a moment after that episode that I noticed that her usual minutes had long elapsed and went in the direction I had seen them go, but they were nowhere to be found."

"So, that evening, Martha continued, panic spread across the home on the wings of the news of your disappearance. Swiftly, search parties were dispatched around the farm and into the Safari.

However, they would return shortly with the worst news we ever heard, "she is nowhere within the farm perimeters." But Opah was found mincingly slashed into bloody shreds.

They were not many security guards in the home at the time as they are today, or were the ones on ground as equipped. Therefore, our father made an urgent contact with his friends in the government. Soon, the military drafted a search team spearheaded by one Scott and the hunt began.

In no time, they had combed the Safari looking for you…

"…Do you mean this same Scott…Jean?" I heckled agitatedly, usurping and claiming her speech turn.

"Yes", she affirmed. Seeing how bewilderment had masked my face, she let out a small humorless chuckle. She was aware of what my thoughts on the man were. She knew me well.

"Something good, actually, usually comes out of Nazareth, you know…" She alluded and continued. "A swift thorough search through the Safari was executed in light's speed and what was found compounded the panic that hung over the home- you were not found.

The house lost its sparkle. Material darkness wore over the atmosphere.

All night long, we sat shaken to our cores, praying that you'd be found, alive. No movement, steward or associates. Works around the farm was abruptly suspended. The home was lifeless without you. Everyone literally paused or held their breath the entire night.

We were bunched about our father in his bedroom till the early hours of the next morning. He was still visibly shaken by the time a search helicopter radioed in to have spotted two SUVs burrowing through the crude road in the heart of the pine reservation beyond the Safari looking bound for Bourdilon, suspected to have a connection to your disappearance.