CHOICES

I have over the months struggled with the idea of returning to blogging but time won't just let me. Man must wack! No food for lazy lol. Well, due to some certain insight I have resolved to start blogging again. I missed here and I learnt a lo
t. I miss all you guys( #youknowyourselves) Below is a short story I wrote a while back. By the way, I'm a freelance writer and I need more writing jobs and opportunities o! Hope you enjoy it.

Besides playing chess the only thing Jamiu did good was playing chess. From the early age of 9, Jamiu would frequent the local catholic priests, raptured in the mystery and magnificence of the game, he would watch keenly as they played. 'Chess, a game of deep thought, calculations and choices' the missionaries -who had left their comfort, always said to Jamiu.
In Nigeria the elite played chess, Jamiu's class fancied draughts. Aged pot bellied men would sit on opposite ends of a bench with a draughts board in the middle; playing with one hand chelsea london dry gin in the other, chatting, cursing and gossiping their lives away. Their young ones preferred thuggery, girls, patronizing video gaming shops and fiddling with drugs and alcohol. They had nothing to do with the mentally taxing. Jamiu dropped out of Aunty Bose Secondary School. His business studies teacher once asked him if fishery was an extraction, manufacture or service business, he stuttered 'mani, mani, manifashure'.
Jamiu thought nothing but chess. He literarily ate chess. He would miss lunch gazing at white and black plastic images ceaselessly for hours, muttering to himself. He would move a piece, stand up and switch to the opposite end of the board and then move an opposite colored piece. Mama Risi - his mother, would hopelessly stare at him, place her two hands on her head and move her head; left, right, left, right. Tears streaming down she would let out a pathetic hiss. She thought her son had gone mad. Emeka was making some money for himself trading, Lamidi was a conductor. He made #1,100 per day. Bisi had started her own paraga joint. China even sponsored himself to the University. Kunle alias black tiger was now in the agbero business. He put a girl in the family way and his mother would soon become a grand mother, mama Risi thought. She lamented her son's madness; always talking to himself, playing with images that looked like 'shigidi' to her. She suspected iya kunle. They had had a quarel. Iya kunle must have bewitched Jamiu she thought.
Jamiu's drunk father didn't
care whether Jamiu was Esu odara's puppet or not, he simply kicked Jamiu out, to fend for himself. Life was a game of chess, life had played, it was now Jamiu'
s move.