A night that haunted me for years

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This is my entry to the supernatural writing contest organized by @jerrybanfield.

This is a recall of a memory I would have rather forgotten, an experience that haunted me for nights and made it difficult for me to use a bath. Funny but true

My Near Death Experience…

Before this incident, you should know I come from a very religious background. My parents were staunch Christians and so were the neighbors. I’m talking about four hours of churching and shouting prayers at least five days a week. My mother would always be cross with me because I prayed silently.
“Do you expect him to hear prayers in your head?” She would rant but in our native dialect of course.

I was young then and I have six siblings. We were raised religiously, often caged from the real world. Since I came of age of sentiency and understanding, I never really embraced Christianity. It was all a little abstract for me. I knew there was someone upstairs we were obligated to and if you don’t fall through with obeying commandments and churching you end up going to a fiery pit where you burn forever.

That was never a pretty picture in my head…
So I did what they said I better do…

But then I finished from secondary school and enrolled at a University…Finally! Free at last! Free to make my spiritual decisions, live free and make friends how I want…right?
I MADE LOTS OF FRIENDS, GOOD OR BAD…
I was the kind of person that liked to have a center in all things, especially friendships. I didn’t like to lose friends, I had already spent much of my life caged and feeling lonely…
Some of my friends…okay, most of my friends did drugs, had sex and did all the immoralities the Bible frowned upon…

My senses would constantly be screaming… “GET AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE!” but I did not want to be frowned upon by my friends or seem uncool. So I would hang a little longer…

Now…The night that haunted me for months...
It was a night pool party to hold at a hotel, which meant lots of boys, booze, drugs and bikinis…another outfit my background frowned upon…but I forced myself into it anyway, willing to please my girlfriends and go boy hunting.

Now you must know that prior to this event, I hadn’t had any hard drugs like crack, ecstasy, morphine or what not. Did a few blunts of weed here and there though but most importantly, I did not KNOW HOW TO SWIM.
All my friends were swimmers though and I figured I could just float about in a lifesaver and everything would be fine.
There was this boy I had a crush one. A medical student, comical persona, tall, chiseled jaw, hard abs…He was like a movie star in real life. Really.

But he was also every other girls dreams too…
Also, I had caught off from parents once I had moved to College. I wanted to be faraway from their overbearing prowess and so most times, they could not reach me through phone calls and often had to get through to me by sending messages through my cousin.
My coming to that party was mostly to see him and hope he would see me. I was messed up like that, he was the first guy that had ever genuinely talked to me.

I’m not ugly or anything. Sometimes I’ve been honored with compliments such as pretty that would make my head swoon but I just knew I was plain and I had been caged all my childhood and through my adolescent years. There was no boy secretly blowing my phone or no one to sneak off to at night.
So…

He was there at the party in all his glory, turning heads and making me die over and over again.
The party starts fine and I hang around by the pool, everything was going according to plan except that Ubong was not looking at me.
Ubong is his name by the way.

He does not notice me till we’re halfway through the party. I’ve been watching him, chugging on booze and do a series of different blunts. Then he approaches me. My heart stops. Literally.
He starts small talk with me, flashes a smile or two, knocks me dead, out and cold. Even tells me I’m pretty. I’m foolishly at my breaking point again…

Then he asks me if I would like to do something special and that I look like I’m not having fun…
I agree…at this point, I would agree to crawl to mars for him.

So he passes me a small paper, bearing a queer white powdery substance. I thought it was crack and again my conscience screamed but at the same time his charming eyes teased…and won. I leaned slightly and snorted the delicate substance feeling it sting my airways.

He said some encouraging words and asked me to dance with him. I think I agreed, not sure but soon we were rocking to the blaring Jamz. It took a minute or less for me to start feeling different. Really different, I was moving sluggishly, like a clown having a bad day but Ubong did not seem to care. The music began to sound queer and my vision blurred. I was freaked out of my mind.

IN MY HEAD, I WONDERED WHAT I HAD GOTTEN MYSELF INTO

I began staggering and I would bump into him. He would laugh. My limbs were stiffening and the first pangs of dizziness gripped me. I wanted to tell him but I could not speak right. He said something and went off…

Then I felt myself was falling backwards.
I’m not sure I remember falling into the pool but I could feel myself sinking, struggling, unable to move my heavy limbs or scream… until I was gulping the water, snorting up water, gagging.
I was so sure I would die. I was so sure I was going to the fiery pit I dreaded. I remember screaming in my head, “God save me, please!” despite the pressure in my head…
Then I woke up at the hospital and my parents were there, holding each other and crying with the church pastor…

I later found out I had taken ketamine, a big dose of it. The police got Ubong but that was another tumultuous story I don’t want to go into.

I sincerely feel I’m lucky to be alive. I was a party with coked out friends who could not have noticed me go missing. I was saved by a hotel attendant who happened to be coming by for no apparent reason. If he hadn’t come by at that exact time, I would have died or worse...
I've seen people die for much less.

I don’t feel God is abstract, he is everywhere and he hears little prayers, even from his children that have become distant.

That hotel attendant could have been doing anything else at that moment. He could have been hitting on any girl, for Godsake.
It was a party...
But he wasn't and for me that was enough. That made me feel someone was watching out for me.

I don't think God has to do something supernatural for you to notice his input. He uses people around us.

Since that day, I have not gone a day without praying but i still don't pray hard like my parents. I still feel God hears small prayers as well too...

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