Rebellion

4. Fading Void

“It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.” – Jonathan Safran Foer.

•••

Dayo jacked up the music volume in the car – to drown out the uproar of chaos outside. It was a typical Monday afternoon – and it was accompanied by the collective misdemeanor of road travellers and drivers. On a normal day – the slurs and jabs would have induced some humorous feeling in him but not today.

Today, he had a lot on his mind.

He had resumed work fully as scheduled at the publishing house, and to say the day was hectic – was being ironic. It was actually free and not quite as hammering as he thought it would be. To be candid, he had no idea his publishing house was so massive and developed like it was. Yeah, he had appointed his friend whom he had knew since college as Editor-in-Chief and had also being pumping in a lot resources that were needed, but he had quite underestimated the sort of duties they took on in the country as a whole.

Apart from the fact that they published the most popular and mainstream novels in the country, they still undertook a vast variety of publishing which included – Magazine covers, Newspapers, School textbooks and notebooks, Tracts for religious bodies and even packages and packs for food products. The diversity of the house as a whole was really bizarre, and he didn’t know if such could be called a publishing house anymore. Of course he had raised the point with Charles about the large variety of stuff they were doing, but when his friend showed him the large figures of revenue the house was generating – then he started to reason a bit with them.

It wasn’t like the money could effect any amount of reasonable change in his financial status, though. He had earned over a hundred million dollars in royalties globally, and hadn’t touched a single penny from his earnings. The rest of his net-worth stemmed from his numerous amount of endorsements, and the money – the various conglomerates paid him annually for being their public representative was more than enough to cater for his needs.

He hadn’t harbored any thought bordering on worry about financial issues. He might not exactly be the world’s richest man or even a billionaire but he had more than enough, especially when his earnings were converted to Naira – he could afford virtually anything he wanted.

Except – the normal life, of course.

Oh, how he missed the days when he could walk down the pavement of any street without getting glances of acknowledgement thrown his way and a few occurrences of pleasantry extension towards him. When he could walk into the mall like a normal person, and get the trademark scorn and frown that was always plastered on whoever’s face that was behind the counter. When he would walk into the bank and meet a really long queue of people, and go on to groan about favored individuals usually females – collectively with the people on the line; these days it was reversed, and he was one of the factors why people groaned in banks.

Normalcy had totally vanished.

He sighed once more, as he maneuvered the steering of the car towards the left and proceeded into the intersection. It was late in the evening already, and he was supposed to be heading home – but he wasn’t exactly. No, he was heading to the pharmacy where he had been given the sleep medication prescription – two days ago.

Of course, the drugs were appropriate and it would seem they were even more efficient – owing to the fact that he had slept very soundly in the ensuing days of the meeting with the consultant. So, he shouldn’t exactly be heading back there. Logic didn’t dictate that he do so. But for some reason, he was.