May 17, 2008

Last Note

Dear Family,

I'm sitting down at my desk, watching my recorded interview playing on BBC. My attention is actually divided between the interview and the song playing on my ipod. I'm listening to songs by Nickelback for the last time- they are my favourite band. I'm wearing my five thousand dollar Giorgio Armani suit. I remember the audience in the BBC studio cheering as I finished reading from my fifth book Splurge. I'm almost twenty, and I have five bestsellers under my Alligator skin belt and twenty five million dollars in my bank account. I'm almost twenty and I have more money than I ever dreamt we would ever have collectively. Yet, I'm not happy. I am burdened by insecurities and a surprising sense of unfulfillment. I have nine family members, a few good friends and plenty sycophants, yet I feel so alone. I walk alone, I think alone, I feel alone. I'm bombarded mentally with things percieved and things that are real. I have got this void inside me.

I remember eight or ten years ago, when Bon Bon Bum sweets were my opium. At one dollar each, it was an expensive habit I tried to keep. The only thing that prevented it from becoming an addicition was the morbid fear that I would lose my smile, not Papa's incessant ranting. That was then. Now i'm in control of a lot of money. I can afford the real Opium and it takes me really high. I don't know why i'm remembering all this...they say at the end, you remember the beginning. My first note- yes, I have wanted to do this for a while now, wasn't as organized as this. My writing was cramped and frenzied as tears ran down my face, in a way that makes me cringe now that I remember it. Now, I write with somewhat unnerving calm.

I have written my Will, and my lawyer will see to it that my last wishes are followed to the last letter. No Dad, you don't get a large chunk of my money. Well, this is my last note, not my last novel, I have to go. There's a ton of pills on my desk that I have to force down my throat with glasses of Moet & Hennessy. Ka odizie, I will miss you all.

Your son and brother,
Nduka Ukwuani

3 comments:

  1. splendid piece of work u put out there... it was really creative and natural... you effectively communicated a message... two thumbs up...!

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  2. i love that... can't be better told. just keep the flag flying.

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  3. This looks like epistolary. It's well written. Reading Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter, I've come to build up a letter my young lover in the village sent to me long ago.

    Keep writing.

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