UN-TITLED

                  Jennifer POV She felt like giving up. It was more like the whole world came crashing down on her. She felt like she was right where she started and the very thought made her feel like screaming in agony. The thought incessant job hunts, scripted interviews which she attended with the flickering hope of being selected by a stroke of divine intervention or luck haunted are fractured mind. As a plethora of thoughts swarmed all around in her already crowded mind, she thought to herself if should she ought feel so defeated and knocked down that all faith in herself is lost or just get back on the horse and keep moving. She wondered if the company thought she was unfit for the role she was applying for. She graduated top of her class with several honors and awards, bagging a Bachelor of Science degree in Human resource management from the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka was no easy task. The university had a reputation for having very few first class graduates every year, thus it was considered one of the best universities in the country (At least by most people). Others were of the view that the university was corrupt and purposefully limited the number of first class graduates to stay relevant, playing chess with their students in the process. However, something everybody seemed to agree was that graduating with a perfect 5.0 CGPA wasn't a guarantee of anything in the Nigerian society. Good jobs were difficult to come by, and when they did come by it wasn't about your degree or skill, it was about who you knew in that organization or in popular terms, your "connection"; except by divine intervention or sheer luck. Getting dumped by your boyfriend the very same day you lose your job wasn't helping emotionally at all. She felt earmarked for pain by the devil or as popular belief is in Nigeria, the witches in her family. As she lay in her room, eyes fixated on the ceiling with patches of ETH of white painted flakes sticking out all over; her thoughts raced around everything that had happened in my life. She thought about losing her parents during the Boko haram attacks in Jos when she was only twelve, it hurt afresh. She remembered moving in with her mum's younger sister ‘Aunt Rhoda’ who made sure her life was a living hell. She remembered blaming herself for her parent's death as though it was her doing. She remembered feeling cursed, rejected and alone. Tears sliding down the side of her face dissolved on her pillow as she lay, lost in bitter memories. It was a couple of weeks to her eleventh birthday. As she sat in the bus headed home she felt angry because her parents failed to pick her up from school. Her anger was soon replaced by anxiety and fear immediately she remembered she was scheduled for an operation at the Jos University teaching hospital that evening. Her parents were probably already there making preparations. After being diagnosed with appendicitis a couple of days earlier at her school clinic, her parents had been told she had to be operated on in a matter of weeks. She didn't understand what it meant as she eavesdropped from the lobby but the look on her parents faces when they exited the doctors office made her realize that the university of jos teaching hospital wasn't a place where people have fun. The doctor referred them to a good friend of his who is a resident doctor there. On approaching her street, she saw people frantic and moving about, some had blood stained clothes on and the surrounding streets were littered with shards of broken wood and glass. Police and ambulance sirens screamed in her ears as they approached her street. The bus reached a roadblock and was ordered to stop and turn around by the police, she couldn't decipher what the policemen were saying over the surrounding noise. Confused, she rushingly came down and ran toward her house. Getting through the hundreds of police men, fire fighters and emergency health care professionals would have been difficult for any other child, but not her, and definitely not on this street where she is "Lara croft". Thoughts trailed in her head as she navigated the street like a maze, running through bushes and pathways made her adrenaline pump even faster. Flashes of memories of her parents pervaded her mind sending mixed feelings of anxiety, fear and love down her spine as she ran. She could see her house now, what was left of it anyway, which wasn't much but was much better than the two houses before theirs. They were all burnt so badly, but the fire had been put out. All the houses she could see looked hollow, dark and dead. The wails of people and deafening sirens didn't make the scene any less horrid. Losing all sense of reason and tears feeling her eyelids she dashed like a chased gazelle. It suddenly dawned on her that her parents could be seriously hurt, kidn*pped or worse d.. "no! I'm not going to think about that!" she exclaimed. Totally oblivious of everything she ran straight into a policeman that had sighted and made his way for her a couple of meters away. He held her tight in his arms and pulled her away while she kicked and screamed in tears." mooom!! daaaad?!!" she screamed helplessly as she was being hurled away by the bear of a man. Over the policeman's shoulder she caught a glimpse of two body bags on the floor right in front on her house. Her teary eyes made the scene blur so badly she had to focus even harder over her rampaging emotions to notice there were body bags everywhere on the street. It looked like a scene from an horror movie and fresh shivers of fear sent goosebumps slithering through her skin. "They are dead" a voice in her head said sternly, the everything went dark.