Scar Tissue
1395 Words
Years had passed.
David was thirty-eight now. Tall. Lean. His muscles had hardened like pavement from years of labor, fights, and survival. His face didn’t smile easily anymore. The creases near his eyes had settled into permanent shadows. But his gaze still burned—quiet, restless. Like a fire that refused to die even after the wood was gone.
Samuel was twenty-four. Soft-spoken. Focused. Still growing into his voice, still learning where to place his anger. But his spirit, resilient, gentle, had never changed.
They no longer lived in the collapsing shed behind the mechanic’s shop. Those days, though not far behind, felt like another lifetime.
Now, they stayed in a small rented flat in Bariga. Two rooms. One fan that groaned like an old man but still turned. A fridge that wheezed through the night yet never gave up. The walls were clean, though the corners bore chipped reminders of time. The window frames didn’t rattle when it rained, and the roof stayed dry.
It wasn’t luxury. But it was theirs.
David still lived like the world owed him a debt it had no plans to repay. He rose before dawn, laced worn-out trainers, and jogged through dust-choked alleys. He punched the air with clenched fists like it had insulted his mother. He didn’t jog to stay fit. He jogged to stay angry.
On weekends, he wrapped his hands with tape that had long lost its grip and entered underground fighting rings. no sponsors, no rules, no promises. Just blood and fists. Some nights he returned home with cracked ribs and a few rumpled notes tucked in his pocket. Some nights, with nothing but pain in his bones.
But he never complained.
“It’s better than begging,” he said once, peeling tape from his bruised fingers.
Samuel sat nearby, laptop on his knees. The faint blue glow from the screen painted his face in light.
“You’ll end up with no teeth,” he replied, smiling without lifting his eyes.
David grinned, blood crusted on his bottom lip. “That’s why God gave us gums.”
Samuel was fighting too—just in a quieter way.
He spent his days seated on a wooden bench outside a dusty electronics shop, soldering broken phone ports and rebooting water-damaged laptops. People brought him cracked screens and battered power banks. He charged little. Too little.
But when the noise of Lagos died and the fridge began its nightly hymn, Samuel would power on his old HP laptop and open a coding window. He taught himself in silence. HTML, JavaScript, Python. Every lesson was a whisper against the chaos.
He had no connections. No mentors. No branded laptop or i********:-worthy workspace. Just stolen Wi-Fi from a nearby cybercafé and PDFs borrowed from a UNILAG student down the street.
One evening, the power was cut mid-lesson.
“No NEPA today,” David muttered from the floor.
Samuel sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I was halfway through backend integration.”
“You go integrate am tomorrow.”
They laughed in the dark, voices soft like a secret.
In the neighborhood, David’s reputation had grown. But not fondly. People called him Boxer, Akpan Duro, That Angry Guy. Most avoided him. A few tried to test him.
One evening, a group of boys on the corner made jokes. Small insults. Called him Old fighter, Wetin you still dey fight for?
David didn’t speak. He just stared.
The smallest boy took a step forward.
A second later, he was on the floor, choking on his own breath. David hadn’t thrown a punch. Just grabbed the boy by the shirt, pulled him close, and whispered something too low for others to hear.
They never tried again.
Samuel heard about it the next day.
“You can’t keep doing that,” he said.
David shrugged. “Then they should stop forgetting who I am.”
Some nights, they sat outside together in worn plastic chairs. A bowl of garri between them. Groundnut. The sky above dull with haze. The streets are asleep, but the air still warm with memory.
“You remember how Mum used to pour cold water on us for morning devotion?” David said one night, chuckling.
David smiled, eyes half-closed. “At 5 a.m. Like say devil dey our ceiling.”
“She slapped me for sleeping during prayers"
They both laughed. Not loudly. Just enough to make the silence feel lighter.
Then it came again, that silence. Familiar. Deep.
David leaned back, eyes lost in the night sky. “I miss her.”
Samuel’s voice dropped. “Me too.”
There was nothing else to say. Grief didn’t need language. It lived in both of them now, in the same place behind the ribs.
Samuel kept applying for jobs. Over and over. Tweaking fonts. Rewriting sentences. Using fake Island addresses because “Bariga” didn’t sound professional enough.
Once, he created a fake portfolio.
Deleted it three days later.
“I’m not a liar,” he said.
David, reclining on the floor, replied without looking up. “You’re not hungry enough yet.”
Samuel smiled faintly. “Nah. I’m just stubborn.”
David nodded slowly, like he respected that more.
One evening, Samuel came home frustrated. He shut the door with more force than usual and dropped his bag with a thud.
“They didn’t ask a single question,” he muttered. “Just smiled and said they’d get back to me.”
David lay on the floor, shirtless, a new bruise blooming on his ribs. He didn’t even lift his head.
“They won’t.”
“I know.”
“You’ll try again.”
“I know.”
The fan clacked softly above them. A mosquito buzzed near the window.
Then, David added, almost as a whisper, “Don’t stop. One ‘yes’ will cancel all the ‘no’s.”
Samuel looked at him for a long time.
“You sure you’re not the pastor’s son?”
David smirked. “I was. Before the world killed him.”
That night, the power went out again. The room was thick with heat.
Samuel lay on the floor, shirt pressed to his chest.
“David?” he said.
“Hm?”
“You ever wonder what life could’ve been like? If none of it happened?”
David was silent for a moment. “Yeah. Sometimes.”
“I think about it too much.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Samuel turned his head. “I want to build something, Dave. Something that works. Something real. Something that makes Mum proud. That proves the world was wrong about Dad.”
David stared at the ceiling.
“You’ve already started,” he said.
Samuel didn’t reply. But something in his chest swelled. Not pain. Something heavier, and warmer.
Hope.
One burning afternoon, Samuel walked through Marina after fixing a spoilt POS machine in a*****e that barely said thank you. The sun pressed down like judgment.
He was about to cross the street when a banner caught his eye—bright, bold, fluttering outside a glass building:
FCB TECH FELLOWSHIP — FOR UNDERESTIMATED TALENTS
He stopped.
Stared.
Read it again.
Underestimated.
Underrated.
That was him.
That night, he applied. Another form. Another cover letter. Another prayer into the void.
He didn’t tell David.
Not because he feared it wouldn’t work.
But because part of him feared it might.
Two weeks later, he was sitting outside, eating rice and tomato stew from a metal plate, when his phone buzzed.
He picked it up absently, expecting another spam message or rejection.
But the subject line froze him: Welcome to FCB’s Tech Fellowship. Congratulations...
He blinked.
Read it again.
Then again.
He didn’t scream. Didn’t smile. Didn’t move for a full minute.
Then he stood, walked into the room where David was rubbing balm on his shoulder.
“I got in,” he said.
David looked up slowly. “Got into what?”
“FCB. The fellowship. It’s real. I got in.”
David stared at his brother.
For a moment, there was no reaction. Then he nodded, just once.
“Good.”
No dancing.
No celebration.
Just a nod.
From one survivor to another.
That night, the fan clicked overhead. The fridge hummed. The city moaned in its sleep.
And in one small flat in Bariga,
hope quietly entered the room and sat with them.
- Writer
