UNWITTING VESSELS (sequel To Vessels Unknown)

TWENTY NINE

Activities filled the room where I lay. Voices of different decibels tickled my hearing. I forced my eyes to open but it stayed shut. I tried to lift my hand to my face but things held them in place. I felt stuck.

I mumbled words that were so inaudible that I felt noises around me prohibited me from hearing myself. "Jacob, Jacob?"

No response. I tried talking again, still nothing.

          "Progress report?" I heard someone ask as I felt a hand take my palm.

         "Pastor?" It called, but I couldn't bring myself to answer.

A pointed light went though my left eye and another went through my left one. "He's still in coma." The voice concluded.

I listened, and heard it's footsteps recede. A cold feeling went through my arms like the tickle of cold water.

I willed my brain to move my fingers but it stayed put. Frustrated, I gave up and finally took a nap inside my nap.

            "Did you get 'the five'?" Lashula stood in front of me and before the assignment lady.
Everyone stood in line with their entities that represented them standing ahead. I watched the white paint separate us from each channeled. The size of channeled humans had increased so rapidly, I thought the entire world had joined the movement.

         "Where's the list?" Assignment lady asked. I forced the red paper into her open palm.
Her eyes ran all over it and a stiff glare came from her eyes to mine.

         "You really haven't worked on your list." She stated, Glancing from me to my beast.

        "Didn't get the time." I murmured.

The whole shukura invasion was getting tiring. I couldn't sleep without them invading my sleep. I couldn't also minister in church without them making a point.
I couldn't even stay at home without one interruption or the other. And I kept reminding them, I didn't make a pact with Shukura, Femi did! Yet there was no sight of Femi in anything they did around here.

Eyes, different shades of eyes pinned on me at the same time. "Hold your wicked thoughts there! If you must complain, do it out of ear shots!" One of the bosses who sat at the tail end of the white hall said.

       "But that's what I did!" I countered in my head.

They still gawked at me. Then I realized, everyone here could literally hear your thoughts as though it was on speaker.
         
From the look of things, I knew at that point that I needed to leave the place. I swirled around to leave but they stopped me.

          "Where do you think you are going?" A voice asked me as I tried to detach from my entity.

        "Time to leave!" I answered not bothering on what they thought of me.

Lashula swirled around and hit me on the head. I passed out and woke up with a start in a white room filled with medical gadgets. The beep beep in the room heightened by disorientation.

I jumped out of bed, dislodging all those wires on my body, even the IV line went out with speed as I pulled it off me.

         Two nurses stood in my way, barring me from exiting the room. Another man ran from the end of the hallway behind the glass door and called me in a gentle voice.
         
             "Pastor Adrian Abujan."

I pinned my eyes on him. Then moved it to the surrounding walls.

           "Why am I here?"

He gently took my hands that was on he glass door and moved me closer to the lone bed in the room. "You are in the hospital. The campus hospital."