"SIGH, YOU GUYS ARE SILENT READERS RIGHT? JUST GIMME A BIT OF REVIEW ALRIGHT! SOME SMALL TO MOTIVATE"
:
That stupid alarm cut through Justin's sleep like broken glass. He jumped up so fast his chest felt tight, like someone was squeezing his heart with both hands. The dream again - that red sun eating everything up, making the whole world melt like pure honey under fire. He buried his face in his pillow but those images just kept dancing behind his eyelids.
Outside, Lagos was already mad with noise. Cars honking like they were in some kind of war, engines growling and spitting smoke. Some woman was shouting from the street, "Plantain-o! Sweet plantain!" Her voice echoed between the buildings like she was calling the whole world to buy from her. This city never slept, never stopped, never gave you a moment to breathe. Justin dragged himself to that small kitchen and made his usual weak coffee from that beat-up pot his landlord left behind. The steam rose up like tiny ghosts trying to escape.
"Just today," he told himself, same thing he said every morning. "Just make it through today." But his head was already pounding, telling him more bad dreams were coming.
---
Work felt wrong from the moment he stepped in. Everyone was buzzing about this meteor thing happening tonight. Priya was waving her phone around like she just won the lottery.
"Justin, shebi you see the weather report? Clear sky everywhere! We go see everything well well tonight!"
Tobi joined in, grinning like a small boy, "Guy, we don set up for rooftop already. Blanket dey , drinks surplus, everything don set. Tonight go sweet die!"
Justin tried to smile back. "Yeah... sounds nice." But inside his head, all he could think of was chaos. Not pretty ones that just disappear - real fire that burns everything to nothing.
He sat at his desk and stared at his work list:
• Fix the login bug
• Connect payment system
The words looked fuzzy. Everything felt pointless, like he was just sitting there waiting for the world to end.
---
During lunch break, Justin found himself by the window, looking out at the peaceful blue sky. Down below, Lagos was doing its usual dance - people walking fast, vendors arguing prices, children running between the cars. For a few minutes, it all looked normal. Safe.
"Oga, shey you dey come tonight?" one of the junior developers asked. "The meteors suppose start by ten."
"Maybe," Justin said, his voice flat like old bread.
The boy walked away, probably thinking Justin was just being his usual moody self. When he was alone, Justin pressed his face against the cool glass and whispered, "Something bad is coming. I can feel it in my soul."
---
Then came that client meeting - the kind where you have to smile and pretend everything is fine when your head is full of screaming. Justin showed them the new website, nodding and talking while inside his mind was seeing broken daggers, humans moving earth and commanding waters. When the client clapped at the end, it snapped him out of his psychedelic activities.
"Very good work, Justin," the man said, shaking his hand. "This is exactly what we wanted."
"Thank you sir," Justin managed to curl a smile, even though his mouth tasted like smoke.
---
As the sun started going down, Justin left work early - before any rooftop party could start. Outside, the streets were alive with Friday night energy. People heading to bars, couples holding hands, children playing around food stalls. Everything looked so normal. But when Justin looked up, he saw a small meteor streak across the darkening sky - quick and beautiful and gone.
"I might have been worrying to much".
---
Back in his small apartment, he pulled out that old notebook, his journal . Without thinking, his hand wrote:
*The red sun.*
He stared at those words until they blurred together. Tiredness hit him like a truck and he fell on his bed with his clothes still on, whispering to himself that maybe tomorrow the nightmares would stop. But deep down, he knew tonight was just the quiet before the storm.
---
Then something woke him up - not his alarm, but a deep rumbling that made his teeth hurt and his windows shake. Thunder rolled over Lagos even though there were no clouds in the sky. And then everything went completely mad.
First, the impacts were small - distant lights that kept getting bigger and brighter. Then huge chunks of something started falling from the sky like bullets from heaven. The ocean started boiling somewhere far away. Forests burst into flames. Mountains cracked open and poured out liquid fire. The end was starting.
---
Justin ran outside in his singlets and Short's, his heart beating so fast he thought it would explode. The air tasted like metal and burning plastic. Neighbors were pouring out of their houses, screaming and pointing at the sky.
"The moon!" someone shouted. "Look at the moon!"
Justin looked up and saw what was left of it - broken into pieces like shattered glass, burning like coal. One massive chunk, big enough to destroy half of Lagos, was heading straight for them.
He ran. His bare feet slapped against the hot ground as he sprinted toward the lagoon. Behind him, the city was falling apart - electric wires sparking and dancing like angry snakes, buildings shaking and groaning like wounded animals.
He reached the lagoon just as a huge fireball crashed into the water. The explosion knocked him down, but he rolled back to his feet and watched giant columns of steam rise into the black night. The heat hit him in waves that made his skin feel like it was melting.
---
In the middle of all the screaming and explosions and the smell of burning everything, Justin felt something strange - a deep, sad kind of peace. The nightmares, the visions of the red sun, the sick feeling in his stomach... they weren't just dreams. They were the truth. Lagos was burning and humanity was dying.
And for the first time in forever, Justin smiled. Not a happy smile, but the kind you give when you finally understand something terrible.
"This is my memory," he whispered to the burning sky, his voice shaking. As the fire ate everything - the city, the people, even the air itself - only the echo of mankind's last scream remained. Raghoul stood in the ruins, the only one left to remember, finally understanding it all.
He was the witness of every lost moment, the last light before darkness swallowed everything.
"I am Justin Olamilekan.
I Am Rag-Houl."
Everything was destroyed - but maybe, in his own small way, Justin could still remember what it meant to be human in the middle of chaos and death.
---
Even as the world burned down, pieces of memory and the raw beauty of just surviving stuck to him like glue. In the ash and fire, there was a soft, sad whisper - reminding him that even when everything ends, life still tries to write its story with blood and hope.
The heat was getting stronger now. Justin now Raghoul could feel his skin starting to blister, could taste the copper of blood in his mouth. But he didn't run anymore. He just stood there, watching his world die, keeping it all in his memory.
In the distance, he could hear voices calling out in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa - all the languages of Nigeria mixing together in one last song before silence. Children crying for their mothers. Mothers crying for their children. Men praying to God in voices that cracked like breaking glass.
Raghoul closed his eyes and tried to remember Lagos before the fire. The smell of jollof rice from street vendors. The sound of danfo buses arguing with traffic. The way the sun looked setting over the lagoon on a normal day. The way people laughed even when things were hard.
All of that was turning to ash now, but he held it tight in his mind. Every smell, every sound, every face he'd ever seen on the streets of his city. Because someone had to remember. Someone had to keep it all safe, even if the world was ending.
The fire was coming closer. Soon it would reach him too. But Raghoul wasn't afraid anymore.