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Book Blurb
Title: Peace
Author: A.D.
Koboah
Genre:
Contemporary Urban Fiction
Peace Osei is
young, beautiful – and addicted to heroin; the only thing that can keep painful
past memories at bay. But when a face from her past re-enters her life
demanding answers to questions she is not ready to face, it threatens to send
Peace swimming deeper into self-destructive waters. Having spent so long
drifting away from the real world, can Peace find the strength to face the past
and banish her demons?
Excerpt: Chapter 1
I quickened my steps to try and shake off the
grinding pain in my stomach. But that only made it worse, forcing me to slow
down and come to a stop by the side of the bridge whilst everyone else swept on
past. It was rush hour so nobody noticed me, a small figure dressed in black
trembling against the icy metal railing under dense grey clouds that threatened
to unleash rain on the city below. Unable to move or think straight I let my
eyes drift over the raging waters of the River Thames, which stretched out like
a rippling black sheet for miles before me. And as I stared at the dark angry
water, it seemed to come alive, taking on the appearance of an enormous
creature stirring restlessly beneath me. The sound of the waves crashing
against the bank now sounded like an unearthly heart beating slow and steady
against the soft sigh of the January wind.
I wondered then what it would feel like to plunge into the midst
of the creature beneath me. Would the seconds spent in the air before I hit the
water feel like an eternity, or would they disappear in a flash? Would any of
the people sweeping past me even notice or stop long enough to care? And once
the dark, icy water closed over my head, how long would I spend struggling
before I gave in to its eternal embrace?
Thankfully, the icy wind was all I felt against me, the biting
cold eventually jolting me out of my morbid reverie and back to reality.
Noticing a bus roll past and come to rest at the bus stop nearby, I released my
death grip on the railing and ran toward it, only just managing to board it
before it moved on.
Once aboard the packed bus I inched my way through the knot of
people on the lower deck, up the stairs onto the top deck and chose a seat next
to the window as the bus lurched forward. Leaning back in my seat, I delicately
fingered three soft plastic packages in my right coat pocket and letting myself
relax – ever so slightly – I watched the city streets dance by.
Dusk had crept up on us by this time and the glow of the
streetlights beating back the invading darkness gave the bustling streets a
festive air as office blocks emptied of their daytime inhabitants. I sat
enchanted by the people that swept past, most of them in heavy winter coats
walking briskly in either ones or twos toward tube stations or to join the
larger groups that had gathered around bus stops in what was a mass exodus away
from the city streets. Some people I saw walked with a grimace as the bitter
cold whipped their faces. Their mouths were drawn into thin hard lines and
their vacant eyes told me that the stresses of the day had followed them out of
the office and would be with them long into the evening. Others strode
energetically down the streets, jauntily ducking out of the way of their fellow
pedestrians as they fled to the comforts of home. They even managed a smile as
they waited for buses that were often too full to welcome them aboard. I also
saw groups of young men and women around my age that appeared oblivious to the
punishing cold as they meandered down the streets, laughing carelessly about
something or other that had amused them. I kept my eyes on those groups of
blissfully young untroubled types who were a representation of something that
had long ago ceased to exist for me, and watched until they were either too far
away to see or had disappeared into one of the many pubs and bars that dotted
the city landscape.
The bus soon sped away from those people and the city streets,
away from the London Eye which stood over the near-black river, holding up its
glowing blue capsules like an offering of jewels to the twilight sky. Away from
the grand office buildings with their lit windows looking like Christmas tree
lights in the distance, and as the bus drew further and further away from the
city streets and became emptier with each stop, we were slowly taken away from
one world and into another.
No impressive-looking office buildings were to be seen providing
the background for an opulent world in this new landscape. And whilst the world
I had left behind had statues and monuments as a tribute to their heroes and
significant events of their history, we saw no more of these as the bus left
behind the wealthy city streets and wound into the urban jungle.
Neglect instead wove an ugly thread along the littered streets of
this new world and the only thing that distinguished each unremarkable building
from its neighbour was the graffiti that screamed at the passer-by from every
exposed concrete surface. It seemed as though every time the bus turned a
corner it was met by a sprawling estate or a high-rise block of flats that
loomed menacingly on the horizon, dominating the landscape and casting an
oppressive shadow over the world beneath. I was carried deep into this new
world and got off the bus to the familiar sight of a small group of drunks that
had congregated by that bus stop. They were always there, dishevelled, noisy
and oblivious to the unease or open contempt that their presence evoked in
those around them. In my eyes they were an example of people who had given up
on life; kindred spirits that had taken enough of life’s knocks, had handed in
the towel and surrendered. People who had made the conscious decision a long
time ago to stop striving for the better things in life such as that better job
or better relationship. They had instead chosen to find that something better
at the end of a bottle – or in their case, the many empty cans of beer that
littered the bus stop.
I left them behind and made the short walk into the heart of the
urban jungle under a sky that had already deepened to an inky black as night
descended, bringing with it a hive of activity as people either left the
streets or ventured from their homes to explore it. Cars roared past and I
heard the sound of a police siren, the piercing wail sounding like a bird of prey
shrieking in the distance before it died away. I passed off-licences, corner
shops, and takeaway shops which were now beacons of light in the darkness,
drawing people in. I took comfort in the kaleidoscope of colourful faces that
passed mine; from white, Asian, Latin American, Chinese and every shade of
black; starting with soft golden browns and travelling down the spectrum to the
richest blue-black skin tones.
Some people I passed were clearly not at ease in this world and
they trod carefully through it with their heads down, trying not to make eye
contact with those around them in an effort to get from A to B unnoticed. But
for others the world around them had become a part of their identity and was as
much an essential part of them as the blood coursing through their veins.
Whether they were obvious predators or people that had simply fallen in love
with the urban jungle, the hold that this world had on them was a powerful one
and it kept them coming back again and again to dance to the rhythms of its
dangerous beat.
I made it onto my road without having to stop and give in to the
pain which was clutching and twisting my lower abdomen and fled past rows of
identical Victorian houses towards the bright red door of a converted house
which had become a lighthouse, lighting the way home in the growing storm of my
need. Once I let myself into the house and stepped onto the worn dark brown
carpet in the gloomy hallway, I was able to release a deep sigh before I closed
the door shut quietly behind me. I slunk past a door on my left, which led to a
one-bedroom flat, and up the stairs onto the first floor which had been
converted into two bed-sits with a shared kitchen and bathroom. The tremor in
my hand was more intense when I put the key into the lock of my bed-sit and
swung the door open to the glare of the television set which I had left on in
my haste to leave earlier on in the day. Safely in my sanctuary, I wasted no
time in shrugging off my coat whilst fragments of news that nobody ever wanted
to see or hear accosted me from the television screen. It was a news bulletin
about another missing or dead child, and a photograph of that child wearing a
school uniform that they would probably never have the chance to wear again. I
watched the television sadly, affected by the sweet innocent smile that the
child’s parents must have longed to see again in the flesh before I snapped the
television off and plunged the room into an expectant silence.
Carefully taking out the tiny bag from my coat pocket, I reached
for the lighter and roll of foil on my chest of drawers, catching sight of a
tall, slim, pretty young woman peering at me from the mirror against the wall.
I avoided her as much as was physically possible, but she still
managed to sneak up on me when I was least expecting it and forced me to
acknowledge her as I did now.
I watched as she put a hand up to her face which had a strong hint
of Ghanaian lineage in the mahogany brown skin, a small, flat, broad nose, full sensuous lips
and thick, jet-black natural hair that had been pulled tightly away from her
face. Although this face had undergone minor changes over the years, the eyes –
my eyes – were the only feature that had changed beyond recognition and looked
as if they had seen far too much in their twenty-three years on this earth. It
was the clear, deep anguish in those eyes that led me here and made me tear
myself away from the mirror back to the lighter and the two small pieces of
foil that I tore off the roll. Rolling up one of the pieces, I put it in my
mouth and let it hang off my lip like a cigarette then tore open the bag and
emptied the brown powder onto the other scrap of foil. Using slow deliberate
movements which defied the urgency that was speaking to me from my every pore,
I used the lighter to melt the powder into a golden-brown ball and tilted the
foil to make the brown ball run down to the other end whilst chasing it with
the foil roll in my mouth.
Inhaling the heavenly smoke through my mouth, I chased and chased
until all my burdens floated up and out of the room.
All my life it seemed as if I had chased one thing or another;
acceptance, love, chasing dream after dream. Whenever I got close enough to
those dreams I realised that they were nothing but phantoms. Insubstantial
ghosts that quickly dispersed, leaving behind mists of failure, disillusionment
and despair.
When it hits, when that first wave hits and I am swept away from
everything, swept far, far away from the shore to a place where I can see
nothing, hear nothing and feel nothing, I sometimes see his face. His face in
all its exquisite beauty often overwhelms me, inducing tears before
disappearing as quickly as it comes, leaving me far out to sea with no sight or
sound of land until finally, it finds me... peace.
Author Bio
A.D. Koboah was born in London and completed
an English Literature degree in 2000. Peace
is her second novel. Her first novel, Dark
Genesis, is a Paranormal Romance that was inspired by the concept of
dehumanisation. She is currently working on a screenplay and will begin the
sequel to Dark Genesis shortly.
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