THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME
Rewinds

"KOKOKORIKO"

Zachary Bemba was awakened from his deep sleep by the crowing of a rooster. His eyes suddenly opened, glazed with the remains of a dream or rather a nightmare.

Zachary first noticed the coolness of the air and its fresh aroma. There was nothing similar to the foul polluted air he used to experience in the outskirts of Kinshasha Town.

He lay on an abnormally small mattress that seemed to be made by inserting a pointed grass into a stiff sack. It was very uncomfortable and hurt his back when he moved.

Zachary blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting in the room before propping himself up and pointing himself around.

He was in a room with a gray clay wall and a grass roof over his head. A small khaki curtain hides a shabby little window on one side of that narrow room— leaving only a slight view of the banana plantation behind it. A rough wooden bench and bench stood at the foot of his small bed.

[WTF!? Isn't this my little shack in my ancestral village?]

[Why did I come back here?]

He seems to be hallucinating about his childhood residence in Bukavu. He had lived with his grandmother until he was sixteen before he obtained some minor achievements in his football career and then wasted his life.

[I'm not dreaming!] He exclaimed inwardly after pinching the dark brown skin on his arm.

The last thing he could remember was drowning and struggling to breathe air in the deep waters of the Congo River. The experience was traumatic for him.

Zachary had failed to repay his debt to a local drug lord in Kinshasha and was left drowned in the river by thug-lickers. He should have been dead and on his way to hell, but here he was, alive and well.

[Can I go back in time? Can I get a second chance?]

"Haha..." Zachary's laughter was a high cold laugh, piercing through the silent atmosphere.

"I have to stop following those soap operas and web novels" Zachary murmured while trying to hold back his laughter.

But suddenly, from the small open window appeared a form. Floating one foot from the rough floor filled with soil was a translucent silhouette of grey glittering with hazy light. Slowly, it becomes in focus when an object is viewed through a telescope, but this ghost is very close, very close, only a few meters away.

Now Zachary could see the form of a man, with a silver tattered line around his neck standing in his room. His skin was charcoal-colored and matched with his soulless eyes. She wore a crown of leaves and grass, plus a tattered regal dress on her body.

Zachary's first impression of him was that he was merely a hallucination and thus shook his head, trying to remove his shadow from his mind. He was calm because this was not the first time he had experienced delusions. Its hallucinations have been diminishing over the years due to drug abuse.

Despite his efforts, the ghost was still there, before him, laughing and performing some sort of wild prehistoric dance around his small room.

Zachary wants to run fast for safety— out of the small wooden door, but keep it in place. Let's face it; there's only one thing he can do in such a situation: Pray that the ghost doesn't kill him.

But suddenly, the ghost stops her maniacal laughter and begins to study Zachary with the unwavering attention of a predator.

Those ghost soulless eyes scared him to the point of almost peeing on his pants. But he suppressed his fear and prayed that Almighty God (if any) could help him out of the situation.

"Young man!" Zachary heard the heavy voice of the ghost echoing like lightning directly inside his mind. It spoke to him without moving its chapped lips.

"I have felt your sorrow and regret."

"I can feel your deep desire to do something for our abandoned land. Your ancestors sacrificed so much to give you another chance. Remember; don't waste it! I'll keep an eye on you." The ghostly voice was ice-cold at absolute zero, without any emotion.

Before Zachary could understand the meaning behind those words, the ghost began to grow steadily to be less dense as it was being erased its existence by an invisible eraser. One minute it was there, and the next, it was gone—disappeared.

[I have to stop smoking Cannabis sativa.] He decided.

"A hallucination of my death, going back to my childhood, and meeting a ghost. If not marijuana, what is it?" He muttered while trying to calm his still turbulent emotions.

But at that moment, he heard a voice that should have been buried deep in his past.

"Zachary, get up and get some water," his grandmother's high-pitched voice. It was just as he remembered: comforting as it wrapped around Zachary and brought him to a world where sound was a force that could change everything that went wrong in the world.

Zachary's eyes were wet as he leaped from his bed and limped towards the door of the small hut. He felt pain in his left leg but ignored it because he was eager to see the old woman who cared for him since childhood. Her grandmother was her world rock star, her anchor, her safe haven. But he lost it before his time.

Just opening the door made Zachary's breath quick and shallow. He could feel his heartbeat in his temple as he stepped out of the thatched-roofed house.

"I'm really back" he murmured as he looked at the banana plantations and the surrounding meadows. Their guesthouse is on a hill that allows Zachary to look down the slopes covered by deadly greenery. The cow was moaning quietly in one corner of the nearby meadow, and the screams and grunts of the fat pig came from the cage some distance away from the house. The chicken pecked the ground in a clockwork rhythm while the goat grazed vigorously in the meadow. Zachary's grandmother's farm is huge, spread over four nice acres.

"It's a utopia" Zachary grinned as he focused his attention on his grandmother.

A tall woman, all thin and thin and with gray hair, was washing clothes a few meters from her doorstep. He was reciting a hymn and did not notice Zachary when he observed it. She is his grandmother, alive and well.

For a moment, the emotions Zachary had buried deep within his mind came flooding forward, threatening to sink him into an endless abyss of regret and confusion. But as she continued to look at her grandmother's figure as real as anything around her, her mood lifted.

[Let this be real.] He inwardly prayed while resisting the urge to rush forward and lift the woman into an embrace.

If this is just a dream, Zachary doesn't want to wake up.

He strongly suspected that he had returned to a time when he was only fifteen years old.

His expectations soared when he thought of that possibility. There were many things that Zachary regretted and more that he could change. If there was a small chance that he had traveled back in time, he would use all his wasted opportunities to fly into the sky. And maybe, he will make better decisions and become one of the greatest footballers of his generation. It was the desire of a previous life.

Zachary turned around and headed inside the house. He needed a few minutes from his grandmother to clear his mind. But then, she realized the deadly pain that tormented her ankle bones and muscles every time she moved.

And then he remembered.

He was involved in a bicycle accident around the time he was fifteen years old during his previous life. The accident was so severe that it essentially tore off most of the ligaments in his left leg. That was the beginning of the end of his football career. He failed his school team's trials due to injury and then began wallowing in endless distress. He then used drugs to suppress his grief and was later expelled from his high school.

What followed was a period of being on the streets of Kinshasha for several months. But fortunately, he was picked up by a retired footballer in the DRC National Team. With his help, he managed to bounce back and join the TP Mazembe— local football team in Lubumbashi. With the team, he managed to gain a little success in his football career.

But his success was short-lived. He soon relapsed into drug use and was banned from the National League. One wrong decision leads to another until even God can no longer save him from himself.

However, the starting point of all his distress was the accident he suffered when he was fifteen years old.

[Why should I go back to the point when I've been injured?] She's distressed. He felt his mood sink as he limped back to his room to check his left ankle.

But at that moment, a Ding sounded in his head, and a translucent blue book opened before him. On the first page, some words are written in beautiful calligraphy.

****

"DING"

'THE INITIALIZATION OF THE GOAT SYSTEM…'