The Fly

The dibia waved him into the clearing with a small, casual gesture. Come.

Something in the incurious and easy air about the dark and balding old man chalked all over with white concentric circles, mysterious angular symbols (and yes, smelling of wood smoke, and animal putrefaction) made him suspect that the old man knew he would come back.

But didn't they always come back? Staring at the starving wife and children slowly become gaunt and hollow-eyed shadows; watching that small boy (small boy!) Emma only six months into the business but already employing three boys to manage a super- market; waking up long before day-break to begin work and retiring only when one could barely hold his arms upright - but before getting to the door of one's ramshackle house, giving up more than two-thirds of the paltry earnings of the day for an overdue rent. 

Wouldn't they always come back, driven by the insane hopelessness of destitution?

He walked hesitantly into the small patch of grassy land fenced with rotted greyish-yellow stems of achara; in one corner was a huge red earthenware pot blackened with soot and dark greenish decay. He noted uneasily that the clearing had only one opening - the entrance/exit -and he suddenly realised with faint alarm that he had actually been waiting, hoping for the slightest excuse to flee once again from what lay before him.

His father had once owned this mangled, rust-eaten animal trap that looked so impotent, so ineffectual that one doubted if a lizard could be caught in its jaws. Sometimes he and his friends would use it as part of a makeshift goal-post whenever there was some under-ripe orange or occasional 'flying carpet' to be kicked around.

One day that trap had caught a leopard.

He remembered the shock - not surprise but horror - he'd felt on seeing the half-severed forepaw of the leopard in the trap, horribly mangled as apparently it had struggled to escape. The cat lay dead in what looked like a spilled 25-litre gallon of blood, its stiffened tawny carcass abuzz with swarms of flies and bugs.

It had bled to death or it would have escaped minus one paw, his father had later told him, but that trap wouldn't have yielded one bit.

He had terrible dreams for weeks afterwards; in one dream, he'd try to kick a green orange into a makeshift goal area -and find he'd kicked his foot into the yawning jaws of that trap. In another dream, the trap would be jerking after him, dragging along a length of rusty chain; he'd nightmare-slow-motion run into his father's hut, screaming for his father to "please catch that trap, your trap!"- and find the trap right in front of him, its steel jaws ready to spring. He'd wake up, a strangled scream starting in his throat, when the steel jaws chomped down with a mechanical viciousness on his foot.

 This clearing reminded him of that trap. Looking so decrepit and impotent with its dying plants, barren vegetable ridges, and shrivelled stick fence, it seemed like an ancient but very powerful and deadly snake playing dead.

Just waiting for the house-fly to alight casually on its half-open mouth...

He shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut against the unsettling thought, rationalizing that he wasn't the victim here, only the beneficiary no matter what turn this cursed expedition took. The spirits were on his side now because he was obeying them, right? (The thought would have been remotely comforting if he'd been in the comfort of his home, on his own raffia mat, and after the whole deal).

And how did a house-fly even concern this issue now? His mind reprimanded.

"Nyem akpa." Give me the bag. The dibia's voice was mild but authoritative. One dark, wrinkled hand gestured at the black polyethene bag in his grasp and the hand holding the bag stretched automatically in the old man's direction. Their fingers touched as he handed over the bag, and he felt his heart lurch with revulsion and dread; just a light brush but the old man's skin had felt oddly cold and slippery - like a reptile's. Or maybe he'd imagined it.

The old man, in a deliberate, off-hand manner, removed each of the items in the bag and placed them on the ground in a heap - one white cock, six guinea fowl eggs, a yard of white cloth, a small bag of salt, a length of red rope and a brand-new sharpened knife.

"Yipu afegi." Remove your clothes. That same authoritative voice; it was devoid of any threat or menace but he complied instantly, in the grip of an inexplicable fear that even the barest outward sign of awkwardness or hesitation in obeying the old man would be noted -by something implacably malevolent- and swiftly punished.

Clad only in briefs, he crumpled his faded, patched green safari suit in a shapeless heap and stuffed it into the black polyethene bag in which the items now on the ground had come.

The old man shuffled over to the huge dirt-caked clay pot he'd seen earlier on in one corner, and beckoned him over. Singing and muttering under his breath, the old man placed both hands on his shoulders and gestured with his balding head for him to kneel. Still singing and muttering, the old man dipped his cupped hands into the huge clay pot.

 He was first aware of a belly-churning stench in the air like soured palm wine and decaying eggs before the stinking, luke-warm water splashed over his head, dribbling down his face and shoulders. Foul water ran into his mouth as he involuntarily tried to exhale through his mouth and he gagged painfully, suppressing the urge to spit out the small slimy and hideously bitter-tasting alien presence that had suddenly invaded his mouth. How dare he display contempt and disgust by spitting?

Saliva pooled in his mouth, began to dribbling down the corners of the mouth and in an effort to take an urgent gasp of air, he swallowed it all, retched loudly.

The old man cackled contemptuously and splashed the last handful of water on his chest.

What exact role did a stinking bath play in this whole procedure...?

A horrifying answer instantly plastered itself in his mind: Some preys are drawn to the stench of decay on predators playing dead but some predators are also drawn to the smell of decay ...on prey.

The disturbing thought came with the conviction of prior knowledge - but how and when had he known that fact?

The old man was now carefully wrapping the yard of white cloth he'd brought about his waist, in an oddly affectionate way -

As a man sometimes might lovingly prepare a ceremonial animal he was about to present to his chi...

I say SHUT UP, he reprimanded his fears mentally again. I'm not the sacrifice, it's...

"Bia!" The old man's brusquely uttered command punctured his thoughts. The old man had walked to the opposite end of the fenced area and was now beckoning to him again, with short impatient gestures; at that end was a row of three vegetable mounds that looked freshly dug. Had he noticed those earlier on?

As he approached where the old man was standing, he noticed that the mounds were disproportionate in size, the first mound being bigger than the other two mounds, and the second mound smaller than the last mound. The old man resumed his indistinct half spoken/half sung chanting, picking up three of the guinea-fowl eggs and planting one in each of the mounds; next, he loosely draped the length of red rope around the three mounds, the tone of his mutterings intensifying as he did this. Suddenly, the old man picked up the knife and approached him with an almost uncanny speed. He let out a small gasp of horror and staggered back, both hands flying up to cover - ridiculously- his eyes (as though he wouldn't be able to stand the sight of his guts spilling wetly from his ruptured belly when the knife plunged in). Alas! He'd been fooled, he'd been fooled he'd been fooled...

Instead of the anticipated agony, he felt the warm, damp breath from the old man's mouth in the cup of his ear as the old man whispered something unintelligible in his ear.

He'd been ...spared?

A cold, sharp object pressed into his palm, and then was suddenly replaced by a hot stinging pain. He gasped, automatically wrenching his hand away.  Anger flushed dully in his chest -but quickly expired- when he looked at his right hand.

There was a narrow line of dark red across his palm where the blade had cut him.

The old man snatched his hand again with a feverish urgency, as though galvanized by the sight of blood, and smeared his wounded palm across the feathers of the white cock.

The bird squawked a weak protest and in the silent cheerlessness of the environment, he found the sound oddly comforting.

The old man presented him with the knife, handle first, and made an expansive gesture over the three mounds. When he remained still for about ten seconds the old man, probably sensing confusion rather than contemplation, pointed at the knife and then made a stabbing gesture in the general direction of the three mounds. The old man's eyes gleamed with curiosity and strangely, something like hunger - a look a vulture might favour a slowly dying beast with.

His brow wrinkled in deepened confusion. What do...?

But he already knew what he was meant to do - and its implication, the cold realisation suddenly dawned on him. He'd known the implication right from the time those lips had whispered in the cup of his ear but his mind seemed to have somehow dismissed that knowledge.

Mound one, the biggest mound, represented his wife, Nechi; if he killed the cock over that mound and allowed the blood to splatter across the egg and then stabbed that egg, his wife would be taken as a sacrifice.

If he executed the same process over the second bigger mound, his first and only son would be the sacrifice. And if he did the same thing over the smallest mound...

"Nneka..." His trembling lips acknowledged in a whisper the name of his one and only five year old daughter, the last born and the one he was most proud of; his smart, pretty Nneka... the sunshine of his life, his Ada...

'No..."He muttered hoarsely, wagging his head from side to side, tears already spilling out of the corners of his eyes. He spread his arms in the direction of the old man, sobbing bitterly, and sank to his knees. "Biko..." Please.

But please what? That he couldn't murder a member of his family? That he'd made a mistake and could he please pleease back away now? That he didn't know what the cost would be...?

The old man merely stood watching him, an expressionless look on his face.

He doubled over as he wept intensely, clutching the knife against his bare chest.                      

Was he weeping about the decision he couldn't make or about the decision...he'd made?

Because after about ten minutes, still kneeling, his face now an inscrutable, inhumanly vacuous mask (as though something unnatural had somehow stepped into his body, perhaps to conduct the rest of this business he was chickening out on) he severed the head of the cock over the smallest mound with three powerful sawing motions across its neck and stabbed the knife downwards into the bloody egg.

The sound of the bursting egg as the knife plunged through it seemed strangely, like a single tortured human moan.

But then it might have been his imagination.

                         **************************************************************

He saw Emma three weeks later cruising past in his brand-new Toyota Camry 2006, but gone was the near- reverent fear and restless envy with which he'd regarded the boy earlier. In its place was a slowly building contempt and, oddly, a detached feeling of closeness to him; he'd looked into his eyes, noticed how he looked out of the corner of his eyes and seen the same look that he now saw in his own eyes every morning - that malignant, mirthless gleam only men that have found and embraced the dark bowels of the dragon (who was sometimes a serpent or both at once) could have. He wondered idly who Emma had had to sacrifice to be so rich.

They had been asked by the dragon to bring a most costly sacrifice to the very depths of its belly and collect in return as much treasure as they could from the intoxicatingly vast ocean of wealth buried there in those horrifying and depthless reservoirs of misery. They had marched on resolutely (with the bound, most costly sacrifice unsuspecting in their arms) knowing instinctively that once they had crossed the dragon's lips, those terrible and vicious snapping teeth would clamp closed forever, leaving them hopeless prisoners in the very bowels of death. Thus they knew - but couldn't turn back even if they wanted to.

Once you'd solicited that dragon at his lair and gazed into those piercing and hellishly malevolent eyes that were a trap themselves, you really could never turn back again.

He chuckled bitterly at this new, profound wisdom his mind was actively churning up this morning, unravelling things he'd never really known.

And as he pinned up on his shirt lapel the plastic tag that declared him 'Senior Driver' in the Maragos International Petroleum company - a position some drivers only got after about ten years of service to a company - a final thought occurred to him: So who was really the victim?

                    ...like a bird that sees the bait, but ignores the trap.

                  They gang up to murder someone, but they are the victims.

Saving Egbo

Death’s, the intoxicating sweet pleasure of sinking that cruelly arched tumescence forcefully, brutally into the uninitiated, virginal depths of good... then, hell.

The persistent staccato of automatic rifles were deafening typewriters, ruthlessly banging out the death sentences of some hapless soldiers in murderous copper-jacketed fonts, accompanied by the occasional throaty interjection of burly 105mm Howitzers, colluding big brothers.

From this maelstrom of violence broiling not three kilometres from the destroyed Mangrove hotel cellar-turned- hideout a poet, a writer such as Obidiniru might dip his quill & preserve a distilled moment of inspiration on paper.

But not tonight. Not this very moment at least.

He was hungry, ravenously so - and that, like an exquisitely malignant toothache that scandalously numbs out the quintessential pleasure of sleep, was all that mattered now. Now.

He peered at Egbo in the darkness of the cellar, his face ghostly pale in the poor light cast by the demented, dancing flickers of a huge bush fire faraway. "Those yams."

A distracted glance, visibly an effort to peel some attention from his thoughts, Egbo offered. "Man, if those shells falling haven't neutered you, I don't know what else would."

"It's been nearly forty eight hours since your last meal."

That last meal, eko and beans, they had found preserved in two compartments of a markedly undamaged food flask amongst the fire scorched ruins of the hotel.  The partially rotted meal might have been the breakfast some unfortunate guest was enjoying when the shells started falling. When that solo single-minded shell, whistling tunelessly of a promise of hell explosively expunged metal, concrete, mortar & wood, spirits & souls from earth. Presenting a delightful smorgasbord of horrendous delicacies to mother Earth - perhaps a mangled, slow burning leather shoe (the foot still intact within, burnt black at the stump for good measure) to go with the last strangled whimper of the dying child, ma'am?  But if your poison is savoury vileness, some smouldering, squishy dollop mashed between the lower, clothed cheeks of a man who lost his head to some flying, recklessly ambitious shrapnel... 

“I’m really fine, Obi.”

You’re telling me. Obidiniru threw his wistful gaze out the window again.

Egbo had contracted something that invaded his body with a raging fever, stooling and puking, rashes, and peeling skin; at the moment he was quite incapable of supporting himself for long on his feet. Not eating worsened these things. He faced the stark possibility of death, Obi acknowledged. But food would improve the odds. Also he needed his strength to go in search of help, one of those refugee camps close to where Red Cross had a depot and where Egbo could receive proper medical attention; and if he would have to carry his friend, eating was...

Outside the sky, ever vulnerable with its brilliant, hair-line fractures- lightning- was an alien, livened damask of sombre colours.

Zombies gliding, he thought the clouds looked like. It would rain at some point tonight.

At some point tonight, most likely before Atlas wept great de-salted jewels against Mother Earth's bosom, he would go for 'those yams'.

‘Those yams’ were thick, dried vines amorously, possessively entwined around over six stakes sunk into huge mounds about two thousand yards from their hideout.

The subject of its ownership produced only a vague whiff of speculation, for apparent reasons. But it was urgent business.

The urgency resulted from the knowledge that the farm which had not been looted or obliterated during the air raid that destroyed the hotel till that God signed-sealed-and-delivered-gift of a moment was nothing short of a miracle. Likely a short-lived one. Like the stingy gods had slept off while dangling the honeycomb tantalisingly from a string before the child and would wake up soon.

The risks, his awareness of their stark vulnerability, gnawed relentlessly at his consciousness. Knowing that every step towards that farm was one towards possible death was enough cause for hesitation. It might be a landmine. One stray slug. Another shell, for Pete's sake.  But his belly, with its remonstrative assertion, would have none of that.

Better killed by mortar from a recoilless rifle than slow, torturous hunger.

Soldiers, your fellow countrymen, are bravely losing their guts & more on the battlefield while you're saving yours for mere food. That was his conscience, its didactic intrusion.

Ah, but if one had half their military training, one would have ended the war by now, eh?

Yes but- the impassioned rebuttal- a good part of Ojukwu's rag tag army constitutes common labourers, civil workers, ordinary men with no military background whatsoever.

Will you turn a mental blind eye to the heart wrenching reality of inexperienced boys’ scouts, teenagers compelled on the force of death to heft bolt action rifles & stalk far better armed, far more experienced death?

Or pretend that the female folk (even pregnant ones, Obi, pregnant ones!) who bravely take garri, palm kernels and water to starving civilians, dodging 'women hungry' soldiers, and a dozen other perils are thinking only of their own paunch?

“You’re so righteous you should go inhabit some bloody Joan of Arc body and go to war.” He muttered.

“Say what?”

“Yams, man, the yams.”  

Egbo had earlier suggested he wait till the battle took itself some other place. Not so close.

Now he shook his head, weary exasperation. “You go then if you like.”

“I’m going for two.” The other grinned. “You will owe me your life.”

He clambered out of the cellar clutching a mangled bit of flat iron he’d found in one dark, musty corner.

There was no comfort in the cold, stiff night breeze; it stank of cordite, charred remains and violence, death’s halitosis; the erratic, nervous chatter of the rifles neither close nor distant was unsettling. Doubled over, he started with loping strides in the direction of the yam patch.

So if a solo slug struck him fatally now or he stepped on a landmine, it would be Egbo – if the man survived, that is – telling the story of how even “Obidiniru his close friend was killed going after food”. Killed going after yams.

He twirled a hand about his head hastily and snapped his fingers. God forbid.

A shell exploded thunderously a few hundred metres west and he dove instinctively to the earth, heart pounding madly in his chest, his bladder near melting into urine. Dead, dismembered, decapitated, strewn like some bloody, rejected sacrifice across the large restive expanse of earth...

He lay still, pressed hard against the dark, packed soil, for a minute or two. Hoisted himself to his feet, picked his spade that had been flung several feet ahead. Covered the remaining metres that brought him to the farm. His heart swelled in relief noting the stakes impaling the huge earth mounds were still intact.

He dug methodically, quickly, pausing every now and then to catch his breath or wipe sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. Occasionally hunger cramps would seize his guts and he’d fall back on his haunches, gritting against the pain till it passed. He exhumed four small, markedly glabrous yams. No mere feat for a survivor of two days of hunger, eh? Barely pausing to gloat over his achievement, he took off his shirt and slung it around the yams, hefted the load on a stiff neck.

Beads of rain were falling intermittently now, as though tentatively gauging what the response of Earth to a watery intrusion might be.

He was already within sight of the shelter, its mangled, crouching remains highlighted occasionally in grisly detail by luminous sketches of lightning across the sky, when the shell struck.

The sensation of impact is one of a giant scorching fist back-handing one sky-high against the intimate, feverish backdrop of hell fire, dregs of sight and sounds barely straining into one’s awareness as consciousness takes a compulsory leave of absence. 

It is a place of stars. An ever-whirling bowl of madness; ink-black soup spattered with lunatic, dancing stars...a blurry picture of a childhood Saturday that cannot possibly be real, since mom never cooked breakfast throwing slices of dodo against a huge wall of blazing flames in the dining room without Simi and Rachel his siblings first groundnut-oiling them well well...or did she? A nagging question, cos I don’t want my own dodo charred black o... A giant, swarthy Frank Sinatra lengthens one arm as mighty as Stentor’s holler, across an eternity trapped between Festac and the rest of mainland to retrieve his hat, his way from the lagoon, silently dripping wet...

Obidiniru slowly rose to his feet, weaved drunkenly a few seconds and crumpled to the ground again, groaning. Egbo.

The desolate, blackened ruins of the mangrove hotel which appeared to have taken a direct hit by the shell were now again the cradle of a roaring inferno - and certainly, the grave of his friend.

His heart dissolved in an amalgam of revulsion and grief at the realization and his eyes wept, brimming with dejected longing as they regarded the flames, like his feet could just fly into the fire and his hands salvage his friend alive.

The flames seemed animated with gleefully poisonous mockery, audaciously poking blistering tongues at the heavens, daring the threatening rain to quench them. 

No doubt if he did fly at them, they would welcome him, undiscriminating with their eager fiery love, cuddling him passionately as he disintegrated to cinders.

Egbo. Fondly called the Lender. Perpetually impoverished because it gave him kicks, dispensing all his earnings to every Dick and Harry that asked and then living by the skin of his teeth. He would loan his life, if he figured out how to.

After a few minutes, Obidiniru gathered the yams which fortunately had not been lost with his fall. Then inching close to the fire on his belly with his precious quarry, till the flames tweaked his face hotly, he rolled a tuber of yam into the fire.

Crushed Flowers

We had always known Mr. Okariri was crazy. 

I mean, anyone who suddenly appeared in a class –during another teacher’s period – and started lashing a koboko with reckless energy every which way at students, had to be. Crazy. Amana, she almost lost an eye that day to a flying splinter of fractured cane. 

He habitually mismatched his socks; I’m talking bright colours - red and yellow or orange and light green. Perhaps it was true that he’d once taken a student to an empty Science lab and asked him to strip naked – to search his private regions for the mgbo that might have aided him in scoring 100% in that integrated science test. No one put it past him, although the student in question might not have confirmed the story. 

Your outright thought on seeing the short lean man, maybe on your way to the school tuck-shop to get some rock buns and coke might be ‘this is a crazy but benign teacher’; the type you drew a caricature of on the blackboard to greet him when he came in for his class and who would spend the rest of the class shouting petty threats at the students in a high-pitched, uncertain voice. The kind of teacher you could maybe not greet although your instincts kept tugging an ear in warning (‘don’t say I didn’t tell you’ it’s at your peril, my dear) and you made to pass... 

KPA!! The hot stinging slap at the back of my head literally careened me off my feet and I fell flat on my face, clutching at the talons of red pain that seemed to be ripping my neck skin to shreds. 

He said something that had ‘idiot’ ‘greet’ and ‘next time’ in it, I don’t know, walked on. 

Yeah, my first one to one experience with Mr. Okariri all out and fully accounted for. 

How my neck swelled that day! Telling my mum that a teacher had slapped me for not greeting him would likely not solicit the kind of warm compassion and pampering that I would receive should I, for instance, tell a lie like: Two students were playing roughly around my desk while I was studying in class and I got hit mistakenly by one reckless fist. 

My resentment for the man burned in my chest, the tiny sputtering flame in the nozzle of a flamethrower; waiting to be fuelled by just enough courage into a raging, bloody revenge when the opportunity presented itself in some way; you know, Hulk Hogan –at the moment he’s fed up and now charging up - about to pummel Macho man into surrender. Or Voltron after enduring fiery blows finally wields his great big sword in righteous indignation to rip the evil giant robot in two exploding halves... (Little boys with their amazingly irrepressible, disjointed fantasies only daydream things that never happen, kai!) 

Yes, we’d always known what a mad devil Mr. Okariri was; the 22nd of June, 1996 was the day any illusion of doubt about that fact was brutally crushed. 

It was a typical boring class; he spoke in an often inaudible monotone and one would be thoroughly spent by the middle of the class trying to follow his words. We didn’t dare ask him to repeat himself - especially if he’d already repeated himself that first time someone asked and you still didn’t get what he said. The lifesaver was the fact he wrote or sketched with chalk consistently on the black board, and one could infer the full meaning of his words from what he wrote. But then you often wondered how such teachers remained teachers, how a school could possibly keep such cheap apologies for staff under their employ - on a payroll, for Pete’s sake! 

I mean, for crying out loud, this was a cranky, inept janitor who traded his mop for a cane and a chalk, who... well, never mind. 

I was saying, we were completing a diagram of the Euglena in our notebooks when he pointed his cane at Peter. “Stand up and tell us its functions” His cane prodded impatiently at one part of the sketch on the blackboard. 

Peter was the oldest and physically the biggest student in the class; yet he wasn’t necessarily a bully although he might enjoy using his strength and size to advantage whenever someone trod on his toes or a friend’s or had something he wanted. He always knew how to fling the branch or plank aright which brought down the biggest rain of juicy ripe mangoes or guavas in Mr. Aloysius’ back yard. He scored the highest in almost any football match we had on the expansive, unkempt school sports pitch. You could actually forget to buy your fish roll and Mirinda or read that Tin Tin comic you borrowed for break time or free period when he began to regale you with the most action-packed, and suspense filled Rambo movie he’d watched last week or two days ago. It was a good thing to always have Peter by your side. 

He got up slowly and shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.” 

“You don’t know?” Mr. Okariri’s eyes danced menacingly. “I just taught this now and you don’t know?” He pointed and crooked his index finger at Peter. “Come out here!” 

Tanda! Someone was about to catch some hot cane! 

The classroom became deathly still, no motion - except perhaps for the dozens of eyeballs tracking Peter’s movement from his seat. 

Peter took his time to the front of the class, clearly not terrified of the crazy teacher whose core competence was wielding a dry, narrow dogon yaro branch. He towered about a foot above the teacher and he used his height to good advantage now, peering down with subtle contempt at the man. 

“You don’t know” The man sneered. “Perhaps you’ve got a vacuole for a brain.” 

That was meant to be funny, nobody laughed. 

“No, sir” 

The cane flashed at his neck; Peter ducked and the man overstepped, staggered and almost fell. 

There was suppressed laughter and a scattering of cheers across the classroom. 

“You rat!” Mr. Okariri grabbed the front of his shirt; a button popped and his shirt slipped out of his shorts in the process. 

The cane swung viciously three times in rapid succession and caught Peter in the back, buttocks and both shins. 

Peter suddenly grabbed the cane out of his hand and flung it behind him. 

“Oho!!” Mr. Okariri sprang backwards dramatically on one foot, his face lighting with hellish glee. “You want to fight me?!” 

He raised both fists and parted his feet in a boxing stance. “Oya, let’s fight!” He shouted. 

There was a general yell of surprise, lockers, seats sliding restlessly, noisily on the floor as students scrambled to better appreciate the unbelievable drama unfolding on an ordinary “go to school, come back home” day. 

Peter just stood, gazing without expression. Mr. Okariri advanced suddenly and shot two lightning fast, very calculated punches to his jaw and belly. 

Peter fell, a sharp cracking sound as his head connected solidly with the concrete floor. 

The class scattered. 

Years ago we had this cat. Sumer - A beautiful, black creature that enjoyed padding around the house with that lazy, luxurious gait reserved for spoilt felines alone. 

She was pretty much a member of the family who shared our meal times – and I’m not talking leftovers here; I’m talking bits of fried eggs, bits of corn beef, fish chunks me and my siblings would struggle for; she had her own rubber foam nest in the garage, made comfortable with a folded old blanket in an old Panasonic television carton but on some random night, she might snuggle up with one of us kids on our mattresses. 

Dad had this coffee brown Peugeot 504 he parked in the garage. For the noise and exhaust fumes I guess, Sumer always exited the garage every morning whenever my dad came to take the car out to work or for washing. She would scurry into the house or fly to the small fruit garden by the driveway and when the car had driven off, saunter back with as much dignity as one could muster after fleeing so unceremoniously. 

One day, dad backed out of the garage, and Sumer, for some odd reason, was right behind the left rear tire. 

When almost 1400kg of metal and rubber weighs on particularly delicate bone, what you hear is an awful, muffled crunching sound, teeth crushing one end of the fried chicken bone, that sharp flat crushing sound that belonged to only Sunday or Christmas day afternoons. The sound is abrupt, not dragged out. 

Relate that sharp, flat crunching sound with no impersonal fried chicken bone but with an object of familiarity, affection and care. 

Perhaps, a beloved cat that often weaved between your shins, purring contentedly. Or a human, a friend, a class mate who filled your fun hour telling you how Loren Avedon dealt Billy Blanks a furious round house kick that drove him into protruding spikes 

Simple. You can’t really imagine it till you’re there. Like an unplanned outcome, despite your elaborate desires or expectations, surprise seizing you by the lapel and rattling you viciously. Wake up! It’s life, baby! 

Funke, who had always screamed “I will be a chemical engineer” in class ending up as a graduate in political science. Life. 

High and mighty Jolomi, the indomitable Zeus of maths, who somehow failed 6 (6!!) subjects in WAEC (including the maths sef) and condensed to something of a non-entity from there. Life. 

Okoi, the royal ‘jonser’ of the class, learning how to sing in college and suddenly, an album or two later, could afford to build a house for his parents in Ogbomosho and buy a brand new Toyota. Life. 

Peter bleeding out on the concrete floor of a JSS 3 class; in Mr. Eke’s arms being rushed towards Mr. Oranusi’s Peugeot Station that would convey him to the hospital, the way his neck lolls boneless in the man’s arms as blood dribbles inexorably from his head despite his school shirt that has been bunched against the wound to staunch the blood flow. Life. 

Peter died a day later. 

Why would life greet tragedy cheerfully with sunlight and just a mild spatter of refreshing rain, the outré indifference of students filing through the school gate to and from classes, just another school day? 

I was once told the fragrance of freshly cut grass we enjoy so much is a chemical grass releases when in fatal distress. Does nature then delight in pain? 

I wish the principal had given a one-week break, while welcoming the police to stage to mete out a swift but excruciating retribution to Mr. Okariri - not only announce the tragic passing away of Peter like just another assembly ground announcement. I wish when Mr. Okariri went to prison, he was murdered during one of those five years he served for his crime of manslaughter. I wish they were only rumours, the stories that blossomed after I’d left school, of male and female students who were raped by a particular teacher and who left the school, scott-free, when he got a better paying job – as a bank manager. 

But at times life crushes flowers with its perfumery - fresh, beautiful blossoms, fragrant with promises of a sunshine tomorrow- and presents vials of poisoned sorrows we must wear as memories forever.

Venetian Blinds

We will wrestle our demons not with incense and holy water, bayonets and gun powder 

The wind assailed the lone lorry on the snaky, black tarmac road like a legion of wildly beserk demons, gleefully exploiting every crack, every crevice in the vehicle to screech hysterically at the occupants tales foreboding waste, despair and doom. 

Heads, bodies bobbed violently from side to side whenever a tyre lurched in and out of a pothole or hit a bump. 

And although the darkness within the lorry was perfect, it was interspersed occasionally by dull flashes of purple white lightning that briefly illuminated grim-faced passengers tightly packed on wood benches in its sweltering cargo compartment. 

He could barely breathe; the air was stifling, heavy with the smell of unwashed bodies and sickness. 

One, two persons had vomited over the cause of the journey and the stench of rotten food seemed to cling to every patch of his clothing, suffused his nostrils perpetually. 

Yet, despite the austere circumstances, his lean hard features eased every now and then to admit a grin whenever his thoughts coalesced briefly around his prospects for the evening. 

A woman sitting by him on this hell of a journey had to be the biggest bit of soldier luck he could ever anticipate. And from the little he'd been able to pry from her - through small talk that had become increasingly microscopic till it was awkwardly non-existent- they were headed for the same destination - Dahomey. 

"Hey, baby" he felt for and squeezed her thigh, hard. "How are you doing?" 

Her own hand clamped firmly over his own, replaced it on his knee. 

"Please." 

He chuckled derisively. 

There was a muffled, ominous boom in the distance - one which might have been thunder, or a big gun. Perhaps, a 105mm field Howitzer. 

"You should fear me." He said. 

A pause. "Why so, sir?" 

He heard the smile in her voice, one of weary scorn. 

There was this sense of light-headed remoteness one experienced at that moment one's hands tightened vice-like around the throat of a victim, or plunged a dagger to its hilt in a man's chest; the richly spurting arterial blood didn't make you wince in disgust; your mind was solely of the opinion you were looking at someone else's hands forcefully, repeatedly drag a human being through tight coils of barbed wire till they were just a lot of shredded, dead meat. 

He knew if he unholstered his pistol, and placed it against say, her right eye (?), it was that same dreamy indifference that would greet the explosive report, the splatter of brains and bloody tissue all over the compartment, all over him. 

But that would ruin his plans for her that evening, wouldn't it? 

He would take her forcefully, violently, brutally till she screamed, begged for her life. 

A savage wave of lust gripped him momentarily. 

The more she pleaded, helpless and terrified, the more he would enjoy it. 

He smiled. 

******************************************* 

Kayode, his colleague, had met him on his way into the office complex and the man's reaction was disturbing. 

What are you doing here?!" His tone slightly more than a horrified whisper. "They have already sent soldiers to your house!" 

The half-crazed, terrified look on his face. The urgency in his grip. The hopeless sense of abandonment the office complex starkly exuded. 

These were things that would haunt him forever. 

You heard the rumours - the progroms in the North, the alarming body count, military officers summarily executing large numbers of Igbos - but you were self assured such things always remained at the fringes of unresolved speculation. For acknowledging such was akin... to forfeiting one's sanity. 

Then the casualties started fleeing enmasse to the East. 

You saw one, two, five trucks, Lorries packed full of humanity and property rumble past on almost daily basis now. 

This should have been your confirmation. 

But your state of denial persisted - Kenneth Ibe could not visualise Kenneth Ibe forsake his life, his job, and flee for his life to the East - his life was here. Things had followed disorder but only temporarily. 

So armed with your allusions, despite Kayode’s dire warning, you leave your official car at the office and make it back to your Lagos apartment on foot, under the cover of darkness however. 

The first sight that welcomes you, right in your driveway, is the disembowelled corpse of your Efik cook, Isang. Your hand leaps to your mouth, over a silent scream and you sink weakly to your knees. 

Nearly stupefied with horror, your gaze trails to your house. The front door is wide open, clothing and foodstuff – ‘garri’, you note absentmindedly – strewn just outside the doorway. None of your other two cars are in view. 

That’s when the blinds tilt just a fraction more, as it were –and the light, cruelly revealing, fully dawns on you. 

In that moment the blinds rise you realise certain insights that should overwhelm you with their severe implications – but merely resonate a bitter note of resignation within you now. Now that the blinds have lifted. 

Your government isn’t coming to the rescue. It took your first real corpse to get the message through. 

You should have realised this right from the onset when your own government sanctioned the organised killings of innocents – not just the guilty coup plotters but civilians as well - in the very place you’d called home for twenty two years. 

Two houses, in Kaduna and Lagos – are gone; three vehicles, a Peugeot, Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen Beetle – are gone. Your high paying job at the National Broadcasting Service – is gone. 

But you calmly accept the fact of your losses. You will leave home with nothing. 

Nothing but an element of your heritage – nearly smothered by plenty easy years of cultivated British accents, fat pay checks, lovely ladies and vodkas, but still alive, potent regardless. 

That element is survival. 

******************************************* 

Her reticence wasn’t troubling in the least bit. It didn’t make a difference to anything he planned to do. 

But he’d noticed her hands earlier, vaguely masculine but clean, her fingers well manicured; the way she comported herself with a certain air of stateliness. This was not a nobody. 

He needed to be sure he wasn’t about to violate the wife/girlfriend of some top officer or something like that. 

Although he was pretty sure there had been no ring on her fingers, one couldn’t be too careful. 

“Are you married?” 

There was no response, for several seconds. He nudged her lightly, thinking she hadn’t heard or was sleeping. 

“No.” Came the reply. 

Raw excitement surged within his chest. “Why?” There was a mocking streak of disappointment to his tone. “A lovely woman like you?” 

There was no reply as before. 

“I’ll marry you, eh?” his hand snaked across her torso this time, towards her chest region. 

The response was immediate. Her hand gripped his wrist with a strength that astonished him, twisted his entire arm painfully away from her. 

“Let me be, please!” 

He drove his elbow viciously at her, felt it sink into the soft resistance of the belly. She gasped loudly in pain. 

******************************************* 

It wasn’t safe for him to move in the daytime. Not only was he Ibo, but certain soldiers had his name on their bullets. Whether those bullets found their namesake or ravaged some other life was entirely up to him now. The realisation was chilling. You couldn’t report to the police now because the police were also after your life – and you were not the criminal. 

What he needed, priority uno, was some form of disguise. 

He stole swiftly, cautiously towards the door. The perpetrators – possibly not the soldiers alone – were long gone, he was somehow certain. But there would be indigenous stragglers soon enough - ones with malicious intent and who wouldn’t hesitate to take his life on sighting him. Whatever business he had left at this site had to be concluded briskly, he acknowledged. 

On stepping into his living room, the stench of rot, faeces and stale urine slammed plush into his face. He gagged. The animals hadn’t even bothered to use the toilets. 

Thick clumps of faeces drying on the Persian rug and the couch, circled lazily by house flies; half finished plates of corn beef and rice upturned on the dining table; a trail of blood that led from the kitchen and stopped abruptly halfway to the living room (Isang’s, possibly); the kitchen, except for a few broken dishes and ripped bags of foodstuff, seemed in impeccable order. 

Things would worsen no doubt, when the thieves showed up. 

Hanging on the rail of the stairways was a torn, bloodied electric blue shirt... a female’s - 

Elizabeth!

Crying out hoarsely, he darted upstairs. 

******************************************* 

“You piece of filth!” He spat, reaching for what he thought was her face. 

Sharp, fiery pain exploded in his chest. He screamed. 

There was the sound of scuttling feet, people struggling to move away from this bit of unwelcome action. 

He reached for his holster. The other hand grabbed at her head and a huge handful of hair came off in his grip. His mind had barely registered his amazement when the blade slashed savagely at his neck, a fatal stroke. Choking on his own blood, his fingers fell to her chest, clamping on her breast in what would be an excruciatingly painful grip. Elastic snapped somewhere and the entire ‘breast’ gave way. 

He hadn’t time to wonder on how flesh could disengage so easily, near effortlessly from a person’s body; or why his murderer wasn’t even reacting in pain. He hadn’t time to wonder about the situation where the prey, in an ironic twist of fortune, murdered the predator. He didn’t have that time. 

His time was already up, forever. 

******************************************* 

He didn’t know how long he stood there, transfixed at the spot, looking at the large, thick blood stains on the crumpled bed sheets. 

Elizabeth. Colleague. Lover. That last night together. 

They’d come straight home from the office, in favour of a quiet home cooked dinner of rice, corn beef stew and coleslaw. The tension over the developing unrest was already palpable as at then. The prevalent rumour was that Major Nzeogwu had been killed in a counter coup. Unnecessary vehicular movement was repeatedly discouraged. He’d left her at his place before he travelled days ago, thinking in case of any unexpected developments, she’d be safe. What a delusional clown he’d been. 

His mind reasoned she might have somehow escaped, somehow gotten on one of those fleeing trucks and miraculously made it to the Midwest, to her people. But his heart, crushing under the weight of incalculable grief, would not be swayed by reason. It told him Elizabeth was dead. Possibly raped several times and killed. Or mercifully, snuffed out by one bullet to the head. 

He knew he had to survive. It was knowledge beyond the ploy of instincts. Survive and lend power to any force of vengeance that reared its head against this madness. 

As he wandered around the room gathering items of clothing and accessories littered everywhere, a snatch of a poem by some author he couldn’t remember –but was certain was someone hugely famous – sifted into his distraught consciousness. 

We shall protect our hearth from all our foes... 

He found one of Elizabeth’s bras under the bed. He held the red bra against his chest, smiled at the absurdity as tears tracked down his cheeks.

...but if the price is death for all we hold dear... 

This bra was one of many he had on countless nights relieved her of, as his questing hands sought soft exposed flesh hungrily. A needful absurdity it was, now. 

...then let us die without a shred of fear 

He clipped the bra behind him. 

The Storm

It would rain soon.
Dark grey clouds stole thickly across the mid July sky like acrid smoke from the diseased engine of a prodigious Mac truck.
From miles across, the sun seemed to regard this intrusive abomination with horror from behind a puny tuft of Cumulus.
Atlas in a moment would exhale oh-not-so gently, unsettling elements haphazardly all across the landscape.
And the Wuse market went on about its own business briskly, languidly, scornful of such things ineffectual as an impending rainstorm.
Car horns bleated impotently as streams of multitude, white ants marshalling around some priceless bounty, rendered the Wuse market road almost impassable.
Traders coarsely bawled fantastic offers and prices at passersby, dangling their wares in sweaty, often uninterested faces; a youth hefted loads of foodstuff off his barrow and held out a dirt blackened paw to an obese, sweaty lady for his payment. Two abokis apparently thought it was more profitable trading invectives than aki Hausa, dried dates, groundnut; they pranced in martial stance at one corner, grappling themselves tightly about the throat, arguing heatedly.
Kamalu took all these in from the interior of the Toyota Corolla parked slightly adjacent to the Zenith bank, betraying as much stolid detachment as an ancient wooden idol might express.
Only if they knew.
He was nervous, very; but the only tell tale sign was the sweat streaking copiously, inexorably down his body.
Whether under the sun or in an air-conditioned environment, once nervous, the sweating began.
This was his first bombing mission. And using the word ‘nervous’ to describe his anxiety was like using a gallon of water to dilute a pinch of salt; he was terrified.
The fear wasn't just logical. But there it was, a cold lode of terror lodged deep in his chest.
Why?
This wasn't even his first, second or third IED; he'd actually put together, tested five small, makeshift bombs over the past three weeks. Rigging the whole thing was like second nature. Child's play (Chukky sticking knives in people like butter).
Power supply - the car battery. Check.
The container - N400, 000 worth of Toyota chrome and engine. Check.
The trigger - a trip wire between his legs, on the floor of the car. Check
Main charge - dollops of stolen Semtex. Check.
The detonator... Check
His motivation wasn't seven virgins on which he could vent unbridled lust. It wasn't that idiotically simple. Although JTF - or WTF they answered- would chalk it all up to some Islamic Terrorist Group. So be it, the fools we suffer.
"Our government is too relaxed." Banaca's brusque, authoritative voice, seared in his consciousness by repeated playbacks on his iPod Nano over a period of four months.
"We need to keep them in a permanent state of emergency and Operation Yellow is the impasse! That is what would yield results against the real terrorists."
His philosophy was simplistic, conviction profound. That was what made it so irrefutable.
What Operation Yellow all boiled down to was to stage several pseudo- terrorist strikes in strategic regions across Abuja. The end result, hopefully, would be to galvanise the authorities into meaningful action which would lead to the establishing of veritable, imposing solutions to the menace of terrorist bombers in Nigeria.
Much like a weaker strain of a virus is introduced into a person's bloodstream to trigger a chain of reactions, all to reinforce the body's immune system.
It was a worthy but gravely dangerous cause. Banaca made that brutally clear in no small measure.
"People will die." His voice quivered in the grip of his passion." Some of us seated here, yes!
"Innocents - children, parents, teachers, wives- He spread his hands expansively.”Across our nation!
"But blood is the price for life! Our sacrifice will be the birth stone of decades of national security and peace for our families, our children, our babies..."
The face of his watch registered 8 minutes to 2pm. By the hour, there would be simultaneous explosions across the city.
In exactly three minutes, he would...
The door glass exploded suddenly, and as he ducked instinctively to shield his face, he felt cold metal press excruciatingly into his exposed neck. Unmistakably, a gun.
"Freeze!" The owner of the gun spat viciously.
Powerful hands grabbed, dragged him through the shattered door window, dumped him hard on the tarred road.
Cold steel, handcuffs, clamped at his wrists.
Someone kept shouting "Bomb! Bomb!", a warning, and as though from a great distance, even though it was just a few metres away, people were screaming, scrambling, running.
This can't be. This can't be...
He felt a sharp sting in the small of his back and in seconds, all sight, sound and sensations generally dissolved into quiet darkness.
*****************************************
So that was really fake Semtex?
Yes, there wouldn't have been any explosions even if they had tripped the detonators.
A dry delicate laugh.
So where are the subjects?
Area 49, each in solitary confinement.
What is their current state?
Most have recovered from the effects of the sedative. Two are still unconscious-
Why? Slight urgent concern in the voice.
Nothing unusual, sir. They'll be awake in a few minutes.
Have the doctor examine them in five minutes if they aren't up by then.
Yes sir. An electronic device beeped severally as keys were depressed.
A pregnant pause.
So what would you say has been truly accomplished so far?
A small sigh, for reflection.
We have successfully documented the precise physiological & physical responses of the sixteen personality types, carried out our research on 50 different batches of 16 personality-
I'm asking for the results of all this, Dr. Banaca... in plain English too. Slightly impatient, firm.
Okay sir. Muted embarrassment.
I can confidently say that, through the results of this project that a potential terrorist can be spotted by monitoring certain individual physiological, psychological and physical parameters.
I see. A note of approval.

You do know however that our methods are highly unorthodox and every bit illegal.

It wasn’t a question, a warning.

Encrypt your findings, send a copy to me.

Yes sir, right away.

The rasp of clothing against leather, shuffling feet.

Uh, sir?

Yes?

The subjects, what is the conclusion on them?

Deprogramming, fast track. Get every one of them out of this hole within a fortnight.

The success rate of the deprogramming process isn’t uh, perfect yet, sir.

Implication being?

We may have uh, individuals who might still retain extreme anti-societal proclivities from the Yellow Program. However the extent is not measurable.

A long pause.

We cannot afford to discharge any individual who doesn’t succeed the deprogramming procedure.

What then would be done to them, sir? Hesitant.

Eliminate them.

DANIEL OKOLI, MARCH 2013