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.