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.