TAKEN

[3]

Sandwiched between Dozie and Frank, I couldn't move. All I prayed for was for the police to capture my abductors.

Yes, I hoped and recited the Lord's prayer over and again in my head, but the driver took the bush path and the police missed that opening.
Before they could come back to join the path, we were already in the deepest part of the forest.

I opened my mouth to speak but Dozie was ready to beat me down. We had ditched the truck and hid in the overgrown shrubs behind a shrine.

          "Say one word and I will sacrifice you to this deity!" Dozie's fingers were pulling my ears to the point I felt as though he was going to rip them off my head.

I nodded to all his instructions for the sake of one more breath in the land of the living.
We were standing in front of 'Mama's' Self-sufficient hut. She walked around us like a swirling vulture.

          "What you did today was stupid!" She admonished, her eyes intense.

I opened my mouth but her forefinger was up in protest, so I shut up. "You could have been killed or maimed!" I shuddered at the decibel her voice had suddenly attained.

          "I do not hurt children, neither do I like losing anyone of them." She stopped in my face and gave me a piercing gaze. "Or do you want your mother to be in agony?" She asked, pointing at herself and letting a loose tear fall off her face.

I stared back at her in bewilderment. Whatever made this old hag think she was my mother even for a second was high on weed. I pulled my gaze off her and scowled in disgust.

Her gaze lifted at me as she gently wiped the fake tears off her face. "You are a hard-hearted child. Your mother is in tears and you are making faces?"

Her hands pounced on my braids, pulling them in her right palm. I winced in pain.
Then I felt my leg give way from a good kick. I sprawled on the floor, crying. My braids were still in the old woman's hand when she barked.

         "Pick her up!"

Her boys dragged me off the floor, yanking my dirty clothes off my dirty bruised body.
Before I could say jack, a piercing pain went through my back, and a long skinny whip came down on my body with vengeance.

The force pushed me to the floor. I couldn't get up quickly to prepare for the next and the next ones. It continued to rain down on me till I felt my skin come off my bones.

         "Get the pepper water!"  Nne Eze was still hovering over me.

I wanted to protest but there was no strength left in me. I lay there praying to the God who hadn't answered me yet.

The last part of the prayer was still on my lips when searing pain engulfed my body. I felt as though I was on fire. I screamed and begged but they tied me to a tree at the center of the courtyard. I'd seen the girls get beaten but never tied to the tree, naked.

Hours later the rest of the family had retired home and the children were playing in the yard, away from me of course. Mama was relaxing in her wooden recliner and staring off towards the sky.

I'd noticed that about her. Every night she'd take the same position and linger her gaze towards the sky while muttering some things I assumed were prayers or incantations.
My tired bones were barely resting on my legs anymore as I slouched forward. I was barely alive. I needed food, water, shelter, and something for my pain.

            "Untie her!"

I hadn't realized Mama was standing before me, again. The rough hands of the boys took me off the tree and laid me before Mama.