He stood in the dark under a small thorn tree and watched as the people walked by; all on their way home. He wasn’t interested in them, only in Ralph Matsimela, the twenty-something gay guy from Roma in the Kingdom of Lesotho. He knew what Ralph looked like because Ralph sent him a few pictures through the message link on Facebook. This would not be his first murder, but it was the first murder in his personal cleansing. The others were on demand and he received money for it; it made him a wealthy man. This was a cleanup of his existence, his bloodline if you wish; his own personal ethnic cleansing operation. He was cleaning up his family and everybody his family contaminated.
At 19H15 there was still no sign of Ralph and he wondered why the guy was late; he normally passed that point before 18H30. He did his homework over the last few months and made sure he knew everything about Ralph’s program. The fact that Ralph was late worried him, but not too much. Then he saw the taxi that Ralph normally took and he relaxed totally. This is going to be so much fun, he thought.
When Ralph passed he did not see the man hiding behind the trees; he also did not see that someone followed him from that spot onwards. Ralph’s mind was far from the dirt road he lived in. He thought about Roma, the place where he grew up. Roma was so much better than this godforsaken place he now called home. Roma had mountains to climb and rivers to swim in, but this place was only a dirt road with corrugated iron-houses as far as you could see. Roma had a soul; this place was dead. He really missed his hometown, but there was no work for him and that is why he decided to come to this place. The other reason was the Lesotho government’s polity on homosexuality; he had to move.
At last Ralph was in front of his own dilapidated house and he opened the door, but before he could close the door behind him something pushed him into his house and someone else closed the door. He lay there on the ground for a few minutes before he could get up and when he did he felt the cold steel of a very sharp knife under his throat.
“You said I should look you up when I am in the area, so here I am,” said Spider.
“Who are you?” asked Ralph.
“I am Spider, your Facebook friend. Don’t you recognize me? Or do you have so many boyfriends that you can’t remember me. You guys are all the same. You screw around with so many that you can’t even recall their names or their faces. That is why you all should die; there is no place for you except in a graveyard; preferably in a mass grave.”
“Of course I know you. Why would you think that I would screw around? I am not like that and you know it. We have talked about it. Why are you carrying a knife? You know how I feel about you. I have never connected with anybody like I did with you. You know that,” said Ralph with tears in his voice.
“You are right about one thing old Ralphy. You will never connect with anybody again.”
And with that he cut the boy’s throat. Then he took the knife and he neatly cut out a flower on the boy’s leg, a flower with a crown right above it. It was the sign of the beast he wished to kill.
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