The Execution of Atha

CHAPTER FIVE

“They are going to kill me Lwesha!” I exclaim in anger.
“You need to calm down Atha” Lwesha chastises me in a calm voice.

“Calm down? The Judge has already made up his mind that in five days’ time my head will no longer be attached to my body!” I press on exasperated by his calmness when all I can do is panic ever since Lwesha broke the news to be of my impending demise.

“Like I said, calm down” Lwesha continues unshaken by my erratic behaviour.

“Get out” I say in a surprisingly calm voice when I realise that Lwesha is no going to comfort me in any shape or form.
“Atha don’t do this, I’m all you have” Lwesha tries to reason with me which only seems to anger me even more.

“The only person I had is already dead so you mean nothing to me, now get out!” I say with a serious look on my face.

“If that’s what you want then I’ll leave” Lwesha responds with a heavy sigh as he gets up into a standing position.

Once I am back in my cell, all my resolve crumbles as I let the misery slip in. Maybe this is how it was meant to end for me from the very beginning, death by execution.

I always felt as though I was not living right, back when I still lived under the tyranny of The Enlightened One. Forced to obey his ridiculous beliefs and notions like some sort of slave, made to believe that he could do no wrong while I constantly failed to live up to his unattainable expectations of me.

I still remember the day he decreed that I was to marry one of his trusted few. The man was practically fifty years old with six wives already and he was expected to take me on as his seven wife, me, a minor.

I was immediately disgusted, begged my mother to attempt to escape with me this time but she feared what they would do to me if we ever got caught.

Taught me how to become an obedient and mute perfect wife, I hated my mother back in those days. Thought that she had finally lost it if she was going to allow her only daughter to marry a man old enough to be her father but then again, what could she have done really?

Just like me, my mother held very little power within the compound even though she was one of the wives of The Enlightened One.

The only female who had true power was The Enlightened One’s first wife, Moira. She ruled the female folk with an iron fist and always made sure to impose her will on everyone else.

Her children were no different, they deemed themselves special for being the children of The Enlightened One and his first wife Moira.

Back then such things irked me to no end but when I look back at them now in my dark cell all alone, they seem so trivial leaving me with the usual feeling of emptiness.