MY KILLER

CHAPTER 9

"To work, as servants."

He killed my family, killed my only friend, killed my baby, and now, he wanted me to work for him.
I must kill him.
I had to kill him.
I didn't care how. The only way to appease everyone and make my life feel a little worth it was to kill him. I didn't mind dying to do so. It just had to be done.
And we entered the palace.
I didn't expect to see this so soon.

"36, 37, 38 ضربه أصعب, " 'Hit it harder' she had said in Arabic.

Two men each on either sides were hitting a girl tied with both hands behind her back to a tree with long sticks. Her screams were piercing.

"40, 41, 42". The girls I had come with were trembling. The Leader we had come with immediately left us, climbed the three short stairs leading to the woman and when she caught sight of him, she motioned on the men to stop their beating and walked quickly towards him. When she was close enough, she placed her hands on her chest, bowed her head and went down with her legs closed, as if to kneel.

He nodded his head and she came up again. They both talked quietly and at a point, she turned to look at us; us with the guards surrounding us like we were prisoners on the death roll. We were prisoners though, and this place felt like the chopping table.
When they were done, the Leader signaled them to bring us forward and they pushed us forward. That was when I realized that we were not alone.

The whole place was filled with girls, girls of all ages and sizes, all of them on black abaya and hijab. Most of them, black. I wondered how many were from Nigeria, how many where like us, prisoners from a bomb blast.

The place we were in was visible to me now. It was a courtyard which was a large circular opening cut into a canopy which allowed the sun movement to display but the roof was covered with glass and the whole place was painted gold. It was truly an amazing sight. The tied girl however, was at the middle and round the place which had three floors to the top were filled with the black clothed girls all around, watching the tortured girl.

They didn't look all pleased to see the tortured girl, so why were they here? They were all probably forced to come.
And the beating continued.
"45, 46, 47..." But she didn't move from the Leader's side.
"50."

And she scanned us from the first person to the last.
"شكرا". She said thank you in Arabic.
"I hope these ones live past a month here. Many of the new Nigerians have all met their demise for one thing or the other. The Sultan is not pleased at all with that country," she spoke in Arabic.

"I hope so too," and he looked at us and took a longer look at me before continuing. "But for some reason, I think this batch will be decent enough, to at least stay in the Sultan's good graces."
She smiled at him.

"I shall be away then. I have to announce my presence to the Sultan."

"Of course my lord," and she repeated the same greeting pose she did when she first saw him. "I shall train them to be better than their predecessors."

"You do just that," and the door closed behind him.
For some reason, I felt abandoned, all alone, like a chick without its mother.
He was the nicest person I had ever met in this life I was living in, the other life before my kidnap was dead to me.

I didn't have the time to shed a tear or two on his behalf.
"Listen up all of you. This is what happens when you attempt to look at the Sultan in the face." I looked at the girl. She had passed out from the pain and I could see huge red marks all over her light skinned body. So all of her pain, screams, torture; was because she dared an attempt to look upon the face of the Monarch. What the...

"This is a lesson to you all, especially these new recruits. You have come in here as a servants, and not as concubines or a Sultana. You have no rights whatsoever in Arabia. You can be killed as easily as you came in and so I advice you to tread carefully within these walls for what you say or do, may lead to your demise. This place is not like the other parts of the world where everyone has rights and even if everyone has rights here, you don't. Tread carefully within these walls I repeat, especially the Nigerian girls that are still privileged to be alive." And turning to look at us she said, "have I made myself perfectly clear.