The Last Holiday

CHAPTER THREE

                   Chapter 3:

I awoke to low but furious whisperings, arguing on the best position to bury something.

    I jerked awake with a start, stopping myself from making any sound, as confusion filled me with an unaccustomed and uncomfortably fear.

  I was on the forest floor, somewhere farther from my 'hiding' place. The ground was wet and squelchy, making slurpy squishy sounds each time the two men shifted their weights from foot to foot.

    Two men? What two men?

A  flood of memory washed up on me, and I immediately felt pain at my capture. What the hell had I been thinking? I was supposed to be home now, and not here.

     Here! Where was here? Was I still in Old Bakana or had I been taken across the sea to Abonema wharf? Worse still, I could be on any of the small uninhabited islands that dotted the river between Old Bakana and Abonema.

    My heart jumped with fear as I imagined me in any of those places. The angala was home to many creatures, both mythical and real life ones. I'd watched a family friend hunt a bear in those woody marshes. I stood no chance.

    Despair sunk me deeper into the smelly black semisolid goo and hairy roots that formed the floor, and a slight trickle of water flowed into my ears.

Wanting to brush off dirt from my face, I tried raising my hands. It met with heavy resistance. At first I thought I had got my hands tangled beneath the stilty white mangrove roots, but a similar case with my feet told me otherwise.

I had been tied, and judging from how deep and coarse the material cut when I struggled against the bonds, I knew I'd been bound with forest creepers.

A small sigh escaped my lips before I could stop it, as mosquitoes whined ceaselessly around my ears.

I was lying on my right side, that half of me totally immersed in the smelly crude oil deposit.

"We should just bury him here in Ama Tamgbolo! No one would know who murdered him! He'd die here anyways!", Baker's voice whispered.

"No! Don't you ever think? I don't believe such a dundi came from the same womb as I!", Ibiye's furious whisper returned, his tone fiercer than his brother's.

     Deep down in me, I wanted their fight to continue. I rolled over so I was laying on my back, looking at the moon smiling uselessly at me from her throne on high, and I wondered if God could see me too.

Surely, he won't let me die at such a young age.

    Whilst the two brothers argued on how best to kill me, my mind drifted to important things.

  Things like: who was going to wash my jersey top and knicker shorts my uncle Donald bought for me when he returned from Hawaii?

   Or my Arabian boxer shorts I had on. A sinking feeling rose in me as I realized some crude had slipped into my boxer shorts and lay wedged between my ass crack, heavy, cold and slimy.

    Like I'd taken a shit on myself.

My stupid imagination fancied it was a snake that lodged between my ass crack, and I giggled quietly, pitying the snake.

    It'd die of such bad gases that the world hadn't even known existed. Oh, plus suffocation.

I squeezed my glutes tighter as though doing kegels to emphasize my point.

    The left side of my head felt numb, like I had been dipped sideways into a cauldron of molten lead; heavy, immobile and hard.
The moment I fully regained consciousness, a dull throb began in my head, and I had to strain so as to avoid gasping.