The rants of an antsy girl

20/02/2020

Thursday

'I feel like I'm in a movie,' Efosa breaks the terse silence.
'That is the purpose of everything.' Zita adds earnestly with a surprised look.
I find it hard to digest all these many things. The story at first seemed silly. A woman dying for a five year old child? Incredibly silly. Later, it became gripping, engaging, strange.
It is strange that even Zita with her bad spoken English could tell a story so well without much reliance on exaggeration.
She nudges me with her piercing, beady eyes and I cannot recollect where I had seen such eyes.
'What?' I ask in confusion.
'You don't understand?'
'Understand what?' I am getting agitated.
She lets out a dramatic exasperated sigh and wrings her hands in frustration.
'This is why I call you brainless,'
I get offended and I snap out of every silly feeling.
'Where is Laju?' I bark.
Zita starts to laugh and runs deeper into the bush. Efosa breezes past me almost immediately, screaming for Zita to stop. It is pointless, utterly pointless.
I pursue after them and the wind howls in my ears like blades slicing through nothingness, sharp sounds that almost make me stop.
Twice I stepped on something squishy that I refuse to acknowledge and just when my chest heaves mercilessly with shortage of oxygen, Efosa comes to a halt in front and I stop mid-run.
There is a large uncompleted building, greened by many years of abandonment with thick grasses growing out of its windows and for some reason, it seemed that the building was meant to be a chapel with all the many building rods sticking from the top of the structure and it's many pillars
I can pick up scents of weed in the air. Then billows of black smoke coming off the other side of the building.
Zita is heading towards a part and Efosa seems to be asking me with his eyes if we should advance or just call the police.
Call the police! My head screams, but curiosity gets the better part of me. I want to know the mystery texter. I want to see the whole charade of mystery. I want to know why they are after my family.
'I must find Laju, Efosa. And I need to know why all the drama.'
He says that I am crazy soundlessly but he follows me as I follow Zita who laughs a low maniacal laughter every two seconds.
The scent gets stronger and when we keep following Zita, we go past the entrance.

...

The room is unplastered and green like the building, but the windows have tarpaulin drapes on them and at a corner, a large pot is boiling, giving off thick, hot, black smoke that makes my head heavy. At the other corner, there is a large wooden table with drawers and a wooden chair with several books and bits of paper. There is a rolled up mattress here and a large chest of something there. On one of the walls, there is a huge curtain of tarpaulin like the curtains they use in play production, for their grand exits.
A laugh comes softly from the darkness. I must admit, this is dramatic. Efosa looks like he has wet his pants, breathing too loudly and turning his head at the slightest sound.
'Ebiekutan,' someone drawls.
I know that voice anywhere. It taunted me for many times in my dreams.
A wave of boldness seizes me.
'Mystery texter.'
He chuckles sourly and lights a candle to his face. Truly he is Damian and truly he has scars, but he is Mr Akhere.
I yelp while Efosa gasps so graphically that I thought he was having a seizure.
'Mr Akhere!' I say angrily. Zita goes to the cauldron and dips in her head. In the smoke, I mean.
He laughs a full belly laugh, slow and jeering like the kind that rich men laugh when they talk about their many wealths and their skills at amassing.
'I can read you like a book. I can plot your graph conveniently and I won't need a plan B or a plan C. I have mastered you.'
I am terribly disgusted and annoyed. No, angered.
'Which stupid mastered?! You did all those nasty things to me, threatened my family and–'
'Haes!' he cuts. 'I don't allow it when people keep whining in MY territory.' He raises the candle to his face.
'Look at me. Do I look like Akhere? Do I look like I concern myself with such things as chemistry, or physics?'
Certainly, he is Mr Akhere, but he is not. He does not speak like him nor does his have beady eyes. His eyes are cold alright, but alive with venom. Like  a stare could kill you. He does not keep his gaze on a place for too long. He keeps averting long gazes.
'Then... Then who are you?' Efosa stutters. I am shocked that he is still alive and breathing.
'I am he. I am mastery. I am intelligence and I am vengeance.'
'Drama!' I spit slyly.
'Exactly. Drama.' He gets up from his stupid, wooden chair. He is quite taller than Mr Akhere. Perhaps he is his older brother. He begins to pace around the room. Zita's head has re-emerged from the cauldron but her mind is long gone. She sits on the floor, leaning on her arms, wasted.
'Drama involves situations with intense and interesting conflict of forces. I me, or I you but then, I rather me. This intensifies the drama.'
What in the world is this person? I want to call the police right now but I bite myself to cool down.
'Where is Laju. I don't care if you you or you me. Where is my sister?'
He picks up a book from his ginormous table, an old, large book. He flips it open several times before answering.
'Strange, I never thought of this. Sentiments. Now?' he throws the book on the table.
'To think that all this while, you cared for her. You have cotton balls for brain.'
I am getting fed up. Is this man all about yapping?
'Are you going to have a meaningful conversation or you will keep yapping?'
Efosa pinches me.
The texter goes back to his seat and crosses his legs. The candle has melted halfway.
'Yes, to business. I have always called you stupid but then, you took it as a reaction of my sentiments, how I feel to you. But I was only stating the fact. You should know who I am now.'
'His elder bro–'
'His twin brother.' Efosa interjects rather cowardly.
His what? Of course, his name, Akhere.
'He's a smart boy. Marry him.'
Eww.
'So what if you are his twin brother I could make it out fast enough? Who are you to threaten us and... and plant bombs in our house? Who are you to terrify me?'
'Zita, bring the girl and the boys.' he says before turning to me. Avoiding eye contact yet again.
'I am Odion. While growing up, Akhere was smaller. He could be easily bullied but to his smallness, he had cunning. He emotionally blackmailed us and all, he could make you think what he wanted you to think,' he examined his fingers. 'Truthfully, I fear he is a more critical thinker than I will ever be. I detest this. I detest my feeble mind but I am awesome, anyways. Our father was rich, not too rich but rich enough. He came into wealth late though, after our mother had died from common fibroids.'
'There was myself and Akhere. There was Zita. There was no mother.'
Zita? This makes more sense. Those eyes of hers like Mr Akhere's.
'Zita!' Odion grits out. She jerks in consciousness, stumbles up in hazy confusion and looks at her brother.
'Bring the girl and the boys.' he hisses.
Zita stumbles out.
'She is cute though, but she cannot speak well. It is the fault of your god-damned father. Mother had died and my father had just come into wealth. He needed somebody. Somebody with whom his soul had tied with. My father was a great man. He believed in rebirths and reincarnation and past lives.'
'In the past, he had married Adiri, the daughter of a water goddess. She was beautiful. Now she was come again in the present as Urowoli.'
'My mother?' I ask in disbelief.
'Urowoli had killed Mother, but we could not hold it against her. She wanted her soul tie with my father to transcend lives. Ages. So she killed Onyeama. Like she had killed Oamen when she was Adiri to get my father's love. It was only normal.'
'This is pointless.' Efosa says in fear induced exasperation.
'The truth is pointless.' Odion yawned.
Somehow, this sounds sensible.
'The truth used to be potent.'
I have never seen this side of Efosa. He flares up and I imagine him tearing off his cloak of cowardice.
'You don't even know the Truth!'
Odion laughs to this reaction but I can see a hint of surprise in his eyes. Something he had not expected.
'Balls, eh? You now have guts? You now choose to be a man?'
'I can bear anything. Anything on this Earth, but you see the Truth, I don't like to see anyone speak against Him.'
Odion is confused now. Even I am confused.
'You seem to have met him. Or are you trying to play my games? Only I have mastered the art of dark speeches.' Then he inhales deeply, so deeply all the air in the would may have finished.
'Stop talking. That is not in my plan.'
'Then don't talk against Truth since you don't know Him.' Efosa continues defiantly.
Wow.
'Okay then. Whatever leads you back to your bed. I don't like Jesus talk.'
Efosa breathes down and Odion turns to me, a cold glare.
'So what happened to your father? Why are you telling me your family history?' I muster to ask.
'Your father happened.' He is cold. Bloodcurdling cold. He goes back to sit in his seat and crosses his legs.
I am no longer impatient, because I am interested in what story must have made this man. This evil man.
He lights a roll of weed and the smell is strong in the damp room, along with the boiling cauldron.
'I have always hated Akhere–damn, I still do. His manipulative. His edge over me. His cunning. For years, I learned me. I mastered everything good about me and along side this, we planned to avenge our father's death together. Look at it, Zita was orphaned so early. So early and it was not too late to have another mother. To have Urowoli and there came Ofortokun, running with his wealth and cunning. Just like Akhere. Damn!'
He abruptly, so abrupt like the speed of light, strips off the tarpaulin from the wall. Efosa kneels down immediately and I keel into the wall behind me.
Guns, machetes, other things I do not want to know. Dangerous things.
He is maniacal.
'I will kill you Ofortokuns, you all! I will gouge out the eyes of every Ofortokun eye and boil it in that cauldron. I will start with your sister. Zita!' He screams.
He exhales and goes back to his chair. He starts to laugh, not an unreasonable kind of laugh. A sophisticated laugh- a rich man laugh.
'So, Akhere. Yes– I took a test during my mental check-up and a friend of mine. He was not a friend though. We studied Psychology together. He urged me to take a visit to a psychiatrist. Can you imagine? He thought I was mad or something. However way, I went, I honoured his words and then I was diagnosed NPD. They said I was a narcissist. They asked me if my parents loved me as they did my twin. Of course!' He is crying now. Beastial.
'My mother adored me. My father treasured me. They loved me than they did Akhere. I Know it. I make it true.'
'They are all liars, they tried to make Akhere more important. If there is one thing I learned through the course of life, you make a snake your pillow to fulfill your cause. We were twin after all. We had the same face and so I cultivated my strength. Akhere has cunning but my temper, my older status, my fiery temper, I used against him. He had killed my friend who was not my friend because he didn't know he was going to.' a throatal sob.
'I used it on him. I subdued him like I was always meant and we cooked up a plan. Zita first because Urowoli had cultivated rich man habits. She didn't cook. Zita cooked. She had always cooked; weed, food, drugs and whatnot. It was easy.'
He drags from the roll and Efosa is trying to breath well, leaning on the wall.
'Then your dumb brain made it easier. It thrilled me immensely. Akhere had turned beastial then. Timid, beastial in his subtlety. He came with the best of himself. He had done something in chemicals at a university. He subdued you. Wrapped you around his fingers, abused you in everyway- sexually, verbally, domestically. I must say, he gripped you by the reins because you were a tough one and he sat worried many nights. Worried that he was becoming a dragon like me instead of the snake he was. You stole his stealth then but still, it was a program of my plans. I am wonderful.'
'You know you are not. You are just one fool plagued with extreme low self-esteem. A coward who could not move on but dwelled on bitterness. You all!' I spat.
'Watch your tongue, babee. At this rate, I am feeling like you killed Akhere.'
'That is your problem o–'
'Zitaaa!'
Zita appears. She seems to have been running. Bringing up the rear are some guys, people whom my dad would have called riff-raffs.
Laju is bundled and gagged.

...

'Oritselaju!' I cry as they set her down. Odion cracks his hands.
They stop me from reaching her by pushing me back, me and also Efosa who is too confused and tired to do anything from his head.
Zita removes her gag and it seems she will cough out her intestines.
'Ebiekutan!' she coughs
'Now,' Odion cracks his hands. 'The real drama will begin.'
One of the boys hands Zita a whip, which she in turn hands her brother. Then he asks me to kneel and also Efosa who is kneeling before he is even asked.
'Now, you will call your father and tell him that the person who bombed his fat friend's van, has you, your pathetic friend who is not a man in any way and your sister, his precious egg. Tell him to come with the police.'
I try my wits at manipulation.
'Ah ahn. Why will you ask me to call my father? You can just kill us and do something spectacular later.'
'Kill which people?!' Laju chirps in fright.
'Don't patronize me fool. I know what you're doing. Call him.' When I hesitate, he whips me and I feel red angry welts rise on my back and arms.
I refuse to cry.
I call my father and do as I am instructed. My father is completely useless. He starts to weep piteously on the phone and I jam the power button quickly.
'You see. Coward.'
He begins to whip us all. Ferociously.
I feel like a mule. Though, irrespective of how I feel, I an cracking my head on what to do. After the whipping, he orders the boys to bound us. Just before he is finished with us, I whisper to Efosa to flash dial Biggie.
Then he collects our phones.
There is silence and the only thing we can hear is heavy breathing. Of the men and Odion. Then Laju's tears.
I am scared to be afraid now because I have to get Laju out of here. I have to embrace the fact that in fear, Efosa becomes very mulish.
I have to think. Now, I know Logicality is not a gender based thing.
Odion suddenly gets up and throws our phones into the cauldron.
Nothing goes on until suddenly, Efosa launches at one ma with his head, even as he is bound. The men try to grip him and I seize by moment. I bite zita's hand since it is close to my mouth. I skiddle away and enter into a dark corner and then try to cut the ropes with the edge of the cement wall.
I hear grunts from Efosa, screams from Laju, Shouts from Zita and barks of order from Odion.
A stroke of luck and my ropes come undone on their own accord, from the knots.
I quickly drag Laju's leg as I can find it. Efosa is now wild and Odion is calling for one Afeez to throw him a surgical knife from his wall collection.
'What is a surgical knife?' that one asks foolishly over the noise. Laju must have bitten a leg as I dragged her off.
A slap answers the fool.
I untie Laju's ropes and push her across and further into the darkness while trying to shush her. I push her very further and then someone drags my legs and bang my head on the wall. Dizzy I try to leave the grip. I fight. Efosa breaks loose and runs past me, I can see it from very scarce light.
'Take Laju with you!' I yell and then I feel a heavy butt on my head, a gun shot in the distance and everything goes sour.