The Insect that ate the Leaf

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©Professorval, 2016

This story never happened anywhere, as it is purely fictitous, and is a product of Professorval's pen. Any resemblance between any character mentioned in the course of this story and a real life character is a co-incidence.

No part of this work is to be reproduced in any form, re-copied to any blog or website without express permission of the author.

The author can be reached with: tellprofessorval@gmail.com

Sit back, and let me blow your mind with my story. The begining may seem dull, but stick with me, and I will deliver.

Please feel free to criticise, as I really need your critiques, to know how well I'm doing. Thanks

Alright, let's begin

Chapter 1
The sun had almost completed its daily fashion parade, and was beginningto recoil to its shell. The atmosphere was cool. Even a 6year-old could
guess it was going to rain in umueze town in no time. Ojukwu and Okonkwo are seated under the mango tree their late father planted forty years ago , when Ojukwu was born, enjoying the cool evening breeze mother earth had to offer, as a quarter filled ten-liter gallon, containing palm wine sat gallantly on the ground close to a small table.
In this part of the world, palm wine was the king of drinks. Weddings, burials, naming ceremonies- and the likes didn't hold in the absence of it. Except if only women were invited anyway. In umueze, a glass of undiluted or adulterated palm wine was all you needed to calm down your raging creditor for long enough for you to be able to convince him to give you some time.
Three tumblers also sat on the table before the brothers. They drank silently, shaking their heads in the process, ending the 'head-shaking' with an
'ahhhhhh' to show that the wine was a strong one. Only an African who hasn't seen his grandfather and his friend drinking palm wine after a day on the farm will see anything strange here.
Ojukwu, the younger of the two brothers, is a trader, whose trade based mainly on palm oil. In his days, only a few of his mates could do the
business, as it involved a lot of stress and capital. Ojukwu had three children, two boys, and a girl, at the middle. Going by the definition of rich, as
compounded by his townsfolk, he was a rich man, and was among the first few people to use a special type of corugated sheets in roofing his
house.
Okoro, on the other hand was a palm
wine tapper cum farmer. He is the 'give-me-my- daily-bread' kind of person, who had no time to worry about anything, so long as his stomach was
full. Atimes, he was broke to the point that his brother had to pay his only child's school fees. Four of Okoro's children died before they clocked
seven, with only the fifth, Kenneth, surviving. The two brothers, during their parent's days, always lived on the other's neck. They quarreled at
the slightest provocation notwithstanding everything their parents tried to do to tie that loosely hanging nut between them.
Things took a drastic turn when their father on his death bed made them swear never to fight again.
Magically, the hatred between them turned to love immediately, and existed until both joined their fathers.
Kenneth and Chidi run past them and
Mazi Okoro speaks up.

'Look at them. What can they do? Other than to eat and play? Imagine, Kenneth cannot make ONE fine yam heap, without
complaining, or squeezing his face.'
At the mention of 'one', he raises his index finger, and stresses the
word. Mazi Ojukwu drinks from his tumbler, at the same time shaking his head in disdain before speaking up. His tone sounds like he's reading a poem.

'Oh! Children of nowadays. Very lazy, and
cunning.'
He stops and raises his tumbler to his
mouth to resume his drinking, while Mazi Okoro takes over the talking.
'Playing is not the problem.
The problem is the kind of play they play', he pauses, tilts his head, the way some people may do if he needs to hear something clearly. He resumes
talking.

'...Wait oh, Ojukwu, is that not your son,
Chidi's voice am hearing Or are my ears deceiving me?'

They both stop talking, glasses in hand and listen. One of the boys that just ran past returns, still running, but looking worried. He runs to Mazi Ojukwu and stands some feet away. Hands on his
knees, amidst panting, Chidi manages to speak.

'Papa! Papa!!', He holds his chest and continues.

'Uhm, uhm, papa...', He stops again. Mazi Ojukwu's tumbler took a trip to his mouth, leaving some ofit's contents in his mouth.

'Chiiidi!, what is the problem? Who is pursuing you?', asked a seemingly nonchalant looking Ojukwu. By now,
Chidi had his hands to his knees. He struggled to talk between pants.

'It's mama oh, papa. Mama is,
uhmm, vo-mmiting, er, blood.'

Both men stood up to their feet immediately. Ojukwu was first to speak.

'Chai, This her vomiting has started again? She almost didn't survive it last time'.

Before he finished this statement, he had started running, towards his house. Okoro starts to head into his
compound, before he moved the second step he stopped, made to follow his brother's fast disappearing shape, but stopped himself, and continued again into his house. All that stood
between his house and Ojukwu's was a hundred metre space of land, on which Kenneth and Chidi cultivated potatoes. If you put the old fashioned
nature of the house aside, the house tends to be one of the very best in the community it stands, thanks to his brother's constant renovations. The
house bears a U-like shape, such that each side has two rooms. A kitchen and a store is on one side of the house, while the bathroom and toilet
are built on the far end of the compound.
He goes straight to a basket in the store and starts to
look through its content. He finds what he's looking for and hurries to his brother's house. As steps into the compound, The sight of his brother
sitting on the tiled floor probably sends a text to his head. Other people standing quietly also helps to tell him was just happened. He gets the hint, and
drops the medicine in his hand to the ground. Perhaps without Mazi Okoro's consent, his two hands found their seats on his hairless head.

'Ojukwu!', he begins. You could tell he was shaking. He continues:

'Can you please tell me what is killing our wives? My wife died around this
time last year...What is happening?'

Ojukwu says nothing. He just sits and stares like a deaf man whose only cow just died. His elder brother's wife
had died exactly 365 days ago. Funny thing (No one can really prove this is funny anyway) is, she died under the same circumstances. Vomit blood
for a month, get healed, and then continue the month after, and then give in to it.
Though being devout members of the Bishop of Rome's denomination of Christianity, the two brothers had
gone the traditional way and 'asked why' or if you like, did some 'research' as to what caused her death, when the eldest of them lost his long time
spouse the preceding year. Their findings revealed nothing. If it was some unnatural force that killed her, the force was smart enough to kill, or perhaps
'out do' all the fingers that may point him out also.

Make una no dey do ghost mode abeg. I need comments to know weda I supose continue or not

Continued

Katherine hurried as she swept her father's vast compound. She had to hurry anyway, except she wanted to offend her often stolid mum. Kate would be fast to tell you that her mum's stolidity was most concentrated in the mornings. If Kate did her chores well, a piece of dry fish would be hers to
chew as she drifted to sleep on her mat, next to mother's bed, in the evening. She stopped to eye her mum's oldest cock, which had just defaecated where she had swept, as it 'cock walked' past her. She tried to look at the bird with the highest degree of scorn she could, maybe it would run away if it noticed. This same aves-classed animal was one of the two reasons she had to wake up early everyday, the other being that her
mother was the wake-early and sleep-late kind of business woman. 6:01am never caught her on her bed and the last time she used her bed in the afternoon was new year day. On sundaes, she was
either in church, or attending her women co-operative meeting- she just had to be doing something during the day.
Kate smiled, when she remembered that she had over-heard her parents discuss the bird's future, as December was around the corner. December, ask any grown up domestic bird, (especially cocks) is that time of the year you want to flex your life, because you could see the end around the corner. If you're lucky, you might get some more months to live, till the Easter came with it's own threat. This was the philosophy of Kate and her peers used to explain why domestic birds became rude in December. Hens were seldom killed, as they were needed to produce more chicken for their owners.
Twelve year old Kate
was the second child of the Ifeanyis. Mr and Mrs Ifeanyi had two children, Katherine, and Thomas. While Thomas was a clone to his father, Kate was to her mother. While Kate could be termed dull, or rather, inactive, like her father, Thomas carried boiling blood in his veins. He was a go-getter, he could throw any of his mates in a fight, he owned a farm, he could walk through those bush paths his mates dreaded at night- the list could go on and on. He so loved his sister that he would punch her
atimes for no reasons at all, though he would kill an outsider, if he could, for even dreaming of that. Since both attended the same primary school, Kate
got all the protection any girl's senior brother could offer. Mrs Ifeanyi was a palm oil dealer. She got oil from producers, and sold them to traders. She also had a shop full of the blood-like
product. In terms of wealth, her palm-wine tapper husband was a 'broke-ass' compared to her. She paid her children's fees, catered for the house and
did most of what the society would expect her husband to do, without really complaining. She was a born-husler, as she couldn't do without
making money. What pained her atimes was that her only daughter was totaly unlike her in character. She would murmur before doing house chores, any of her mates could force sand into her mouth in a fight. All she could do well, at age twelve, was to cook. Her cooking was always without flaw. Mrs Ifeanyi took solace in her 15year
old Thomas whose abilities could not be doubted at all. At fifteen, he single handedly cultivated his father's farmland, which could swallow up two standard football stadia. His mother could talk about him anywhere, anytime.
Back to the present, Kate had finished sweeping and was washing her broom. She sighed when she looked
behind the water pot. She had forgotten to sweep there. She glanced back towards her mother's room and seeing nobody around, she hurried away from the pot, as if the pot was going to
report her. Just before she stepped into the kitchen, her mum called from her room. Kate stamped her feet on the ground.
'Ooooooooh!', she screamed in a whisper. She would probably get a space in the nearest morgue if her mum
heard that.

'Maaa!', she answered afterwards,
trying to sound as cheerful as she could.