This is a work of fiction.

Chapter 1

Tolstoy and Camus arrived at the same conclusion on the question of the meaning of life. Their appraisal of this perennial philosophical conundrum hasn't been matched in its depth and objectivity by any of the thinkers who came after them. According to Tolstoy, life was a big joke that had to be terminated. For Camus, life was meaningless and continuing to live despite knowing this, was absurdity. For both men, suicide seemed the only logical action to take. However, they both acknowledged that only brave thinkers could undertake this life terminating action and thinkers of this sort were extremely rare. So they invented alternatives. Tolstoy proclaimed the belief in the existence of God and the existence of divine duties and associated rewards or consequences for their adherence or abdication could give life meaning, and ordering life around this belief helped people deal with the vicissitudes and challenges of being. Camus thought that humans could create their own meaning by doing the things that they loved; by engaging in activities that made them want to look forward to living another day on earth.

With religious adherence waning around the world, Camus' answer appears to be the most subscribed by the intelligentsia. The assumption is that if we have a reason to live and a goal to pursue, then we can withstand the difficulty and suffering associated with existence. The problem with this notion of meaning is that it's usually framed in egalitarian and humanistic terms. Liberal proponents of Camus' line of philosophical thought admonish humans to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of themselves and those they are responsible for, strive to make the world a better place and develop deep healthy relationships with their loved ones.

Kenneth Obi had read the works of writers like Tolstoy and existentialist philosophers like Camus. He had devoured Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky and had absorbed Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. He realized something that existentialist humanists who regarded responsibility and relationships as the the aims by which meaning could be generated didn't seem to realize: Some people didn't possess the capacity to find such ventures meaningful. This fact seemed obvious to him because he belonged to this group of people. He had never been able to figure out if he was born sadistic or if his sadism was as a result of the environment he was born into. He had always leaned toward biology in explaining his interests since his siblings although having been born into the same environment he was born into, turned out normal. Experiencing the pains and suffering of others brought him a sensation of pleasure that was unmatched by any other sensation he had ever had. He had been born into a very puritanic-esque religious family with a stern, overbearing father and an industrious mother who deferred to her authoritarian husband's every wish because she had been informed by the bible that she had to at all times be subservient to her husband, even if his interests clashed with hers.
Being the first child, Kenneth felt the full force of his father's strident form of upbringing.

Titus Obi was born in the sweltering cauldron of the Biafran war. A northern soldier had ran a dagger through the neck of his mother's husband as the man watched, with tears rushing down his eyes, as his wife was raped by another northern soldier. That was the moment Titus Obi was conceived. He grew up with a strong yearning to know his father, so he would make him pay for what he put his mother through. Because he never experienced what having a father felt like, he determined to be the best father to his children that he could be and to train them to be responsible, moral adults, who wouldn't be inclined to partake in the immoral actions of his father. Probably lacking the experience of having a father figure gave him a wrong impression of what it meant to be a father. Titus Obi was an abusive, insensitive father who forced his children to do what he felt was right and discarded their opinions and feelings. He was hardest on Kenneth because he was his first son. He forbade him from keeping friends because he didn't want him to be corrupted by outside influences.
He took him to school everyday on his way to work and sent a driver to get him at exactly the time of closing. He made his maids swear to always make sure he didn't interact with anyone from the time he came back from school till the time he returned from work. He got one of his maids fired for allowing a classmate of Kenneth's who claimed to ask about details concerning a group assignment to visit him in the premises of his home. Kenneth was scolded and flogged on his buttocks with a stick for attending to his classmate and was denied lunch money for the following school week. Because of this Kenneth became reticent, bashful and unable to mingle with his peers. He was bullied and made fun of as a consequence.

Titus Obi prohibited his son from playing video games or watching television except he was watching a science lecture, a debate, a quiz competition or the evening news. He made certain that Kenneth was always studying as long as he wasn't asleep, at church, in school or having a meal. Looking back at these experiences, Kenneth felt a whiff of gratitude for it was in those moments of solitude, flipping through pages of books that he learned about the interesting world he was born in. Although Kenneth didn't have real friends he always felt he was interacting with some of the smartest and wisest people who had ever lived through books.

When he finally escaped his father's control and protection during his five years in the university, he realized that interactions with humans was overrated and inferior to the ones he had with the historians, revolutionaries, poets, philosophers and psychologists he had read during his formative years.
For Kenneth, reading was both an enlightening activity as well as a troubling one. He found it disconcerting that while reading any fictional material, the characters had the capacity to express and experience a range of emotions that seemed alien to him. They could feel love for someone else, they could express compassion, and they experienced a vicarious reaction when they saw another person experience pain.

The lack of these feelings, his sadism, and an all consuming hatred for his father made smashing the head of Titus Obi with a pestle from his kitchen a very entertaining exercise. He had always wanted to kill his father but had never found the opportunity. The opportunity came when his mother travelled to another state for a business conference. He was informed of this while residing in his university campus during the second semester of his third year. He was 19. He waited till it was Sunday - four days later - to journey back home. His reason for this was because on Sunday mornings there were very few people in his vicinity due to the fact that a lot of people had attended church. He took a cab from school and asked the cabman to stop at the gate of his house to reduce the possibility of being spotted. When he alighted he didn't notice being seen by anyone. He had already decided not to even enter the house if noticed that someone saw him. Every member of the family had a spare key and he used his to gain entrance. There weren't any maids or attendants around because they had been relieved of their jobs as soon as Kenneth and his siblings came of age. This, according to Titus Obi was to teach his children independence and self reliance. His wife tried to object stating that as working class couples who were always out at their jobs for the better part of the day the house had to be attended to by someone, especially if their kids weren't around. But her husband's will stood. That Sunday, only Titus Obi left the house and only him was to occupy the 4 bedroom duplex when he returned from church. Kenneth was aware of this and he planned his actions in accordance. He arrived at the house after he was sure his dad had left for church and waited for him to return. The time of his arrival was 9:11am. The streets were vacant and the house was empty. When his father returned from church he bashed his head so many times and with much intensity that his face was grotesquely disfigured, while the rear of his skull tore open and a liquid mass of brain tissue and blood littered the floor. Before this he had struck the pestle forcefully against his father's legs from behind as he walked into his room - immobilizing the man instantly. Shocked as to how his assailant had gained access into his home and curious to see the face of his attacker, Titus obi tilted his head towards the direction the blow to his legs came from but received another one across his face, which sent him sprawling to the floor. With blood trickling down his temple and a lacerating pain on the side of his head, Titus Obi mustered what was left of his strength and turned around. What he witnessed made him gasp in bewilderment. His own son was standing over him with a bloodstained pestle, gloves over his hands, smiling wildly at him with intent eyes.

"Ken, what are you doing?" were his last words.

The reply to this statement was as frightening to Titus Obi as it was perplexing.

"What I've always wanted to do."

With that statement Kenneth released a series of strikes to the head of his father and ended his sixty year old life. He left the house afterwards and returned to school as if nothing had happened. Titus Obi's death was ruled as a homicide but his murderer was never caught.

With the death of his father, the first name on his list of people he wanted to kill was crossed off. Striking off the name of everyone on the list became the ingredient that gave Kenneth's life meaning. He had subscribed to Camus's philosophy but not in the way the secular humanists had imagined.

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