by Abosi Ogba

CHAPTER 1: SADE BROWN

‘I don’t know why you need this serum, Sade. I can swear you do not need it... But I want you to think about it. Things don’t have to go this way.’

Madam Kontena’s voice is almost breaking. Sade has never seen her like this. She looked like she had aged ten years ahead. Maybe face implants now reacted to stress levels. Wonderful innovations they do these days, Sade muses.

But Sade Brown knows exactly what she wants and she knows how to get it. Otherwise, she’s learning fast. Today is a perfect day to kill her sister. It would be wonderful to watch her choke blood on whichever designer outfit she wears to the election. She would die with everyone in Metro Lagos watching, and only at the last moment would her eyes meet Sade’s.
Then she would know that it was her. But it would be too late.

‘It’s the only way, Madam.’ Sade looks up at Madam Kontena sharply. Madam Kontena is backing her glass window now and the light hits her grave face. Outside, cars and bikes hover through the debris of the Former Toll, which no one ever rebuilt after the 201020 Massacre. Normal people going about their businesses in the city that never sleeps: Metro-Lagos, the last surviving city south of the Sahara Desert.

Sade rises and looks out towards the last surviving bridge from the old times, when it used to stretch over a large mass of water. Now, only an endless stretch of red, fiery sand was under it.

Sade sees her car, docked at the VIP corner. Her eyes rest on the bumper sticker that screams “MY FATHER IS A LAWYER. DON’T FIND MY TROUBLE.” The color, a garish red, looked like a gash on the skin of her white car - like a bloodstained scar on otherwise immaculate white hospital sheets. Her boyfriend had stuck the red sticker to her car, telling her it would keep the policebots away.

Sade chuckles lightly as she thinks. Did Coker really believe the policebots who hovered in traffic around Osho-Dee or the rusty ones stationed at former Ikoyi would have time to process a fancy sticker? Their scanners were rusty constantly faulty and they would rather save their energy because their charging stations were still using solar powered generators. With some stabilized old fashioned hydraulic oil, you could get past them easily but if you had nothing for them, they will hold you up for hours and ultimately wasted your time.

Even with robots replacing the men and women, the Nigeria Police was still a bleeped institution, second only to the press.

Still, Coker thought a cute red sticker could keep them away. But that was who Coker was. He was easily the most beautiful thing Sade ever had. The contender being her career in Skin Insurance, in which she had worked for over a decade. She herself was the finest testimony of Skinsurance Corp, a subsidiary of Cabal Investments, the only other powerful body apart from the government.

Hell, even the government feared anyone from Cabal Investments and avoided them like plagues because they knew that in the streets and creeks of Metro Lagos, the absence of the Cabal meant uncontrolled chaos. Uncontrolled chaos meant none would benefit from the carnage, as the Government and the Cabal did now – from the present chaos, which they themselves created.

Thousands and thousands of Nigerian Pounds came into the Government coffers every day and they pay their ‘tax’ to the Cabal. It had been that way for fifty years and no one would dare cross the Cabal. Until now.

And that is why Mide Brown must die.

Sade looked again at Madam Kontena. They met five years ago at a Cabal dinner and since then, Madam Kontena had been her biggest client, spending hundreds of Nigerian Pounds on her skin annually. Sade had also met Madam Kontena’s rich friends who she sold Skin Insurance to. “Your skin is your shine,” she would tell them. “It is the only thing Metro Lagos cannot take from you so you must protect it. You must insure it.”

And here she was, blackmailing the woman who could destroy her career with a flick of her finger. Sade chuckled again to herself. She knew she was bleeped. But she knew it would be worth it. Captain Terry Damola has assured her of a place once he assumes leadership of the council.

Sade looks back at Madam Kontena, steel-faced.
‘Now will you give me what I want or should I tell your son you’re fucking his sex doll?’
She moves closer to Madam Kontena,
‘It would be a shame. Mother and son sharing the same damn thing.’ Madam Kontena has had enough. She punches a button on the glass desk and it slides open with a hiss and emits smoke. Sade’s eyes light up as Madam Kontena hands her her prize.

‘If you want it, you can have it, but whatever you do, make sure it is worth it.’


x x x

Sade enters her car and the hatch shut tight. Then she heaves a sigh of relief.

‘Sade’s car is activated,’ comes the automated voice that Sade has learned how to ignore.

She pulls the vial from her purse and observes the glistening serum. Holding it in her hands now, she can hardly believe a tincture this beautiful would end the internal war ongoing in the Cabal and establish a new Council. Since she works for the Cabal, she is at the front line of this unending war not as a fighter but peacemaker.

The fighters are Boma Ying, the Chaplain who owned the biggest church in Nigeria; Captain Terry Damola, the Captain famous for the 201020 Massacre, and her sister Mide Brown, former Deputy Speaker of the Council. However, their followers do most of the actual fighting while they seat in their posh, secure living quarters, giving orders via scheduled live broadcasts.

The feud was messy and lawless. The only rules the Cabal obeyed were the ones they made and the only rules they made were the ones they could not obey.
Only a few laws were untouchable. The Election for the Council was one of them, and her sister must not win it.

Sade put the vial back in her purse then coos at the dashboard.

‘CBN Way, number thirty one-five.’

The car whirs to life and the automated voice beeps back at Sade: ‘Extremely Volatile Neighborhood. Last known act of violence ten minutes ago.’

‘Let me see.’

The monitor displays CCTV footage of a bearded man in neo-military fatigue, Captain Terry Damola and his guards getting into their hovering cars. Sade watches closely. Just as Captain Terry Damola’s car lifts, it explodes and debris of blood and bones litter the street as bystanders duck for safety.

Sade is horrified, as she watches the charred remains of her benefactor burn.

‘Ömö’, she gasps.

end of chapter 1

THIS IS WHY

I want to get married.
Yeah, I know. Age, cash, maturity, err what else, sexual stamina?

I like babies, I like family, I like to live in a home with all the noise and the yells and the laughter. I like the smell of plantain frying from a kitchen, of a kid breaking a plate she's trying to wash, of the younger one crying that the elder one has taken his share of the meat.
Although I don't like the smell of diapers being changed (Lord, don't even wanna think about it), I like how the baby would smell after a bath and he's all powdery and giggly.

I also like the bedroom, where I would hold her to myself and press her naked body against mine, skin to skin. And although at a certain time of the month she will act all weird and strange, I'd understand that that's in her nature.

But then the thrills, laughter, yelling (from her), clattering and yeah, food: these are the reasons why.
This is why.

THE SPECIAL THING EVERYONE SAID CIGARETTES HAD

I never touched a cigarette until I was ten or eleven. I still wonder why it took that long; because, right outside my home at Ikwerre Road, women sold cigarettes and dry gin in small dirty glasses to old men and conductors.

So, I never touched a cigar until Brother Nathaniel sent me to buy "three Rothmans and one baba blue". My mother had called him to take care of me, since she and Daddy were travelling; so, we had the whole house. I didn't see him smoke them, I remember I fell asleep and woke up to find three stubs on the sitting room table, sucked so hard only the filter (I didn't know what it was called then) remained.

I took the brown things into the kitchen and lit one up, almost burning my fingers. It wasn't working. So, I sneaked outside and bought another stick. With my heart threatening to burst and with shaky hands, I lit it. I dragged and puffed. I didn't feel anything. Where was the fun? I dragged harder. I still didn't cough. Why do people always cough in books and movies on their first smoke?

Maybe I need to try another brand, I thought. Let me see if it can give me the feeling everyone spoke about. So I bought two sticks. Finished it. Bought five. Finished it. Same day.
I am twenty-seven now and I still drag and puff, hoping to find the special thing everyone said cigarettes had.

..

PRIVATE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL


I am a teacher. I teach children between the ages of twelve to fourteen. They are about in their second years of their secondary education. The school is like a private government school. Let me explain.


Here, we run on a middle-class budget. This means that the fees are low; so, of course most of our students have parents who cannot really afford huge money for their fees. In the fourth week of every term, after the morning assembly, we send students who haven't paid their fees back home. This task is really awkward to me, because I have to look at their gloomy faces as they walk out of the class, with me beside the door.


Yesterday, we started third term exams and we had to send the debtors home, because yes, their fees hadn't been paid. I held the door again while the class prefect, Victoria, walked out: gloomy.


I would want to pay for her. And for her assistant, Mark; and for the twins who sit in front.The salary is around enough to pay for three students and buy them lunch for one day. Maybe I can pay for them. Maybe I can pay for them just this once.

Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John Tram83 by Fiston Mwanza I just finished those two, and I recommend.

Everyone likes people who drop comments. I do to. So there...

I've taken it down. I'm no more posting free stuff here. Ungrateful people die quicker.

I've taken it down. I'm no more posting free stuff here. Ungrateful people die quicker.

I've taken it down. I'm no more posting free stuff here. Ungrateful people die quicker.