₦airaland Forum

When you think a thing, the thing you think is not exactly the thing you think you think, but the thing you think you think you think.

The maize said to the electricity: "I'm corn-fused."

Policeman: Boy, how high are you?
Drunk boy: Officer, it's 'Hi, how are you.'

Wow!

There are talented Nigerians at large, and you're one of them.
Every storyline ends with a suspense. That's a sure way of pulling a large crowd. I'm a fan already.

You're a wonderful writer, do you know that. Your story is getting more intriguing every step of the way.

Buchi Judas was a hardened criminal. He had literally spent more time in prison than out of it––and he was Cain Martins’ father. At the age of eighteen, Buchi was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for robbery, and a years after he was released from jail, he was sent to another five years for fraud. He came out again at the age of thirty-eight and was sent back at forty for manslaughter––this time, it was a life imprisonment sentence. Spending only two years in the federal prison, Buchi managed to break out with the determination of seeking revenge from the woman who had sent him in there––Pamela.

Pamela was a prostitute and an addict. She suffered amnesia due to the drugs she took. So, she could not remember her own last name. In fact, nobody had called her with her surname since her escape from the orphanage to live a life of her own. Pamela met Buchi not long after her escape from the orphanage at fourteen, Buchi gave her shelter and impregnated her just after about a year of their living together. At sixteen, Pamela gave birth to a baby boy whom Buchi simply named Don Judas; but before little Don could be two years old, his father was sent to jail for manslaughter.
Buchi had come home one night to find another man in bed with Pamela. He had gotten so mad that he picked up an empty bottle of Harp Lager lying in a corner of the small room, he broke the bottle and viciously struck the jagged edge of the bottle in the strange man’s chest where the heart was housed. The naked man died instantly, with his manhood half-limp. Seeing what her enraged husband had done, Pamela carried Don and ran out of the room to the nearest police station where she reported how Buchi had stabbed another man. In less than thirty minutes, Buchi was arrested, and a month later he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
After Buchi’s sentence, Pamela devoted herself fully into the immoral business of prostitution, which was the only thing she knew could do to fetch herself some money. Pamela loved her child deeply and wanted a normal life for him; so, she started by giving her child the first name that came to her head: Cain Martins––the ‘Martins’ was the last name of her lover who was killed by Buchi; Lucky Martins, he was not that lucky after all. She started working in a house of ill repute and used the money she earned to send little Cain to school.
The night before Cain Martins’ fourth birthday, his mother was attacked by a stranger. That scene had unleashed the monster caged in the mind of the innocent little Cain.

Pamela was scared, the nightmare had returned––the man who had killed the only man she had ever loved was back. The rage she saw on Buchi brought goose pimples on her flesh, it was that rage he had seen in his eyes when he had caught Lucky with her. He had come to revenge for reporting him to the police––he had come to kill her. Pamela thought about her son––if Buchi killed her he would take Cain and raise him a criminal like himself. She couldn’t allow that––no!
Pamela stepped back from Buchi and grabbed a kitchen knife she had been using to peel the oranges she wanted to suckle. She was not sure if she would be able to use the knife if Buchi attacked her, because she knew that few people have the stomach to use a knife against another human being. Pamela wasn’t certain if she had that kind of stomach. Fearfully, she waved the knife defensively at Buchi, drew small rapid circles in the air with the point of the blade, as if it were a talisman and she were chasing off evil spirit that stood before her. Of course, to her, Buchi was something more than an evil spirit. Buchi looked at her dramatic performance; he smiled and picked an orange from the tray on the table. He sat down beside his son and sucked as he ran his hand through the little boy’s hair, occasionally telling Pamela how he was going to kill her slowly. Buchi stood up suddenly, grabbed Pamela’s hand holding the knife and turned it in an anticlockwise direction. Pamela screamed with pain as the knife fell off her hand. He had acted too fast for Pamela to react. At the same time, Buchi kicked her legs from under her and she landed on her back with a heavy thud. With Pamela lying on the floor and screaming with agony, Buchi climbed over her and held both his strong hands on her throat, squeezing in a vicious manner. He used the both hands which he had slipped around her throat and choked her with all the force of which he was capable. Pamela was helpless; she could feel her life departing from her as breathing was impossible, coupled with the excruciating pain in the inner part of her neck. The extreme pressure on her windpipe and diminishment of the blood supply to her brain through the carotid arteries rendered her almost incapable of resistance. She wanted to scream but could not; her eyes began rolling from left to right. Then her left eye caught the knife which had fell off her hand, the knife was lying not far from her. She stretched her left hand towards the knife until she caught it. Immediately, without thinking twice, she struck with the little strength left in her left arm. She let go when she felt the knife struck one part of her assailant’s body. For a second, she felt nothing until Buchi relaxed his hold on her throat and fell over, clutching at his neck. Slowly, Pamela stood up coughing vigorously, feeling her neck to check if her larynx had not been damaged. When she looked down, Buchi was jerking sequentially; she had stabbed him in the neck with the knife. There was blood gushing like a macabre fountain from where the knife had penetrated the neck that the head was leaned grotesquely to one side, and the knife was deep to its hilt. The room instantly became an abattoir; wall splattered with gobbets of dripping blood and the dirty rug was soaked with the slimy red liquid. She retched at the horrible sight; it takes special courage or madness to slash at another person and not be repelled and disgusted by how the knife slice through the soft flesh, and how the precious store of blood is let loose by the deadly weapon. Until that horrible moment, Pamela had never killed anything bigger than the cockroaches lurking around her cupboard.
Little Cain watched as the two older people fought like animals. He saw his mother being rendered helpless by the stranger but he could not do anything about it but watch. He watched in horror as his mother stabbed the stranger in the neck with a knife. The blood which sprayed out of the wound splashed across Cain’s face and he used the back of his hand to wipe the blood off so as to get a clearer look at the man who jerked and jerked till he jerked no more.
Unknowingly to him, Cain had just watched his own mother kill his father.
But nobody knew.