₦airaland Forum

estrella:
When she comes to she is standing up tied to a huge tree her heard head covered with a cloth that has holes for her to see and breathe.  Groggily, she looks around and sees so many a large cluser of  trees. (So many implies that you’re going to say: “she sees so many trees that. . . “ Better to use the collective noun for trees) She doesn’t know of any forest near the campus and struggles to fight the bile of panic rising in her throat. (The standard bile phrase to represent panic is: “bile rising in her throat.” “Bile of panic” does not exist.)  Now she can feel terror, like a vice, wrap itself around her throat chest (this is fine or you can say: “Now she can feel terror’s vice-like grip wrap around her chest”. Also, because you’ve used “bile-throat” already, it would be repetitive to say “throat” again. Instead you can say “chest” or “heart, for e.g.” ); she doesn’t know what is happening but she knows it can’t be good. She thinks of her father and wishes she went had gone (I think “had gone” has better agreement than “went” for what you’re trying to say.) to Portharcourt Port Harcourt during the last holiday to see her baby brother.
A man appears in front of her wearing a black mask but she knows it is Mr. Incense. His perfume nearly chokes her. (I like your use of choking metaphors for fear in the 1st paragraph especially since in the end Mr. Incense’s perfume does actually choke her but don’t overdo it, you mention choking again in the next paragraph in a metaphoric sense and you don’t want the writing to become clichéd.)
‘You have been chosen’ he intones.  ‘How nice,’’ Martha wants to reply. A deep hysterical kind of laughter bubbles close to the surface of her lips and she struggles to tame it nearly choking in the process.
Mr Incense moves in close to her and frowns with displeasure as she looks at him straight in the eyes. He yanks off the cloth from her head.*
‘Bala’!  He barks, making her start violently. Another masked man scurries into her line of vision and stands a few feet away from Mr Incense, unable to hide the sheer terror visible in his eyes.
Mr Incense turns to him. ‘She is marked.*’’
The terrified masked man whimpers; ‘I didn’t know high one, I didn’t know.*’
Mr Incense looks at him without moving and Martha can almost hear the man’s heart die with each second that passes by. She finds that she is holding her breath as well.
Mr Incense turns back to her. ‘Clean that mark off your forehead,’ he orders.*
He takes out a knife and cuts cleanly through the ropes binding her. Her hands fall limply to her side and she is bewildered at first wondering what it is that he wants her to do. She has totally forgotten about the dark cross on her forehead.*
‘The mark’ he yells at her. Wipe it off!
She uses the tip of her finger to touch it black cross on her forehead that has crusted over and then drops her hands by her side.*
‘No.’
Mr Incense looks at her as if she has lost her mind.
No?
She hears Bala who has been standing behind her gasp.
‘No,’ she retorts; even as she says it, she wonders where her boldness comes from. She wants to live and not die and now that she thinks about it, she is not sure she is ready to die. But the ball has been set in motion and there is nothing she can do now but follow through.*
Mr Incense paces furiously in front of her, his hands rising and falling as if some imaginary orchestra is playing rubbish in his head.
He halts suddenly, looks at Bala and says, ‘shoot her and dump her body at the back.’
Martha’s heart fails her and she lets out panicked sigh. Bala hurriedly walks round her and draws out a gun. He looks over at Mr Incense as if seeking approval. Mr Incense looks long into her eyes like he is memorizing the lines of her face. He nods curtly.
Bala levels the gun at her chest.
Martha closes her eyes.’ Goodbye daddy, she chants in her head and is surprised to find that she is remarkably calm.
The gun goes off and Martha jerks, expecting to feel her life seeping out of the hole in her chest.
She hears the sound of harried feet and is afraid to open her eyes. A rustle and then a voice at her ear.
’Run’, it whispers thinly.* (I think it’s better not to start your dialog paragraph in the lower case; you can end the “voice at her ear” with a full stop.)
Martha takes off like a bullet nearly tripping over the body lying in front of her. She runs like the wind (Watch the similes. You’ve used two in consecutive sentences to describe the same thing i.e. that she’s running really fast. It weakens the effect a bit and can make it seem clichéd or like you’re exaggerating on purpose, which doesn’t fit in with the situation.); she has never run like this before, not even when they had told her that her mother was lying dead in the hospital a few blocks away from the house. Her lungs are on fire and her feet are numb but she runs anyway, crashing into shrubs and narrowly missing tree limbs lying in the her way. She runs until she bursts out unto a clear road, tarred. (Do you mean a “tarred, empty road?” “Clear road, tarred” is a little ambiguous and feels a little lyrically forced in the way it sounds to me (but i dunno sha, anyway just think over that phrase). It looks familiar but she does not stop to think.
A car is coming in the distance and she begins to wave frantically. She can make out two people in it as it slows down and then begins to pass her by. ‘Noooo’ she moans; then the car stops and reverses back and the back door swings open. She dives into the car literally and shuts the door hard. (You may want to consider using “slams the door shut,” because it’s a more standard phrase than “shuts the door hard.”)
The man driving the car is elderly and his face looks kind as he turns back to face her.
‘Where are you going my dear?’ 
‘The campus’, she chatters through teeth that are clicking against themselves in fear
‘Oh you poor girl! The woman in the passenger seat exclaims looking back at her too. ‘You’re shaking like a leaf! Are you alright?’
Her bespectacled face crinkles up in concern.
‘Can we just leave this place? Martha asks in a small voice
The man nods and drives off smoothly while the woman keeps plying Martha with concerned questions.

--------
The church falls silent as the priest announces that they have a miracle sitting in their midst.
A young student narrowly escaped being cut up and used in a ritual killing just on the outskirts of the main campus two days ago.
Apparently, the black cross she was marked with on that fateful Ash Wednesday day had saved her life as the bullet intended for her missed its mark and killed the one who was supposed to kill her.*
“If she had not been in church that day,” the priest says gravely, she would have died. It was the work of an angel.
His dark limpid eyes hover over each person in the church as he moves his huge, hulk hulking body from one end of the altar to the other.
‘Don’t play with the things of God and he won’t play with you.’
Martha is sitting quietly at the back of the church next to her father. He has her hand clasped in his as tightly as he can as if he is afraid that she will vanish into thin air. She has never seen him so emotional before and wonders if this was what he needed to come alive. Because he has; He is no more the shadow that fleets flits from place to place. Since she got home on that dark Wednesday night and told him the story, he has become the father she used to know. He even called up aunt Ifeoma and ordered her to bring the child back to him. (Consider: "Ever since she had arrived home on that dark Wednesday night and told him the story, he had become the father she used to know (or you can say “remembered”). He had even called up Aunt Ifeoma and ordered her to bring the child back to him."
‘A child needs his father’ he had groused over the phone’. 
Aunt Ifeoma had harrumphed but she was smiling when she put down the phone.
‘Please join me in thanking God for Martha’, the priest announces.
Martha rises to her feet, and gets a rousing standing ovation from the church. There are tears in the eyes of some mothers and grins on the faces of some fathers. Martha feels overwhelmed and tears start to fill her eyes. She sits down abruptly and buries her head in her father’s shoulder.
--------
Martha slips out of the church shortly before the end of the mass and heads towards Obinna’s place. They have hardly seen each other since her ordeal but they have spoken over the phone several times.
When she gets there, he is waiting for her outside the boy’s quarters, resting on his hunches and drawing shapes in the ground.
As he approaches, he rises to his feet, his eyes boring into hers. She walks into his arms and he holds her there, her head pressed into his t-shirt which smells reassuringly familiar.
‘Let’s go.’
He takes her hand and begins to lead her back towards the campus.
‘Where are we going? I thought we would hang out in your room as usual?’
‘I had to wash the rug and clean the place a bit so it needs to air out’
‘Well, can I at least get my scarf? I left it the last time I was here.’
‘Wait here, he orders and strides back to the room.
Martha follows him slowly and by the time she gets to the room, he is locking up, her scarf wound around his neck.
Martha catches the a whiff of something familiar as he comes up to her and takes her hand again.
Incense?
‘You’re burning incense in your room? Why?’
Obinna stares into her eyes again as if he is searching for something.
‘I told you, I washed the carpet. The smell of the incense makes the damp smell more bearable.’
She shrugs as he takes her hand and as they make their way slowly back to the campus, she settles her body into his embrace and inhales his scent one more time so she won’t forget.

Ogaga4Luv:
[size=13pt]Enjoyable, I would re-read if I had the time. . . . . [/size]

vescucci:
I'm getting intrigued by this Steig Larsson fella. Even his name intrigues me

Dimka 76:
@Tatase em Can I send you m9 too?!