CONSEQUENCES

Stepping into the street, you wince. The glare of the scorching sun prompts you back into the house to get sunshades. Then you step out again. Now you are ready to dominate your day.

As you walk toward the gate, you absent-mindedly twist the ring around your finger. It is an odd-looking ring, set with red stones. It is wrapped around your middle finger. When your fingers touch the ring, you feel peace pervade you, and that foreboding shadow in the horizon becomes even more caged.

And so, you step out of the compound and set off on the short walk to the bus stop where you would get a bus to your interview venue.

There is, as usual, a throng of bodies at New Haven Junction. You swallow the bile that rises in your throat as you press forward with the crowd to get inside the empty bus that just arrived. You secure a seat, look yourself over and, satisfied with what you see, make yourself comfortable.

Again, your hand goes to the ring on your finger. You make to twist it again.

Then you stop.

And you look at it with fear in your eyes.

One of the stones is gone.

***

May, 2015

You were just in your second year. But you were already one of the most dreaded Cobras on campus. Your quick rise through the ranks since your blending, just after your matriculation, had most of the older members believing that you’d become Capo by your fourth year.

You knew you were untouchable. You knew you had the blessing of Jegz, your Capo, and the Point 1 squad – which was why you did not think twice before pouncing on that homo boy that made the mistake of coming to your lodge to visit his homo partner.

You and the guys enjoyed beating and humiliating both him and the guy he came to visit. Taking videos of them naked, flogging them with planks and bottles and the like, taunting them, wiping their accounts clean. All of these gave you a high unlike any you had ever experienced.

And so, you were reborn.

***

May, 2017

“No be you I dey follow talk?”

A sharp cry followed Potiphar’s words as he struck the unfortunate guy on the head with the plank in his hand.

You blew out the smoke in your lungs.

“Guy, dide!” you said to Potiphar as you walked towards them, lit blunt in your hand. You bent towards the terrified guy and put the flaming tip on his neck.

The scream burst out of him like an explosion.

Unbothered, you said to him, “Shey you like as this fire dey burn you like this, ba?”

You were enjoying his screams; their intensity fed something dark, something twisted inside you. Every touch of your burning blunt on his skin was like an inhalation of a strange and forbidden drug. You inhaled the blunt and stanched the flames on his skin again and again, each of his screams getting you closer to the crest.

You did not notice him start to choke, didn’t notice his breath seizing. You did not feel him start to convulse. All you were interested in, all you were focused on behind your shut eyes was his screams.

Then, he was no longer screaming.

And when you opened your eyes to look at him, you saw what you had done. You recognised the slack emptiness of death in the sack of meat that was his body.

You thought fast. You had to, because you had not meant for things to get this far. And, what was worse, you had his friend, the other guy you had lured him into calling there, with you. You knew you could not let him live. Not after what he had seen.

Signaling Potiphar and Cross to pin the friend down, you walked over to him. You could taste his fear in the air, his pleading eyes calling to your humanity, pleading for mercy. But you were too far gone.

Unthinking, you held his throat. Squeezing harder and harder, your fingers obeyed the demented chant in your head, “More. More. More!”

And when you felt his windpipe constrict fully under your grip and his last breath leak out of him, you breathed easy again.

***

June, 2017

“…Madam, it’s okay! There’s nothing more we can do. That place was a lonely place and we don’t know what took your son out there…”

You rolled your eyes as you waited outside the police station for Shed’s release to be processed so you both could go home. You hated the place; every fiber of your being revolted against being in such a place.

From the corner of your eyes, you saw the weeping woman come out of the station office, making her way to the gate.

In the middle of the courtyard, however, she stopped. She looked around, demented fury on her face. Then she ripped apart her blouse. And, stooping, she scooped sand off the ground.

“Let the tears of a grieving mother drown your spirit,” she screamed. “All of you who took my only son from me, the only son I suckled at these bared breasts, let the spirits of the dead haunt you. You will never know peace as long as this sand is upon the earth!”

With that, she scattered the sand about her. And, gripping her blouse in front of her firmly, she walked out of the station, leaving a shocked silence and faint unease in her wake.

***

July, 2017

Every day had become a nightmare. Ever since that day in June, you’d been seeing glimpses, flashes of death, of him, of them, of the ones who died at your hands, of the ones who died at their own hands after you humiliated and brutalized them, of the ones who died on your orders.

At first, you thought it was just nerves.

Then, you thought you were being paranoid.

You were a strong man, a man’s man, you reasoned. You had nothing to be afraid of.

Or, so you thought.

Until two days ago, when you woke up from sleep to see his face staring down at you, jeering with cold, dead eyes. You jumped off the bed and scurried into a corner of your room.

That was when you noticed the others. Two other bodies in your room. Two other dead people staring at you, loathing on their dead eyes. Two other people who you had killed.

And, every day after that, the numbers kept increasing. They disappeared after a while and reappeared again, a constant torture to your senses.

***

August, 2017

Chants and incantations filled the air; a thick, pungent smoke, wafting both from the flames of the circle of candles within which you knelt and from the burning pile of sacrificial items, filled your nostrils.

You felt a warm liquid splash on your skin. Even without the coppery smell and the hint of avian faeces that accompanied it, you knew one of the chickens had been killed and its blood was being used to drown your demons.

You shut your eyes and focused on the native doctor’s voice. His every chant, his every incantation, his every word soothed your inner turmoil. You could feel the ghosts being caged in the darkest recesses of your mind.

When he was done, he pulled out the ring from the sacrificial flame. Only, instead of the plain black ring you had brought, the ring was set with several red stones.

Each stone, the native doctor explained, represented one of the spirits haunting you. You were to always wear the ring, he said, to never take it off, not even for a shower.

Most of all, he added, you were to return in three years for the reinforcement of the charms.

***

Present Day

You gasp in horror as you watch another stone fall off the ring. It disappears before it hits the bottom of the bus. Panic rises inside you as your mistake dawns on you.

20th August.

That was your due date for the renewal of the charms.

And, for some reason, you’d told yourself it was the 30th of August, believing you still had time. And today was the 25th.

Hurriedly, you tell the driver to stop. But he refuses to oblige. He will only stop at the proper bus stop, he insists.

You look at the ring.

More than half the stones are gone.

Your fear amplifies.

At Pasc & Jek, the driver mercifully stops. Immediately, you clamber down from the bus, your steps hurried as the stench of death pervades your nostrils.

You are about to pay him when you see them. All of them. All 21 of them.

Cold.

Angry.

Hateful.

Vengeful.

Dead!

And coming towards you.

You panic and you start to run. And behind you, together with the shouts of the driver, his conductor and the rest of the passengers, you hear the angry humming, the sound of your ghosts chasing you.

And so you run.

You have to escape them.

You need to escape them.

You look back again and again, feeling and confirming their gain on you.

You cry. You beg. You plead as you run.

You trip and you nearly fall.

Managing to steady yourself, you glance back to see them very close to you.

In desperation, you decide to cross to the other side of the road. You hurl yourself into the road.

Right into the path of an oncoming trailer.

Written by Mitch