Tears of a DEAD MAN by Mide Benedict

Some things are not born to be, but when men offer sacrifices to evil, strange deeds emerge to suck the blood of the good….
                                                         
                                           The Tears of a Dead Man

   A story told by the dead man himself....

sunday mornings were perpetually very bright and SUNNY! And of course such can’t be denied. Besides, as I have conceived for long that the actual reason the day had escaped the huddles of bearing other names was because of the fact that the sun never divorced it, well, except sometimes when they may probably emitted anger smokes from their actions. Such had occurred chiefly because one, whose organ cannot stay put, rest and remain faithful would cheat on the other with the rain, another whether, and this act, would do no greater harm that to throw the world into blind-darkness, or at least slightly blind, therefore consuming, acrimoniously their let-there-be-light relationship. However, this fact does not give this day the eye-of-a-needle escape route from the reality that it was always dull too.

And Just like any other Sunday where Christians would prepare themselves to go to church for worship and prayers, when some would rise-up early, detesting bath and with a burning fire consuming nothing, rush down to a nearby bar to drink all sort PLEASE-HOLD-ME-I-AM-FALLING, failing to think about what and how to make ends meet, except to think of how they would fall into a gutter and drink bad water. But as for my little family, I mean my wife and I, since there was yet no child to break down the house, call me daddy and my wife, mummy, we were busy putting everything in place as quick as we could, just to enable us go to St. Peter’s church, beautiful-city gate, (one of the biggest and most expensive churches at that time) to worship and listen to another of Rev. Father James’ spirited homilies. My wife, in order to prepare our regular Sunday morning meal, bread and egg, hurriedly got into the kitchen, as usual. She was such a wonderful woman when it came to working effectively and putting things in place, and, without doubting, it reflected in our future encounter; how she managed to escape my eyes of pins before it all went KABUUM revealing what was hidden. But whenever I asked why she sucked in such so much of such cheetah-deed, she would say she had to hurry up the cooking, especially on Sundays, so as to give us some time off to eat and also for the food to digest before leaving for masses. Well, what else could I have done than to appreciate her. For me, not much work to do, THE MAN OF THE HOUSE!, not much work to do. I was busy washing the car, my own car to be precise, for there were two vehicles in the house, one for my wife and the other for me, which I was to drive to church in. I did what I had to do in time because, my wife, with her cheetahric in being, was an anomaly to the usual women habit of late dressing. She would, at all times, take her bath, rush her dressing up and get dressed before I always did. I wondered how she always performed the magic. Even some of my friends did make complaints to me concerning their wives who constantly made them go late to events, especially parties on Saturdays, but hers was different; she was the opposite version. Sometimes, I even would ponder whether to praise her, truthfully, from my heart for it or not, but what choice did I possess than to do so, for it was better to be a cheetah than a snail in work.

When the job was done, I went to the table to have my breakfast and instantly, I called her to join me, since it was a custom in our home never to eat before or after anyone; we must both eat together, no matter how hungry any of us was, we must…. ‘Honey, come join me for breakfast, please hurry up, am really starving.’

‘I don’t think I will eat before mass today.’ She said. I was surprised because that was the first time she would say that and that prompted me to ask….

‘Why, hope you are okay dear? Is anything wrong? You don’t have appetitie?’

She carried on the twin brother of a smile upon her face and said, ‘you care to must dear.

‘Why wouldn’t I, or don’t you know you everything to me?’ moved with what I would call emotion, she gave me kiss on my cheek which called out that kind of grin that would likely shape itself on one’s face when joyous. Notwithstanding, I asked her again what troubled her so much that could have sealed up her interest of satisfying her stomachic call, despite she made the charm against our stomach that morning.

‘Honey, not that I’m sick, but just that I don’t feel like eating bread this morning; I’ve lost appetite for it.’

 ‘Then you should have cooked another meal instead of….’

‘Yeah…,’ she cuts in, ‘I thought of that too, but it would take my time, I will manage myself till the end of mass.’

‘Okay dear, that would be better. Besides, I would have two breakfasts dancing on my table this morning’ I said with a smile on my face.

‘No, no, no, the food is only meant for me and no one else. You are a giant food-man’, she said with a grin plastering her face intensely, then she took a sharp turn-around and went straight into her room. The moment I saw her enter her room, no diviner had to brief me my fate that morning, I knew I had no choice than to rush my meal, because I discerned instantaneously that she was going to fast-forward her dressing time, since she did not eat and that would earn me extra knocks on my door when she was done and that usually came with her ear-pulling statement that has now become a neology: ‘Honey-are-you-not-ready-yet?’

 After I had speedily swallowed up my food, I, without even rinsing my hand, nippily proceeded to my room, which was not too far from the dining room to get dressed in my black suit, pink shirt and red tie, which I had managed to press with the eye-blinding low current the power company had brought the previous night. I took my shirt and trousers cautiously to prevent it from getting   bedraggled, then began to dress in it. I was still about knotting my tie, which I should have put on immediately after wearing my shirt and trousers, but instead proceeded with polishing my shoe; though I should have done that before donning my clothe but it had skipped my mind, when someone suddenly dashed into my room like a bull chasing after a red cloth, but this time, it was a bull chasing after a door; my DOOR!!! I was so shocked, that even at the stint of sighting his face, my tie dropped from my hand; his face was as dark as the back of an old overly burnt clayed cooking pot, his eyes were red and could be likened to a fresh blood gushing out from the throat of a just throat-opened fowl. He was putting on a long ash coloured jeans and a brown round-necked T-shirt which he covered with a black ground touching mafia suit, normally worn by street security guards. His hair was so unkempt that each strand was bolted to another, making it look like a twisted security barbed wire scattered around the fence of an abandoned timeworn military barrack: his lips were black too; it was exactly like the surface of a newly tarred road, and at that moment, instinct brought it to my mind that he was either a smoker, a drunk, a drug addict or something of such, because they were too dark to be natural and that impelled me to question him without taking another glance. ‘Who are you!’ I asked in a blustery voice, though I was so horrified that my hands began to shake like that of a drilling machine being switched on then left to dance around on a definite spot. The little dead smile on his face began to bury itself progressively and all I could now see was not a face, but terror itself as he squeezed is already horrified face intensely and folded his arms into a huge knuckle.

‘Shut that mouth of yours before I shut it up for you.’ He barked.

‘You can’t be serious, I should shut what up, my mouth! How could you come into my house and my room in fact, you didn’t even get the glimpse to knock, you didn’t…. In fact, that’s by the way, tell me, who let you into my house and who….’ Before I could complete my questioning, I saw a gun with a silencer attached to its mouth pointing directly at my face. Seeing this, I continuously swallowed up my spit three times and like the voice of nothingness that roamed the graveyard at the three cardinals of time, I muted at once. And without making another ‘eh, what are you…!’ I instantly concluded in my mind that it was as an armed robbery attack.

To be continued on Thursday

• Dear reader, I hope you enjoyed the story. Be assured on its continuity on Thursday. Always remember that we are the society and the society is us. We have to change what needs be changed and leave what needs be left.

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