The Words Finesse

David drove to his office in a daze. Glad that work had ended for the day and most of the staff had gone, including his secretary, he flung himself in his chair, stretched his legs on top of the files strewn across his desk and shut his eyes.

Man, he had not expected such a hot brickbat. But then perhaps it was what he needed. Nagging fear clutched his heart: was there still any hope left for him and Njideka? Had they gone too far down the slippery road to the point of no return? Reverend Adolphus had assured him that all hope was not yet lost. ‘As long as the signals have not completely died out you can recharge the batteries. If you still love her make the move. Like you did when you were chasing her. In spite of all this women lib stuff the ladies still want bedroom warriors. At least most of them.’ David had come away rather amazed that a man of the pulpit could talk so forthrightly and knowledgeably about matters of the flesh. But then the young Anglican clergyman was one of the most maverick pastors in town. In addition to his degrees in theology and Biblical studies, he earned a first-class degree in Psychology from the University of Ibadan. Male members of his parish often held up his wife as a model of godly sexiness to their wives and girlfriends.

David sighed and let the Technicolor slides of the past five years with Njideka play in his mind. It was all as fresh as yesterday and now as sad as a bleak rainy day. He met Njideka at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Whether it was love or lust or a combination of both at first sight, neither could say. None of them cared either because they ended up in David’s bachelor pad after the party, tearing off each other’s clothes and burrowing into each other in a sheer wave of carnality that made them forsake the bed and take to the floor. It should have been a one-night stand but apparently they could not get enough of each other. Both had so much in common: they were Anglicans; their home villages was just three kilometres away from each other in Imo State; they got their degrees from Abia State University, though David majored in History while Njideka started off with Economics before switching to her dream discipline, Law. Both were top students, amazingly missing first-class by cat’s whiskers. Both were driven and super-ambitious. Both were opinionated and relished challenges.

And both felt they had found the one who would meet the needs of their hearts without any yeye compromise. When they got married, David was a middle-level manager at Straight Kings, the leading HR firm in Lagos and clearly headed for the top. Njideka was already making her mark as one of the dynamites of Femi, Kanu and Iroko Chambers, the undisputed leading light of the private legal enterprise in South-Western Nigeria. Within two years of marriage, the bedroom was replaced by the office. Files, phones and laptops took the place of pillows, duvets and bedsheets. Sex, whenever it happened, was a pain in the ass and a clear obstacle to planning the latest Power-Point presentation or preparing briefs for those legal fireworks. But then certain marital duties had to be performed. After two years during which they prospered financially from their exertions, subtle hints came from families and friends about a little boy or girl in the house. Njideka would not deny her brooding but she was also hungering to be a senior partner in the illustrious chambers and possibly be in charge if the head honchos set up a branch in the East. A baby would not be convenient for now. She was glad her man was the modern, yuppie, career-driven New Age husband who would not be tied by traditional concepts of the marital life.

Alas, it was not to be. David was still a man and his machete demanded a farm to weed. Rebuffed repeatedly, he called Njideka in for a serious talk. He got the shock of his life when his wife made it clear her fast-track as the female power house of Femi and Associates would not be derailed, even by konji. The resentment and quarrels got too much for both of them. Soon they talked only in monosyllables, and only on the most essential and most mundane matters. Somehow, despite all the hints he got from attractive female colleagues and clients, David held out, temporarily quenching matters with porn and masturbation. Anger seethed in him. One night, he got home and had an awful fight with Njideka, turning into an almost demented tiger. ‘Fuck the career-climbing. I didn’t bargain for this.’

‘Well, you have it and you better live with it. Dick and pussy doesn’t bring the good life,’ she thundered back, a sexy hellcat at that moment.

‘My learned friend, go get the divorce papers. I can’t go on like this.’

‘What did you say, David?’

‘You heard me. This is no marriage; it is a goddamned board meeting.’ He grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the house. He returned to the office, thankfully free of staff, and for the first time in ten years, cried his eyes out. He did not know that Njideka was also soaking her legal briefs with tears and struggling with her personal demons and desires. David ended up in a night-club and in the arms of a big-breasted escort who confessed he nearly ‘killed’ her with his wild waist sciences.  

The home front was now broken. Each passed the other tight-lipped in the corridors. Each went out for days on end without keeping the other informed. David half-expected divorce summons any day.  

Hot guilt over his repeated sweet trysts at night-clubs filled his heart. One night, after a rollicking session with another escort, he went into the bathroom to clean up and broke down in tears. 

‘Why are you crying?’ 

He turned. It was Marcie, the escort. He doubted it was her real name. She was dragging on her cigarette, her lush tresses falling wildly down her shoulders, her most suckable breasts unbridled beneath her towel. Her long legs were raw sex on the move.

David knew he should just shut up and leave but he so badly wanted to unburden his heart.

‘My marriage is gone.'

‘Care to tell me about it?’

‘Why should I?’

Marcie‘s smile was sincerely sympathetic. ‘It will do you some good and at least clear your head to drive home without tears blurring your eyes. Come.’ She led him like a mother guiding her troubled son to the small but neat sitting-room. She retired into the bedroom where they had turned the earth upside down in a frenzy of coition and returned, decently dressed in a T-shirt and knee-length skirt. She handed him a Coke and sat opposite him.

‘Talk. I will listen.’

David could not believe her disposition. But then he had read somewhere that prostitutes give men far more life-saving services than mere release of konji. He sighed and talked. When he finished, an almost visible silence filled the room for a couple of minutes. Marcie looked up and smiled enigmatically.

‘No wonder you were thrusting like tomorrow will never come.’ She paused, apparently ignoring David’s discomfort which he tried to hide with gulps of Coca-Cola.

‘Go home, take her in your arms and give it to her as you gave it to me.’

David looked at her as if she was a bundle of idiocy.

‘Haven’t you been listening to me?’

‘Sure, loverboy, I have.’ She reached for a cigarette, noticed the flicker of disapproval in his lovely eyes and decided to humor him. ‘See, I am a woman and I can bet you all you paid me tonight that right now your lady is in deep torment. She wants her career badly but her body craves for you, the man she loves. Be her man. Love her till she is healed; then both of you find the balance. The golden mean, as good old Aristotle said.’

The high-flying HR expert did not know his mouth was wide open in sheer amazement. Sure, things had so degenerated in Nigeria that undergraduates and graduates were taking to prostitution, popularly known as hustling, to make ends meet. But he never thought the day would come when he would see a commercial sex worker tossing off Aristotelian philosophy.

‘Jesus' was all he could say when he regained control of his mouth.

‘Indeed. Now go and do it and may the one you called just now help you.’

David sighed heavily. His guilt-riddled countenance was as readable as a CNN headline. Marcie guessed what was troubling him.

‘You have made the mistake. If things were okay between you two, you wouldn’t be here. Who knows what she might have done since you guys became Iran and Iraq? Healthy women love to meet the needs of their clit, you know.’ There was no element of vulgarity in her voice. ‘Go, and good luck.’

They stood and stared at each other. Marcie ‘s hazel eyes looked so much like his favorite late aunt’s that he had to restrain himself from hugging her. At the door, he turned and spoke softly.

‘You are much more educated than me. Why are you doing this job?’

‘Because somebody has to do it. I have served you a great purpose tonight, abi?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

As soon as the door closed behind him, Marcie went into the bedroom, lit a cigarette and let her tears flow. For herself. For the man whom David reminded her of; the man she loved like no other and had been killed fighting against Boko Haram as a Lieutenant and member of the Special Anti-Terrorist Squadron of the Nigerian Army.    

After two days of mental struggle David went to see the funky but wise man of God.

Njideka sipped her cognac and smiled humorlessly. She had never been much of a drinker, even socially, but recently she had taken to relaxing with some cognac after the day’s labors. Loneliness at home inevitably increased the quantity she downed. ‘Watch it, Nji girl, or you might end up a shayo mistress,’ she said to herself. She closed her eyes to imagine herself in an inebriate state and laughed bitterly. She set down the glass on a side stool, stood up and glanced at the wall –clock. 8.30p.m. She was not expecting David home but a heart-breaking pang of sorrow hit her hard as she reflected on how they came to this sad pass. She shivered as she vividly remembered those x-rated texts David used to send her towards the closure of work. Texts that got her wet between the legs and made her silently but venomously curse anyone who dumped any work on her desk at that time. Those days when they discussed work and ended up fucking on top of files. 

Where had it all gone, she wondered for the millionth time. Where is the spring and the summer, as the hit Swedish pop band Abba sang in their heart-tugging masterpiece ‘Hasta Manana.’ She began to pace the elegant room. It was the master guest-room in their de luxe six-room bungalow; she had moved into it shortly before the conflagration that was consuming their marriage. Initially she had not intended to remain cooped up there at nights, just pausing to keep sexual heat away from the growing demands of her job. But David had gone beyond reason so there was no point returning to their bedroom. But now, as she took in the expansive bed, the beginning of tears formed in her eyes. Without any deliberate plan to do so, she stopped before the in-built full-length mirror situated in the far left cream-colored wall. Her eyes fell on her reflection which was amplified by the bright light overhead. 

At twenty-nine years, she had the figure of a woman nine years younger. Endowed with a beautiful ripe-pear complexion, average height and a small, neat, curvy body that could excite unholy thoughts in a priest, her oval face could not be described as classically beautiful. But the sum of her impish dark eyes, the well-carved nose, smooth and immensely kissable lips and high-cheek bones gave her demeanour an arresting attractiveness. Her breasts were by no means the typical big African mangoes but they always looked like determined rebels whenever she was on the move, even in her legal attire. Whatever she wore sat neatly on her compact backside. It was the movement of her backside under her denim skirt at the party that got David into trouble.

She sighed deeply and looked at the small mesh of lines at the corner of her eyes. Where had they come from? She had not seen them before. Or perhaps they had been there but she had apparently not noticed them. To think there was a time these lines were not there and her sunlight had not dimmed. She returned to the sofa beside her bed and reached for the bottle of cognac. At that moment the front door bell rang. She paused. The bell rang again as she got up.

‘Who is it?’

‘Me.’ It was David.

Njideka glanced at the clock. 9.15p.m. The rat was rather home early today. Steeling herself to look unbothered; she approached the door and unlocked it, then walked back to the room wordlessly. David entered, shut and locked the door. In the natural order of their war, he would not bother to greet her. He would retire to the bedroom, bathe and either go to bed or catch the news from Aljazeera or BBC from the portable TV he had moved into the room since she moved out. There was no question of dinner. He took care of his stomach outside though he faithfully credited her account with family upkeep money and kept her informed when he did this via whatsapp. 

But now he went to the shut door and knocked gently. Njideka looked up from her mobile where she was trying to engulf herself in, of all things; the Brittle paper bestseller erotica by Obinna Udenwe mischievously titled ‘Holy Sex.’ The knocking was persistent. She ignored it.

‘Darling, please open up.’

Silence. Njideka’s heart and head danced with a cocktail of barely restrained emotions.

‘Nji, I am not leaving here till you open this door. ‘ David’s voice was low, calm and sad.

‘Didn’t you see your whores tonight? You can mount sentry for all I care.’ Njideka was chagrined at the strident note in her voice.

‘There is no whore, nne. This madness has gone far enough. Please, open the door.’

Silence for what seemed like a century. Njideka dropped her phone on the sofa as tears filled her eyes. She knew her self-control was virtually gone. But somehow she remained glued to her seat. David began knocking again. 

‘Leave me alone!’ she shrieked. ‘You want a divorce; you will get it.’

David took a deep breath.

‘Nji, I am sorry. They were the words of a frustrated man. I love you and will never leave you.’ The words rang true. Njideka broke down and cried openly. David’s heart bled as he heard her sobs.

‘Nji, o zugo. Please.’

The door flung open like the released entrance to Aladdin’s cave. A sobbing Njideka turned to go back to her seat but David caught her with gentle ease and held her arm fast. The months of pent-up anger, frustration, guilt and passion raged in her struggle to let go but David gathered her to him and virtually crushed her in an embrace. Gradually she ceased and sobbed heartbrokenly. David could not restrain the tears in his eyes and voice. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ he said repeatedly. ‘Forgive me. I love you.’

Njideka looked up into his eyes.

‘Davi m,’ That was her pet name for him. A name David had longed for like mad. ‘I hurt you badly. Gbagharam, biko. Can you pardon me?’

‘For calling me that, I can forgive you anything.’ He was not kidding and she knew it. He sighed. ‘I have to tell you something.’ The difficulty in his voice gave her the message.

‘Later, Davi m. I know what it is and heaven will not fall.’ She took his right hand and led him to the bed. David followed her obediently. They sat side by side. ‘Fuck me till I faint,’ she said hoarsely, the pool in her eyes almost drowning him.

‘Are you sure about this?’ David tried to ignore what her words, her scent, her desire, were doing to his loins.

‘Yes, I can’t go on like this. I’d rather get drunk on you than cognac.’ Before David could reply she pushed him on the bed with surprising strength. David had removed his shirt and vest in the bedroom but had his trousers on. Njideka wore shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt. David’s engorged manhood nearly burst as she swiftly peeled off the shirt and her swollen mammaries jumped at him like a commando’s knife. Was it his imagination or had they grown to the size of medium paw paws? Njideka smiled at the flare of lust in his face.

‘Want some breast milk?’

David pulled her down and pressed her body hard on his. Njideka gasped at the tip of his iroko touching her womanhood; his chest burrowing into her painfully ripe mangoes; his male scent mixing with her womanly sexy aroma.

‘I wan chop,’ he whispered gutturally.

‘Your wish is my command,’ she replied, giggling with unbridled happiness. Only Hymen knew how much she had nearly tumbled into the chasm of depression because there was no-one to eat her ikpu since she and her husband went to war. David watched, transfixed, as she got rid of her shorts with the subtlety of a strip-tease in heat, cupped her boobs and lay back on the bed. Anticipation and something akin to sweet dread engulfed her being.

David‘s lips and fingers went to work. While he kept his hands on her breasts, his fingers playing her nipples and all the circumferences of her aureoles, his mouth researched her genitalia with the dexterity of a PhD candidate writing a thesis on a subject dear to his heart. By the time his lips dug into the candy of her clitoris, Njideka was making sounds very much like those of dogs fighting over a plate of juicy meat. The sounds and crazy mix of Igbo, English and gibberish emanating from her mouth could have set an eunuch’s head on fire and David was no eunuch. He ate and ate till she let out an unalloyed scream which must have pierced the sound-proof walls.

‘A nam abia ooo!’ Neither of them bothered why she was announcing her arrival but somehow David’s head remained burrowed between her almost unhinged legs as she reached the destination of her orgasmic journey. Her husband raised his face, bathed in female juices, and watched as Njideka convulsed rhythmically on the king-size bed, a beatific smile on her face. Then he held her tight and let her tremors pass through him as she calmed down. They remained still for what seemed like years. Then Njideka opened her eyes and kissed her husband on the nose. ‘I needed that,’ she whispered.

‘I am sure you did.’ David wondered if the throbbing of his penis was real or imaginary. He gasped as his wife’s right hand snaked out and took charge of his shaft, sneaked to his balls. ‘You are killing me, babe.’

Njideka smiled wickedly and made him lie on his back. She propped herself up on her knees, bent and descended on his manhood with sweet savagery. David was no stranger to blowjobs and back in the old days Njideka had been one hell of a dick-sucker. But this one was unique. She did not shut her eyes for a moment as she devoured shaft, scrotum, testicles; the entire package. David’s head seemed to erupt as she unexpectedly went slow, then fast, gentle, then almost rough, light, then amazingly heavy with both mouth and fingers. At one stage, her alternately cool and hot lips ceased their mission of mercy. Almost at the door of Nirvana, David opened his mouth. She smiled her wicked smile again.

‘Say nothing. Just enjoy the ride.’

She formed her right hand into a circle, wrapped it around the trembling manhood and gently lifted the skin at the base of his erection. David knew he was a goner. Two more of that and he would come. He gritted his teeth in anticipation. Njideka tugged once more, and then abruptly took him almost savagely in her mouth, letting her lips encase his entire velvet, compelling the JT to travel as far as it could down her throat. The sky burst open. David could not help the rough cry that escaped his lips as he bucked and exploded. White milk gushed as if from a broken tap. Njideka’s face was rinsed with perhaps the biggest man-goo she had ever sampled during coition. She paused very briefly to give her dribbling mouth a little respite before getting back to work. She sucked and licked till there was nothing left in the pipeline. Almost perfect silence reigned, only interrupted by the sound of the in-built split-air-conditioning unit.

‘Are you still alive?’ Njideka asked mischievously. She had adjusted her position to place her naked trunk on her man’s inert form, making no effort to clean her face. David wrapped his arms around her and she purred like a contented cat.

‘Guess BJ 101 was a compulsory course in the Law Department.’

‘Of course. That’s why I am a first-class bongi advocate.’ The sultry way she spoke made David resolve never to have such undue period of abstinence from her again.

He looked into her shining eyes. ‘Where do we go from here?’

‘All the way to paradise. Remember, you must fuck me till I faint.’

David sighed. ‘We must go to work echi.’

She smiled as if reassuring a little boy who forgot to come home from school with his assignment notebook. ‘Today is Friday. Not that I care.’

The realization that the weekend with its sweetly unholy potentials stretched out before them activated David’s juices. He swung her up and laid her across his lower regions. ‘Let‘s get to work.’

They did not step out of the house that weekend. In fact, only the need to bathe and eat made them engage in non-erotic movements. All phones were switched off or put on silent. They unleashed every device of erotic enjoyment their minds could conjure. David was happily shocked by his wife’s unorthodoxy and more than once wondered whether their unplanned celibacy had brought forth the beast in her. On her part, Njideka rejoiced in her man’s ultimate willingness to recognize her needs and incorporate her pleasures in his.

No sex style was left unattempted. When David sought for a condom, Njideka firmly shook her head. He hesitated. She kissed him reassuringly. ‘I know you fucked outside during our fight. I also know you used protection.’

David could not hide his surprise. All his trysts with escorts, including Marcie, had been with packets of Gold Circle. He insisted on it and the commercial sex workers, more used to the average Nigerian client who preferred skin to skin, happily obliged.

‘Who told you?’

‘I know my man. Now shut up and give it to me like those dogs that roam about in my village market.’

They downloaded X-rated stuff from the internet together and tried out what they watched. At David’s suggestion, they took to bedding like bunnies in all the bedrooms in a sex game he called ‘Bongi the Rooms’ and ended up in their abandoned marital bedroom. Njideka could not restrain the emotion that overwhelmed her as she lay on the bed. Her tears flowed with the surge of her husband’s groin in her thighs and when he took her in the wildest jack-knife style on the bed, she sobbed and screamed unashamedly. When she finally regained her senses, she hugged him.

‘If you don’t share this bed with me again I will shoot you.’

‘Never, Nji.’ He meant every word.  

 On Saturday evening, in spite of her insistence, he joined her in the kitchen as she dished out food. The exercise lasted longer than usual for some reasons. First, Njideka went into the kitchen wearing the shortest and most pussy-defining bum shorts she could lay her hands on and a bra the late queen of American porn, Linda Lovelace, would have killed for. Second, when she opened the fridge and bent to collect a cooler of stew, something drastically shoved her from behind against the cool fridge. Something hard and rigid in her hole. All thoughts of food were suspended; indeed the thrusts suspended her memory as David gave her raw fireworks in the kitchen. They ended up eating in the kitchen naked.

Later, well after midnight, after an exhilarating 69 session which culminated in a good pounding in sensational missionary-style, they lay in each other’s arms, spent and swimming in unmatched bliss. Abruptly, Njideka gently nipped at David’s left ear. He opened his eyes.

‘Emm?’

She sat up, a pensive look on her face. David guessed she wanted to download some information and also sat up.

‘My bosses offered me headship of their newly established branch in Onitsha.’

David felt an invisible cloth covering the glow that had taken hold of his soul since their reconciliation.

‘And have you accepted?’

She took a deep breath.

‘I must give them an answer this week.’ She suddenly put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes.

‘It is one hell of a chance in a lifetime. But I don’t want us to go to war again or worse.’

David smiled and took her in his arms. When he released her after a tight love-lock, he focused a warm gaze into her beseeching face.

‘Do you really want to go? It will be tough but we can work things out. You deserve to get to the top of your career.’ 

She spoke quietly.

‘I know. But after this weekend, I guess my priorities have sort of been readjusted. I know what matters.’  

 David held her arms. ‘Don’t be hasty, Nji. Onitsha is not on planet Jupiter. We can come to an arrangement which will suit us fine.’ He sounded so sincere that tears sprang into his wife’s eyes.

‘No, darling. I don’t want a weekend husband, a cold home and a colder bed. One shot at that nearly turned me into a dependant on cognac. And what if the kids come? No, Davi m. I am not that liberated.’

Her man took a deep breath. He realized his duty was to support her in a decision that would be good for both of them. What an unbalanced world, he thought. If the shoes were reversed I, the world, would expect her to move with me, probably give up her job, just because I am the husband. He kissed her long and hard, only stopping when passion began to quicken their heartbeat.

‘Easy, babe. You are my wife, and your happiness and fulfillment matters to me. Take a decision that you can live with.’

Njideka asked him quietly, ‘Who or what transformed you, honey? It can’t be our bed-creaking exercises, though they helped.’ She grinned. David took a deep breath and told her about Marcie and Reverend Adolphus. She listened patiently. There was a short interval of silence, and then she took his right hand in both of hers. 

‘Thank you, Davi m. I love you.’

He gave her a blatantly evil look.

‘Prove it.’

‘How?’ She asked with deceptively child-like innocence.

‘By giving me a dangerous lap-dance in the sitting-room.’

She giggled.

‘Glad you want a dangerous one. O ya, make we go.’

Njideka politely told her bosses she would not accept their offer. Barristers Femi Okoduwa and Kanu Eze listened to her reasons and watched her intently as she spoke. When she finished, Okoduwa smiled knowingly.

‘Hope you don’t mind my saying this but you radiate a brightness that I have not seen in you for God knows how long.’

‘And a relaxed beauty, I must add,’ added Kanu.

Njideka could not help the laughter that bubbled up from her insides. The two doyens of the legal profession in Nigeria told her they would get back to her and assured her of their highest regard for her contributions to their chambers.

On Friday, she got a letter promoting her to senior counsel in the chambers of Femi, Kanu and Iroko, putting her in charge of the research section at the Lagos head office. 

A magazine of literary and cultural criticism, Bakwa Magazine, has released its eighth issue, themed PAIN.

Founded in 2011 by Dzekashu MacViban, Bakwa magazine is Cameroon’s leading Anglophone publication of literature, politics, and art. Its editorial team currently comprises editor Dzekashu MacViban, assistant editor Socrates Mbamalu, copy editors Nfor E. Njinyoh and Kelechi Njoku, staff writer Howard M-B Maximus, and editorial adviser Kangsen Feka Wakai. It also explore pain in different forms with an exciting mix of memoir, fiction and poetry.

Bakwa‘s Issue 08: PAIN has contributions from Isabella Morris, Howard M-B Maximus, Ucheoma Onwutuebe, Margot Block, Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, Olubunmi Familoni, and Isabella Morris, Dane Cobain, Stanley Princewill McDaniels, Agogho Franklin, Immanuel James, Leslie Meya, Imhanguelo Angela, Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Abigail George, and Kwoh Elonge.

It was the kind of night when spirits and human beings contested ownership of the earth. This was the period called morning-night. The sky was an inky blanket of darkness unpunctured by a moon. The stars fought valiantly but vainly to occupy the heavens. Crazy forms emerged and dissolved, given substance by febrile imagination. This was the hour when nature surreptiously stole the alertness of even the best guards.  This was the moment when human nerves were sapped by the mysteries of the dark. The hour when the gates fell to the barbarians; the wooden horse penetrated the city’s defences. This was the hour of the commando.

 Danji wondered whether the pounding he heard belonged to his heart or head. Whichever, what was clear was that it emanated from his body. Sweat bathed his face beneath the balaclava mask he wore. He wondered if his finger could effectively curl around the trigger of the Uzi submachine gun hanging from a strap on his right shoulder. He glanced at the man crouching in the darkness a few feet away. Ajayi was almost invisible; only the inkiness of the night contradicted the darker hue of his commando outfit. Danji held his breath and wondered for the umpteenth time how it would turn out. How the world would explode once the raid began.  

It was his first. And absolutely nothing he had learnt prepared Danji for this numbing fear; this awful urge to pee though the newest member of the 249 Special Battalion, Burning Spear Company Squad 9, knew there was nothing in his bladder. The images in his head were better locked up in the deepest recesses of his brain but somehow, in spite of his best efforts, they kept zooming in his face. There was some justification for this.  Danji and his mates were about to assault a stronghold of Kamadeem, the notorious chief of the Holy Warriors, the deadly group of terrorists who had held the country, especially the far Northern provinces by the balls for the past five years.  Kamadeem had become a law to himself, slaughtering, raping and rampaging at will. Even the security forces of the state were not exempted from the group’s attacks. They attacked military bases at will, captured senior police and army officers and videotaped their beheadings. The gory tapes were either put up on internet media platforms or sent to the offices of the country’s security chiefs.  The Holy Warriors shook the country when they openly attacked the country’s only military airport. Although the assault was foiled, the terrorists destroyed a number of transport aircrafts and attack helicopters and did substantial damage to the airport’s facilities.  The group captured and held large swathes of territory and openly poked their bloodstained fingers in the eyes of the government. It appeared they were unstoppable. Till the new helmsman took over in an election he won by promising the terror-stricken citizens that he would kick out the Holy Warriors in a year if voted into office. The electorate believed him. After all he was a retired army brigadier, a veteran of countless anti-insurgency operations and a winner of many blood-soaked battles against all kinds of territory-seeking marauders and fanatics.

Almost two years had gone and the war was far from won. There were forces, both internal and external, who ate their hair as they swore to keep the bloodbath going. A few did so because they believed in Kamadeem’s mad ideology.  Some because of political and tribal designs, including undiluted hatred for the brigadier and all he stood for. Many opposed him because an end to the war would block their sources of influence and power. But an overwhelming number of opponents opposed him because the bloodbath nurtured, fertilized and enriched the soil of corruption from which they fed fat: the inflated sums for weapons that never got to ill-clad and ill-equipped troops; the allocations for a war on terror that ended up in coded bank accounts; the hydra-headed contracts. A vigorous pursuit of the war would stop the flow of the milk and honey.

But the brigadier, against stomach-bursting odds, did not relent. The result was that on this fateful night, midway into the president’s tenure, this group of handpicked commandos was making an assault on Kamadeem’s lair. The journey to this hell of a night had been long, arduous and bloody.  The turning point was the establishment of the 249 Battalion which was commanded by a protégé of the president. The battalion was closely patterned after the British Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), a force whose officers had been earnestly requested for by the president to set up the unit. The British Prime Minister wisely sent him retired SAS officers to do the job. In the finely nuanced but no less gritty world of politics and diplomacy, there was a subtle difference from sending serving officers. The president accepted the compromise and so far the result had been satisfactory. Acting on solid intelligence and using methods the conventional forces were unused to, the 249 Battalion took the war to the Holy Warriors and for the first time the terrorists were on the defensive.  But it was a grim affair. The battalion’s casualty rate was staggering and replacing the dead was not easy. Danji was one of the most recent recruits who met the unit’s exacting standards.

The intelligence that led to this operation indicated that Kamadeem, who was always on the move, had a number of hideouts, some in the most unimaginable places. It took a while before he was tracked down to this one which was a big man’s palatial residence in the upper-crust King’s Boulevard.  Squad 9 was the arrowhead of the assault. There were twenty-five of them under the command of newly promoted Captain Hassan Tamuniye, one of the first members of the unit. His SAS trainers adjudged him a first-class anti-terrorism material and so far he had not disappointed. He spotted Danji during a recruitment exercise at the 563 Military Police camp where the twenty-four year old corporal had been serving since he joined the army a few years ago. Hassan had taken a fancy to the short and deceptively slim soldier and was delighted when Danji emerged with no less than eighty percent in each aspect of the gruelling training.

Danji carefully unslung his Uzi and waited. Good God, he prayed incoherently, not knowing what else to add. His insides seemed to have developed a will of their own. He took a deep breath. Try all he could, he could not muster enough moisture to moisten his tongue. He finally tracked down the steady pounding to his heart but there was nothing he could do to control it. Without glancing at the blackened surface of the special wristwatch he wore, a unique gadget each member of Squad 9 had, he knew the boom and blast would begin in barely five minutes. He glanced towards the immobile Ajayi. The guy is hardened, he thought. He does not look like someone about to wet his pants. Like me. The two of them would follow Sergeants Fagbeni and Ayakata through the gaping hole of the intimidating electrified rear fence which Fagbeni would blow open with the massive bazooka resting snugly across his back. Hassan and two of his boys, if things were going according to plan, were currently noiselessly taking out guards at the heavy double front gate with commando knives and other special silent instruments of death. In prearrangement with the power supply corporation, electricity had been cut from the area. Although this part of the city did not depend on the hyper-inefficient national power supply to survive. The brief cover of artificial darkness helped the squad and their back-up get into place without being spotted.

Danji counted in his head. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. His eyes focused on the squat shape of Fagbeni as he moved into place behind the cluster of trees opposite the fence, holding the evil-looking bazooka like a toy. Ayakata was behind him to load the weapon and support him. The earth itself held its breath in anticipation. Danji and Ajayi tensed.

When it came, the explosion was solid. One second, the colossal, wired and iron-tipped fence simply came apart. Fagbeni and Ayakata performed a deadly duet. Even as they threw themselves down to avoid the backblast, Ayakata reloaded from the cache of rockets crisscrossing his back. One more blast, and even before it totally died out, they were on the move. 

Danji should have moved forward. He should have followed Ajayi at full speed, his Uzi set on full automatic and firing bursts of 9mm steel jacketed death.  He had done this dozens of times in training.  The fear in his belly should have propelled him forward like the rocket, turning him into a killer machine. But Danji simply froze. At that moment, he was a living statue caught in the deadly grip of battle terror.

 ‘‘Come on!’’ Ajayi’s growl was muffled by his balaclava mask.  Danji’s ears rang with the sounds of war and his booted feet started moving as if they were not his.  They hit the yawning gap created by the bazooka. At that moment three fleeing terrorists nearly ran slap bang into them, their rifles blazing. Danji’s finger curled around the trigger as he screamed from unalloyed fear. Ajayi opened fire with sharpshooting speed and accuracy. None of the trio had a chance as the high-velocity bullets hurled them into the night. Ajayi grabbed his colleague and pulled him into the shadow of a wrecked car.

‘‘Guy, you want to stay alive?’’ he thundered, yanking down his mask to reveal feral eyes and clenched teeth. Danji could only nod.

‘‘Then get a grip on yourself.  If you try that rubbish again I swear I will kill you myself and save these bastards the labour.’’ He meant it. Danji shuddered. At that moment, he realized he had more to fear from Ajayi than the terrorists.

‘‘Move it.’’

They broke into a run.

******

It was a bloodbath. Kamadeem and his men fought back like madmen despite being surprised.  They were heavily armed and outnumbered the soldiers by at least five to one. The commandos had strict orders not to call in air support because of the residential nature of the attack zone. But Hassan radioed his back-up as soon as it became clear that the operation was turning from a quick assault to a pitched battle. He lost four men in five minutes. Finding Kamadeem was another matter. As he led the search for the terrorist chieftain, bursting from room to room, gunning down anyone who raised even a finger in a threatening manner, Hassan’s stomach rolled with a growing fear that the much-prized horse might have bolted.  In the name of the ancestors, who sold us out? he wondered. Not even the British-trained 249 was immune from the attacks of the demons of corruption and ethnicity that had kept the war going for a long time.

Fagbeni, the second-in-command for this mission, was leading another desperate search on the grounds of the massive compound. Corpses lay in awkward positions under bullet-blasted floodlights. They included Alsatians belonging to the terrorists. Fagbeni’s eyes darted towards a building behind the badly shot up garage. He had taken cover behind the body of one of Kamadeem’s men. Ajayi and Danji were with him. Danji was drenched in sweat and urine but at least he was on the move and doing all the things expected of him in this nightmare. 

 ‘‘See that building?’’ Fagbeni’s voice was intense.

 Ajayi and Danji nodded.

‘‘We are moving in. Cover left, Ajayi. Danji, right. You know what to do.’’

Danji nearly screamed: I don’t, Sarge. But he jumped to his feet like the hounds of hell were after him and took off, his eyes darting furiously, gun at the ready. He had barely moved a few feet when the hounds broke free in the most unexpected manner.

The bullet wrecked garage exploded in a frenzy of battle. Guns blazed from under, around and even above blasted vehicles. How the terrorists concealed themselves there in perfect invisibility was incomprehensible. But their rifles, light machine guns and machine pistols roared. Fagbeni’s scream was cut short by a blaze of bullets to the upper part of his body. As Danji hit the ground, rolling frantically for cover, he saw Ajayi open point-blank fire before high-calibre bullets hurled him a good four feet away.  He struggled to his feet, drenched in blood but another blistering hail of iron threw and kept him down permanently. The corporal could not even think. The desperate search for cover concentrated his mind. He landed bang in a wide hole where rubbish was burnt, stifling a scream as a stiff arm entangled his neck. It belonged to one of the soldiers. Half of his head was gone.

He dived behind the corpse, struggling to ignore the awful thing happening in his head. It was a crystal-clear realization that death was rushing at him in full force.  The realization grabbed his survival instinct by the throat in a vice-like grip but it fought back murderously. The enemy had broken cover. They were making a dash for escape, guns distilling pure death. They had realized they outnumbered and probably outgunned their attackers. 

Danji’s eyes and brain were furiously fast.  There were about seven or eight of them heading his way.  The one on the far left…it was all heated up by smoke and sounds of battle but he looked like the numero uno.  

‘‘No!’’ His scream echoed in his ears as something slammed into the side of his face with the brutality of a camel’s kick. Fear fled at once and Danji opened fire, breaking cover at the same time. He knew he was at death’s door but at that moment he did not give a damn.  All that mattered was taking as many of the sons of harlots with him to the immortal realm.  He wanted them to pay for killing Ajayi and Fagbeni; two good men. His Uzi continued chattering at full automatic as steel pounded into his body. Any man would have fallen under the impact. But Danji was not any other man at that moment. A demented laugh escaped his lips as his killers screamed under the devastatingly accurate sweep of his gun. Its blinding muzzle flash showed that his final guess on earth was right. When he finally landed on his knees, blood pumping out of his body like a vandalized oil pipe, none of the terrorists was alive. The Uzi slipped from his nerveless fingers and he toppled over.

Hassan and the back-up team found his body. Kamadeem was lying five feet away from him, his chest shredded by 9mm bullets, his eyes wide open in shocked death.

‘‘By Allah, he won this war for us,’’ the Captain whispered as medics stretchered Danji’s body into a lorry designated for carrying fallen squad members. 

Danji got a twenty-one gun salute at his funeral, a posthumous elevation to a full rank Lieutenant and the Distinguished Combat Star.

###

The 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, an initiative of Commonwealth Writers, is now open for Short fiction submissions, and entrants have no restriction on setting, grenre or theme for their story.

The competition which also requires no entry fee covers countries* of the Commonwealth regions of Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, Caribbean and Pacific. 

The Prize is awarded to the best piece of unpublished short fiction of 2000 to 5000 words in English. Translated entries are eligible, as well as short stories written in the original Bengali, Chinese, Kiswahili, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan and Tamil.

Regional winners will receive £2,500, while the overall winner receives £5,000. The translator of a winning short story into English will receive additional prize money.

The five winning stories from the 2019 competition will be published online by Granta.

The submission for the Prize opens on 1st of September, 2018 and will close on 1st of November 2018. 

To find out more about the contest's eligibility criteria and rules, kindly click HERE TO DOWNLOAD. 

Enter for the competition after reading the rules via HERE.

* See Section 4 for countries in the regions mentioned in this story.

Afro Anthology Series and Enkare Review have invited African story writers to submit a fictional work that centers around a blind protagonist or has blindness as its core theme. 

According to them in their release, the anthology will be published on World Sight Day 2018 which comes up on October 11 in recognition of blind citizens and to draw attention to blindness and visual impairment. 

Life is a tad crazy for many of us here, that we begin to wonder whether we are going to make it all alive. The weather is cold, the little water we have access to is frozen and filthy, we live on nothing else other than the unpredictability of our means of livelihood. We have paths that lead to us, but over the years, no one has found a path to come to our aid. Our condition has charmed us on our soil, and the fear of the unknown world we may be stepping into if by chance we get the way out of here, also drained our guts.

It was last Saturday morning that I received the news from an unknown number about a prize I had just won for participating in The Message Competition- A contest about scribbling ones  thoughts in five minutes into any meaningful message, written in any form of writing on the dedicated site for the bout. 

Getting updated on how I'd won that amazingly fun competition, I was told their dectective software had analysed the truism of every click, tap, space and press that came through each contestant's electronic inputing device they used to access the site to contest for the prize and they had discovered everyone cheated except few entries that were genuine as mine. And that after thorough examination and cross examination of the 40 shortlist, they found the wow factor they'd expected in my entry.