A POOL OF BLOOD

John Ebute

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The air is thick with fear, a fear so palpable that we can smell it. Every hair on my body stands on end, and I tremble from the cold shiver running down my spine. We look at one another searchingly, scanning our faces for the slightest ray of encouragement but it is as futile as looking for a stream in a desert.

The dense silence that blankets the room only makes our fears take on a raw, profound edge. The silence is a mirror, showing us in stark clarity the absurdity of what we are about to do, the unspeakable dangers and risks it is fraught with. But we also know the implication of not going ahead with it, so turning back at this point is not an option.

We have been standing in this room for over five minutes, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling as if some wondrous act was going on there. Each one of us romances his dread in the privacy of his heart, but is unable to keep it from being painted on the canvas of his face. It doesn’t matter that for over a week now, we have been plotting this, laying bricks upon bricks on the foundation of the plan. It doesn’t matter that just yesterday, after we had gone through every detail of the plan with a fine-tooth comb, smiling to ourselves at its marvelous ingenuity, delighted that all our previous hours of painstaking scrutiny had yielded no dent or flaw, we had laughed over some bottles of beer how stinking rich we would become after today.

Kunle, our leader, clears his throat, breaking the silence that seems to be guffawing at us and our well-laid plans. Everyone starts at this unexpected sound that comes with the force of a hullabaloo, a weed of an interference into our still world where the only sound alive is that of our hearts pounding furiously in our chest.

Kunle is a born leader, articulate and charismatic, but today there is no trace of that superior intelligence and confidence in his voice that makes us drift to him like sheep to a shepherd. “Guys, this is the night of our lives, a night we’d always look back to and be glad we did the needful.” His words ring false to our ears, carrying the forced energy of trite platitudes.

Although his air of authority is gone, Kunle proves he still has his wits about him when he doesn’t go on with his contrived speech. Instead, he asks us to put our hands on top of one another’s in the middle of our circle, to draw succor from this ritual of our seven-year-old friendship. Surprisingly, we find strength when we do this, our fears gradually fading away.

Then Akin, the joker among us, points our attention to something we’d been too tense to observe earlier.

“Omoh guys, make una look o. Femi don wet him trousers.”

Our gaze turn to Femi with incredible synchrony, and we all burst out laughing, as we see the large patch on the front side of his trousers.

As if unaware of what he has done, Femi looks down and sucks his teeth in disgust. “Thank God say na night o. I swear, if not I for no follow una do this waka again.”

“Ta, they no born you well,” I shoot at him, glad to finally put my mouth to use. “Na so-so fear-fear you sabi. Small thing, you wan find excuse jàpà leave us. But if na woman, nobody reach you for that one. You fit kill person sef.”

A round of boisterous laughter greets my comment. Femi himself is chuckling so loud I feel we have finally found our guts back. We seem to have forgotten our earlier hesitation and panic.

“Jide, forget,” Kunle, our leader, addresses me. “If Femi see woman, na the same thing him go do– him go wet himself. Or have you guys forgotten how he wet himself as if he was watering flowers, when Atinuke mistakenly touched him with her ass?”

We remember, and start laughing all over again. A few moments pass before Kunle addresses us, his tone serious now. “It’s good we’ve gotten rid of the Chicken Little chirping in our ears– the sky is falling, the sky is falling. We know what we’ve to do, and we mustn’t delay any longer. Of course, you all know the consequences we’ll suffer if we don’t do this. We simply don’t have a choice here.”

The word “consequences” hangs heavy in the air. It is a word we have been using more frequently in our conversations of late. It is a word that took a special significance after it fell down from the lips of Baba exactly a week ago.

“Failure to do this has drastic consequences, one of which is that you boys will run mad,” he had declared, his voice icy like the harmattan wind. If the spirits he worshipped had uttered the words themselves, we wouldn’t have been more afraid.

It is difficult to picture any of my friends running mad, these vibrant friends of mine whom we have come a long way together. Our journey as friends began in the university, seven years ago, when we were just freshers. We stuck together and became inseparable. We graduated together last year– we are not medical students, all thanks to ASUU strikes– and have still been together. We faced the horrendous throes of unemployment and penury together, supporting one another emotionally, and if we could help it, financially. The thing is, we are all in the same financial hot water. Together, we decided we were tired of the rat race we were trapped in and unanimously agreed to see Baba.

Now, we file out of Kunle’s one-room apartment into the cold night. A breeze is blowing softly, and I allow myself savor its gentle caress on my face. In the absence of the moon and with only a few stars out in the sky, darkness dominates. Plus NEPA have decided to do what they know how to do best. This suits us well, suits us even better than whatever witches are flying about at this ungodly hour to perpetrate their evil. And we don’t really need the illumination. Our feet know the path already to our destination, all thanks to six days of consistently walking the same path. The sureness of our steps despite the solid darkness that envelopes the terrain, is ample proof that we are all carrying a map of this route in our minds.

Light flashes from a screen briefly, and Kunle whispers, “We’ve only a few minutes, guys. We gaz hurry.”

We quicken our pace, and soon we are standing in front of the dump. Our eyes having adjusted to the darkness, it doesn’t take us long to pick her out, soundly sleeping among a pile of rubbish.

“Who’s going first?” Femi asks, his voice barely a whisper.

“You, of course,” Akin whispers back, his voice like a hissing snake. “No be your food be this,” he adds, tongue-in-cheek.

Kunle hushes them. “Shhhh. You’re going to wake her up.”

It is too late. The woman is awake already. We see her lift herself up to an upright position, her legs still stretched on the bed of trash. She cocks her head to one side, as if trying to listen for a sound. Instinctively, we all drop to a crouch. She scans all around her quickly, demanding concurrently, “Who be dat? I say who dey there?”

The only reply she gets is the reverberation of her voice in the dead silence of the night. She repeats the question a few more times, then mutter some unintelligible words to herself before finally going back to sleep. I hear Akin breathe a sigh of relief beside me. For me, I look upwards at the sky, my eyes heavy with my gratitude.

Kunle gives the signal, a dexterous gesturing with his hand that we quickly comprehend. Akin is the first to respond. He leaps at the woman, simultaneously removing a chain and a piece of cloth from his pocket. The woman jumps awake before he reaches her and starts screaming, a piercing scream that seems to boast of the ability of raising the dead. Akin pushes her down, as Femi and I run to assist him. We struggle to overpower her. I have never met a woman so strong before.

Femi yelps in pain as her teeth dig into the flesh of his right arm. She slams her head against Akin’s face with a violent force, and from the way he reels backward, I can tell the pain searing through him is as excruciating as hell. I stand completely confused as to what to do next, as she bends to pick something from the ground. Just as she rises to her full height with a stone, Kunle, just joining me, strikes her down with a heavy rod.

Kunle taps Femi. “You’re up, man. Seems like we won’t be having need for the chain and gag anymore.” I hear the undertone of sarcasm in his voice.

Promptly, Femi unbuckles his belt and pulls down his trousers. As he straddles her, Kunle nudges, “Be quick. We’re running out of time.”

He rips off her tattered clothes and stops suddenly. “Guys, she’s not breathing o.”

“What are you talking about?” Kunle blares.

“She’s not breathing. She’s dead. Look, there’s blood everywhere.”

We scream in unison. This isn’t what we had planned. This isn’t how the affair should have played out.

“What are we going to do now?” Femi asks, his voice like that of a child who has just seen a ghost.

As I glance at the dead body that had only a few moments ago been violently alive, I conclude Femi is asking the wrong question. What he should be asking is what level of dementedness had seized us, making us listen to an old man who looked deranged himself, and agree to gang-rape a mad woman at midnight as a way of earning the favor of a god that bestows wealth. How could we stoop so low?

Suddenly, a flood of light breaks upon us and we find ourselves surrounded by a band of uniformed men holding large clubs and heavy torches. Vigilantes. My heart jumps into my mouth.

“Wetin four of una gather dey do here for this kind time?” we hear a rowdy voice call out.

We say nothing.

“No be una I dey follow talk,” he shouts, the sheer terror in his voice making my skin crawl. Their torchlight finally reveals the corpse in the pool of blood behind us.

I look at the stone-faced men and then at my three friends, and I realize that this is the day we die. My only consolation is that like every other thing, we are going to be doing this together.

Note: Chicken Little is the name of a comic character that prophesies doom.

John Ebute (Swan XIII ) is a Nigerian medical student, a certified copywriter and a trained screenwriter. His works have appeared in Ubwali, Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, Eunoia Review, Empyrean Magazine, Synchronized Chaos, Spillwords Press, Kalahari Review, Farafina Blog, Muse Journal, Arts Lounge Magazine, Ta Adesa, Afrocritik, World Voices Magazine, Words Empire Magazine, and elsewhere. He was the winner of TWEIN Recreate Contest 2024 (Prose category), RIEC essay contest, NIMSA-FAITH Suicide Prevention Campaign (Prose category) and first runner-up in the Paradise Gate House Poetry Contest.