BLOOD MONEY AND SOFT LIFE

 Anything the devil gives to you is never for free

Even after many, many years, you still randomly remember the time you watched your father’s coffin being lowered into the earth by four men who looked like they had an eating disorder. You looked around and saw your younger siblings in tears, all six of them. Your mother had cried so much she couldn’t cry anymore, so she just stared blankly with her swollen eyeballs. Some other people who you’d never known were present and crying and you wondered whether your father even knew them at all. You would’ve thought they belonged to the community of drunks who beat up their wives every night, but they looked responsible. Well, your father did too. Then you willed yourself to cry, not because you were worried about people asking why the deceased’s first son was dry eyed as his father was being buried, but because you didn’t want to risk anybody catching any clue that it was you who ended his life.

Life was tough. Too tough. You had graduated with a first class in Engineering at the age of twenty four and had since been living with your parents and six younger siblings in their two bedroom apartment. You managed to hold a job as a sales boy with a ten thousand naira monthly salary, but it just wasn’t enough. Your father was as useless as your salary, while your mother struggled to make ends meet as a trader. Sometimes, he seized the money she made from her sales and used it to “shut down" the beer parlour at the junction. So, when one of your guys brought up the money ritual talk, you didn’t tell him to shut up.

Few months after the funeral, you had your family move into a duplex, your siblings had switched schools and your mother now ran the biggest supermarket in the area. Mothers now made references to you when scolding their lazy sons.

“Look at your mate, Chike. He now works in an oil company."

“Does he have two heads?"

Finally, you were living the life you only fantasized about. And you could live this life forever, as long as you paid your annual dues.

You usually went for the arrogant girls, the ones who combined arrogance with materialism. The “is it for eba?" type of girls. This is because it gave you a different kind of satisfaction watching the life seep out of those gold diggers. You never got attached to them, except Sarah from last year who had grown on you. Regardless, you did what had to be done.

“Babe, when are we going on that vacation?" The girl in the armchair next to you sits up and questions abruptly. This one really is a spoiled brat. Hers is going to be the best.

“Soon my love. Soon,” you respond and smile affectionately at her.

“Yayyyyyyyy. I can’t wait," she squeals.

"Me neither."

BY PEACE AKPAN