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I Know Where God’s Sepulchre Lies
Was it not King Solomon, the scripture’s acclaimed wisest man to have ever sojourned on earth, who wrote in his famous treatise, Ecclesiastes, that there’s nothing new under the sun? And by that, did he not mean that there’s no vile thing the human mind can think of that the eyes of the sun have actually not seen and witnessed? Yet, when it begins, the sun buries its face under a cloud, cutting off sunlight for some moments, as if to say it doesn’t want to behold this particular evil and be forced to stand as a witness to it for all generations to come.
When the first blow lands on your face, sending a wave of biting pain through your body receptors to your brain, you’re too stunned and confused to feel the full impact of the pain. The smile on your face, as if frozen by the suddenness and oddity of what is going on, refuses to leave your visage for a while. This makes things worse for you. Because they do not see the smile for what it truly is – paying tribute to the joke you’d just shared. What they see, instead, is a haughty smirk, reeking of arrogance, nonchalance, defiance. Your smile is a gale that dries up, from the cistern of their hearts, every emotion that makes them human– sympathy, mercy, compassion.
It’s an irony, an ugly one. Your first girlfriend in your secondary school days used to tell you that the only reason she hasn’t left you even though you haven’t been giving her money like a real boyfriend should, was because of your dimpled smile, so beautiful it always made her want to hide there– in the fortress of your dimples, she’d say. Then she’d add– you should smile often, babe. Your smile will endear you to people and save your life if need be.
She was wrong. Your smile is now catalyzing your death.
When the next set of blows descend, dropping like hailstones on your body, and you look up to find the utterly feral expression in their eyes, you scream. The scream, instinctive and piercing, is loud enough to call forth the dead to life. Unfortunately, there are no sepulchres around, so it’s a waste. But the living nearby hears the agony-bearing shriek and hurry in its direction, like sheep drifting to the voice of their shepherd. Impatient feet are forced to run, fatigue flee from bodies, and the lull and quiet of the earlier moments kiss oblivion. All of these people share one thing in common: an inclination to have their curiosity satiated and be live spectators of something that just might be truly sensational.
A feeling of delight courses through you when you look up to find a small crowd gathering around the four of you. At last, someone to rescue you from this insane trio. But no one makes a move. They’re all watching the spectacle with an enthralled look in their eyes, as if they’re only viewing an intriguing movie scene, as if the pain searing through you is anything but real.
A slap smashes against your face, the sound– reverberating like a thunderclap, compels the sun to reluctantly peek out from the cloud and bear witness to this tragedy. The sun is willing to help you, but there’s really nothing it can do. So, it only watches in horror, sharing your pain, empathizing with you.
“If all these yeye boys don eat bellefull, na so-so fight-fight up and down,” you hear a hag of a woman declare, her voice thick with loathing and disgust.
You want to quickly explain that this isn’t a fight that you too are taken aback by the whole drama, but a deft punch on your nose quashes the words in your throat. Instead of the words you’d intended to utter, blood starts pouring from your nostrils. The sight sends alarm shooting through your spine.
“Leave them na,” another woman says. “My own na to watch. If they like, make dey kukuma kill themselves.”
A newcomer joins the crowd and he’s the only one sensitive enough to notice that this isn’t a fight, that the numbers are obviously mismatched.
You look at him in gratitude as he asks the others, “Why are you people just watching them as if this is some circus? Why should three boys be against one boy?”
He starts to move closer, but when he’s only a few feet from you, a man in dirty singlet calls his attention to something. “You want to show that you’re a hero, abi? You better be careful. These boys can be cultists. This was how they did with one guy here last week. Innocent person wey put mouth inside the matter just die for nothing.”
Your hero tenses for a minute. Paralyzed by fear, he stops moving, his face raised skywards as though rethinking his decision. A sudden hush sweeps through the crowd. A few moments pass before he shrugs it off and resumes walking in your direction. Everyone looks on in anticipation. The few bored ones that had been about to leave, decide to stay, to watch how this new added spice would affect the entire drama.
“What’s going on here?” your hero asks when he finally reaches where the four of you are standing, looking from one boy to another.
The shortest and stoutest of the trio, the one who had struck the first blow, is the one who replies to him. “Do you even know what this mother-fucking bastard boy did?”
“What did he do?”
He tells him, and to your delight, he says the truth just as it is, with no embellishments or subtractions. What happens next takes you and everyone else by surprise. Appalled, the sun burrows its face behind a cloud again. Your hero uses his head to hit your nose. The speed, the unexpectedness of the hit and the maddening pain that follows it, sends you crashing to the ground. Your groans slice through the air like a sharp blade.
“What did he do?” you hear so many voices ask all at once.
Stoutest boy repeats his words.
“He did what?” you hear, before the torrents of blows begin descending on you from every angle. You feel bones in your body break and your flesh rupture. You’re lying in a pool of your blood, but you don’t know from how many places the blood is gushing out. You think about running, but you discard the thought almost immediately– your body feels like a bag of cement.
Some passersby stop to take in the spectacle. The ruckus precludes you from hearing their open speculations.
“Poor soul,” one says. “What do you think he did?”
“Poor, my foot,” another replies. “He’s probably a thief. They’ve been catching thieves in this area lately.”
“Maybe he’s not a thief,” another opines. “Maybe he’s a yahoo boy. That’s how we caught one in our street putting a baby’s shit into a container. These guys don’t have conscience o.”
When someone finally suggests that they get a tyre and kerosene, strangely you think of this as an act of mercy. A quick death is better than this torture. It happens quickly. The kerosene bathing your bloodied body. The tyre thrown around your neck like an ill-fitting garland. A lit match thrown at you. The smell of flesh burning. The fresh wave of pain. The taste of hell. The breath of life leaving you.
When it’s over, your killers look up to heaven, convinced they’ve just performed an act of worship. Unfortunately, you were the lamb, the sacrifice.
Days have passed, but the story of your death continues to be told. Whoever hears the story shakes his head in contempt. Of course, the contempt is directed at you. They think you deserve what you got.
Your mother often warned you to be careful about your jokes, especially the ones you liked to start with “I know” before dropping a jaw-dropping bombshell. But you never listened. Now, a joke of six words has cost you your life. When you looked into the eyes of those three boys, a mischievous smile lifting the corners of your mouth as you told the joke, what did you think would happen? That they’d laugh and applaud you for the ingenuity of your joke?
Did you really think people understand the words– everyone has a right to life? Didn’t you know that the words freedom of speech and freedom of belief only have significance in your Civic Education textbooks?
Even in death, you’ve still not learned your lesson, because you expect me to boldly write here the harmless words, you’d spoken that resulted in your unjust murder, so everyone can see how innocent you are. But unlike you, I’m wise enough to know that certain messages require cryptic shells to hold them and protect both them and the messenger from unnecessary bullets.
He that has eyes, let him see and discern.
Contributor’s Bio
John “Penwielder” Ebute is a Nigerian medical student, a certified copywriter and a trained screenwriter. A staff writer/editor at Zobateli Magazine, his works have appeared in Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, Eunoia Review, Synchronized Chaos, Spillwords Press, Kalahari Review, Farafina Blog, Muse Journal, Arts Lounge Magazine, Ta Adesa, Afrocritik, World Voices Magazine, Words Empire Magazine, and elsewhere. A member of the Swans Collective, 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. You can reach out to him via johnebute001@gmail.com
