A Collection of Short Stories

Jibril
Olisaeloka Onyekaonwu
Hide us; deliver us from our nakedness . . .
Christopher Okigbo
Lament of the Drums
***
Abu Danjuma read the letter for the third time. Each phrase brought with it recollections
too powerful to shove aside. He remembered the wrongs he had done, the lives
he had cut short. And satisfaction coursed through him. He felt as though he was floating in
midair. He regretted that he did not discover the power that killing gave much earlier than now.
He thought of men he had beheaded; of how easily his blade cut through the throat of his
victims, how invincible the squirting blood made him feel. The vain struggles of the slaughtered
gave him enormous power, a heady sense of euphoria. The women were disappointing; he
raped them because the urge overpowered him, and he killed them because he had to. He
never hurt children. There was something about children that arrests his senses, gave him
chills. Their eyes—there was something about their eyes, both haunting and weakening.
Sighing, he rumpled the letter into a ball. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he
exhaled and wondered why it was that things had never felt so right. A crusade had never felt
so successful even before it was executed, before it was even planned.
He tossed the paper into a basket. He went to the mirror that hung on the wall of the half lit
room, and when he looked into it, he grinned proudly at himself. He grinned because of what
the letter from the supreme leader said.
He was going to lead the kill.
***
52
Tales from the Other Side