Something thicker than blood.

Art by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.

I

Water. Fire.

22 nd September, 2024.

Water and fire are said to be arch-enemies, the unresolvable dissension between them as profound and age-old as that between light and darkness. In the words of your grandmother, “You cannot cook the two of them together in one pot.”

Yet, they share so many things in common. Of course, before now, you did not know this. But now, with your body totally immersed in the water depths, your soul apprehends this truth with such clarity as when your eyes pick up your reflection in a mirror. Water and fire, despite their remarkable enmity, are united in perfect similitude in the way they engulf, in the greed-cum-jealousy with which they swallow their victims. They both eat their victims in the same way a sex-starved man shags a prostitute, the way a hungry beggar does justice to the first meal he has seen in days: they leave nothing on the plate; in fact, they lick the plate clean with their tongue.

You understand this, so you do not wrestle with the water. You give yourself submissively to its sadistic violence, like a willing sacrifice on a thirsty altar. You allow it purge you of your sins, wash the blood off your hands, extract the vileness from you. And this is all that matters to you now: your purity, your sanctification, your redemption.

II

Water. Blood.

2nd June, 2024.

Your hands are busy on your phone screen, your thumbs active as they have never been before, the rest of your fingers holding your device firmly in place. Your eyes are focused on the screen, sharp and alert like an animal who knows it shares the jungle it calls home with predators after its blood.

Someone materializes in front of you and grabs the phone out of your hands. Your instant jump is instinctive, as is your quick lurch at the intruder. Then you see who it is, pout your lips in repressed anger, hiss and return back to your seat.

“OG, e no make sense now,” you spit the words out, as if they were the ones that had hurt you.

“Why you go grab my phone like that when you know say I dey busy with am? Now, all my efforts go just waste.”

“You no go shut up?” the reply comes with the quiet force of a simmering volcano. “We get serious package to run in just a few hours time, and you dey here dey tap.”

“Tap tap tap, show earnings,” roars Haruna, the jester in your five-man gang. The wit of his remark has everyone holding their sides in laughter, except you, of course.

“Dey there dey laugh,” you say in a weak riposte. “When I blow and cash out big, we go see who go laugh last. Abi una no know say na airdrops– especially this Blum wey I dey tap now– be the next big thing?”

“Dauda, I say shut up,” Gambo, the leader of your gang, hit at you again. “Wetin all this your tap-tap don do for you? We get big job to do this night, job wey they pay us well and put plenty money for our wallets, you dey here dey tap.”

Big job? You wonder. What was the big job in robbing a few apartments, something you guys have pulled time and again with the ease of an adult reading the alphabet?

You do not reply Gambo, even though you have so many bitter words sitting on your tongue like bullets, words you know would make him go back home to think about his life if you fired them.

Instead, you fix him a glare, an unflinching, hard glare. Gambo glowers back at you, and the atmosphere begins to grow taut, the tension between you two gradually becoming palpable.

As usual, Luka intervenes, playing the peacemaker. “Make una calm down now,” he says, his soft voice almost making the sizzling sound of water poured over burning faggots. “See serious movement wey dey ahead of us, una dey here dey do like small-small girls. OG, you suppose know say Dauda no be himself since today. Him just dey do somehow like person wey bone hang for him throat.”

Luka is right. He is the only sensitive one in your gang. A lot has been going through your mind.

It started after your father broke the devastating news to you and your mum three nights before, during dinner. The next morning, your mum packed some of her things and left the house. “I’ll come for the rest of them later,” she said to your father, without looking in your direction, her eyes like balls of fire, like a pair of mini-suns.

But she returned back this morning. Your best guess is that your father had gone to have a long talk with her at her parents’. Still, you wonder what “jazz” he had put into his mouth as he apologized to her to have made her come back. It is a feat you didn’t think he would be capable of pulling. For yourself, you do not know what to do about your father’s king-sized treachery; you do not know what this new feeling that you have in your chest for him is: bitter disappointment, anger, a blend of these, or something deeper and darker. You do not know how much time it will take to heal, before you can finally be able to look into his eyes and find the strength to mouth the word, “Dad.”

Your friends do not know all these, but Luka, just him, can see and read the signs in the sky, the ominous gathering of dark clouds. Nonetheless, you make plans to join the rest of the gang for tonight’s mission– you need the money, after all.

***

The last apartment in your raid is a walkover. The occupants are just a middle-aged woman, a few years younger than your mum, and her daughter, who herself is a few years younger than you. They understand that there’s nothing they can do against the five of you, so they comply with such meekness as God Himself would be envious of.

They throw themselves on the floor, assuming the posture of prostration, their hands stretched out over the floor, their face kissing the tiles, as Gambo gives the command. The woman tells you where to find all the money she has made from her business since the beginning of the week, which is all they have, and you locate the place with no difficulty.

It is all easy. It would have been that easy if you didn’t stop on your way out, suddenly aroused by the girl’s really big ass staring you in the face.

“Where you dey go again?” Gambo asks as you rush back to where she is.

“I need a quickie.”

“Come on, Dauda. We no get time. We need to leave now.”

But you do not answer him. Instead, you unbuckle your belt, pull down your trousers, turn her over, rip off her dress, oblivious to their– her and her mother’s– whimpering, pleas and tears.

You struggle to enter, and when you eventually do, there’s blood.

“She be virgin,” you hear the others echo behind you, raw interest and enthusiasm in their voice.

They, too, take their turns when you are done. The mother faints before you guys finish and leave.

III

Blood. Conscience.

22nd September, 2024.

Your mother is nervous. You are nervous. Only your father isn’t – he’s smiling, in fact, tapping his feet in undisguised impatience. You people ought to have been done with this, since three months ago, but something had come up– that’s all your father had said.

Now, you sit nervously beside your mother, waiting for this unpleasant rendezvous to be done with. It couldn’t get more awkward than it already is.

Finally, the guests you have been waiting for arrive, the ones you have been waiting to meet since the last three months, after your father wrecked the sanity of your world– yours and your mum’s– when he told you he has another family.

Your father goes to the door to receive them. When he returns, however, there’s only one guest with him.

When your eyes meet, you both gasp.

“Do you know each other?” you hear your father ask, his voice sounding far away.

“He’s one of the boys that raped our daughter to death. In fact, he started it.”

“You killed your sister?” you hear, but you don’t know who asked the question.

“I didn’t know she was my sister. But blood is supposed to be thicker than water. Why didn’t I sense that we’re related?”

You run out of the house. You keep running. You do not stop until you see the river and jump into it.