
MARINA, VICTORIA ISLAND, LAGOS
12:30pm, 23rd January, 2022
Friday, the most celebrated day of the week, is a perverted nature of itself today. The air is tense, the sky leaden. The omen keeps getting stronger.
Strangely, nothing is moving, except for a number of motorcycles and a mild litter of pedestrians. Everyone appears to be waiting for something—a lover, a friend, an enemy, a call, a taxi, a warmer temperature, the passing of time, a stroke of luck, and… and maybe a goddamn shock. Not everyone would wait for the latter. Who would?
Well, I’m here, waiting, anticipating a shock. The devil told me it has to be by 1 p.m., which is thirty minutes from now. All I need to do is come here, call on Hades, and then return home.
“Keep an eye on the man in blue shirt and black joggers. He’s carrying a black briefcase.” I reach for my left ear and tug at the wireless earpiece. The steel-cold voice continues: “Not the usual kind of briefcase. It is bigger.”
“Got it. I’ll move once I retrieve it.” A bleep sinks into my ears, meaning: you’re now on your own. I squint into the far distance, across the crowd pulling up and down the walkway. I momentarily rake a glance up the tower on the other side of the road. The plaque hoisted on the rooftop bears the inscription ‘UAC’. It’s the head office of a chain of companies. And many lives depend on its existence. Attached to it are two bank buildings, also with plaques fitted to their body. Polaris Bank Limited and Skye Bank, respectively. Asides the scores of folks who will go down in the next thirty minutes, the buildings will suffer the worst crash.
A puff of breath escapes my mouth. I wish I could alter the looming devastation. That I can come back here tomorrow and find everything just as it is now. I wish I was never involved in this.
“Hey boy, what are you doing? The link has been waiting.”
I almost flinch on hearing that steeled voice again. I tug at the earpiece, glancing right through a static crowd. A bearded face is staring at me. He matches the description. Blue shirt. Black joggers. Black briefcase. “I found him.”
“Then move!”
The bearded man nods at me as if begging for my cooperation. But there is no use in begging me. Do I have a choice?
I cross the road and meet him perched on the walkway. I stand beside him, arms akimbo, watching a group of migratory birds. When they’ve faded off into the farthest skies, I put down my left hand so that it grazes his. “The bag,” I mutter.
He doesn’t say a word as he slips the handle into my grip and turns away. To avoid suspicion, I turn to regard his departing figure with a big smile—opposite of the gritty feeling welling up inside of me.
Everything begins to move as soon as I take a step back. Slowly at first. But within seconds, this part of Lagos Island turns typical of the ever busy Alaba International Market, where everyone races against time to make ends meet. I turn around, a frown on my face. Why is everyone leaving?
But not everyone is leaving. People come. And people go. Like a journey in a circle. It is great when those who go can one day come back to you and take you in their eager arms, whispering into your ears that they will never leave you again. It is great. “It is great.”
A creak filters into my left ear. “What is great? Why’re you still waiting?”
I curse the steel-cold voice internally. “Package secured. I’m moving in two minutes.”
“A shack right in the middle of UAC and Polaris Bank. Sit there for a while till no one notices you. Leave the bag there. Once the grandfather clock strikes one, your job will be done.”
I squint to my right side. The Lagos Cathedral sits there in a cloak of gray paint. And the grandfather clock is fitted right before it, ticking. On and on. Till the doom of everything will come. “When my job’s done…”
“Don’t worry. Your sister is safe.”
4th January, 2022
They are watching me. Just like they watched my mum. They had watched her until she could no longer breathe. I can see the man with gloved hands and a masked face pull out a serrated knife from my mom’s chest, his hands moving across her face to close her eyes which are staring in deathly horror even though the life is already gone from her.
I can’t rush at him as much as I really want to. I can’t seize the murderous steel from him and gore him to death as he has done my mum. The gun muzzles hemming me in will not let me. Or is it my cowardice? After all, I have a sister to look after. My pretty little sister. She clings to my thigh as the execution plays out before our eyes. I try to shield her eyes with my palms and stop her from seeing the horror. “Asura! See no evil! Hear no evil” I roar. But she fears the bad guys the more. She can only obey them and take in the trauma that will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Finally, the devil tears himself from the carnage, grinning at us as he inches forward, blood dripping down the blade which he soon waves before my sister’s eyes. The air of death is a fiery wind. Like lava breezing through a conditioning system. If you’re wrapped in such a fate, you’ll never know how to stay still.
We never knew how to stay still. And the devil likes those who can’t stay still. “You’re impatient, are you?” He says to me, wiping his knife clean against my face—so that my face bears the blood, the warm blood of my butchered mother. Eyes brimming with horror, I reel against the wall as if I can pull a deeper retreat.
“I see you must have lived a quiet life so far,” he says in a jokey drawl, his eyes a twin orb of haze, blurring with the aftermath of a gory orgasm. “You should live just as you are made to be… . A hunter.”
My eyes light up as he mouths those words. I can’t imagine the evil of having to become like him. Even if I’m hacked or quartered, I’ll always retain my sanity. My mum used to tell us that. But even if she wasn’t killed for a good reason, she had lived by her words. Since we were captured on our farm last night, a number of mothers and fathers have been killed so that their young children can become… hunters. But like my mum, I’ll always retain my sanity.
Two masked men drag in a slender woman and push her to the ground. Two girls fall after her, their faces a painting of bruises and cuts so that I shut my eyes immediately. The devil snatches my trembling sister and holds the blade against her neck. “Watch them,” he growls. I scowl distress at him, at my sister, and at the two girls who will now watch their mother peter out in death. The older girl looks my age. Roughly twenty-two. A lady. And she holds tight to her younger sister who is her shoulder tall. When we all leave here, we will never be sane.
The heavier of the two masked men rips off the woman’s chiffon blouse. I close my eyes to see no evil even though the malevolence is an echo of screams in this room.
“I said WATCH!” The steeled order gores the air of subjugation, and once I look at the devil, I note a trickle of my sister’s blood dribbling through a small cut on her neck and across the serrated edge of the knife, the innocent girl gasping and breathing hard. But she is not going to die.
I press my eyes onto the rape: the heavier man grabbing the woman’s parted thighs against his groin, his groans smothering the cries of loss.
“Will your sister be the next?”
I heave a sigh and scowl rage at the devil. “Do you dare?” I say before I understand I’ve just gone one step into the grave—whatever grave may imply at the moment. Asura screams as the knife cuts deeper and the blood spills “She’s too young for this. Just punish me instead!”
“I don’t need your blood. I need your obedience!”
“You’ll never achieve it when you’ve killed her!”
He pulls away the knife but holds her to himself still. “Does that mean…?”
“Yes, I’ll do what you want… but—”
He claps and yowls. “… on the condition that I keep her safe, right?”
“And that you won’t ever use her as you’re going to use me.”
“Simple!”
But I don’t trust the words of the devil. No one should. Only that apart from trusting blindly, nothing can save Asura and me. I glance at the sisters this time. The younger one is screaming hard; the brutes seem to enjoy pain. And the older, her eyes are brimming with horror. I know the colour of terror since I’ve seen it in my mum’s eyes. Only that this lady is an equivalent of me. Unharmed persons with things to sacrifice for. She’s holding her younger sister by her wrist, not daring to shield her eyes from the savagery. She glances at me at that moment, as if waiting to know my final decision in this turn of fate. But for that decision, it’s better not to think when you’re cornered. Just do the generic.
“What do you want me to do, leader?” I can feel the lady’s gaze intent on me. But she is the least of my concerns now. Her mother is yet to cough out blood. Her sister is yet to bleed in the neck. And she is yet to be asked a question.
The leader suddenly hugs me. He kisses me under the ear. He pats me and whispers, “It’s a rite, fella. You’re now part of us,” and he hollers, the others grinning along with him. I rush to my sister who is now fallen limp against the wall and I cup her face. Her eyes and lips are sagging. She’s too strong. I try to wipe her bloody neck with my hand, but a couple of men with a first-aid kit soon crouch beside me.
“They will take care of her till you’re back. Let’s get going.”
I glance at the woman who is still being raped—it’s been some ten minutes and the heavier man is still active. How—
“Don’t be curious. She’s going to die under my knife.”
MARINA, VICTORIA ISLAND, LAGOS
23rd January, 2022
There are two ways to make a sacrifice: you either do it for yourself or for someone else.
Now, it’s ten minutes to 1 p.m. I cast a final glance at the UAC building, at the Polaris Bank by its side, and at the gray-coated cathedral opposite them. The countdown has begun.
I’m being watched, I know. And it’s the reason why, a couple of minutes from now, I may make a wrong move. But in this short while, there’ll be nothing more riveting than the awareness of freedom, even if it peters out thereafter.
I grab the briefcase by the strap and puff a sigh and pluck out the earpiece—the chain around my mind, the reminder of something familial, the link to the devil. And I trample it underfoot. Freedom at this moment is a wild surge of panic—the fear of failure, fear of a new bondage, fear of the smell of blood and flesh that will plunge Lagos in a pool of unrest.
I sight a lazy motorbike by the road. The rider left his key in the ignition switch, going meters away to grin at a duo of guys in jackets. I learnt biking in my final university year; it can finally be put to good use. I hurry towards the bike and everyone pauses to regard me, just like earlier when the world on this street was waiting for whatever. Manning the vehicle, I latch onto the handlebars—one of which bears the briefcase—and I squeeze the clutch levers. And soon I’m vrooming down the road and maneuvering through the haul of buses and trucks, ignoring the yells and curses dashing after me.
I feel a vibration against the right handlebar even in the heat of the hurtling. A beep follows. Loud enough to crumple my face. All we need is an open field or the Lagos Lagoon. We will leave unquietly but take no lives.
But Asura hovers ahead, first above an oil tanker dragging down the Broadstreet driveway. My hands quiver on the clutch on seeing her—my sister who won’t let me leave. Her face is a sheet smeared with blood and soot. Once I cruise past the lorry, she appears ahead again, this time, lying supine and waiting for me to ride over her. I clench my teeth. A wash of haze sweeps over me, forcing the bike almost against the road divider— BOOM!
I crash against the divider I had avoided, the bike falling with me.
Not only have I fallen; there are many others. Especially cars who already headbutted the road divider and those who are bashing themselves in the rear. People are screaming. Fire is burning. Fire is raging. Groaning, I force a turn. The UAC tower is expelling a massive wrap of red-black smoke. The surrounding banks and the Lagos Cathedral must be suffering as well. But the briefcase is still by my side.
I frown. I didn’t do this. I would never do this. But how? How did it happen? Asura crouches before me, her gray gown torn, bloody and sooty, her eyes boring into mine with pity. I swing my head to shake off the illusion, and she fades away. But is it really an illusion? The devil must have…
Beep-peep. Beep-peep. Beep-peep.
I flinch and grab the briefcase and hurry to my feet, gasping for breath. I must find an open field or reach the Lagos Lagoon. I scamper along the trapped vehicles, but the beeping continues.
Once I get to the end of the driveway, the bleep stops.
“Brother Saheed!”
Asura smiles and waves at me. My mum hugs her and beams a smile. The sun blinds my eyes. And a thunderstorm swallows and deafens me and tears me apart, crashing me down a pool of burning metals.

Elisha Oluyemi is a Lagos-based writer-cum-fiction manuscript editor, from Nigeria. He’s the founder of and Editor-in-Chief at Fiery Scribe Review, a literary magazine.
He has contributed short stories to literary journals including African Writer Magazine, Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Mystery Tribune, Adoxography, The Shallow Tales Review, Paracosm Literary Journal, Arts Lounge and a few others. He won the 1st runner-up prize at the Shuzia Writers’ Prose Competition, themed The Verdict, and has a psychological thriller upcoming in PROFWIC Crime Anthology Vol 1.
He’s a Korean language addict and a big fan of classical music. You can connect with him on Twitter @ylisha_cs.