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by Iweka Kingsley

This Christmas will make it exactly eighteen years since my parents died. I was only four years old. If there ever was any appreciation I had for Christmas, I lost it that night. I remember it so well. It was the 25^th of December 1993, a cold and dry night and we had just had dinner. They barged into our house like wild animals, after breaking down the front door. They just grabbed him and slit his throat and made us watch, my mother and I. My father did not scream; he just died. I looked into his eyes before they let his heavy frame fall to the ground. He knew I would live and his eyes told me never to forget that night, never.

They made me watch as they took turns with my mother. I watched them rape her till her eyes bulged out so much that I feared they might pop-out of their sockets. My four-year-old eyes could only take so much and I didn’t know when they shut by themselves, I think. I didn’t hear her voice; it was subdued in my head by the cries of my sibling yet in her womb. I was to become an elder brother in about three months. They made me look. I saw her face and her eyes wet with tears, begging for death. It came two days later and we found her lifeless body dangling from the ceiling fan in the only bedroom in our house. That was the last time I cried. I shed hot, silent tears that day, and my voice remained unheard since then. They concluded that the horror and trauma of that night made me dumb and reclusive. I never bothered to correct that notion. The silence helped me in ways even a billion words couldn’t have. It made sure I remembered that night always.

Eighteen years later and I am standing over two grave stones with three bodies, or what is left, in them. My brother didn’t make it when they cut my mother open to bring him out after she hung herself. He was three months short of being ready to enter the world. It is him that I miss most, the one I never got the chance to know or to love or hate. He is the reason why I am going to kill all of them this Christmas, after all these years of planning and preparation.  He would have been about eighteen years old now.

I found them, all five of them from that night. It took me a while but I found them. Wealthy men they became, all of them heading big private corporations and holding top political positions, just as the baba had told them it would happen; but not for too long. I found them and soon it will all be over. I know so because I will make it happen.

Opposite this cemetery there is a Church, a Catholic Church. “Silent night, Holy night…” I hear a choir singing from inside the church, rehearsing for their carol service I suppose. It’s really bright inside the church and beautifully decorated I think. I have not set foot in a church since that very dark night, but I will set foot in this one when I am done. I will kneel at the confessional and say, “Forgive me Father for I have sinned…” Tonight is a cold night. I feel the wind against my skin as I walk along the side walk with the guns tucked inside my jeans, and the knife strapped around my right boot. They have a meeting with baba tonight, five of them. I used baba to arrange the meeting before I shot him in-between his eyes. I will be waiting for them in baba’s shrine. That’s where I will kill them tonight.  Tonight the world celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, but I cannot wait to look into their eyes and remember that silent night again.

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About the author

 Kingsley is 22 years old. He is the Assistant Editor of www.lowladee.com . His first book, a fiction novella titled “Dappled Things” will soon be published in Nigeria. He believes in a better Nigeria someday. Iweka Kingsley also contributes on www.naijastories.com where he writes using the pen name ‘Scopeman’.

Follow this writer on Twitter @IwekaKingsley

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Editor’s note:

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.