By Blessing Opeyemi
The nightmares came again and that time it was worse than the last one; he could literally feel his mother’s hand on his neck, strangling life out of him. He struggled like he always did but he couldn’t get her off him. She smothered him almost to death. He woke up gasping for breath, coughing loudly and roughly, feeling empty and hollow, he felt pains in his head, his chest, his limbs ached badly and his breathing was raspy. Mother rushed into his room with concern oozing out of her pores all over. She sat on his bed and placed her hands on his shoulder where it fitted like it rightly belonged there but he retreated from her. The hate inside him was brewing, it was at the edge of spilling all over, the brim of explosion. He knew he couldn’t spend another day with her without letting out all he had been containing. One more nightmarish dream and he would break, he couldn’t take this anymore. He has been telling his mother lies to cover up the real reason for his uneasiness, his shouts and hostility.
“What is it again? I thought we’ve talked this through?” She asked. “I think you need me; you can’t do this alone.” She tried to touch him again but he sprang from her touch. He only nodded, paced round the room and excused her out of his space.
He knew he had found it and would definitely end it. He was so restless and couldn’t think straight. He knew he was between the devil and the red sea. He so much waited to end this and he knew so crystal clearly that if he’s so into exiting this phase, he would exit alone, without the only person he had grown to know and love. He was in a dilemma. “What would you do if your only source of happiness, springs out sadness?” ” What would be your resolve if the only path of lights and life you’ve ever trodden leads to hellish darkness?” He couldn’t sleep no more and he turned the questions in his mind without the hope of getting any satisfying answer. He either had to stay and give in to death or back away and give her to death. He had talked to a lot of people, too much his mother would have questioned and there he learnt the dream were pointers of things to come and he needed to be faster. He stood up and went out to check on his mother. She was still sleeping and he slowly pierced her skin with the syringe and he injected her. She struggled a little but later calmed. He stepped back and took a long look at her, he knew it was the last look that would last forever. He went back to his room to pack his little belongings, pieces that would remind him of his life, his love, his sojourn.
He could not quite remember when it all started but he loved every bit of it before the dreams came. It has been fun to them both and made them grow stronger. Mother was the center of his universe because he never knew his father; it was him and his mother and they satisfied each other, complimented each other, more like lovers, other than the mother-child bond. All he wanted to do was to satisfy her and that he always did before the dreams came when the satisfaction was not between her legs anymore but in her death. He checked the money where he kept it and he saw they were still intact. He took it, smiled and thanked his mother’s spirit because even in her absence, she would still sustain him. One long lasting look round the place and he stepped out into the early sun with the bag slung over his shoulders. He took his mother’s phone out of his breast pocket and dialed the number of one of his friends who had advised and talked him into it. He picked on the first ring.
“Heeeeeello , good morning.”
“Yes, it’s me. I thi…..nk I’m ready, I already injected her.”
“Please be fast about it and I’ll come for my balance in the evening”.
He ended the call and walked into the ever-brutal world beaming brightly like a free bird.
Before The Break…
When she knew she was pregnant with his child, she was ready to give everything she had to keep the child. He would come home reeking of alcohol and ready to tear her up at the slightest provocation. She needed to leave to have the baby all to herself away from the prying eyes of people, away from the untamed hands of the beastly father. She had kept her clothes away in bits so he wouldn’t notice. She had it all planned out, kept it from everyone else except herself and the child which grew in her. He woke up one morning and discovered she was gone and the room looked back at him with more space he had ever noticed.
She walked days without end, no shelter and no sustenance. The people she came upon wouldn’t want to attend to a heavily pregnant mentally deranged woman. She ended up in an uncompleted building on the outskirts of the new city where she survived through all odds. She had her baby and it was a boy. She was super happy and knew this one would grow up to be a man who wouldn’t drink alcohol or beat her up. She would shield him from the brutal world and he would never be a part of it. He was her life, her travails, her death.
