Superhuman: Sebastian Caine

It was January of year 2010 and it wasn’t such a great time to be a Corper in Plateau State. It definitely was  bad timing to have been posted to the otherwise quiet and beautiful village  of Kuru Karama. There had been an air of tension for sometime, especially following the burning of that Church at Christmas. That had been bad, Iyinola, another Corper whom Osemeke had known from a distance in Camp had been one of the victims.

Osemeke was on his way to the LGA Secretariat that Monday morning for his CDS like he'd done for 11 months. He was due to pass out in a few weeks and despite how much he'd grown to love the idyllic village whose children he taught maths and physics, he couldn't wait to go back to Benin City which was home. From the little chalet he shared with four other Corpers, he boarded a motorbike which took him the 15 minute commute to the highway. From there, he  boarded a bus that took him into Kuru town, another 15 minutes away or so.

He didn’t smell the trouble as he walked up the slightly inclined foot path to the Secretariat. He was even whistling under his breath, life wasn’t so bad, the sky was blue and everything was peachy. Maybe if he’d heard the screams soon enough, he would have been able to escape. Maybe he would have jumped over the low fence into the grove of mango trees on the north side of the Secretariat. Maybe he wouldn’t have even entered the Secretariat at all and would have escaped down the highway. Maybe he would have found a bike to whisk him off to safety. Maybe.

He walked right into the middle of a slaughter fest and all he could see was blood and flying body parts. It was like the marauders were systematically going from room to room in the quadrangle style layout and bringing people out to slaughter in the quadrangle. Someone shouted something in the local dialect he’d been trying to learn all year in a bid to communicate better with his students. It could have been the fear or even the adrenaline rush, but he couldn’t figure out what exactly had been said. All he knew was that two men bounded his way, brandishing machetes. He turned and made a  run for it towards the entrance but another machete materialized, blocking his path. He made a sharp right turn and stumbled down the path that led to the female toilets at the back of the Secretariat compound. Vaguely, he remembered the newly appointed female Assistant LGI complaining about the location of the female toilets as opposed to the male ones within the main Quadrangle. Funny how the most absurd things come to mind at the most absurd moments. He tripped over something and went sprawling. He caught himself just before he hit the ground. In horror, he saw that what he’d tripped over was in fact someone trying to crawl their way to safety. They were so bloodied that he wouldn’t have even realized they were human had they not been trying to put one  bloody stump in front of the other. One of Osemeke’s pursuers paused long enough to deliver a final killing blow to what had probably once been the head. Not believing the horror unfolding before his eyes, Osemeke stumbled into the toilets and barely made it into a stall before he lost his breakfast of akamu and wara. The Assistant LGI had been right, the place did smell like rats lived in there. Seconds later, he heard the door crash open as the macheted men came in. He heard someone start to whimper in the stall next to him.

Oh God, please don’t let them find me!

He heard the door to the other stall being pulled open and the distinctive sound of metal hitting flesh, of bones giving under the force of the blade, of blood and soft tissue splattering and hitting the dingy rotted wooden walls the Assistant LGI had spoken about with so much disdain. He heard the gurgling sound of blood flooding the victim’s throat as her cries were finally silenced.

Oh God, please, please…

The hacker existed the stall and took the step and half to Osemeke’s stall.

Please…don’t let them find me…please…

He kicked the door and it splintered. With an anger that was so tangible, Osemeke could almost see it, he hacked at it with the machete until there was nothing left of it. Osemeke looked into the eyes of his killer and all he could see in them was nothingness, a dark, bottomless hole that was going to swallow him up until there was nothing left. As he braced himself for the first strike of the machete, he sent up one last, faint prayer…please…

The hacker looked right through him and lowered his machete. He reached out a hand towards Osemeke who was crouched down on the floor beside the toilet bowl and lowered the lid. Stepping on the lid, he hoisted himself up to look out the tiny window above the water-closet  into the grove of mango trees.

“Dan iska! He climbed out the window.” He called out to his partner who was making a search of the other stalls and he turned and got down from the toilet, his bare foot missing Osemeke’s head by mere inches.