The Negotiator

My madam is not necessarily the easiest person to work for. She has her moments and can be outright crazy. I have come to understand her and her crazy mood swings and we have our ways, we know how we roll.

About six weeks ago, she told me her best friend was coming from Abuja to visit and that we had to prepare specially for the visit; clean up the house from top to bottom, get the guest room on the first floor ready, stock the house with her favorite foods. My crazy madam went overboard during the days leading up to the arrival of her friend. One moment she wanted the red curtains and the bed pushed against the wall, the next, she wanted the bed at the window and the curtains hanging in the other guest room, which had to be taken down, washed, ironed and then hung up. And of course she changed her mind like five million times. Then she decided I had to wear a uniform and changed her mind and said I looked like a “trendy maid” in my regular clothes.

At first, I thought it was all in a bid to impress her friend and show off but as the arrival date drew closer, I realized that it was more of feelings of insecurity, and you could tell that she was somewhat intimidated by her friend. She became even more impossible to live with and practically drove me up the wall.

When Mrs. Monica (like she asked to be addressed) arrived, everything went fine for a few days before it all started to go pear shaped. She started out really nice and sweet and she even said please and thank you all the time. Then she just seemed to wake up one day and started to complain about everything, even when it was perfect and of course my madam would blow a fuse at every little thing. One day, when Mrs. Monica complained that her móí-móí was too hot and had scalded her tongue, my madam dragged me into the kitchen by my ear and told me the story of my life. She said I was trying to ruin her reputation by disgracing her in front of her friend and that I wanted to make her the laughing stock of the town. I desperately wanted to tell her that laughing at her was the last thing on my mind, seeing as my ear was about to fall off. When we went back into the dining room, Mrs. Monica smiled at me and asked if I could please warm up the móí-móí as it had gone cold while she was waiting for us to come out of the kitchen. You should have seen the evil look my madam gave me, as if I was the one who had wasted a good half hour cussing in half a dozen different languages.

One time, Mrs. Monica taught me how to make omelets and she was so pleased with my finished work. She told me I was a natural and how we were going to have such a great time trying out recipes. Next thing, when my madam got back home from work, she told her she was tired and famished from doing “all that work in the kitchen”, imagine! And she would do all these things with a sweet smile on her face and you would wonder if your ears were deceiving you or if you had suddenly gone senile.

Two days before she was to leave, she asked my madam to let me accompany her on a shopping trip. After visiting practically every shopping mall in Lagos and every exclusive store, we went back home and spent the night and the next day packing up her luggage. Again, she did the about face thing and was really pleasant during the shopping. Every time she got herself a snack or drink, she insisted I have something too. She even asked for my opinion on what gifts to buy her nieces and grand children. While packing, she reminisced about her youth and all the places she had travelled to and she told me these amazing stories about these amazing places. She even showed me pictures on her phone. By the time she left, I had forgotten about all the issues she caused with my madam and I really started to miss her. That was until she called my madam and complained to her that she was really dissatisfied with my work and that I hadn’t packed up her luggage properly. That’s how my madam went into a fit of rage like I’ve never seen before, throwing things and telling me the story of my life. She abused me, abused my mother and everyone for my village join, and then threw me out that night. Even if she no fire me, me sef I go carry my leg waka commot. I don tire jàre. As I was walking to the bus stop with my Ghana-must-go on my head, wondering how I was going to return to my mother in the village, a car pulled up beside me. The driver’s window came down and lo and behold, it was Mrs. Monica’s driver who had been around with her on her visit. He gave me a phone and said Mrs. Monica wanted to speak with me. I reckoned that if she was also going to start abusing me and my mother, she sha couldn’t attempt to throw a knife at me through the phone.

            “Omoladé,” she said without any preamble. “I want you to come and work for me. There’s a plane ticket to Abuja with your name on it…”

Superhuman: Peter Maximoff

         “Oshòdì Òkè!" The conductor shouted and jumped down from the bus before it rolled to a stop.

         “Enter with your shange oh!”

The crowd at the bus stop surged towards the bus and struggled to get on it. Chinomso stayed back and watched in satisfaction as more than half of her fellow would-be passengers got on the bus. At least, there would be a better chance for her with the next one. 

         "Abeg moff oh" the woman selling pepper by the side of the road snapped, sprinkling water on her cherry ripe tomatoes and anyone who didn’t move far away enough from her wares. The woman’s little toddler found it funny and giggled. Chinomso eyed the woman and moved away from her. Sorry oh, as your father has paid Fashola for the road now, she murmured under her breath and hissed. The toddler watched her leave and stuck his tongue out at her. It’s not your fault oh. One day, you’ll be in my shoes.

Ten minutes later, there was still no bus in sight and the crowd had tripled. She brought out her phone and started to chat with her friend on WhatsApp.

> Pls kp a seat 4 me, still @ Airport rd, waiting for a bus

> Babe hurry oh, test starts at 12

> Yeah, I knw. bloody fuel scarcity!

> Kpele!

>People are not smiling at all oh! Na to fight kung fu enter bus today oh!

>Lol!

The shouts of the crowd dragged Chinomso’s attention away from her phone. They were all screaming and pointing at the pepper seller’s toddler who had somehow slipped through the crowds from under his mother’s eye onto the road and right into the path of a pick-up truck. Chinomso didn’t think, she simply dashed across the road, snatching the boy on her way. He had been so close to the pick-up that Chinomso actually scratched the back of her hand on the rusted grill on the front of the pick-up. Everything happened so fast and all she remembered was the wind in her face, throwing her fake Brazilian weaves all over the place. She stood panting on the other side of the road with the dazed child still clutched in her arms. The mother crossed the road and approached her with a glazed, shocked look on her face. Chinomso handed her the child and watched as she shrank away from her in fear. Àjé. That was what her eyes said. She looked around at the crowd that was starting to close in on her and she saw the same look on their faces.

         “How did she get there so fast?”

         “She disappeared!”

         “I didn’t even see her pass and I was closest to the road.”

         “Ó gbófe ni oh!”

         “This one na mammy water!”

         “E dey fly for night…”

         “Tuffia!”

Yet again, she didn’t think, she just got the hell out of there and all her would-be lynchers felt was the draft of air she left behind as she ran all the way to Oshòdì without stopping.

Superhuman: Nikki Sanders

Ezinma came awake slowly. She had fallen asleep sometime during the day from sheer exhaustion. She had been left with her hands and feet in shackles for days now without as much as a sip of water. Sometimes, she believed that they had forgotten all about her and she would just die here without anyone even realizing it. Not that anyone cared anyway.

Ezinma was Osu,  an outcast, sub-human, inferior to the Diala. She had been brought to the king's palace as a slave when she was just seven. She didn’t even know where she had come from originally and hardly remembered what life was like before her days of servitude, but she reckoned it must have been difficult because everyone talked about the outcasts with revulsion and disdain. As far as the villagers were concerned, they were the embodiment of evil, the vector of misfortune. Even among the slaves, the Osu were at the  very bottom of the barrel. 

The curse of the gods had come, with skin white as the shawl of Ala's priestess. Ezinma had never seen an albino before but she was sure they could not be as frightening as these oye eboe. Even though the king had embraced them and welcomed them into the village, exchanging gifts with them, Ezinma knew they were a curse from the gods and would only bring trouble upon the land. 

The stories from villages far away said the white men had taken slaves and put them on monstrous beasts upon the ocean banks. Some people said they sacrificed these people to their strange gods whose messengers were the monstrous beasts. Some said they took them away to their land at the edge of the world. 

Ezinma knew the king wanted the favor of the white men and their gods. She knew he coveted their gifts, like the bewitched ihe ojoo that now stood against one wall of the hut in which she'd been held. On the surface, the thing looked like a perfectly still pool of dark water, only it was completely solid to the touch. Even the carved patterns on the wooden frame that surrounded that terrifying surface was strange, like nothing Ezinma had ever seen before. It could show you your perfect reflection, much better than looking in the muddy waters of the Oramiriukwa ever could. In fact, it was as if your very own twin had been summoned by the evil spirits within the thing. The white men had revealed their ihe ojoo during Iwa-ji and the king had been bewitched by it. Even if they had asked him for his own mother, he would have given her up just to have the white man's special gift. In order to have just that  one piece of evil that wasn’t even as tall as she was, he had given them over three hundred of his people, both slaves and free. He had even offered the white men yams before making an offering to the ancestors. And they called her evil and cursed. The king had committed the greatest type of Aru Ala, an abomination and insult to Ala, as far as she was concerned, and she was sure there would be grave repercussions.

The white men had put the slaves given to them in shackles. They had then inspected their new possessions like goats on Orie market day and had separated them into groups. They had all looked Ezinma over in the same lascivious way the king’s chief steward had started to look at her, right before he had started to force his way with her. You are Osu, he would say. You are common property for me to use as I wish. When the white men put her and four other slave girls in a separate hut, she knew what they had in mind. They were definitely not thinking of sacrifices to their gods. They had come for the other girls in the last few days and she knew that if she didn’t die of starvation first, she would follow suit soon enough.

The men came at dusk. There were five or six of them. She couldn’t really tell because everything was blurry  to her. They were drunk and rowdy and the first of them didn’t even wait to take off her shackles before trying to spread her legs apart. The others cheered him on and in the fading light of the sun, Ezinma saw her reflection in the evil gift of the evil man who was going to show her no mercy. Rather than look frightened or even defeated like she felt, her reflection gave her a defiant half smile and then winked. It was the last thing she saw before the world went pitch black.

When she came to, her evil twin was gone but had left carnage in her wake. The scene around her was so gory that her stomach heaved and she threw up a string of foul tasting, green bile from her sunken stomach unto a lifeless face whose unseeing eyes stared grotesquely at her. She looked around her in horror.  It was as if her evil twin had gone through the hut with death's scythe, slashing men to pieces, both black and white. Outside the hut was the same, the palace courtyard was strewn with mutilated bodies. The only sign of life was from a few other female slaves cowering at the entrance of another hut. 
Run! The thought came to her clearly like someone had said the words out loud. She dashed back into the hut and hefted the white man’s magical gift onto her head with her bloodied hands, marveling at the ease with which she picked it up. It was evil, no doubt, but at that moment, she just knew somehow that it was her only chance of survival.

My Best Friend's Girl

I’m stuck here, under the hot sun, fanning myself with my hands. The man on my left raised his phone to his ears and gave me a generous whiff of his under-arms and I almost passed out! I wonder why there isn’t a waiting lounge at MMA’s Arrivals. Why do they always make people wait outside, like suffering souls awaiting the arrival of their loved ones. Or their hated ones, depending on what side of the street you’re standing on. I’m here with my Best Friend and we’re awaiting the arrival of his Girl Friend. I haven’t even met her yet and I hate her. Very much.

I’ve known Kayode all my life. His Dad and mine both worked at NICON back in the day, when NICON was the big, Strong, Reliable. We both grew up in the company house in Surulere, and attended pampers Private School. Then we went off to boarding school at Federal Government College Ijanikin and then to Unilag.

Growing up, it was always Nneka and Kayode, Kayode and Nneka. I remember the Okonkwo children who lived on the first floor used to call us Husband and Wife and I would cry because they made it sound like an insult. Then in secondary school, I was Defender of the Universe because he went through the shy, introvert phase while I have always had a mouth that was too big for my tiny body. I could face off anything and anyone and for some reason that still baffles me, I was popular and was quite the Queen Bee. In Unilag, he became the Stud and I his wingman.

All this time, I never had romantic notions about him. I hear a lot of people say it is impossible for a guy and a girl to be really close friends without there being feelings running amuck between them. I can say confidently that we were the exception to the rule. Kayode was just like another one of my brothers. He bullied and teased and lorded it over me just as much as my brothers. And when Emeka Okigwe broke my heart in JSS3, he went along with my brothers to teach him a very good lesson. I did my fair share of sisterly duties too.  I can’t count the number of letters I have penned or Vals presents I have picked out or the times I have scratched out eyes. Yes oh, you mess with my Best Friend, I scratch out your eyes! I was usually the Girlfriend who picked his calls and said “he is asleep” when he wanted to shake off some girl or the New Girl who showed up on his arm just to show an Ex he’d moved on.

When it was time for Masters, I was the one who made the decision for Brunel and he agreed of course. It was even my idea to go all the way to Manchester from London, to watch the Red Devils play. I’d felt we deserved a break after our first term exams and all. That was where he met her. She was sat on the other side of him at the stadium and for the life of me, I didn’t even notice her or see her face. The Devils were whooping Chelsea’s ass and I was too busy screaming myself hoarse to notice my Best friend chatting up the Bird with the weird accent. Next thing I know, he’s on the phone 24/7 with her and two weeks later, he took another trip to Manchester.

Funny how I never even noticed him as guy like that until she came along. Not even with all the other girls, and believe me, there’s been a lot. That was when I realized just how big a part of my life he was. How he would call me up in the morning to ask what we were doing that day and how I would retort that we had lectures, dhurr! Or how I would come out of my apartment at the Bishop Complex and find him waiting for me and we would walk to the bus stop together. How I would use him as a human buffer against the wind during those cold winter mornings or how we would meet up after lectures and he would buy me dinner or we would go back to my apartment and he would cook. How we talked about everything and bickered over everything. How my mother would call him and complain that my phone was never switched on and that I never bothered to call and how he would calm her down with his sweet talk and I would sit there and laugh about it and still refuse to speak with her.

Now it was all Halima this and Halima that. Now when he comes to my house, he puts her on speakerphone while he cooks and I have to endure listening to that infuriating squeaky voice with the wonky accent. Gosh, if I have to listen to anymore of how she spent all her mohneh on Soondeh, I’m going to start tearing out my hair.

She was born in Liverpool to Fulani parents and moved to Manchester when she was sixteen. She’d never been to Nigeria before and she’d decided to come now because of man (I’m not judging oh, I’m just saying). She doesn’t speak any Nigerian language, not even her native Hausa. She can’t cook (at least I can cook even if I hardly ever do it), doesn’t know who Don Jazzy is (as in really!) and short of her name, dark skin and green passport, she might as well be from Mars. What did he ever see in her?!

After waiting for what seemed like forever, Kayode finally left my side and bounded towards the entrance. He enveloped her in a bear hug, lifting her off her feet and spinning her round and round and round. And round. It aff do nah!

The first thing I noticed about her was how really tall she was. She was almost as tall as Kayode, which was saying something. My nose went up in the air instinctively, not that I started to feel really short, no sir! People have always said how Kayode and I balanced each other off nicely. She was way too tall for him and they looked awkward together. Just saying.

            “You must be Neh-karrr.” She said to me, her voice lilting up at the end of her sentence in that way of hers that grates on my nerves. “I herred so moch about yer, it’s grrrait to finally meet yer!”

I plastered a smile on my face and tried not to roll my eyes. Hard as I tried, there was no way I could say “pleased to meet you too” without choking on the words so I just kept my jaw-aching fake smile in place and wondered anew at the notion of looks that could kill.

Right from the moment she got here, he’s been glued to her side and I’ve been left to my own devices. He didn’t even call me up to help proofread his quarterly report like he usually does. I would have practically re-written the thing and would have given him an earful about how deplorable his writing skills were. Then he would nag me (again) about my unfinished books and how really undisciplined I was with finishing any project and we would have had one of those stupid fights I miss so much now. It’s been a week and we have hardly even spoken, not to talk of squabbling.

Even today that they (gosh, it feels weird referring to them as they) invited me over, I might as well not be here. Kayode wanted to cook a special meal for his Girls (rme) but all that was going on in that kitchen was the kind of PDA that would make even Cinderella puke, so I left them to it and came to watch Vampire Diaries on CBS Drama instead. Well, looking on the bright side, I wouldn’t have to clean up after him while he cooks. For all his culinary prowess, Kayode is not the neatest bunny in the garden and sometimes I used to wonder if having someone do all the cooking was worth the trouble it took to clean up after him. The guy was a hurricane in the kitchen and it was really nice to have someone else do the work for a change. I heard the back door open and slam shut. He was already making her take out the trash, on the first week oh. That’s another Kayode thing, he is as bossy as I’m lazy and can be a bully sometimes. He has this quiet way of having his way, and whenever we disagreed on anything, I would in my characteristic way shout my point while he would keep quiet, working his silent emotional blackmail until I felt bad and gave in and apologized, even when he was wrong. I smiled in contentment as I placed my feet on the glass center-table, something that would elicit one of those silent stares from Kayode. Oh well, he isn’t here to disapprove, is he? He’s too busy right now to go on and on with his “Nneka don’t slouch” or “don’t leave your shoes in the hallway” or “don’t eat all that chocolate” or “you watch too much TV” or “don’t leave that report until the day before it’s due”. Maybe having her here isn’t such a bad idea after all. To tell the truth, he’s been less and less of a grouch in recent times. Really, for all my petty jealousy and unfounded dislike of Halima, I honestly don’t like him that way. Yeah I love him to bits, he’s been a part of my life for as long as I can remember and I’ll always love him but I don’t love him. Heck, I can’t even imagine being in love with him. He would drive me crazy and you can bet I’ll give twice as much as I get! We’re Kayode and Nneka, Nneka and Kayode, and to make it anything else would simply ruin it.

Halima poked her head around the door and smiled at me.

            “Yer allrrait Love?” she asked.

Damn, as much as I hate to admit it, she was starting to grow on me and I knew for all my shakara, I was going to like her very much.

            “Yeah, thanks!” I replied returning her smile. (It was a genuine one, cross my heart and hope to die).

            “Halima?” I said as she made to return to the kitchen.

            “Yes Love?”

            “I’m really glad you’re here…”

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.