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Death’s glare – Short Story

By David Kwakye

Looking through the windshield, my vision is mightily clouded by a misty web that gives a different shape to everything my eyes feed on, but I haven’t been drinking. From my eyeballs, warm streams of tears run down my cheeks as I drive in the comfort of my VW Tuareg towards home.

The reason for my tears stems from my mind wandering with little aim at the junction of death.

Did you ask why?

Well, in the mortuary, freezing and with a body owned by rigor mortis, another man is heading home, too; but not on earth. He is going home to another world to meet the King of kings.

My tear ducts have been punctured because I just killed a man, and the sad thing is that, I’m a doctor who has been entrusted with saving the life of people; no matter what issues I might have had with them in the past.

The odyssey of hate began at The university. Richard was my trusted friend and neighbour. In a flat of three rooms, he resided in the middle room, while I stayed in the room on the extreme right. We were so close, people thought we were brothers. And like most friends, we shared things, but I would go a step too far and share the apple of his eye with him.

Arguably, Constance was the most beautiful girl on campus. Both lecturers and students pursued her. But for some reason that bordered on strangeness, Constance had taken to liking me, even though she was in a relationship with my best friend.

I’d felt uneasy at the beginning. I mean, this was my best friend’s girl we are talking about, and I couldn’t wrap my brain around the thoughts of stabbing him in the back. But as time got dragged along, peeling days off the calendar, I began to enjoy the attention Constance directed my way. A bit of flirting here, a quick brush of skins there, and the emotional stage was set for a culmination of epic proportions.

And that night when disaster reared its ugly head, I hadn’t planned for it. I’d tried to protest, but with her luscious bosom all over me, I’d succumbed, when all thought had been surrendered to my phallus. And the abominable act had happened in no other place but in Richard’s room.

In the middle of our third session of coitus bliss, Richard had walked into the room unannounced. Earlier in the evening, he had said he was attending a party and would head home after the party was over, but after drinking himself to the point of inebriation, he’d decided it was best he stayed the night in his flat at school, and went home sober the following day.

He’d gone mad upon seeing us engaged in sex and he’d yelled at us, complete with red eyes and contorted facial features. But he refused to touch us. He’d directed his fury at the door and punched it with little mercy.

After he’d calmed down, he’d walked out of the room with a smile on his face. An evil plan had just been hatched, and if I’d known the extent to which Richard was willing to go, I would have gone for a club, and begged him to beat me with it until I passed out.

I was close to completing my medical education, but Richard would ensure I wouldn’t reach the end of the race that would see years of toil crowned with a certificate of glory. And during one of my examinations, Richard had managed to bribe one of the invigilators to ensure I left the exams room a ruined person.

I was busy answering questions I’d spent months studying for, when an invigilator tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to a piece of A4 paper close to my legs, and asked what it was. Innocence owning my brain, I’d shrugged and said I had not a clue what it was. He’d reached for the paper, and it contained some of the answers to the questions we were answering.

In a silly game Richard and I played a while back, we had studied each other’s handwriting, and at that moment, I was staring at his handiwork. With the hand writing on the official paper bearing semblance to mine, there was little I could do to get out of the web of shame that had been spun around me.

After the paper, Richard had sent a text asking how the paper went. And he didn’t end the torment with ensuring I had problems at medical school.

Richard knew where I hanged out when I was in the house. We lived at Labone, and the Qbase pub was our home on most weekends. But on the weekend he’d planned to complete his ruining mission, he’d decided to stay away. He’d paid others to do his work for him. I’d just finished my first chilled bottle of Stone Strong Lager, when I felt cold liquid splash on my back. I’d turned around in fury, eager to find out who had been silly enough to pour cold liquid on me.

Standing with a smile, and a look of mischief radiating from his eyes was a young boy who looked not more than fifteen. The manner in which he smiled irked me, and I shoved him. He’d fallen to the floor in dramatic fashion, and the shove had set the stage for the demolition to begin.

From my back, I’d been slapped with such force, I saw a flash of fire-like light in my eyes. I’d fallen to the floor, clutching my face in an attempt to thwart any blow that would come towards my face. But my assailants had other plans. A kick had been directed towards my groin, and for thirty minutes, the thugs targeted no other part of my body but my groin. It took several sympathisers and waiters to get the thugs off me.

After the beating, I’d received a text from Richard asking if I’d been able to urinate. The beating rendered me impotent, forever keeping generations of my lineage within me.  

And, so, when Richard came to my theatre for emergency treatment after being involved in a fatal motor accident, I felt the time of retribution was due. He’d gone on to marry Constance, and during that period I’d had to endure a torrid time to complete my medical education. Plus, he’d ensured I spent several cold nights alone.

Looking at him lying unconscious on the theatre bed, with no one in the room but the two of us (I’d ordered the nurses to go get medicine), I couldn’t help but deliver the ultimate punishment. I’d mixed a lethal dose, and injected it into Richard’s blood stream.

The nurses had come to meet the lifeless body of Richard, his spirit probably at the junction that led to the Pearly Gates, or the opposite place of misery. Right after the murder, I’d felt good, basking in the joy of dishing out retribution I’d thought I’d never get the chance to execute. But driving home, reminiscing about the times of mirth we’d shared together, I wish I’d saved him; if not for anything, then for the fact that he had children to take care of. But in the heat of the moment, I’d succumbed to the pressure of rage that had burned within me for years.

The taking of a man’s life is nobody’s business but God’s. I pray the good Lord will forgive me.

Daily Graphic/graphic.com.gh
Ghana


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