The Witness of Usehjiki

The screaming rose.

Kuwin climbed the ladder leading up to the bed of the truck. He fumbled on the last wrung and nearly fell back, earning a chastising look from Enechi.

“You had better be careful,” Enechi hissed. “If this container falls, and the contents spill, we’re all in trouble.”

He got to the edge of the container as Osa disappeared beneath the blood and oil. Kuwin wanted to puke his guts out and scream. He held the side of the cage to keep himself upright. This was so wrong. And yet, he couldn’t refute Enechi’s logic. His family needed protection. God wouldn’t fault him for trying to provide, right? Even Osa, herself, had said Kuwin should look for other signs and wonders. This was what ‘other’ looked like. God didn’t usually speak to him through murderous men with questionable ethics, but Kuwin was flying blind here.

All day, he’d fed on nothing but oil. He’d been laid bare, anointed by priests, fed by wandering dancing children, and bathed in the combined spit of strangers. To say that Kuwin was deeply disgusted would be an understatement.

“It’s all good,” Enechi had explained to them. They needed to be cleansed or else the ritual wouldn’t accept them. The creation of a witness required clans-blood who were without other incantations and spells and totems. Whatever protection they’d ever had, had to be washed away till they stood, defenseless in the shadow of a new and greater being.

Which sounded murky and uncomfortable, already. But it turned out to be even worse when Enechi asked Kuwin not to pray till the ritual was done and the witness was created.

“Excuse me,” Kuwin had said, about to pop a vein in his forehead.

“No incantations, no protection,” Enechi replied. “Your god is premium protection, from what I hear. If you keep beseeching him, the ritual won’t work.”

Kuwin had cried the rest of the day. He’d cried throughout the cleansing and cried every time he had to drink oil. He was grimy and disgusting and hungry and lost and, honestly, Kuwin was starting to hate everybody on the planet.

One of the attendants handed him a small pocket knife, just as Enechi and Ahimad took up their places around the container where Osa’s body had disappeared into. On one side of the container, an attendant stood, holding the bottle with Osa’s extracted blood. He opened the bottle, just as Enechi and Ahimad slit their palms and their blood dripped into the container.

Kuwin shook as he brought the knife to his palm. Closing his eyes, he pressed the blade into his flesh and cut as deep as he could before he held out the hand over the container.

His blood dropped into the container, the same as everyone else’. Reminding himself not to pray, Kuwin kept his eyes open, watching the chanters all around them work themselves into a frenzy. As they moved, the fires lit all around, as well as the large one in the field pulsed in unison, ebbing and flowing in tandem with the chants.

Every once in a while, Kuwin’s vision would blur, and he’d have to shake his head. He needed a clear head to get through this. Enechi and Ahimad had stopped moving a while back, stuck straight in some daze as their hands continued to drip. Kuwin was probably supposed to be in a similar state, but he couldn’t be. It was second nature for him to call upon God. If he lost consciousness, Kuwin was going to pray.

His feet ached, after standing in the same spot for a while. Still, Kuwin waited. He stood for so long that he lost track of time. But he continued to wait. It was bound to be over eventually. Right? It wasn’t as if they were going to drip blood till morning. Was it?

Suddenly, around them, the chanting began to pick up again. Slowly, it intensified, and the fire bellowed in the background as the container trembled beneath them. Kuwin held the cage again, to keep steady, but Enechi and Ahimad remained, standing firm on their respective sides of the container.

“Jesus,” Kuwin said before he clamped his other hand over his mouth. I didn’t pray. I did not pray. That was not a prayer, he thought to himself, desperately.

And yet, the simple uttering of the word brought clarity to Kuwin’s mind that he hadn’t had in a very long time. Because what gave him the right to utter that name when he had sullied his hands with diabolic ways and murder? How could he call on Jesus when he was helping Enechi and Ahimad repeat a faulty history? He would never be able to look God in the face when he died if he went along with this. Yes, God worked in mysterious ways, but how could he have been so scared that he’d assumed this was God speaking to him?

Kuwin withdrew his hand from the container and removed his singlet. As he wrapped it around the wounded hand, Ahimad looked up.

“What are you doing?” Ahimad asked.

“This isn’t right,” Kuwin said, shaking his head.

“Kuwin-”

“I can’t... I’m not going to be a part of this.”

He threw the knife on the ground and shuffled on the truck, heading for the stairs when Enechi got in front of him.

“Get out of my way,” Kuwin said.

“Go back to your place.”

“No.”

Enechi plunged his knife into Kuwin’s body before Kuwin knew what was happening. He hooked Kuwin’s hand over his shoulder and hoisted Kuwin into the container.

Kuwin gobbled up oil and bits of congealed blood as he fought against the enveloping contents. His stomach was torn and with every movement, it hurt. But he had to get to the edge. His body slipped lower. He had only one hand to work with, but he made it to the edge, holding on. He had to keep his head above the oil, or he’d drown.

“Don’t worry, Pastor,” Enechi said. “You won’t become a witness if you don’t die, but we do need your blood.”

Kuwin’s hand slipped. He let go and grabbed it again, drinking some more oil as he struggled to stay afloat. He pulled himself closer to the edge and used both hands to hoist himself up, but he kept slipping on oil. Kicking around, in the meat, the blood, his foot kicked against something solid.

Osa.

A chill ran through his body.

She wasn’t moving or fighting or screaming anymore. And if she’d been underneath the weight of everything without oxygen, ever since, Kuwin was sure she died a while ago.

Ignoring the morbidity of it all, he used her body as a step to push himself out of the container.

The man who’d assisted them turned to Kuwin, about to push him back in, when people started to scream in the distance. The crowd of chanters closest to the gate was abandoning their places and running as a commotion broke out in that area.

“Find out what’s going on,” Enechi said to the attendant and the man jumped down from the truck.

Kuwin bled all over the truck as he fell out of the container. He tried to get up but the weight of the oil he’d been submerged in, weighed him down like a person just coming out of a swimming pool. But ten times worse.

“The L-Lord is m-my sh-shepherd,” he said through gritted teeth. “I shall not w-want.”

People were running towards the house now and from his place on the truck, Kuwin was afforded a high vantage point as the crowd cleared.

Almost everyone around him was scantily clad in thin pieces of clothing that barely covered anything. But the woman walking towards them was tall, languid, and stark naked.

Unashamed, she moved with her shoulders square and her back straight. On her head, a mountain of unkempt hair, tangled with dust and trash and everything in between. As the bodyguards opened fire, she kept up her pace, ignoring the bullets when they pierced her skin or went right through her body. The first man she reached was subjected to a broken neck.

She cut a straight line through the compound, from the gate, heading right for Kuwin. Nothing the men did stopped her from moving. And as they broke her body apart, it sewed itself right back.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures,” Kuwin said, struggling to stand up as Ahimad and Enechi jumped off the truck and went down the stairs, separately.

The oil kept him down and his stomach worsened his chances. He couldn’t get up, but he knew he couldn’t stay. So, he steadied himself and rolled off the truck. He landed on a finger and felt it snap back. Enechi and Ahimad were nowhere to be found. It wasn’t as if Kuwin had expected any help from them.

When he looked back, the witness was looking right at him, barely twenty feet away. The fires around lit up her skin in a glistening glow, exposing her black flesh. There were places on her body where pieces of skin were missing.

There was no one between them. Nothing to protect him. Except for a container of blood and oil.

Lifting himself, he crawled to the front of the truck and leveraged himself till he was leaning in. Then he pulled the lever of the truck bed where the container rested. It moved but very little. Kuwin put all his weight on it, groaning and crying as the lever came down.

The bed of the truck tipped backward and emptied its contents onto the floor as the witness stumbled away, shocked for the first time.

The witness looked around, crouched, and leaped over the murky mixture that was in her way and landed in front of Kuwin.

She knelt by him and took his hand as Kuwin felt a squeeze in his head. His body. Everywhere. It felt as if she was pulling him in, as his existence blurred and cleared and then blurred again.

Then it stopped.

Surprised, Kuwin opened his eyes to find Osa standing behind the witness with the witness’ head in her hands, as a lifeless body fell over Kuwin.