Mansion Atop Your Heads Onatola Abiodun   © Copyright 2018 by Onatola Abiodun

How Death kills

Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced and here comes the opening of an act from the chapters of my illustrious books of story. If I ever seen either of my parent, perhaps I saw them from the eyes of my grandparents.

My Daddy was an engineer, his undying quest for knowledge put him on the forefront of the most wanted in the list of hardened criminal (I mean those who had done enough of ruin to the power of reading; books do begged him for their lives),I think granny told me " Baba e do get an offers of employment from innumerable company, appointment letter do file on different line,each beautifying itself to be eye-catching''. "Your Daddy died one night he fell from his bed''. Wait did I just said bed?," your Daddy died the night he fell from his mat'' she added.

Granny had concluded to never tell me how dead came and took my mother hand to an unreturned idle work but an invisible voice do came to me in the morning, too dark like an enclosed tunnel,I always felt all that light the World was darkness, a very cruel darkness...

Mother died the day she went washing in the house of an uneducated literate who made fortune from cruel politics, everything in Africa were cruel, my Country never cherished her products, an orange hawker do tagged their tray 'imported orange' with the hope of charging an exorbitant price for one and the kerosene traders will wrote "Sweet kero is available here;the wool of your stove shall find an undying affections for this''. So when Mother strength could no longer holds the forces of hunger she tasted liquid soap,she taught it was an imported juice..

But sometimes mother lucid do go loco,and when it happened mummy said she always felt the heaven moving under her feet and earth looming above like a danger about to unleashed on humankind, "woman right are human right,human right are woman right" she always emphasised, talking it in a trillion time till the tales tells her herself then she will began to tell us stories, it was not stories she do told us but happening that are hardly to believe if you have never being a pagan,but I think Christian will believes, they never queries the story in the Holy Book,to them the White were never a lier even though they are so reserved in making the then Africa a shadow of her former self...

I shall tell you one of the stories she told me then,I think I have began to hear stories from her the day she got betrothed to father,I was still an immature egg in her ovary. Mother believed every child is a child regardless of sex,a virtuous feminist she was,if she was alive the chibok girls will not have stay long in the damning custody of those good devils who are fighting for a God they didn't know or probably if they knew him,they knew Him about what they are told,they never know the untold about their God and their professed way of life called religion.

There was a town so rich in farming,cocoa to be precised. Adejare family was one of the rich mogul in the town,his generation inherited their great grandfather cocoa farm in order of succession,when it was the turn of Adeola yo inherit the estate the whiteman planned with the village priest to framed a vision for him that we made him so afraid to abandon the cocoa farm so that they may took over the farm from him which they succeeded,they even made a play on his senses by making a rain to rained in front of his hut only (the whiteman run pipe across his roof and splashed water across) as a sign that "the gods were angry".

Adeola abandoned the cocoa made him became so poor that he do sold himself in labour in exchange for food,this continues throughout his generation and everyone of them have a fair share of their patriarch sensible lunacy.

Adelani,his son ran away from the village with a vow not to return if he doesn't becomes someone worthy of good repute in riches. It was a decade that he had left the village that he decided to return, upon returning to the village he found that everything has changed, he was unable to locate his family compound. He have to asked his way to the village head compound and he told the village head the history of his family which didn't took the village head the family he came from.

On purpose the village head told some of his chief to take him to his parent house,the king never told him that it was his parent house he his about to pass the night. He got there in loads of cash from which he gave the last wife the sum of fifty thousand pound to cook meal for everyone in the compound, it was the woman who saw him when he opened the bag of money that told her husband that they should kill the money mogul who came on a brief stay without knowing that it was their son they was planning to kill.

Adeola and his wife killed Adelani,they told the king that he ran away to stay at they riverbank owing to much heat,rich folks so much hate heat I guess,are they not?

The king order a search for Adelani but they couldn't find him,later Adelani's wife confessed to the village head. The The Village head replied them with a maxim "he who that does good, does it for himself and he who that does evil, does it for himself.

Though Mother didn't died immediately she drank the sweet poison. A good Samaritan saw her when she was trying to wrestle with the power of death, I think Mr. Death ( her living friend) had told her how to outdo its tricky tapestry,she began the display of her learned trick with a loud,silent wailing cries then a moan slightly different from the cries of a teething child,then she bent, folding herself into two equal half and fell on the floor while flapping her legs at interval.

Mother was later rushed to a doctor but she died in his saving hand. The doctor was a veterinarian,none of my community populace were seeing, I think there eye though open is visually impaired,to them everyone on white apron is a doctor,they never cares and he made a perfect play on their senses...

If Mother was alive;I would have prayed death for her,granny told me she was a beautiful woman to behold;a lady of an ugly flaws. She do advertised an imaginary goods in an empty hand,she talked to an invisible shadow and danced vigorously to an unheard beat...

Onatola Abiodun is a Nigerian.  He lives and writes from Lagos, Nigeria.