NOW
The children have guns. And their joy knows no bounds. They stagger in a fit of euphoria, a drunken revel, their jaws wide apart, expelling guffaws. Arms hoisted, their hands bear the weight of cold metal. Fingers curl around the trigger and press down. Bang! Bang! Bang-bang! The bullets pierce the skies, empty cartridges littering the ground around their feet. These little ones, they look like long-time comrades relishing the thrill of a reunion. Bang! Bang! Bang-bang! Bang! A familiar scene in a world where God’s eyes are closed. Ravens depart from a heap of bodies, send their croaks across the skies, and then sit on the parapet wall of Benin City Metropolitan Hospital, one of Nigeria’s best medical centres. Mounted on the parapet is a large plaque, displaying in green spray-paint, “GOD HAS FORSAKEN US TOO!”
Once again, the crows and the guns release their sounds.
A car cruises into a field.
Its driver squints at the scene which lingers ahead. He giggles.
No one has accompanied him. He walks alone, works alone. Unless his companion is a child/are children. A photograph hangs down his car headliner and dangles close to his face. He reclines in his seat, he smiles, he sighs. He reaches for the picture and pulls it close. A painting by Harry Anderson: Christ and the Children.
In the picture, the Christian deity sits, mostly young boys standing or crouching around him; there’s a girl too, identifiable by her long hair. The deity’s left arm is snaked around a boy who sticks by his side. He’s looking into the child’s face, as if he’s his father. The children seem to have no parents or guardians, else they couldn’t have drifted away with a stranger. They were either abandoned or didn’t receive enough care. Fences should keep a child in. But when there are no borders, the vastness of the world swallows up the child.
The man releases the hanging picture and flicks a glance at the windscreen. The children and their guns are no longer on the field. It’s all silent. It’s all serene.
He looks at the side window. And there he sees them, their bright faces pressed to the tinted glass. He smiles and winds down the window.
The children back away and stand still. “Lord!” they chant for him, their voices rimmed with respect. The Man alights, smiling. They call him Lord because, of course, he saved them all.
TWO MONTHS AGO
The Man is steering a minivan down a silent street where tall grasses and potholes abound. He feels eyes boring into him but doesn’t probe it; after all, some things are best left as they are. The car noses past an assortment of decrepit buildings and half-torn walls, then wheels into an alley. The headlights splash their beams. No living thing in sight except for a black goat; it is bleating, a noose around its neck. There are chickens too, two of them, clucking and flapping their wings as the car eases past them. The residents here seem to be hiding from something. Else, why would a street in Nigeria have nobody walking it at this time of the evening? Has Country eaten them?
Bang. Bang-bang. Distant gunfire. Distant screams.
The Man raises his brow and shakes his head. It is normal these days, this sound of assault. And you don’t call it danger if it doesn’t disturb you or draw out your blood.
He glances at his watch: 7:23 PM. Someone coughs behind him. He looks at the rearview mirror and observes the humans in the backseat. They’re all boys; they’re all weak. And they are huddled up like the unfortunate weaklings the world has made them. The man sneers, focuses on the road, musing: In a world where everyone is food, boys cannot wait for years before morphing into men. Right! Aren’t we all creatures fated for change? Poultry farmers make chickens into adult birds by selective breeding. Farmers ripen green fruits through ethylene treatment. As long as there’s a potential to grow and become older, speed can be hastened, and boys can become men overnight.
The Man looks across his right shoulder and mutters, “We will get home soon.” His voice is a low baritone, assuring and authoritative. The boys nod. They know where they’re coming from. And if you ask them, they’ll likely chorus, “From hell!”
Four boys are sitting in the rear row. Strangers. Barely a wisp of young adults. They were kids until Men touched their lives. Who says a family can’t be broken? Why not hew the parents, kill the children, make a bonfire of their bodies? Even if there is a survivor, their life will stamp out the cliché that a bunch of broomsticks is unbreakable. Four boys are sitting in the rear row, and they have arrived from hell.
Four boys are sitting in the middle row—roughly ten years of age. Just yesterday, The Man picked them from the streets. They were crawling over a mass of dead bodies, searching blood-soaked clothes for who-knows-what. Seeing them, he whispered for the children in the rear row to remain silent. Then, he stepped out of the van and called to the kids outside. He frowned when he noticed the fear on their faces. “Ha, boys. What are you doing?” he said, his eyes fixed on one of them who had a gash in his bare thighs.
“Food,” two of them chorused. They seemed bold even in this mess. One of them continued, “When people run comot laidat, dem go hide food in their pockets. We wan see weda dey have food.”
The boy with the gash took a step back, but staggered over a body and fell back. Quickly, he clasped his palms and began to rub them together. “Please don’t kill us. Please don’t kill us.” He pointed over The Man’s shoulder. The Man looked back at the van, at the children watching from the rear row, and turned back to face the scared boy. “Take us,” the boy said. “Take us.” The other children nodded.
A boy sits in the passenger seat. His eyes have been on The Man. Earlier today, this boy had an elder sister with whom he was fleeing to safety, until Men caught up with them, whisking the sister away, and leaving him all by himself. He could have lost himself too, had The Man not showed up at that moment to save him with the sound of gunfire. Now the boy sits in the passenger seat. His eyes have seen a lot.
“We will get home soon,” The Man says with a smile, and guides the van through a pothole. For the children, home is a place far from home. He understands this, and he knows what to do.
#
The Man crouches before one of the new boys. “Look into my eyes,” he commands. And the boy obeys.
“Who is a god?”
The boy almost looks away. “A god saves,” he replies.
“What do you do to a god who saves?”
“Worship.”
“And what?”
“Obey.”
“Who saved you yesterday?”
The boy’s gaze wavers, his nose flaring. His eyes are shimmering with tears. “You. You saved me.”
“Then who is your God?”
“You.”
“What did you say?”
“You are my God.”
“So, kid, what must you do?”
The boy nods. “Worship.”
“And?”
“Obey.”
The Man presses his lips, sighing. This was the last of the children. All of them have the same mind. Little wonder Jesus loves the little children. Their minds are perfect in devotion.
He caresses the boy’s cheek. “Will you follow your God?”
He nods. “Yes.”
Then The Man reaches for his waist, lifts up his shirt, pulls out a pistol, and hands it over to the boy.
The boy grasps the gun, feeling its weight press against his palms.
“Be a giant tree before they step on you,” says The Man. “Call me Lord.”
NOW
The boys stand over the body of Lord, over the blood spreading beneath him. They form a circle around him, looking down at him. Then their gazes ease up, flitting across each other’s faces. Their lips curl into a sneer. And as if that is a cue, they shoot their hands up and begin to fire bullets into the sky, their laughter petering in the noise.
A giant tree.
They’ve found the meaning. They’ve found the will. They toss the guns to the ground, hold one another’s hands, and walk away like that, so that none of them would drift back to this point. This place where it all ends.
About the Author:
Elisha Oluyemi won the 2022 Lagos-HCAF Writing Contest (Prose) and came 1st runner-up in both the Shuzia 2021 Short Story Contest (2nd Ed.) and the 2022 Flash Fiction Contest. He co-edited the PROFWIC Crime Fiction Anthology, Vol 1. Elisha has writing published/forthcoming in journals, including Mystery Tribune, L=Y=R=A, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Brittle Paper, SprinNG, Dark Winter Mag, Hooghly Review, Iris Youth, Entropy, African Writer, Salamander Ink, Erato, Neurological, Kalahari, Nymphs, Shallow Tales Review, Sledgehammer, and elsewhere. He writes in the psychological and literary genres and tweets @ylisha_cs.
Isele Magazine 
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