Chapter 1 - a Death

Atim ran like her life depended on it because it did. The baying mob behind her were out for blood, and would only be appeased by her death. She shrugged as she thought about it...She'd been running all her life, today was no different.

All she had said was "God go punish you".

Four simple words.

Uttered by an angry fourteen-year-old girl at Asuquo the so-called eighteen-year-old "king of boys" that had just raped her.

---------------------------------------------

Asuquo was a thug, a miscreant who preyed on the weak and helpless.

He terrorized the community he lived in and the inhabitants were powerless to stop him.

He was a cultist and a militant.

He strode around majestically, bedecked in a dirty orange singlet with a skull emblazoned on the front and the SAS motto - "who dares wins" printed on the back.

He wore a necklace of cowries and animal teeth of some sort around his neck and had a red cloth with cowries woven into it, tied around his left bicep.

He was a bit scrawny, but his reputation as a killer in the community cast a long shadow over his physical looks.

"Asuquo," Atim said, "God go punish you." Her voice trembled with rage at the pain inflicted on her.

Asuquo collected his belt and AK-47 from one of his boys and turned to sneer at Atim as she invoked God's punishment.

"Nothing wey God fit do for here." He replied, turning and strolling back towards mama Okon's shed to resume drinking the ogogoro he had been drinking before his boys had brought her kicking and screaming before him.

He fiddled with the juju on his left bicep that protected him from death, as he walked past the timber truck parked beside mama Okon's shed and smiled confidently in the knowledge that his juju man was very powerful.

Atim stood up, adjusting the remains of her torn wrapper, just as Asuquo made to sit down.

She opened her mouth to speak, but Asuquo shut her up saying, "if you talk kpim, na as we take kill your sister, na im we go kill you."

Atim's heart broke and she wailed at the revelation.

The universe hadn't been kind to Atim.

She had been born a twin, and even though this wasn't the Mary Slessor era, some people in the village still held on to old traditions that were deeply rooted.

Atim and her sister Aniefiok had been cast out to die within hours of being born.

They had been taken into the forest and left in crude baskets. For most infants, this was a death sentence, with the armies of marauding ants and other creatures in the forest, but the universe had other plans.

They had been found a couple of hours after being abandoned, by a bunch of children cast out by their families for being child witches, they themselves lucky to be alive.

How the children had fed them and raised them, only the universe could explain.

The children had even named them.

Yet even as the universe had kept them alive, it had taken one of their group for every year that Atim and her sister lived.

But even that kind of luck had to end at some point, and it did with the death of Atim's sister Aniefiok

Her remains had been found by the stream where she went to fetch water.

The body had been covered by soldier ants and had been partially consumed, but even though her clothing had been devoured along with most of the body, her wrapper had been found some distance from the body.

The children had suspected that someone had raped her and killed her, but there was nothing any of them could do.

They were outcasts, and of little worth to the village.

"Ah, Asuquo...na you kill Aniefiok?"

"Heeeeey...Abasi mbok" she cried, lifting her hands and eyes up to the sky.

It was at that precise moment that the universe, which had ignored Atim and her twin sister's prayers all their lives decided to answer her. And answer in the most glorious manner it did

There was a weird sound, like guitar strings twanging, slightly inaudibly as everyone seemed oblivious to it, but Atim could hear the sounds and she paused, her face scrunching up.

The twangings, spaced out at first - began to come together with the spacing in between them reducing in duration. The timber on the truck suddenly shuddered as the steel cable binding them together groaned and parted with a loud resonating twang.

With a whoosh, the steel cable snaked through the air, its stored kinetic energy seeking a release. it bit into the top of Asuquo's shoulder, shearing through skin, muscle, ribs, and organs like a hot knife through butter - and exited under the ribcage on the opposite side taking off the arm at the elbow.

The writhing cable hit the ground with a smack, dispersing some of its stored energy before whiplashing in an arc. It sliced through one of the bamboo poles holding up the zinc roofing where Asuquo's boys were drinking. it took one's head from his neck and took off the top of the other's head before cutting through the remaining bamboo pole and embedding itself in the palm tree beside the shed.

There was a rumbling sound as the now unrestrained logs of wood rolled off the timber truck crushing what was left of Asuquo's body and reducing the drinking section of mama Okon's shed to nothing.

As the dust settled, it revealed the carnage left in the steel cable's wake.

The cable itself still dripping a mixture of tree sap and blood. The people who were alive were shocked by the carnage. Until someone found the voice to speak.

It was the driver of the timber truck. With tears in his eyes from the dust, he turned to look at Atim. He pointed, and his voice trembling with rage said "Na she do am. She curse am. She be witch!"

Atim thought to herself, "oga, no be you no tie your timber well?"

But she was already on the run.

Again.

This time for her life.