Must Read: A Dream To Kill My Father - Season 1 - Episode 4

Episode 7 years ago

Must Read: A Dream To Kill My Father - Season 1 - Episode 4

Your father learnt architecture but he couldn’t work with his skills. There was a time he was invited to four interviews in two days but when he went to those interviews, he was just shedding tears, as he couldn’t see what was written on the board or on papers.
There was a time I wrote a list of jobs in a paper and sent it to another church so they could pray over it on which one your father could do but none came out. As God would have it, I accepted fate and sent him to the missionary as prophesy.
On his first attempt, after 2 years in the seminary-just 2 years to graduate, an unknown force made him drop out.
On his second attempt, after spending 3 years-a year left to graduate; papa started a trouble that his son would never be a pastor;-that jobless and lazy people were often the people who ventured into the profession for selfish reasons.



As a woman, I had to re-tie my wrapper but this time, very tight that it held my waist like twine.
I, with stubbornness-sent your father to the seminary for the third time when he now graduated as a pastor. His father didn’t contribute a dim till he graduated since he swore never to have anything to do with him being a pastor.


Even after picking his cross to follow God’s will, nothing seemed to have changed. I have been feeding him, you and your siblings. But I know by the power of the living God I serve, those tormenting his life would be destroyed,”
I saw water falling from the cloud in my front. May be it were my grandma’s tears, I did not know but I heard sobs. Water trickled down my face.



It was not what my father had gone through that made me cry. It was more than that, more than what my grandma had told me. He couldn’t just stop making mistakes.
I felt a sharp pain in between throaty-sob as though I swallowed a ‘male-stone’ {granite}.
“He should have stuck to my mother, shouldn’t have left her. He shouldn’t have with deceit, collected quarter of the #500,000 that was placed in my care by papa; giving me hope he was saving it in a bank; he bought shares and once my admission came through, I wouldn’t have to search much for the money or disturb my mum,” a very hardworking mother-who though, fed up with life, still has a tinge of hope for the sake of my junior brother and me.



She sells ready-made pap with moi-moi across various streets in Lagos during the day; running at buses and cars to sell sachet-water to commuters at night. I could remember in my unconscious state how skinny she looks, her toenail almost rust as if whitlow had eaten deep into them; deep into her life.
I didn’t know how my soul moved away from the cloudy place. It moved very fast like fast-forwarded documentary but the pain and frustration still clung to me. I couldn’t see my grandma again, didn’t hear her sobs.
My soul seemed to have been drifted to another location, a very dark tunnel. I tried to stretch my legs but they remained interlocked and folded that it seemed I could be bundled into a Ghana-must-go sack.
I saw horns on people’s heads whose faces were painted a darker shade of black, darker than coal. Something sprung out of my head and I saw a mirror in my front; someone I could assume to be Lucifer in my presence holding it. He made me look into the mirror, to see I looked exactly like him-I had horns and would be initiated into their midst in no time.



“You’ve been deceiving yourself you look like God, you bear no resemblance with him,” he said clasping his hands together. “You brought everything on yourself by being a good-Samaritan. If you had not helped your grandpa and he was still at the hospital, you would have made heaven and become a saint,” he added and disappeared.



I looked into the mirror still standing in my presence and saw myself buying a gun and shooting my father. I shot him in his two eyes, shot him in the heart and forehead. He fell and I heard a loud scream piercing my ear-drum.
I scuttled forward to where he lay in his pool of blood. His clothes were with holes the bullet made on it,-blood spurting out of them. I knelt on both kneels beside him, grabbed him awkwardly-shaking him vigorously and shouting.
“Wake up daddy! Daddy, I’m sorry I shot you out of frustration.” I was now wincing, breathing hard, perhaps I had developed asthma. Hot tears strolled down my face.
“Papa made me do it,” I sobbed and left my grab off his clothe. I was shaking, streams of hot pee wet my pants. My nose emitted snot that drained down my white chase-deer which was stained with blood-in unison with sweats and tears as though Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo were practicing another form of glass staining on my t-shirt.




I tried to imagine me grieving over the father that never cared about me, my mum or brother. The father I never liked, who I abhorred. Who I blamed for our suffering and frustrations. I knew I hate him but I couldn’t wish death for him, couldn’t wish I had shot him.
I rose up on the verge of total derangement, tore my clothes of my body; crawled to where his body lay “now I am going to wake him up,” I blurted in grief {grieve}.



“Daddy! Wake up! My mother loves you. My brother and I love you” I shook him vehemently; cried out in pain may be those words would wake him.
“We will build a house and live happily. It wasn’t your fault we are like this. I’m sorry daddy.” I wailed.
“Daddy!” I shouted in insanity as I regained consciousness.



I hope I don’t do it in real life.


THE END…