by Chris Kelso
Doctor Chopin, a vicious and insane surgeon, was after him.
Chopin would love to see Obi on his gurney with a wasted heart . . .
Apart from avoiding Chopin, his is reason for being in Old Lagos was that he was to attend university there. He had been unconditionally accepted to study botany after achieving the necessary B4 in fishery and chemistry and a notable A3 credit with distinction in biology. The Slave State had previously only allowed Austria-German, New Catalonian, and Soviet Asian nations to enroll its people in higher education, however Baroness Un soon realised that as long as the main hub of humanity in the South and West were deprived of their basic amenities, then there was really no honest threat—and so why not allow Afro-Oceanic nations that same right?
Obi’s father was a farmer in Okpella, as well as an affiliate of the Benin tribe and a long time contributor to the State—this is how Obi escaped the enclaves. Going to university was something he respected his son for doing. Before setting off for Old Lagos, his father warned him to stick to his studies, beware of Chopin, and avoid getting caught up in the growing number of vicious anti-Slave state confraternities that were swarming the universities. He told of the wandering Mephisto and its ability to tempt honest men and women, of the ugly Winged Shaver Gangles and their reptilian nemesis, locked in an eternal feud in the South Eastern extremities of the Slave State mainland. Obi promised to respect his father’s wishes.
The boy browsed through some beautifully designed but illegally smuggled wax resist textiles, in two minds whether to part with his money. He opted not to contribute to a dishonest cause.
***
Standing ankle deep in a shallow reservoir in Epe’s coastal market, Obi bought some fish food packets from two grateful husband and wife peddlers. They wished him well on his journey. Pig-faced children scuffled hard in the silvery streets, troughs piling high, awful slander spoken in barbed oinking. Trash cans overflow/Wednesday summer heat send lines of reeking flesh up into the swirling vortex-hole where the sun used to be before it fell out of the sky and into the ocean. Women wept the eternal ballad, histrionic moans—sounds of nightmare trains rumbling on the distant track of thinking . . .
Once the boy had arrived outside the gates of the school, Obi saw an attractive older girl waiting with a collection of textbooks clutched close to her chest. The very fact she was older gave her instant motherly appeal. She seemed approachable, and since Obi did not know anyone here yet, he thought about an introduction. He nervously presented himself to the girl.
—Hello. My name is Obi Bamgbala. I don’t really know anyone here.
To his relief the girl smiled sympathetically.
—That’s ok. I’m Asa. It’s very nice to meet you Obi Bamgbala.
Beneath the confidence of her voice and the poise of her carriage, Asa’s face reddened.
—You’re in your first year?
—Yes, how did you know?
—You look absolutely terrified.
Asa giggled, covering the arc of her smile with a red jotter. Her red broche, festooned by white, yellow disc floret daisies, mesmerised Obi as she gestured with her hands erratically. She continued to reassure him.
—Don’t worry. We’ll look after you.
—Thank you. I need to find my dorm room first.
—Come with me little one.
—I appreciate this, Asa.
He wondered if she knew he was smitten. Very probably. Woman were sensitive to male infatuation; Obi knew this because he often found himself infatuated with someone or other.
As she led Obi into the halls of residence, a completely new landscape seemed to present itself. Coating the surrounding walls of the ghetto passageway, scribbles of graffiti filled the new dweller of Lagos State with discouragement. Unfriendly promises from local gangs helped mark their territory. Obi read some of what was inscribed on the stone corridors.
“We go kill all Ijaw people with our gun”
“The end shall never come until the beginning has come and pass away”
“Pyrates stay away.”
“This is the end of Egbesu in Odi village.”
“Anything goes up most come down this is the end of Egbesu”
“Say no to Odi”
“Viscera eyes inside you”
Those responsible for the graffiti seemed to belong to the confraternities his father had warned him about. Beside each threat, there were signatures. Altogether, there must have been over twenty street and creek gang monikers. The rumbling discontent was a strange phenomenon. Each gang was passionately anti-Slave State, but could not agree amongst themselves. The best jobs for a slave involved working for officials rolling pats of butter, boiling Baroness Un’s eggs, pounding ice, or grinding coffee. However, the majority found themselves down the mine shafts. Obi reminded himself how lucky he was to be here . . .
Those from the overtly masculine gangs (The Outlaws, Second Sons of Satan, Brotherhood of Blood, Buccaneers, Red Sea Horse, Icelanders, and the Black Axe) outnumbered the few female led ones (Daughters of Jezebel, Amazons, The Black Bras). Obi saw for the first time that although the former nation of Nigeria was economically prosperous, its people still lived in civil unrest—especially students who desired higher education.
The university had looked so promising from the outside.
***
Asa acknowledged the wall art, though only briefly.
—You must be very careful little one. There are people here which you must avoid at all costs.
Obi ached to ask further questions but sensed he should choose to discuss something less serious with Asa instead. Obi experienced feelings for the girl he’d never had before.
At the entrance hall Asa stopped.
—This is the hall of residence access. Just go up the stairs and find the room that matches your ticket. And be sure to avoid a boy who calls himself Ogu. He’s the leader of the Black Axe. He’s an engineer student but claims to be the reincarnated ancestral spirit of Olorun. Please be careful. I will keep a watch on you after classes.
Obi thanked Asa once again for her assistance. He plucked up the courage to ask her out.
—Would you maybe want to go for a drink sometime?
—I’m allergic to alcohol.
He saw the intrinsic fear of castration in her sex, the dread certainty of her eventual death. Obi produced a Jam Cap that a flogger gave him in the city centre. He was too afraid to use it alone. Asa seemed unnerved by the materialisation of drugs.
—I better go!
He watched her leave down the main steps, captivated by her flow. Her long wiry fingers clung to the handrail as she floated delicately to the bottom like a wonderful guiding apparition—but once Asa came to the passageway, Obi forgot about any implications her charity may have brought. A tall, charismatic boy with a perfect face and broad shoulders greeted her like a lover. Crouching to her level, the boy started kissing around Asa’s mouth. To Obi the display seemed to last an eternity.
Disheartened by the girl’s devotion to another man, Obi Bamgbala crawled away to his dark dorm room to weep. The dumb hunger of lust made things even more complicated. He heard the students fucking in the surrounding dorms—a gymnasium of bodies murdering each other, the dead screwing the dead.
He felt Dr Chopin’s eyes on him, waiting for the *SNAPPING*, *POPPING*, *BURSTING* sound of his heart . . .
***
The wallpaper around him sweated from the walls. He forced open a window from its latch and stuck his head out for air. A crowd of insects attacked the boy, magnetised to the oily moisture of his cheeks and forehead. Tears were all around him, the aqueous layer and eternal epiphora. He drank from a bottle of water and his thirst was abated. Suddenly his despair diminished.
Tomorrow was his first day at Old Lagos University and Obi was looking forward to it.
Obi had yet to witness the brutality he’d been told was rife in Lagos State. He knew students were rebelling against it all (because, of course, a decent educ
ation did not exclude you from a message from the Slave State), but Obi found it curious that the violence hadn’t yet spilled into his path. Obi was famous for inviting trouble. On his way to the first botany class of the semester, the boy kept a sharp eye for anyone who might seek to harm him.
Sitting in a seat by a single desk, Obi began to unpack his equipment for the class. He was the first person there, which was completely his intention. Obi had been in class a few minutes before he saw there were hardly any students in the lecture theatre; he was even more surprised to find that the sparse collection of students at the beginning of the lesson didn’t pick up, even as the lecturer arrived, ready to give his seminar.
The lecturer introduced himself as Mr. Abayomi. Everything about him radiated knowledge and wisdom; he looked like something from a phantasmagorical dream. At ninety-five he had avoided enrolment in the enclaves. People began speculating that he was a Slave State mole. No one could believe a man could last so long without being taken into forced labour.
Only halfway through his lecture Obi knew he was going to enjoy this class. Abayomi carried an old-fashioned blackboard pointer and when he spoke of an area of study that excited him, he would thrash the stick against the desk in front of him. His enthusiasm was inspiring and infectious. The boy felt like he was beginning to realise his true passion and before long, among the meagre numbers of the lecture theatre, he rose straight to the head of the class.
In the coming few days, Obi had little trouble with his university life. He spent most of his time in his dorm room. He’d seen Asa with her boyfriend but kept his composure. There had been no violence to speak of. Women and men danced merrily through the night in room and parlour huts. Everyone seemed courteous. At university, his studies in Mr. Abayomi’s class were proving increasingly rewarding; the teacher would test the boy in ways he thought might throw a simple freshman, but Obi had read well under his guidance and always responded with intelligent solutions.
Abayomi told him to beware the grey goo of the Slave State. The self-replicators who sift the mined materials, who crowd the biosphere, who eat the environment and destroy all carbon-based life instead of just the hydrocarbons in the oil.
Obi was fascinated by his teacher’s literary career in Shell County, and after class each afternoon Abayomi would share stories from his time as an editor.
—Since the holocaust, which actually came to me in a precognitive dream months before, everyone wanted to write their autobiography. Everyone had their own perspective on the disaster and of the resulting outbreak which saw each man, woman, and child in Shell County turned into a hideous reanimated monster. As an editor that’s a really dull way to make a living . . .
Abayomi had avoided the worst of the outbreak but experienced the most toxic nature of people.
—What?
—Back when I edited for Subterfuge I was a real highflyer. I wrote his biography and in return he removed me from the conscription line.
—Brilliant! My family is also immune from conscription.
Although they were only a few days into the first semester Obi was enjoying class and relishing his relationship with Abayomi. Agronomy was his favourite subject.
2.
Day four on campus saw everything he had been forewarned about become reality for the first time. After leaving the dorm one morning, Obi spotted a group of students surrounding another youth. Hiding behind the border of the Lagos State signpost he spied what was going on. All of the students crowding around the boy wore black bandanas and carried machetes. One boy started sermonising.
—You are a female sympathiser! They have no visible genitals and yet you continue to pursue them? You are afraid of the place of immanence, the outré, the body without organs.
They poked their weapons into the centre of the circle. One boy stood dominant just out of the way of any danger. He was clearly the leader, the orchestrator of this cruel crescendo. Obi could not take his eyes from this boy. He knew instantly it was Ogu, the engineer student and first in command of the ill-reputed Black Axe cult. Ogu wore a weathered “Scarface” t-shirt and had a long black fringe which overhung his bandana, hiding the left side of his face. He was scourged with acne but was good-looking.
As the mob separated, the target of their carnage came into view. In the middle of the dust bowl quarry beside the university, the bloody remains of Asa’s boyfriend lay motionless. He’d been beaten and hacked to death in broad daylight, then was to be left like road kill for some unsuspecting student to stumble across. Ogu stepped up to the limp, disjointed cadaver and knelt to its level as if he were still among the living. Ogu began to talk like a judge declaring a guilty verdict.
—Wilson Chinualumgu. You have been executed accordingly for rallying against the Black Axe movement. For campaigning against anti-Slave State cultists and for copulation with one village whore, Asa Taiwo. Your final punishment—decapitation, then public piking. The viscera eyes judge you . . . ”
Ogu retrieved a machete from a crony and proceeded to saw off Wilson Chinualumgu’s head.
Obi couldn’t look away. He thought he’d be disgusted, and he was, but something compelled him to keep watching. It was Ogu’s level-headedness which had the boy stuck. Obi found the respect he had for this merciless killer surpassed even that of his admiration for Mr Abayomi.
After chopping at Wilson’s neck for a few minutes, he had finally managed to disengage the skull. Ogu held the head high above his head like some glorious sports trophy. He smiled as the dangling spinal-cord dripped fluid and flapped loosely. Ogu and the rest of the Black Axe rejoiced by kicking the severed head around the road like a grotesque football. They screamed—Ayei Axmen!—triumphantly. Those around who witnessed the murder did nothing. In fact, once the boys were out of sight everyone resumed as normal.
Obi could think of going to only one person—Asa—but didn’t want to be the one who broke the tragic news of her lover’s death. The boy found he had no desires to report the incident or find council in the arms of a sympathetic adult. Obi was far from traumatised. What he felt was more akin to that of an awakening; he wanted to talk to someone about how impressively Ogu conducted himself, about how ruthless and inspiring he’d found the whole experience. Obi held him in the same regard as action movie anti-heroes like Rambo or the Terminator. Even the Al Pacino t-shirt he sported seemed representative of his vigour and guile.
***
The next day the school gate wore the head of Wilson Chinualumgu, his face contorted and frozen with those final few agonised thoughts. Needless to say, Asa had been trying to reach Wilson the night he was murdered by the Black Axe. Now her worst fears were realised as she came into the building early that morning. When she saw his head carved up and served like an obscene entrée’ on Lagos State’s rusted fence pole, she sank to her knees and did not return to her feet until a military policeman threatened her.
Obi left Asa alone for a couple of days after the incident. As much as he longed to console her with the false intention of making her his girlfriend, his father had taught restraint persistently when he was growing up. It wouldn’t be appropriate to make advancements on the recently bereaved. In truth, Obi had begun to resent the notion of compassion and the conduct that came with it. To Obi, it seemed his father taught concepts that deliberately denied all pleasure. The senseless murder of Wilson had little effect on Obi Bamgbala, other than that it stimulated a dark spirit inside of him. It occurred to Obi that what he respected about Ogu and the Black Axe was their complete lack of restraint and compassion. They fought for only one principle ideology, and that was self-fulfilment. Like pirates, they took what they wanted, killed who they wanted, thought what they wanted—to live like Gods, servants of the State’s chaos and yet independent of the State entirely. He saw how Ogu was able to kill and take revenge and go unpunished. Obi wanted to be respected like that.
A fly steered its way onto Obi’s chest. It buzzed, feeling its way around the boy’s knitted shirt before re
sting its wings and becoming stationary. Obi observed the insect for a moment. The jagged mandible of its mouth caught on the wool of his garment and the tiny insect was suddenly trapped. No matter how hard it flapped around, it was stuck. Obi mercifully slammed the broad lane of his palm over its struggling body, crushing the insect to death. The boy saw its last frantic motions. He felt nothing. Even the final backward march of the fly to the gravel beneath, Obi remained unperturbed.
In class all he thought about was Ogu. Even as Abayomi came in to explain the gruesome death of the student union head, a task he took great discomfort in doing, Obi fantasised. This would be the first botany class Obi Bamgbala coasted through. At the end of the lecture Mr. Abayomi kept him behind to inquire as to why he was so uncharacteristically quiet during his lesson.
—Obi, what’s troubling you?
—Nothing—lied the boy.
—Come on, don’t give me that!
—I’m fine.
While Obi didn’t initially enjoy being disrespectful to his cherished tutor, there was a defiance he found pleasure in. Abayomi was an agent of repression, a holocaust profiteer. His coldness was the rejection of comfort and conformity. Obi suddenly found himself wishing to disassociate from the comfort Abayomi gave him.
—Obi, you just don’t seem yourself today.
—No sir, today I believe I have finally discovered who and what I wish to be.
—Men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation.
Abayomi coiled the pointed tip of his beard around his finger, considering the change present in the boy. He delivered one last piece of advice disguised as proverb.
—A chicken that scratches at the dung hill will soon find its mother’s thigh bones.
Obi was unmoved. The teacher became suddenly quiet. Obi knew he had succeeded in alienating the old man. Then, without saying another word to each other, the apprentice left his teacher behind.
***
Outside the university, Obi’s new idol could be seen with a throng of Black Axe mafia lagging behind their leader keenly. Ogu was still wearing his shabby Scarface shirt but possessed the same imposing presence. It seemed the Black Axe had a problem with another detractor of their organisation. This time it was a boy Obi did not know.