Buchi Judas was a hardened criminal. He had literally spent more time in prison than out of it––and he was Cain Martins’ father. At the age of eighteen, Buchi was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for robbery, and a years after he was released from jail, he was sent to another five years for fraud. He came out again at the age of thirty-eight and was sent back at forty for manslaughter––this time, it was a life imprisonment sentence. Spending only two years in the federal prison, Buchi managed to break out with the determination of seeking revenge from the woman who had sent him in there––Pamela.

Pamela was a prostitute and an addict. She suffered amnesia due to the drugs she took. So, she could not remember her own last name. In fact, nobody had called her with her surname since her escape from the orphanage to live a life of her own. Pamela met Buchi not long after her escape from the orphanage at fourteen, Buchi gave her shelter and impregnated her just after about a year of their living together. At sixteen, Pamela gave birth to a baby boy whom Buchi simply named Don Judas; but before little Don could be two years old, his father was sent to jail for manslaughter.
Buchi had come home one night to find another man in bed with Pamela. He had gotten so mad that he picked up an empty bottle of Harp Lager lying in a corner of the small room, he broke the bottle and viciously struck the jagged edge of the bottle in the strange man’s chest where the heart was housed. The naked man died instantly, with his manhood half-limp. Seeing what her enraged husband had done, Pamela carried Don and ran out of the room to the nearest police station where she reported how Buchi had stabbed another man. In less than thirty minutes, Buchi was arrested, and a month later he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
After Buchi’s sentence, Pamela devoted herself fully into the immoral business of prostitution, which was the only thing she knew could do to fetch herself some money. Pamela loved her child deeply and wanted a normal life for him; so, she started by giving her child the first name that came to her head: Cain Martins––the ‘Martins’ was the last name of her lover who was killed by Buchi; Lucky Martins, he was not that lucky after all. She started working in a house of ill repute and used the money she earned to send little Cain to school.
The night before Cain Martins’ fourth birthday, his mother was attacked by a stranger. That scene had unleashed the monster caged in the mind of the innocent little Cain.

Pamela was scared, the nightmare had returned––the man who had killed the only man she had ever loved was back. The rage she saw on Buchi brought goose pimples on her flesh, it was that rage he had seen in his eyes when he had caught Lucky with her. He had come to revenge for reporting him to the police––he had come to kill her. Pamela thought about her son––if Buchi killed her he would take Cain and raise him a criminal like himself. She couldn’t allow that––no!
Pamela stepped back from Buchi and grabbed a kitchen knife she had been using to peel the oranges she wanted to suckle. She was not sure if she would be able to use the knife if Buchi attacked her, because she knew that few people have the stomach to use a knife against another human being. Pamela wasn’t certain if she had that kind of stomach. Fearfully, she waved the knife defensively at Buchi, drew small rapid circles in the air with the point of the blade, as if it were a talisman and she were chasing off evil spirit that stood before her. Of course, to her, Buchi was something more than an evil spirit. Buchi looked at her dramatic performance; he smiled and picked an orange from the tray on the table. He sat down beside his son and sucked as he ran his hand through the little boy’s hair, occasionally telling Pamela how he was going to kill her slowly. Buchi stood up suddenly, grabbed Pamela’s hand holding the knife and turned it in an anticlockwise direction. Pamela screamed with pain as the knife fell off her hand. He had acted too fast for Pamela to react. At the same time, Buchi kicked her legs from under her and she landed on her back with a heavy thud. With Pamela lying on the floor and screaming with agony, Buchi climbed over her and held both his strong hands on her throat, squeezing in a vicious manner. He used the both hands which he had slipped around her throat and choked her with all the force of which he was capable. Pamela was helpless; she could feel her life departing from her as breathing was impossible, coupled with the excruciating pain in the inner part of her neck. The extreme pressure on her windpipe and diminishment of the blood supply to her brain through the carotid arteries rendered her almost incapable of resistance. She wanted to scream but could not; her eyes began rolling from left to right. Then her left eye caught the knife which had fell off her hand, the knife was lying not far from her. She stretched her left hand towards the knife until she caught it. Immediately, without thinking twice, she struck with the little strength left in her left arm. She let go when she felt the knife struck one part of her assailant’s body. For a second, she felt nothing until Buchi relaxed his hold on her throat and fell over, clutching at his neck. Slowly, Pamela stood up coughing vigorously, feeling her neck to check if her larynx had not been damaged. When she looked down, Buchi was jerking sequentially; she had stabbed him in the neck with the knife. There was blood gushing like a macabre fountain from where the knife had penetrated the neck that the head was leaned grotesquely to one side, and the knife was deep to its hilt. The room instantly became an abattoir; wall splattered with gobbets of dripping blood and the dirty rug was soaked with the slimy red liquid. She retched at the horrible sight; it takes special courage or madness to slash at another person and not be repelled and disgusted by how the knife slice through the soft flesh, and how the precious store of blood is let loose by the deadly weapon. Until that horrible moment, Pamela had never killed anything bigger than the cockroaches lurking around her cupboard.
Little Cain watched as the two older people fought like animals. He saw his mother being rendered helpless by the stranger but he could not do anything about it but watch. He watched in horror as his mother stabbed the stranger in the neck with a knife. The blood which sprayed out of the wound splashed across Cain’s face and he used the back of his hand to wipe the blood off so as to get a clearer look at the man who jerked and jerked till he jerked no more.
Unknowingly to him, Cain had just watched his own mother kill his father.
But nobody knew.

impresive..
pls continue the story i will be waiting..

Wonderful short story,focused on the main act,a story which makes u get the rush.

Akin Ayan believed in the existence of evil spirits, he trusted his life was being ruled by the likes of witches and wizards. He had had spiritually incised marks on different parts of his body; he had incisions round his wrist, his ankles, around the neck, his belly, round his waist, his back, chest and some other parts. He had always believed that all these spiritual marks engraved on his body were what had been keeping him alive; they’d served as anti-witches and wizards attacks. The attacks that had surely killed his parents.
When Akin was only eleven years old his parents had been struck down and killed by lightning on their return from the farm, Akin had after then been living with his only living relation––an Ifa priest. The older man had consulted the oracle on Akin’s behalf and he had later revealed to the boy that his parents had been killed by a group of witches who had sent Sango, the god of thunder, to strike them dead. A member of the witch family had demanded ten tubers of yam from Akin’s father and the man had refused to give her, they had successfully killed Akin’s parents and they were out to get Akin himself. The priest had tried all his best to protect the boy; he covered Akin in a big black pot by the side of a river for seven hours, then he had asked him to eat a concoction which he had prepared for him. While Akin was busy eating the medicine, the priest was busy making incisions on the body of the poor boy. And by the time Akin finished eating the priest had made a total of seven hundred and seventy-seven marks on his vulnerable body on which he rubbed another black powdery substance. He concluded this rite with incantations to a candle-encircled pentagram drawn with a black cock’s blood on the ground, before he buried in that ground a portion of plantain-tree-stem wrapped in black clothing material. This corpseless burial stood as a symbol of a ritual for Akin’s soul supposedly to be claimed by the witches.
When Akin Ayan became old enough to get married, the priest had seriously warned him that his first seven lovemakings must take place by the bank of a river or stream if he wanted his wife to be immune to the witches’ attacks. Akin did as he was warned and the seed planted in his wife’s belly germinated at the seventh act. She gave birth to a baby girl whom they named Omide––the returned stream. The priest then instructed that they must always take the child every year to the bank of a river and make her sit for seven hours until she was exactly seven years old.
The five years old Omide was sitting with her parents watching the silent flow of the river when they heard a child crying solemnly somewhere by the bush nearby. Akin stood up and went to the direction the sound was coming, he had broken the vow; he shouldn’t have stood up until after seven hours, he found a little girl of three sitting alone and crying. Akin noticed that the girl was dressed in expensive clothes, he asked the girl her name but she couldn’t say anything––she just continued crying. Not knowing what to do with the strange girl, Akin carried her to the priest who consulted the oracle and was utterly astonished himself. When the priest told Akin and his wife what the oracle revealed to him they thought a screw had gone loose in the old priest’s head; the little girl they had found by the side of the river was their real child sent to them by the oracle itself and Omide was the adopted which would soon be claimed by the oracle. Akin and his wife could no longer fathom what the old priest was saying. Omide was their child; she was the result of what they had done at the bank of the river, how come a mere stranger was their real child?
The priest could not find any reasonable explanation for what he’d said, but he continued telling them that the oracle’s revelation was the truth. He also told them that any other child born by them would also be claimed by the oracle––the strange child was their real child.
Hearing the absurd story told by the priest, Akin Ayan concluded in his mind that the old herbalist had really gone crazy. The next morning Akin found the priest dead in his sleep. A week after the priest’s funeral, Akin Ayan packed his things and moved out of Ibadan with his wife, Omide and the three years old girl whom they named Arewa––the beautiful one. They moved to the water-side area in the heart of Lagos. And within two years after their migration from the largest city in Africa, Akin’s wife gave birth to a baby boy. They named the boy Oba–king.
Tragedy struck on April 15, 1972 when Oba was seven years old, Arewa was twelve and Omide was already fourteen. The three children were out having fun by the river when the eldest among them, Omide, suggested they go on a sail. Arewa blatantly refused, reminding them that their parents had warned them not to get too close to the water because it was dangerous. But Omide was not listening to what her sister was telling her, she pushed a nearby canoe in the water and jumped inside it. Oba followed Omide and they began rowing. Arewa stayed by the river begging her siblings to come back, but the two were only laughing at her until the canoe suddenly shook and capsized, drowning Omide and Oba.
Akin was too shocked to believe what had just happened to him. Losing two children suddenly was something like a fatal blow to him. The sadness he felt was one he would have to live with for the rest of his life. In his sadness he recalled what the late priest had said, that Omide and Oba would be claimed by the oracle. His children were not his children, they’d been claimed by the mermaid. Afraid that Arewa may also be killed, Akin Ayan decided to seek protection from the church. Akin Ayan and his wife who believed in witchcraft became Christians.

The Ayans became devout Catholics, and Arewa was brought up in the Christian way. She was taught good morals and was made to believe that there is only one Supreme God––the creator of heaven and earth. The only living heir to the Bensons’ wealth was the only child of the Ayans. The three years old Martha grew up without the faintest idea of whom her real parents were.
She was rechristened Rosemary by the Catholic priest and she married Raymond Philip.
But nobody knew…

I never knew too..
Thumps up

I am here.

http://writertainpublishers.com/?p=2301

Guys, click on the link to vote for LarrySun as the best writer in this year's Nairaland writer's award..
Let's show him love and support,we can do this..

#TeamLarrysun