BODIES AND SOULS

Corporal Segun Okafor woke up to a blurred out green world filled with mad flurries of lightning and the staccato bursts of thunder. He returned to the waking world from a terrible dream; he was pursued relentlessly through a dark forest by a menagerie of restless spirits hell-bent on tormenting his sin-wreathe soul. Segun spat mud mixed in with plant bits on the forest floor from his mouth, the slow return of sensation and orientation told him he lay prone atop the wet muddy foliage-filled floor of the forest. He and his gang of rogue police officers and soldiers were ordered by the cabal to quell the protests with extreme prejudice; put simply—shoot the protesters on sight, hunt them like animals, show them they were but masses of unthinking flesh fated to serve the oligarchs and petty despots of Nigeria's politico- and socio-economy.

The ruling caste of myopic unenlightened fat-bellied politicians.

Segun regained his breath gradually, blinking away the last vestiges of his unconsciousness from his once-insensate eyes, he realized that the crazed dance of lightening and the dissonant metronomic booms of thunder were actually the harsh glares and the accompanying wet barks of gunfire, the gun-muzzles of two parties warring within the dark forest's confines. One man, clothed in a black-tie-adorned short-sleeved purple shirt, a black trouser and matching shoes fought with fire and steel against a platoon of armed officers. The platoon made up of one squad of mobile policemen dressed in black uniforms filled with patches and trims of green, yellow and red colours—commonly, these officers were known as MOPOL; another squad of the barbarians clad in black padded uniforms with the acronym SWAT stenciled in a large white font on their clothes—formerly this rogue unit was called SARS; and a squad of soldiers dressed in patchy green fatigues.

More than a dozen of the thugs were already dead.

It took little cognition in the dazzled brain of the SWAT corporal Segun to realize that more of the platoon were dying; it was like watching an action movie. The young man who had put him down was weaving through tree-cover to tree-cover, bush to bush, diving and rolling to evade enemy salvoes, and returning fire with pinpoint accuracy, preternatural skill and superhuman reflexes.

The SWAT officer shuddered at the slaughter; bang-bang-bang, a soldier hit the damp ground dead with a spray of blood; ratatat-ratatat, one MOPOL officer empties his SMG's clip in the direction of his enemy, only to felled by a bullet to the breast when trying to reload—the man died without a sound.

Not even a whimper.

Boom-boom-boom, a lone SWAT officer bravely advanced to the purple-shirted young man's last location—some thick chest-high bushes—under the cover of suppressing fire delivered by his fellows. A loud momentary silence descended on the forest as the soldiers ceased shooting to better access the progress of their teammate. Sounds and signs of struggle became apparent in the direction of the bushes, but after the losses they had incurred, none was as brave to aid their fellow goon. A terrible scream sent chills down the spines of the rogue officers; they hear the heavy shuffle of booted feet, and the raspy sounds of wheezing.

Agitated and trigger-happy, the soldiers point their guns towards the trembling bushes; they part to reveal their teammate.

The SWAT officer was dying; his throat was slit and bleeding freely, blood stained the hand he held to his neck to stymie the blood-flow in futility, his uniform stained crimson all over. The officer stumbled to rejoin his mates, his pleading eyes wet with tears and blood, his breath wet with vital fluid that filled his windpipe and lungs, his gait unsteadying as he walked with a drunken swagger…

A shot rang out from behind him; the SWAT man pitched forward, falling on his face to reveal a hole the size of a fist at the back of his head that exposed blood, bone and brain matter. The death-wound bled copiously, colouring the ground beneath red.

The man died with a silent gasp.

The others were so stunned with what happened that they momentarily forgot they were in a battle, until their foe shot down another officer in their untidy formation. The combination of muzzle flare, the gun's bark and the officers dying wail snapped the men out of their stupor. Out of the thirty-five that came for the hunt, almost half were already dead.

Many among the living officers concluded in their minds that their nemesis had come, others determined to live, some couldn't care less.

The shooting and dying resumed, it was a symphony after Death's own black heart. The cries of battle of the living and pain-laden wails of the dying were a tenor and soprano; the percussion and drumming of ballistics were instruments in the hands of a hellish choir; the dark forest a marvelous stage…

And the silent dead, the spirits that inhabited the forest its invisible audience.

It was a masterpiece.

Fear of death, coupled with the deep want to preserve his life urged Segun to continue reprising his role in playing possum. To do otherwise was to invite his untimely demise. He closed his eyes for a few moments, tears silently sliding down his cheeks as he remembered his brush with death.

Judgement had come quickly Segun reasoned, but the verdict—his execution merely only postponed to a later time—by the timely intervention of a teammate. Segun remained prone, the bullet wound to his side much bearable than the dirge of death-shrieks of men he knew that filled the forest's flora confines.

They were flashes of remembrance behind his closed eyes, flashes no different from the ones that heralded the death of an officer.

Segun remembered…

Once the SARS… SWAT officer came into striking distance, Somto leapt from his hiding place like a tiger would, going for the kill as the prey remained ignorant of the hunger and fangs of death that hung above its head. The crunch of foliage betrayed Somto's attack, warning the rogue officer of his impending doom.

The officer had been hearing and seeing things the moment he began to approach the glade where the apparently dead soldier and protester lay. Shadows darting corners, the raucous laughter of playful children, his mother calling out his name; feeling stimuli that resonated with the eerie and diabolical. The SWAT… SARS officer reasoned that his nemesis was upon him; for his conscience, whatever little was left of it, began to replay his wicked deeds in his mind.

It left a bad taste in the fiend's mouth, it seemed he would finally for himself have a taste of the evil-wrought concoctions he dished out. He kept his attention on the supine form of the dead soldier as he approached both corpses, focusing on the nature of their deaths. The lady was clearly shot down, twin holes stained with blood clot were visible on her clothes.

As for the army officer…

The private had his head beaten to a near-pulp; the white of bone, the messy ragged flesh and copious amount of blood were gruesome embellishments on the soldier's bashed-in head.

Blood gleamed like rubies in the interplay of shadow and light in the forest.

The SARS man clearly had not expected to see any casualty on his side; they had the guns and were of a fair number, and for a protester to best a soldier with clearly what was a big stick was a bad portent. 

Corporal Segun was slow to bring his gun to bear as he half-expected to see another member of his kill-team, but Somto noticed the thug was fast enough to get a glancing shot at him. Somto opted for going for the gun than the head in a split second decision. The gun's muzzle, slightly angled to Somto's torso let off a round as the club knocked the rogue officer's aim off.

The gun's bark was loud in the protester's ears, disturbing the peace of the stilling forest and the restless spirits therein. The flare of its muzzle, like the fiery roar of a wyvern, was almost blinding. The flash leaving afterimages in Somto's eyes.

Ratatat-ratatat… bang-bang… blam-blam-blam… more bad men died. The young man seemed impervious to the bullets that hit him—they pinged off his body like he wore rubber armour, his strength and reflexes apparently superhuman.

The men fought a demon; even the ones that were cooked, that had some charm, talisman, gris-gris… some juju on them died like fowls. Human-fleshed dummies for target practice. And Segun lay playing dead, lost to a reverie of nightmares. Unknown to the corporal, during his bout with the protester…

The bullet whistled into the greenery in its trajectory, shredding the crimson flowery leaves of strangely arranged bushes which marked the grave of one of the restless deceased. The apparition railed at such insult to its resting place, its translucent body, invisible to the living struggling before it, lunged at the rogue.

Somto's second swing with his club failed, and in a fit of retaliation by the rogue officer, both men started fighting over the gun; one wanting to kill, the other intending to incapacitate. Somto, his makeshift club forgotten on the forest muddy floor, wrestled for the gun with the SARS man, the previously policed gun strapped to his back sounding in step with every shove and punch.

The angered spirit flew into the corporeal form of the fiend. While the spirit couldn't really attack the officer, its passage through his body disoriented him greatly. It momentarily robbed the officer of his senses, the man dizzy and wavy as the apparition phased through his sin-laden body.

Unknown to the SWAT officer, and Somto, the officer's ward of protection—juju employed to protect the rogue police officer in firefights—was disabled once the spirit attacked.

The apparition's fury gave Somto enough time to win possession of the weapon, enough time to point the business end of the gun towards the SARS man, but not enough time to put a good distance between himself and the clearly dazed officer.

In an effort to resume his scuffle with the protester following the unexplainable lightheadedness, and also forgetting the gun's safety was off, the SARS officer startled Somto with a frenzied lunge and a vicious howl, causing the young man to reflexively pull the trigger.

A single loud bang sounded, an echo of death's heavy metal lullaby; a blinding flash like the metal gleam of the Grim Reaper's scythe in the sunlight, harvesting the hay-souls of foolish men; the abrupt soprano shriek of a dying man—a single hole blown open in his torso, ragged where it bit through the policeman's black uniform, cloth smoking and flesh underneath bleeding from the bullet's impact; tiny speckles of blood on the surprised features of a murderer, his murder weapon smoking, an evidence of his sin like Cain's mark; the deafening silence after death's whistle, the lush greenery swaying in the melancholic breeze…

Someone tripped over Segun's prone body, the movement causing him to wince in sympathy to his injury. Whoever tripped didn't get back up again, the person's body remaining still where and how it fell, sprawled against the corporal's legs.

Segun felt something wet; the coppery stink confirmed his suspicions. It was blood, another rogue officer had been put down. Lightening, thunder and the impacts of brimstone suffused the world around; the cloying stink of cordite, blood and death of man and plant as both were shredded by hails of bullets was a horrid stench in the air.

Segun continued to play dead, but the actual dead enjoyed the show. Unknown to the belligerents fighting atop their graves, the blood of the evil pleased these weary souls; the restless dead enjoyed the exhibition of the thunderous art of fiery death…

It was art so classic and gothic it could only have been painted by the combined genius of a Renaissance painter and musician. A curio made if Vincent von Gohr and Beethoven sat in the same room for too long. One playing the deathly symphony, the other a choir master whose colour-stained hand danced insanely on a blood-red canvas with demented brush strokes.

A thing of beauty indeed; the spirits loved this new fragrance. The smell of karma, of nemesis, of retribution… of justice.

Something landed beside Segun with a sick thud; he opened his eyes carefully, seeking to avoid Death's all-seeing eye. Yet, his gaze met directly the vacant eyes of a dead soldier. The military man lay parallel to Segun, his head besides the Corporal's while the rest of his body faced the opposite direction. The soldier's face was frozen in pained shock; Segun witnessed the light of life fade from the man's blood-streaked eyes. The soldier weakly coughing up blood with his last breath.

Segun closed his tear-filled eyes, turning his face the other way; the act proved futile as it could not make his memory forget the sight.