Mama asks me to pray again.

My knees are hurting from kneeling on this floor. I think she wants me to know how hard the punishment for my sin will be. Today's prayer session has been going on for four hours now. I've run out of what to pray for.

Should I pray that hailstones should somehow fall on the house and her part of the room caves in killing her while she's interceding for my soul? Should I pray that the old dusty ceiling fan falls and smites her on the head? I know... I will also add that a tanker crushes her on her way to Oil Mill market and grinds her bones to pulp the way she has done to me. So, when they call me to identify her body, I will turn my face away and deny that it is not my mother.

Mama calls me a harlot. She tells me to repeat after her till my jaw aches and the words melt into my mouth like sour butter. She tells me that I'm cursed because I have my father's blood running through my veins and praying everyday will remove his blood and replace it with the blood of Jesus.

I sigh. Rolling my eyes, I tell her calmly "With the way I've been praying he will need blood transfusion",

The fire in Mama's eyes blazes hotter and licks a burning trail up my skin. She slaps me twice on both cheeks. I hear ringing in my ears now. Maybe God has sent his angels to bear me up to heaven. As my eyes refocus I feel disappointment seeing only my mother haunching over my immobile body. Angels are white...not black and wrinkled like the coal tar skin on my mother's face. She is sprinkling her holy water on me now. I imagine the water being the washing hand water of the Apostle, as he eats fat portions of the tithe my mother pays. Pays in exchange for his prophecies.

•

Apostle tells her on the dry fast mountain that her daughter is a demonic harlot sucking her finances to the spirit world. Years later, all she does is pay fat bundles of monies for his reassuring prophecies of deliverance. I hope God delivers her. I really hope God delivers her.

•

She is in her room singing church songs and dusting her beloved glass figurines. Mostly bible characters adorn the oak shelf. They all have forlorn looks on their faces as if to stop mama from wearing them out with all her dusting. I remember when she asks me to clean her room and one falls, shattering to a million pieces all the way to Calvary. I stand there frozen and she comes in running from the kitchen with a wild crazed look. Mama hits me with her iron fists and makes me to kneel on the broken glass shards. My blood flows freely from my knees. "Ngwa, osiso recite Psalm 23 because the demon inside you has risen up to frustrate me Abi? Tell them you didn't see me!" She screams at me spraying spit in my face.

•••••••

Lying down in my room idle, thoughts of red run around in my mind. I have nothing to regret. The black cloud I have been trying so hard to suppress is taking form now. Filling out my insides. I think I'm indeed possessed. Mama has made me possessed. I stand up and make my way across the house to Mama's room. The door is slightly ajar. The angels are with me. I don't know when I walk into the room, walk over to her oak display and carry the huge pointy crucifix. It feels heavily cold in my fingers. I think that her heart is cold so it'll settle in there nicely. She is kneeling by the bed in a crouching pose. The itch rises again and I let it take over my hands. I feel like an executioner hovering over her. She hasn't noticed me. I want her to see me. What she has made.

I raise my hands high above my head and drive the crucifix into her back; into her heart.

She screeches like a wounded animal- sounding like a demon from the bottomless pit. She'll be going there soon, might as well start sounding like them. I dislodge the cross from her back and she is struggling to turn over now. I impale her again and again. Till her back is covered with the blood of Jesus. I touch her face lovingly and trail my fingers down to her back. I wash my hand in the red. Lifting my fingers to my face, I inhale deeply. It has the sharp metallic smell of the rusty tap at the house in Onitsha. Inspecting my fingers, I have the urge to taste it. I put them in my mouth but, it doesn't taste like communion. I turn to look at Mama. She is gasping for breath and coughing up blood. I wipe the bloody crucifix on my jeans.

Leaning down next to her I speak, "Nne, recite Psalm 23". She is looking at me now. Her eyes are full of the fire. I see my self in their reflection laughing and dancing in their fading flames. She doesn't say anything. I give her a backhanded slap. And shriek at her to start saying Psalm 23. She weakly drones out the verse. Midway into it I join her. "...walk through the valley of the shadow of death...".

•••••••

Mama is crying now sprawled across the bed. I move her up so she can rest in peace. I start to cry. Cry until something swells inside me and bursts. I laugh. Short hacking sounds, it soon becomes full laughter that shakes your body like convulsion. My belly hurts like someone is tying it with cloth and the back of my head they're pounding it with pestle.

•••••••

Mama stops talking Psalm 23. I think her voice has died first and gone to hell (to scream at the demons to repent).

I stand up and go to the backyard and begin to gather a pile of dried leaves and firewood. She will have the best funeral pyre befitting a sinner. Mama said we are all sinners but my sin is the greatest. So now I will cleanse the sinners from small sin to big sin. In the end too I will burn and dance in the flames of hell.

By: Homa Ejims ©

14/10/23 AD