FORGIVE ME PAST: The D-day

I spent the rest of that Friday, before the D-day, organising the interior of our tin-roof—that it could be difficult for one to believe that it was a manufacturing industry for thieves and murderers—and visiting Gerald to see how he was fairing. Talking about Gerald, nurse Peace had really taken good care of him for the past two days, that he could now speak out, and looked far better. Leila was also always at his side, doing all the duties of a wife.

When the sun deserted the sky, and the moon took over the stand, I made up my mind to strike the next morning. I wasn’t following up Kisule’s routine for no reason—like I said, he wasn’t in the ‘better future’ of Gerald and I. Basing on what he did to Gerald, Kisule had proved to be a big threat to our well-being. Thank God he hadn’t attacked again. Nonetheless, I had to do what I had to do, and that was deleting him completely from our lives.

Kisule’s home was located on the outskirts of Bwaise, where the hope of development had began to sprout. The house stood on almost half an acre, and that proves the fact that he was above the poverty line. Owning a bungalow in one of the suburbs of the city, regardless of the location, isn’t something every Tom, Dick and Harry can achieve. Despite the fact that Bwaise is mainly a slum, quite a number of middle class citizens have homesteads there, and Kisule was one of them. No wonder he even owned a car!

Saturday morning came a bit late, for I had spent almost the whole night planning and preparing for my one-man mission. It was as if some supernatural powers were preventing me from doing what I had to do by freezing the clock, but time is a river—it always finds a way to continue with its flow. Kisule’s day always began at around five-thirty o’clock, and by five-twelve, I was already in the walls of his overgrown shrub fence, with only one tool in my pocket—a sisal rope.

The spot I was in gave me a clear view of the whole front compound, the face of the house where the mouth—the main door—was. A narrow path connected it to a rubbish pit which was near the toilets and bathroom, and between those two points, I was, molded in the congested branches, almost invisible. An avocado tree stood a few meters from the pit, and there’s where my plan was to be given the breath of life! I knew I had to wait a little longer, but that was not an issue because I had all the time in the world.

All the different kinds of early birds were already in their respective orchestras, creating beautiful melodies, ushering in the young day. It was still pitch black though, that if it had not been for the security lights on Kisule’s bungalow, it would have been impossible for me to see what was going on in his beloved homestead. A ghostly wind froze my ears, as though trying to communicate in the tongues of the afterlife, through whispers, reciting unworded verses of praise, to me, the self-imposed grim reaper.

And yes, such praises were timed right because a few minutes later, Mr Kisule opened the door and outside, towards his death, he came, a blue towel wrapped around the lower part of his aging body—his swollen belly holding it steadily in position—and a red basin in hand. My heart pounded louder in my chest, but my decisions were now past the emotions of the heart—they were manufactured in my murder-infected brain.

My ‘prey’ cleared his basin of the soap dish, sponge and tiny lamp, and put it before a jerrycan of water before standing akimbo. Seeing him pouring water from the jerrycan into his basin at last, after spending a few seconds perhaps debating on whether to take the cold bath or not, I knew it was almost time to strike. He staggered with the full basin of water, with the lit lamp, and into the bathroom, he disappeared.

Tip-toing into the illuminated bathroom, I was swept off my feet by the man’s absence! I hadn’t learnt that he had first visited the loo, and that meant a possibility that he was stalking me instead, as I tip-toed to the bathroom, from inside the dark latrine. Since tip-toing is always a clear indication of evil intentions, I imagined his reaction on seeing a shadow of a person he hadn’t known yet, entering the bathroom in such a manner. I gulped the litre of saliva in my mouth, as beads of sweat began to form in all corners of my body.

Pushing the wooden door open at once, Kisule tried to catch me by surprise, in a wrestling contest, but he was no match for me—I was the younger blood, and I had learnt from the best of teachers. Taking the battle to the bathroom, I was able to overpower him, and just like Gerald, I wrapped my right arm around his wrinkled neck, and Mr Kisule began kicking for his life, unable to utilize the privilege he failed to take advantage of earlier on, that is, shouting for help.

He really did put up a fight for his breath but I knew what I was doing. Just like slaughtering a chicken, I nailed him to the ground, with all the energy I could use, to minimise even the slightest of movements. Like a cat, Mr Kisule must have had nine lives: it took me over five minutes to ensure the total cessation of resistance from him. Nevertheless, he succumbed to the magic in the strangulation at last.

After ensuring his death, I dragged his warm corpse to the avocado tree on which I tied the rope I’d come with, wrapped one end round his neck, and suspended it as though he had committed suicide. As other people were thanking God for the gift of life and a new day, Mr Kisule was journeying through the tunnels of death, courtesy of me, his ticket giver!

I had anticipated that life without Kisule would be a better one, and I would have had it right if it hadn’t been for the tornados of guilt swirling inside my heart, and the unlikely aftermath karma had prepared for me. My hands were stained with innocent blood; I had become a devil, bound to facing the consequences. At that moment, they were out of sight, but I got to know how enormous they were to be hours later.

The only person I had to break the news to was Gerald. He didn’t say anything when I broke it to him, rather, replied with what looked like a smile, clearly hailing me for what I’d done for him. There was no obstacle, whatsoever, before us, or, as far as we could see by then. We had a new life to live, without brutes and debtors. “Tomorrow you’ll be ready to leave this place,” I assured before leaving for our abode—everyone needs a moment alone, to put his thoughts in order, after committing his first direct murder—after a brief talk with nurse Peace.

At a distance, as I walked to our abode, my curiosity was aroused on the cause of the converging of a multitude at Bwaise swamp, at the exact point where we—or I—had dumped the bodies. I dashed to the spot to see what was going on. People were murmuring, and in some of the conversations I was able to eavesdrop before knowing what exactly was going on, were sentences like ‘I don’t know why the police hasn’t come yet’ and ‘why would someone, in their right mind, do such a thing to fellow human beings?’.

On weaving my way through the congested ‘news hunters’, it dawned on me seeing all the three corpses at the swamp bank! I panicked for a moment, palpitations exagerated, as my stomach began to rumble. The symptoms became even worse when I heard police-car alarms join the party! On looking towards the direction they were coming from, I knew that wasn’t the place to be when I saw a huge lion of a dog in a cage at the back of one of the police Pickups.