the ritual

[Published in the Weekend Nation]

Denja sat slumped on a tattered creaky chair. A once lively but now rusty and ready to fall into disuse rundown radio, panted beside him. He shifted his gaze from the puffing radio to a cracked-faded building to his right, musty in the sun. It housed termites ravaged and rotten dusty shelves, remains of what used to be the most vibrant shop in Nachilenda Township. It was now a haunted sorry sight, a repelling place of cockroaches and rats odors.

“I can’t continue like this,” he swore agonizingly as thoughts about his past hurled on his mind. He, the only child in their family, inherited a vibrant shop when his parents died in a road accident. However, the moment he got the riches he was not himself. Denja became wasteful.

“Barman, two more crates please. And you mang’ina-seller, bring that whole basin,” that would be him lavishly spending for a horde of people and prostitutes in his daily visits to beer-halls. You see Denja ate, drunk and slept around irresponsibly.

However, dearth closed in on him, stripping him of everything. Within few years, all his riches collapsed to wretchedness. He was now poor, striving to eke out even a subsistence living. Moreover, people mocked him for being too thoughtless. And the scorn was the thing that pained him most.

He licked his parched lips, gone dry because of hunger. He yawned pathetically, his eyes feeling dizzily and started to mist up. He stretched his once meaty arms to expose protruding ribs his ragged shirt refused to hide any longer.

“I can’t continue like this,” he swore again, “I’ll be back on my feet, whatever it takes.” His resolute centered on visiting some famed witchdoctor although his best friend he had confided in had raised reservations.

“These witchdoctors are all fake,” the friend had warned, “They always tell you rituals they’re sure you’re bound to fail. The rituals are highways to serious problems.”

However, for Denja, the penniless mockery he now was, there was no turning back. Two days later, he sat fretting in the hut of the witchdoctor, so determined to remove the paucity and mock on him. The hut was sultry, reeking with odors of roots and leaves.

Even the owner was not palatable for the eye. Denja observed. He was shabby and emitted a revolting stench, a rancid odor of stale sweat. Mounds of dirt grimed on the creases of his tattered clothes. A dirt necklace seemed to strangulate his elongated neck, seemingly protesting the heavy mass of his baldy big head, which possessed big jug-handle shaped ears. Even his eyes, enslaved in protruding sockets pronounced by black bushy eyebrows hooded like some fierce bird of prey, were elusive and humorless; eyes that emitted a haunting gaze.

“Well, let me warn you,” the witchdoctor brought Denja back to the present in a throaty and crispy hollowed voice. “If you miss even just one thing my spirits here say you’ll go mad.” He harshly looked at Denja for confirmation. Denja only managed a nod. The witchdoctor proceeded with everything.

Denja dejectedly setting out for another hunt was almost out of time. The five-day-period accorded to him for the ritual was almost over. Only a few hours remained. He reached and felt the sharp knife and plastic bottle hidden under his threadbare jacket, his inseparable companions the past four days; the days he had failed to find a naked singing madman for the ritual in all the places he had thoroughly combed. When the witchdoctor had told him to collect the required items from a naked singing madman, he had chuckled in victory, seeing his glorious past restored and the mockery, history.

“I thought he’d tell me something so difficult, as my friend told me,” relieved, he had thought then. However, he miserably started to believe the friend, for the closest he had come all the past four days were singing lunatics, but not naked.

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Thomu, an auditor for some big company, called for another beer he swore for the hundredth time was his last. Nevertheless, he yawned for more that day. He was even so drunk to even notice he was the only customer remaining. He grudgingly left for the taxi rank at 23:45 when he was told it was time to close. However, the eerie emptiness at the rank sobered him up. Troubling thoughts of cold-blooded robbers terrorizing places at night vividly came into his mind. He knew the bandits were somewhere waiting to pounce on their victims. He did not want to be the one. “But how do I get home unscathed?” he thought desperately. Nevertheless, a smile hovered on his lips as he looked for a dirty plastic bag and some dust, as a plan crossed his mind.   

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Denja, strolling home from another failed hunt, leaking wounds of defeat, could not believe his lucky when he saw the naked singing madman, a baggage on his head, coming in front of him. He pounced on him and within minutes, he had collected the needed items and cautiously left.

The following morning Nachilenda Township woke up to two shocking news; a mutilated body of a man, they came to know as Thomu, was found naked and murdered, and Denja had gone mad, walking naked and singing.