17/01/2024
HELL ON EARTH 1
He coughed and struggled with his breath so loud that his ten years old son could hear him from his room opposite his even while the door was shut.
Mark speedily climbed down his wooden bed as he heard his father's voice.
It was unusual incident but the nurse his father visited yesterday had mentioned his ailment to be something related to kidney disease or heart failure.
She was not sure of his predicament so she urged him to go to a hospital for a test so he'd get a proper treatment instead of living on self medication.
To Mark's father, Obidike, that was a huge step to take cause he could barely feed himself and his only son in his small wooden house built in the middle of farm lands very far away from human homes.
This was the only place his father own property he could lay claim and build life.
The villagers deserted him and his son. They painted him a wizard before everyone and children yet unborn.
To them it was no ordinary guts to live in such environments for years without wild animals that roam the bush at night tearing him and his son to death.
This conception they had about him sealed every connection and transaction with his people.
Obidike had to travel miles away from his home town to the neighbouring villages just to earn a living.
At the end of everyday activities, some people would pay him with few tubers of yam, cocoyam, corn or two plates of food for him and Mark.
Only few kindly paid in currency and it could only afford them a cup of garri or palm oil which served as stew or sauce for breakfast with their yam.
Mark ran into his father's room with a small calabash of water in his hands.
He knelt before him on the floor and pleaded with him to drink a little water but Obidike was far gone to the spirit world.
"Say something to me father. Drink a little. You'll be fine." Mark gently touched his head. It felt cold and calm unlike other times when he touched his father's head, it's usually hot or seem like he had