Eka’s story [completed] Season 1

Season 5 years ago

Eka’s story [completed] Season 1

“Out! Get out of my house! You have eaten all your siblings, your broth ers and sisters are dead and you know why they are dead! You killed them, witch!”

shouted Mr. Effiong. “No papa; I ate no one. Please don’t send me away, I have nowhere to go.” Ekaette
pleaded tearfully. Mr. Effiong raised his machete and swung it at his daughter. She ducked but not quickly enough.

The tip of the machete grazed the skin of her
neck and she yelled in pain, “He has killed me oh! I am dead! I am dead o!” “No! You are not dead Ekaette!

The reason you are still alive is simply that I don’t want to stain my hands with blood. But if you don’t step away from this house this very minute, I am going to spill your blood!” “Daddy please, have mercy on me, I
am not a witch. I did not eat my brothers and sisters.”

“I said get out of my house!” Mr. Effiong raised his machete again and began to slap his fourteen year old daughter around with the side of the machete. Eka, as she was fondly called, rolled on the floor yelling in heart-wrenching pain as her fair, supple, soft skin reddened and tore open.

From the bedroom Ufoma, her mother ran out, dragging behind her a Ghana-must-go bag.

She dragged the bag
through the living room and out of the house and
dumped it on the street. She then ran into the house and joined her husband in the callous attack against their teenage daughter.

Ufoma kicked Eka, punched her,
dug her nails into her skin and then buried her teeth into her back.

Ekaette’s cry could have melted the
hardest of hearts; but sadly not a soul on the street came out to help the girl.

On the street people were
heard saying, “Eheh! Finally, Effiong and his wife have decided to drive away the little pretty witch who ate all the children in our street.” Eka bled from all over her body.

At some point she gave up hope that she would
survive the ordeal.

When her mother saw that she could no longer utter a cry, or raise her hand to defend
herself from punches and waves of machete-slaps she and her husband unleashed on their daughter, Ufoma asked her husband to stop beating Eka. She then knelt
close to her and tore with her bare hands every piece of wear on Ekaette’s body.
When she was done, she
dragged her by the hand into the street and left her on the ground.

While Eka lay on the street, a swarm of flies settled on her naked body to lick her wounds. She was too weak to stir a limb, so she let them have their fill of her bloody wounds.

Passers-by mistook her for dead and wondered
how a young pretty girl like her came to meet death in the gruesome fashion they saw her. Sadly for Eka, it began to rain. With the rain, her skin began to burn intensely, but the swarm of flies fluttered away for cover from the rain.

Eka tried to get off the ground
but could not, so she lay back on the ground and hopped that death would pity her and snuff the life out of her.

The rain which began as light showers turned to a
heavy downpour; still Eka lay on the ground. There she wailed and cried, but her voice was too faint for any to hear.

She had cried herself hoarse. Then a momentary
help came; Simbi her only friend and the only person who believed she was not a witch ran into the rain with her six year old brother and lifted Eka to a shed by the street side and put her on a table.

There they cleaned her many wounds with a piece of cloth they took from the Ghana-must-go bag which contained her belongings.

Simbi and her brother worked hard and fast to help Ekaette.

They were afraid of being seen by their
parents; if that was to happen all hell would break loose, and more so if Iya Jegede was to see Ekaette on her table.

She would raise hell over that and claim that
her shed and the table where she sold her wares had been defiled by bringing a witch to sit on her table.

When Simbi and her brother were done, they helped Eka into another clothe taken from her Ghana-must-go bag.

Simbi sq££zed two hundred Naira into Eka’s hand and said with tears in her eyes, “Eka, this is all I have.

I saved it from selling tomatoes for my mother. Use it and get away from here. Those two people who did this to you, they are not your parents.

I believe they adopted you and now they want you out of their house by all means.

Go far away from here and don’t ever
come back. Here is my father’s phone number, you can call me whenever you need to talk to someone; just don’t tell my father you are Ekaette. Okay?” Eka said nothing; she simply stared emptily right through Simbi
and her brother as tears flowed from her eyes. Simbi wanted to hug her for the last time, but could not because of her many wounds. She did not know if they would see again. She had to sq££ze her hand and even
that made Eka wince in pain.

Simbi and her brother ran back into the rain to get
home before their parents would notice they were gone.

The rain did not let up till nightfall. While Simbi went about her home chores she wondered how her friend was doing.

She was not sure she had eaten anything all day,
and she knew no one on their street would offer her anything to eat. When Simbi could not bear the pain of the horror Ekaette her friend was going through, she scooped some food into a disposable plate and ran into
the rainy night to give it to her.

When she got to Iya
Jegede’s shed, Ekaette was gone.

Simbi felt pains stabbing at her heart. She cried silently and ran around their street to see if she could spot her. After about thirty minutes of searching for her she went
home heartbroken.

That rainy night, Ekaette had no clue about where to go.

She just wanted to get away from her street and
her parents who branded her a witch.

Through the rainy night and with hunger gnawing away at her intestines,
she trekked until her legs could carry her no longer.

When she spotted an uncompleted building, she made for it to spend the night there.

She did not want to spend
the two hundred Naira Simbi gave her; it was her
security against any eventuality. She dropped her bag on the rugged floor of the uncompleted building, la!d her head on it and began to muse over her sad life. In-
between her musings she sobbed. She knew she would not be able to sleep that night.

The thoughts on her mind
and the burning pains on her body would not let her sleep.

As the thoughts of her sad life ran through her
mind and she consoled herself with hot tears, she began to hear a hissing sound like that of a snake.

She stared into the dark to see if she could make out anything.

While she peered into the dark, her mind began to play tricks on her. Something seemed to be coming for her slithering on the floor like a huge snake. Fear seized her heart and she began to pant like an asthmatic patient.

Without giving much thought to it, she sprang
to her feet, grabbed her bag and fled from the
uncompleted building.

Ekaette could only be aptly described as a head-
turning, drop-dead beautiful lass. It was hard to run into her without pausing to have a second look at her.

Though she was just fourteen, somehow her beauty worked surreal magic on men which often left them stuttering on their words and acted stupidly in her presence.

Her hair was the strangest thing about her,
besides her near unbelievable beauty.

A wisp of her hair felt strange to touch and stretched way down to her waist line.

Because her parents were poor, she could not
afford to go to a beauty salon to take care of her
hair.

So every once in a while she would wash her hair with hot water and apply petroleum jelly to it. In spite of that, her hair still looked great. Owing to her parent’s poor state, she could not go to school.

To help ends meet at home, she had to sell fruits on her street.

In spite of her beauty, there was no trace of arrogance about her. Not a few people admired her for her industriousness. Being the first child and having no grown up brother to help her with some manly home chores, she did every work in the home.

She would push all by herself a barrow containing six twenty-five liter gallons of water to supply water to their house.

And when she was done, she would go to sell oranges, cucumber, banana and watermelon in the street.