Baskadia

After the night watch service at holy cathedral church.

Mathilda greeted the lay pastor that officiated the night vigil and stepped out of the church auditorium. She smiled as she entered a taxi-cap that conveyed her down Creek Road Market.

Inside the cab she returned her self to the memory lane; the thought of who and what she had been before she got converted marveled her; back then in the world she was rudimentary, contemptible and contaminated. She spends most of her times in nightclubs wriggling her larger-than-life, classic and marathononic waist with the intentions of luring men’s eyes to it. 

She smokes cigarettes and cajoled God over and over again. When her parents cautioned her she flung her fingers in the air tagging them antiquated, barbaric and old-fashioned. She’s the lousiest girl ever, sharp-tongued and danced to the gallery. She had her crafty way of defiling church leaders with extremely convoluted sensual body languages, she was overly carefree and disobedient. 

But now in this taxi-cap running very fast into Niger Street like it was suicidal, after those years, she marveled at who she is today, a great observant and much prettier that the glassy ballerina she had been jovially called by friends at Enitona High School.

Now, unlike before she hates to play around like erring minions and heartily dislikes the music that was curated by godless entertainers.

Her falling apart had began as she grew into adolescence with bad friends she now fondly called minions. 

They had lured her into smoking, going out in the night and used high-powered android phone. In a birthday party, drunk and completely oiled she had slept off with the android PHONE banging hot music through the earphones into her ears until her left ear shattered to flaps and she became partially deaf. Her mother accused her father of being the reason behind Matilda’s deafness but her father told them it’s never his fault but Matilda’s fault since she choose to meander with gofers and minions. 

It was during the period of regretting why she had joined the minions that she was approached by a young boy that led her to Christ. And ever she had been happy in the lord  

*

The taxi dropped her at creek road market junction. She is on her way to carry the school bag of her sister in her mother’s stall. It’s midnight and she was scared her heart beating very fast as she veered into Gumbo line. 

In front of one of the Gumbo stalls she saw a young nebulous boy shredding down the front window of the stall with a short axe. 

Out of curiosity, she etched stealthy to a dark corner opposite the window to see his face unfortunately it was Mugodo the boy who talked to her about Christ, the boy who converted her to Christ.  

*

Matilda fell on her knees and said ‘how art the mighty fallen’