Baskadia

How would he explain himself to all these angry faces? What would he say to

them in this court room that was so chilly, or was he the only one feeling the cold? Is

there anything the crying mothers of the deceased would want than to see their children

alive again or to see the killer dead? How was he going to make his mother – who was

also crying – know that he regretted disregarding her ‘mother’s sixth sense’ when she

told him to come home for the holidays? How was he going to tell her he was sorry for

not listening to her when she called to say she felt a sudden pain in her left breast which

always made her know he was in danger or that danger was not far from him? How

would he explain to this stone-faced judge with lenses as thick as the bottom of a coke

bottle that he was just an innocent secondary school Literature teacher and a hostel

master who had not even spent a full academic year in the secondary school; who just

wanted to stay back in school because he wanted to savour the new books that the

school’s new administration had gotten for the library just before the start of the end of

term holidays? What was going on in the minds of the principal and other staff as they

watched him standing there, speechless? How was he to make them picture him

hearing screams from the SS3 girls’ dormitory on his way to the library and wondering

why there were still students in the hostel when they should have been home? Would

they want to hear of how he had heard a scream filled with pain and had run toward the

sound? Would the court believe he had heard a serious argument coming from the

room the screams had come from? Or would the parents want to agree that he had

heard ‘You can’t have him!’, ‘You are a bad friend, I let you know of my feelings before

you started to like him!’ ‘I will kill you before you can have him!’? Would this court clerk that was eying him with scorn try to understand that he had rushed into the room on

hearing the murder threat? Would anybody care to know that the blood on his cloth was

from him running to Tolu’s lifeless body? Or would they ever accept that Jacinta had

held Chidinma with a knife to her neck, threatening to kill her if she didn’t accept that

she (Jacinta) was the only one for him? Did they know that he had begged Jacinta to

drop the knife and let Chidinma go? Could they wrap their minds around the fact that

Jacinta had slit Chidinma’s throat when the latter had declared her love for him even

with a knife to her neck? Could they imagine how he had screamed and ran to

Chidinma’s body, getting more blood on himself? How would they comprehend that

Jacinta had dropped the knife and made advances by trying to kiss him and touch his

manhood? Did they know that the truth was that he had shouted at Jacinta, called her a

demon, and warned her to stop but she wouldn’t? Would they even want to listen if he

tried to tell them that it was when Jacinta wouldn’t stop, he had pushed her away and

she had hit her head on the edge of the iron bunk, making her as lifeless as her

counterparts? Who would care to ask him what was going on in his head with the way

their eyes condemned him already? Would he even gain vindication with the way his

lawyer was saying ‘erm, erm, your Honour…you see…life imprisonment is still

acceptable…errr…we know there are three deaths…’ As his lawyer ranted on, he

looked at the judge and all he could see was the image of the noose around his neck.