This is a flash fiction that centers on the trial of a Secondary School Literature teacher who seeks vindication for the death of particular students...

The Noose Around His Neck

Oscar de Josh

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.

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