WHAT A WAY TO DIE!

Ntinti paced up and down Mama Chinyere’s stall like one of the customers buzzing around, waiting for their turns to buy Akara. He looked around at intervals and scanned the environment. No one noticed him. Nobody hailed him and called him “ntinti na obi Aba” the way they used to. He didn’t want that either. Everybody wanted to buy akara and leave.  Like a kite would a straying chicken, he intently spied the black nylon bag that Mama Chinyere kept under the kitchen stool she sat on. When he felt nobody looked, Ntinti napped the nylon bag like a cat and zoomed off through the back of the stall through the bush part that led to the main road of eastern avenue.

 “hol’am! Hol’am! Onye-oshi hol’am!” little Chiamaka that was playing under the akara table screamed and the crowd of hungry customers re-echoed and chased after Ntinti. He was so nimble. None among the hungry chaser could get close to him. He tried to turn into the bush by the left but unfortunately a man coming out from there with his trousers on hand, kicked him on the chest to the ground. The nylon fell aside and the crowd pounced on Ntinti with various objects. He didn’t scream. He didn’t fight back. All he needed was an escape route. While he struggled to stand up from the ground, somebody threw a motor tyre on him and another emptied a cup of fuel on his head and yet another threw in embers of firewood and set him ablaze.

Danga the road side vulcanizer picked up the nylon and opened it. An awful smell oozed out; and he threw it away. Behold! It was a fold of children’s napkin that was white before, drenched in a pool of urine and brownish watery stool. The crowd dispersed with sighing. Faces bent. Feet dragged. There was silence everywhere in the world but the “mtchwww mtchwww sighs of puckered lips. Then came the cry of the raven from the almond tree in front of mama chinyere’s stall: “nkankankakwaraka!” what a way to die!