TAKEN

[16]

"Why have you refused to die?" His voice simmered into my thoughts, pushing away the beep sounds that came from the machines monitoring my body.

The room was deathly silent after he spoke. I could hear my heart thumping away into oblivion. Suddenly, cold shivers ran down my spine and got me shivering under the sheets.

Too terrified to move, I remained still on the bed wishing I could magically vanish. But of course, I had no extraordinary powers, and wishes only happened in some magical realm.
Rather than clouding my eyes with tears from the emotions building up in the pit of my stomach,  I decided to count in no particular order.

"Is it you or the witchcraft you ate that is still keeping you alive?"  Dozie's words floated to me the second time like a foul-smelling odor, thereby forcing my thoughts to scramble for safety.

My body began to move. I needed to run, but to where? I had all these wires all over me, a man sitting directly opposite me with deadly intentions in his huge skull, and only one door between us.

"Stay still." He warned coldly. "Stay still."

His gaze lifted slightly on me before he refocused it on his gun which was subtly pointed at me.
I gasped and grabbed onto the bed rail, pulling myself up a little so I could see him properly. I was calculating if I could by any divine chance escape the room before my blood becomes the only thing that could satisfy him.

But those damn sheets were heavy on my body, and my weak legs tried to push them down so I could wriggle out of them.

The madman sat up and leaned towards me."I will warn you for one last time." He pointed the gun at me "Stop. Moving!"

My mouth was sealed to silence and fate. How could I not oblige him? He was Mama's right-hand man and who was I to question or disobey his instructions?

"Again, why can't you die?" The words slide off his lips iced and frozen. He withdrew the gun and placed it on the table next to him.

He was surely barking at the wrong tree. Even if I were to answer his question, I was only human and didn't have the power of life and death in my hands. So that question was directed at the wrong person.

"Every time it was programmed for you to die, you would survive against all odds. Why?" He hissed again, running his fingers around the gun that was innocently sitting on the table, gently caressing it as if waiting for a wrong answer.

"I don't know." I meowed like a cat.

He let out a hysterical laugh. "You know! And not just that, you've poisoned Mama, my mother against me!"

Wait, did he just say Mama was his real mom, or was I getting this all wrong? Didn't Ifechi confirm that Mama had no biological children? That it was because of her barrenness that she began to pluck children off the streets and out of their mother's hands? My dialogue was to no one but myself. Something bigger was going on.

Dozie sucked in all the air in the room while blithering me with his evil gaze. The gun was in his hands again, twirling gently in his right fingers urging me to answer, any answer. But, my brain was taking its time to churn words out of my mouth.

His big overly grown afro hair bobbled up and down, followed by the restless tapping of his foot on the cold white tiled floor.

"But," he raised a finger, lifting himself off the same couch where Mama sat a moment ago. "I think all that game with death is because you've not had this placed in between those witchcraft eyes of yours."

His full height came into view as he slowly walked towards me and placed the gun right on my forehead. I whimpered and tried to brace away from him.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, "He kissed his teeth repeatedly. "Don't move away from me now." He snarled, pushing the gun harder into my skull.