Ritual

Every morning, I will tell this story to myself as I remember it. In bits and pieces and jumbled up in order. 

The feeling of knowing death is at the end of a path, but choosing to walk it anyway should be a complicated one. It should be one of panic or at least trepidation. It was not. Not for me at least, not this morning. Or was it yesterday morning? I cannot remember when I am. All I know is that this is the last morning I remember. 

I wake up with a smile on my face, it is the way I have awoken for the past eleven months. Not even the looming deadline is enough to distract me from what is on, under, and around me. Wealth. I feel it in the softness of the sheets, in the way the bed and pillows envelop me like clouds. It is in the air, cool enough to stop beads of sweat from forming, but warm enough that I do not feel cold. In the bright room, decorated just the way I like it. The only thing that tries to pull me out of it is my buzzing phone. I sigh, knowing that I do not have to look at the screen to tell who it is. It is my sister, Seyi. She has called me several times, and now that I’m nearing the one-year anniversary of my marriage, the calls have increased. 

Her calls ground me, and remind me how everything around me was earned. I do not pick up. I have already said all I have to say to her. I know what she wants: a fantasy. She wants me to live.

Eleven months ago, I sat at home with a business card in my hand, as my sister tried to get me to tear it up. I held it tightly in my hands, torn between not wanting to touch it and wanting to feel every inch of the rectangle. 

The paper was white and soft but somehow still crisp, with black embossed lettering in a font I could not recognise but still seemed indescribably elegant.

“David Adediran”, it read simply with a phone number underneath. There was no job title on the card, and there did not need to be. Everyone in our area, no, our state, no, our country, knew Mr. Adediran. So we knew what it meant when he handed me his card; it was a proposal. A marriage proposal so clear that he didn’t even have to say the words.

As far as proposals went, it was unromantic and lacking in heart. However, romance was the last thing on my mind, and heart was not a luxury I could afford. I had a choice to make. 

I already knew what my sister’s answer to that question was. Seyi didn’t even want me touching the card. She stood in a corner of our room, as far away from the card as she could get without leaving. 

“Don’t do it.” She spoke as loud as she could without outrightly yelling. Even with her caution, we heard a furious banging on the wall right outside. We fell silent immediately. The banging was our aunt’s way of telling us to keep it down, not to disturb her, or my uncles as they held yet another family meeting. They were deciding how to split my father’s property, and as a two-in-one deal, they were also deciding our fate. They had already forced us out of school, but I did not doubt that they were capable of much worse.

“Say it. Say you won’t do it.” Seyi wanted to get a promise out of me, but I stayed silent. I did not know what to say. The proposal was one year of marriage. One year of unlimited wealth in exchange for the rest of my life.

“This could change everything,” I plucked at the rubber band on my left wrist as I spoke, pulling it and letting the elastic band rebound onto my wrist over and over again. The pain that came from it was slight, but helpful. With every snap of the rubber band against my skin, I reviewed the facts before me. I reviewed my options. 

Ten years ago, a young man emerged as one of the wealthiest businessmen in Nigeria. I knew this because he came from our area; I passed the house he grew up in on my way to school. The house was a nothing-special little bungalow, not too big, not too small. He was both our neighbourhood boogeyman and success story. An average boy making exceptional money. But everyone who went against him always wound up dead in mysterious circumstances. The source of those initial funds, the money he used to start his business, was a mystery to all who cared to inquire. 

So we all knew what he was. Not a kidnapper, not an armed robber, not even a black market organ trader, but the worst kind of thief: a ritual killer. The money he started with, two billion naira, was an obscene amount. Not the kind of money you could get through scams or by robbing banks. It was corrupt politician money, the kind of money you could only get by swallowing a state agency’s annual budget. And even if the rest of the world did not know, we, who grew up in the same neighbourhood as he did, knew him well. There was no way, legitimate or otherwise, he would have access to corrupt politician money.

With thieving, as with everything else, the most important factor was access. A poor person could only steal from fellow paupers, a middle-class person could steal from others in his social strata and lower, and only the rich could truly rob the rich blind. 

David Adediran was the kind of boy with a face that could easily be lost in a crowd. Before his eighteenth birthday, he had lived just how he looked; averagely. No family money, no silver spoon. His father, a mid-level civil servant, had scrimped and saved for half of his life before he was able to afford the land their house was built on, and had to scrimp and save for another half of his life to actually build the house. 

The only conjecture about how David got his initial funds came from his ex-girlfriend, or her sudden absence. David showed up one day two billion naira richer and suddenly without the pregnant girlfriend who was last seen with him. It was a guess that only got confirmed when he started getting married every two years, and like clockwork, his wives would disappear on the night of their first wedding anniversary. 

As always, the police would make a big production of questioning him and searching for his wives until he released a video of them. The video was always the same; they would be in front of a blank background and telling the world that they were travelling. Always somewhere remote, always somewhere where they claimed there would be no cell reception. But the world should not worry, according to them, they were perfectly healthy, safe and freshly divorced.

The only thing his wives had in common, other than being female, was a strong ability to spend money. It seemed like whatever they wanted, no matter how outlandish, how expensive, how illegal, he found a way to make it happen. Everyone agreed he was doing money rituals, but there were different opinions on the exact way he did the rituals.

Some believed he butchered his wives before pouring their blood on his deity’s altar. Some believed that he turned them into zombie-like puppets whose only purpose was to hunt down his enemies. And others believed that he attached himself to them like a leech, swallowing up their fates in exchange for decadence. 

I have to admit that I was more comfortable with the last option. What is my destiny? Do I even have a fate? If I do, it is not something that has served me well over the years. Hiding from my father’s relatives, hoping they wouldn’t sell my father’s house and leave us homeless, had gotten old five months after the funeral. My destiny, I thought, was a flimsy thing: if I could trade it for a year of wealth for myself and a lifetime of wealth for my sister, I felt like it would be a worthy exchange. I felt a moment of hesitation before I decided to make the call, but thinking about the greedy eyes of our relatives, I pushed the buttons.

David delivered on what was promised. In eleven months, I was able to tour the world with my sister, get her a foreign citizenship and enough money to last three generations. Every time I was in a new country, I would record a video reading off a script he gave me. The script was familiar; I was happy, I was safe, I was divorced, and no one was to accuse my ex-husband of killing me. Subtle. Equally important was that every month, David sent me a video, a compilation of how the people I hated the most, my relatives, were suffering. Money, I found out, was the axle upon which the world turned.

David watches me; this is one of two things I cannot get him to change. He watches me with infinite gentleness within his eyes. When I eat, when I walk, when I spend his money. No matter what I do, the gentleness in his eyes does not change. I do not indulge in it. I cannot. It is the gentleness of the herder leading a lamb to the slaughter. I think of his gaze as a blunt knife resting against my flesh; it is not fatal, but unbearably cold and terrifying. I wonder if he is trying to find the quickest way to kill me. How can I not? He looks happiest when his gaze rests around my neck like a silk scarf, waiting for the moment to constrict. It did not bother me at first, but as our first anniversary draws closer, I find myself more and more unnerved by the man I married. What bothers me is the way he looks at my right hand, at the shiny bracelet that encircles my wrist. The bracelet is the second thing I cannot get him to budge on.

He gave me the diamond bracelet the day we got married, immediately, even, like he couldn’t wait to fasten it around my wrist.

“It looks lovely around your wrist. You should never take it off.” He said, right outside the court registry. My sister was absent from the wedding, a futile protest to stop me from going through with it. He looked at my wrist in a way that seemed almost reverent. I didn’t think much of it then. 

David takes care of everything I want. I can buy anything, I can do anything. I have to, just so I can stand what happens at night.

The nights in David’s house, the nights in any house after I got married, were a silent blanket, oppressive and heavy. It was at night that I most felt like taking off the bracelet and running as far away as I could. I could not sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt uneasy. Like something was grasping at me, pulling me closer.

I don’t like remembering the nights, so I will go back to talking about the morning.

This morning. The last morning I can remember passes quickly. I call my sister and say my goodbyes. I beg her to enjoy her life and forget about me. She cries, still begging me at the final moment to reconsider and run away. But I cannot. Having seen what David’s money can do to my enemies, I am reluctant to let that blade fall on my skin. Once the call is over, I go silent. Nothing, I think, can improve my mood. And then David hands me the final video.

My uncles, aunt, and cousins are maimed beyond repair. They squirm like little maggots, getting dirt into their wounds. The video quality is good enough that I can see that some of their wounds have gotten inflamed. They are laid beside each other, on the floor of the living room in my family house. They can have the house now, I think.

The rest of the day passes in a muted way. I do not drink, I do not revel, I just stay in bed. Each second that brings me closer to nighttime does so with a cruel efficiency.

I feel the night before I even look at the clock. The oppressive air is back, and with it, David. 

He gives me a phone so I can record my own video, still with that soft, gentle look. I feel the hairs on the back of my hand stand up when I make eye contact with him, but I do not run.

“Hello everyone, I am happy and safe. I’m just going to take a long trip to Tibet, so I will be out of contact for a while. There’s no need to worry about me, and my ex-husband hasn’t done anything to me.” I say, reading the lines off a sheet of paper he handed to me. My mouth feels dry as I speak, and my voice cracks. We have to redo the video thrice because of it.

“Don’t worry, you’re doing well. It usually takes more than one take to get it right.” He says. 

Usually. I wrap my mind around the implications of him using that word, the brazenness of it all. I hear the sharp sound of my laughter before I feel amused.

Once the video is done, we move on in silence. He guides me forward, deeper into the dark hallway of his private wing. The only source of illumination is his flashlight. I brace myself for a sudden blow to the head or the sharp twist of a knife, but nothing comes. 

Instead, we find ourselves in front of a door. The door looks normal, made of wood like the other doors in this house. However, at the sight of it, something within me wants to run like a scared animal. I finally feel a twinge of regret for the price I promised to pay. But it is too late. David opens the door.

On the other side of the door was the dark night. Darkness that stretched as far as my eye could see. It felt like what I was staring at was not a room, but rather, a black hole. However, from the black hole, I see something emerge.

Hands. Several of them. Seemingly attached to the darkness in the room. They strain to reach me, and I instinctively cringe away. But a force propels me forward. David has pushed me into the room.

The first thing I feel is agony. A wet splat echoes through the air as my body lands on something soft and springy. However, before I can assess my situation, my body feels like it is on fire. 

I feel a change, I am moving into the thing I landed on. Or rather, it is absorbing me. Pulling me deeper and deeper until there is nothing left that belongs solely to me.

As I am pulled into it, I feel something being peeled off me. It brings a tearing pain that isn’t physical. Something intangible leaves me. With the clarity that comes with daylight, I often wonder if it was my destiny. I never felt the effect of its presence, but I feel its loss very keenly.

In the brief moments between the bouts of pain during the absorption, my mind races. I now know the answer to everyone’s questions about how my husband does the money rituals.

All of David’s past wives simply vanished, so everyone assumed that he killed them and fed their parts to the god who provided his wealth. I was not ready to die, but I had made my peace with it. But this, this is something I never agreed to. The joining process is over, and so is the blinding pain. It is replaced by numbness. I cannot feel anything on my skin. I do not feel my body anymore. My mind feels jumbled, surrounded by many other voices, no, many other minds. We are all conjoined so thoroughly that the only things we have that are distinctly ours are our hands. 

Our hands stick out of what is now our body at odd angles. Some short, some long, some fat, some slim, but all of them with pretty diamond bracelets on their wrists.

The idea of what we must look like repulses me. I had caught a glimpse before David pushed me in, but even that is not enough. 

I am adrift in a sea of voices. Most of whom are barely coherent. One of those voices cannot form words; it only cries. The ignorant cries of a newborn baby. The cries are all overwhelming, but something about that one makes me want to push myself far away from it. There is too much space and too little of it at the same time. My vision is both narrow and all-encompassing. I see through my mind and the others, as frenzied as they are. 

My mind is slipping again. The only thing I can see other than the mass of flesh that I am a part of is my arms. I know they are mine because they stand out amongst the other arms with bright diamond bracelets; they’re the only arms with a rubber band resting alongside the shiny bracelet. 

I want to breathe, but I find that for me, breathing is now just an idea that cannot be put into practice. I am forgetting something, something important, something that makes all of this worth it. 

Mornings are when what I remember makes a bit of sense. At night, I almost lose myself completely in the mess of minds.

Slipping through my mind, slipping through my fingers. Fingers. Fingers make me think of something. Hands. My hands. Something about my hands pulls at my mind. Something that can help me. 

With the last thread of sanity my mind can muster amidst the screaming voices I share a body with, I direct one hand to move to the other. Then a loud snap. A brief sting. 

The pain helps me focus. Replaying my memories. Keeping the timeline of my life and the reason for my current situation straight. My parents, dead. My sister, safe, rich and happy. My relatives, unhappy, battered and maimed. Me, in a prison made of several bodies and minds. Money. It was all for money. 

I lose track of time. But the rubber band helps, and the strange desires I feel also help me tell time. Mornings are fine, but when I feel the urge to grasp and pull at someone until she is part of us, I know it is nighttime.

I, no, we, feel the moment a new woman steps into the house. We are connected to her. We know when she is awake. And at night, we pull ourselves to her using an anchor. We cannot see much, but she has a beacon on her. 

It shines brightly even when our minds have to cross oceans to find her. The beacon is a slim, expensive thing that sits on her wrist. Even with my memories, we feel strange, incomplete. At night, I am a pair of outstretched hands, reaching for something I am too far gone to name. Something I can sense on the new girl. The other minds sense it too.

We reach for her, and together, we try to pull her to us. I glean some knowledge from the minds that surround mine. I know that we will do this every night, until a year passes and she joins us in the flesh.