The City of Dementia
by Kennedy Ighalo

The day breaks and the eyes only see its now, live its today, imagine its tomorrow and hope for its future; because it knows that life will remain a transition of events. The humid air intensified with the scorching of city sun, and the loud wailing of polluting music filled the atmosphere with nostalgia. Men, women and children clad in colourful fashion moved in confused settings about the street. Each person harboring a secret, each mind keeping and creating a thought as they walked into the distance. Amid them, was a decaying body shattered in pieces, its hands missing under the paces of their feet and yet, the crowd had managed to create a path around it. The solid eyes of the dead man, whose body was gradually returning to nature, were missing and its hollows gazed in deep strangeness at the circle of shadow birds hovering above. For new men, the city was ‘a psychiatry of insanity’ with all its noise and heat in the commuter buses, its traffic jams and the constant horning of cars as if they could fly over the car in front. The road was crowded with sales-children, who’d been given the forced occupation of car chase just to compete with the hustling adults to sell the city’s poverty redeemer; pure water.
    He couldn't see the congestion in the buses, but he had been in a situation where two plump women sat beside him and showed no concern to his discomfort. It was amazing he thought, walking along with a crowd he had confirmed crazy for walking on a road made for cars. An older woman and a younger girl in her teens were having their share of an argument which had erupted from the most trivial issue and it was so everywhere. When you accidentally pushed the person who walked in front slightly, there he was, folding his fist and asking "you dey craze" like you were the cause of his general problems. The city was as rumpled as the intestine. People who discussed a mad man walking naked and picking the trash on the street to wear as the eccentric fashion of an over spirited designer, were blind to the fact that someone who was thought to be mad was cleaning up the mess they had nonchalantly disposed about the street. He was mad and so were we to him. One bald headed man with the shrewd figure of a professor hissed as he tried to move pass the mad man and got a firm bite on his hand. He was struggling to break free, the nature of his age giving him a disadvantage and yet the crowd continued, casting a puzzling look at the two mad men and some ran forward whilst some screamed that the bald headed man be helped. Good Samaritans rushed out to the man's rescue, beating up the mad man until he violently created a chance of escape. The bald headed man's gratitude came out of a bloody mouth, a tattered shirt and a sore hand, and for some reason he staggered on, wondering about his past.
    Suddenly, there was an uproar from the crowd and every person ducked as they scattered in their anxiety; running towards a direction without proper understanding of the happening. The street was in a state of pandemonium; mothers gripping their children and holding them as handbags, the crippled blinded by the dust purging out from the stampede and lost children searching for their fled parents. She was shouting as she ran, urging her son who was no longer behind her to run faster. As she tried to look behind, someone who tried overtaking pushed her to the ground and the racing feet continued on her. She screamed out of agony, a name only she could recognize, under the feet that smashed into every part of her body. Her blood trailed on the ground, and she should have crawled before trying to stand, that way the man's foot wouldn’t have plunged into her ribs, paralyzing her so she could lay helpless and watch her end come. The wailing siren at the background was like a mourners song and the policemen who were dressed in dirty black uniforms began to gain their way through the crowd.
    "Thief!" shouted a policeman who held a baton and was running in a particular direction towards a man whose bare back was all he could see.
    Immediately, the people began to halt consciously, looking at their sides and regaining a brief calmness. Those who had lost something searched the ground, and parents who had missed their kids and family played the elegy tunes. Another young man helped out in calling 'Ole!' and a group of youngsters and tots took action as they luckily saw a policeman close up to the suspect but missed him. They were quick to identify the bare-chested who kept pushing people out of his way as he ran. The boys ran after him and began to pick up instruments that would help with the chase. The policemen were far behind now, finding their way through, and the boys had begun to throw stones at the suspect. The first stone went past the corner of his face and when he caught sight of it from tail eyes, he increased his speed. Again, those who moved out of reflex at the coming stones, fell careless into someone causing them to fall. The next stone caught up with the skull of the suspect and his blood splattered under the glow of the sun, but he didn't stop even as another stone smashed into the muscle of his backbone.
    His eyes were overcome by pain and his breath had a death fierceness as he jumped over the decayed body laying shattered. The car in the traffic moved, and the suspect had not expected it, so the side of the car rammed into his side and rolled on the bonnet to the ground. He had no time to see the shock that came on the man’s face or the curse that he spurted out; quickly he got up and on his heels he was, dodging the next vehicle. It was a chorus now 'Ole! Ole! Ole!'  And the suspect knew the repercussion of it. He wished he had a gun with him or something threatening to assault someone with, but he hadn't, all he had was the air inside an empty fist and the repentance in his heart. He ran into the market and the butchers had seen him and had heard the familiar word. They left their table, and unfortunately for the suspect, he had not gotten pass them. They were around him like cultist around a table, their butchering knives and the coldness in their eyes gave him the freaks. He turned around and the stone from an aggravated tot, vexed for having run such distance, blinded his vision and he wept blood. He staggered backward, fighting to regain his complete vision, and that was when the crowd rushed to him. In the fraction of a second, the suspect’s body was being brutally severed and he was dragged to an open place outside the market.
    His head looked up to the heavens and his mouth chattered meaningless confessions with the crowd who gathered around him asking questions. He was stripped naked and the blackness of him glittered of perspiration and blood. "Cut off his manhood," someone thundered and a few more suggestions flowed in deliberating the best way to execute the pleading suspect. Someone offered petrol and a tire wasn't had to get. They wore it around the man's neck after they had tied him in a way he could hardly breathe. Then a smoker had volunteered his lighter and together under the rain of their curses and 'die, die, die' they huffed, the suspect looked through the itches of the flame at the passing of the world.
    When the police arrived, all that was heard was the painful scream of the man, and instead to put off the heating flame, they chose to argue with the prosecutors for setting him ablaze. Time passed and the charred body of the suspect was all that was left. He lay in the final form his body had taken like a sacrificed lamb. Once again the street continued in its order, the policemen were gone and the people began to walk pass the dead man. His body would decay there, that was certain and the people began to discuss courteously about it. Some spoke lousy languages looking at the body and acknowledging that that was once a life and someone’s child. Night came and just like the howling of a wolf, families dreaded at the distant call of Ole!
    Nobody is crazy except a mad man and yet there is insanity amongst us, amongst those who deliberate the movement of our lives, but still only a mad man is mad.

back to archive