We Never Know People
If you have heard it a boring trillion times, it still does not change the point: Appearance can mightily deceive! Innocent-looking people turn out to be not as guilty as they seem. A sizable number of them would shock the wits out of others with Extreme Violence, Sexual Perversion, Betrayal, Trickery, Non-Remorse and Hardihood. I have in dreams and in real life witnessed murderous attacks of proven and imagined enemies with a Monday Hammer or worse weapon by A Baby Face or The Tender-Skinned and if you had not been at the venue of the grisly offensive would never have correctly guessed its source.Well, if you are still inclined to harbor your reservations about my thesis, then speedily or gently read the story below.
His full name was Evans Luther Nzerem: a near cripple that was destined to walk around with crutches. The bones of his hind limbs had been malformed at birth. Also, there was a sickly dullness about his eyes, cheeks, chin, shoulders and overall build the next person would not excuse a curious long survey. One day, Evans’ Mother told her husband about his susceptibility to chesty coughs for the most part of the rainy season and he could not help exclaiming “Christ! The Boy’s only Seven and he’s beginning to betray tell-tale signs of an Asthmatic Future.”
But Evans Mother would have none of such Prophecy of Foreboding while she already had Evans” helpless tiny legs to contend with. Always it was a corrective hush but sometimes a rebuking one that Husband Theophilus Nzerem got from her, each time his imagination or fears for Young Evans’ longevity on Earth earned this type of voicing.
Hardly, Evans was permitted, on account of his deformity, to touch either a domestic chore or communal duty. Rather, from Father, Mother, Uncles and Aunts he got instructions to perform lighter forms of such duties, whether demands for them came from his elderly ones at home or from his seniors in classes. But as occasionally as they did, Evans seldom remembered to say “A Disobeying NO” to them, while on the days he dared to protest them did so in a most fragile tone?
Evans father, Theophilus, needed no tutorial on the subject to keep pushing the boy into schools reputed for Qualitative Tuition, in order that he might offer him the best of it and, with that, offset the problems he was bound to grapple with, if he eventually found himself in a Field of Endeavour other than the office.
Good a thing, Evans Luther Nzerem was the studious type. In the end, he earned marks that were high enough to fetch him a place in The Law Faculty of the University of Hago at the proud age of Seventeen. In fact, his offer of admission to commence a Law Programme in the institution coincided with his Seventeenth Birthday. Ultimately it prompted a marking of both events with fanfare by his elated parents, friends, neighbors, admirers, casual acquaintances and well wishers. All had streamed out of their far and near homes to be part of the occasion or witness it, with as many as did warmly received and lavishly entertained. On his part, Evans Luther did not make a shoddy job of giving his Vote of Thanks to their quests in a Dove’s Voice, and accordingly winning for himself much approbation.
While many were ready to vouch for the good character of Evans, with their ready and waiting reasons willing to contend that butter would not speedily melt in his mouth, one person had felt sufficiently persuaded to keep a different opinion of him. A fellow hundred times sure that Evans Luther Nzerem was Second in Command only to the Devil… Not a Subordinate to Disembodied Spirits nor answerable to Medusa?
How the fellow stuck to such a damaging opinion of Evans and “The Why” nobody could rationalize, more so that the fellow in question was Evans’ immediate elder sister, Hilda Nkechi Nzerem.
To Hilda, it made no Big Deal that others grudged her for the grudges she had against brothers secretly Evans. Not quite ten years ago had he evilly secretly urinated into a half bucketful of water which his Kevin Elder Brother had arranged for his Early Morning Shower, apparently in pursuit of a fitting retaliation to Kevin’s cruel smacks of his two cheeks for sharply answering his pestering questions…
Eight-year-old Evans Luther ostensibly lending himself to Juvenile Mischief, Lack of Judgment and Silliness. One or two hearer-analysts of the dirty incident had gone further “A kid’s own version of War against a Grown-Up Sadist”
But not for Hilda, the only eyewitness to the incident through coincidental appearance at the scene while Evans was helping himself with “Bladders Urine” to avenge an elder brother’s mistreatment.
Only a pervert, now or in the future, would have settled for such a grotesque weapon for a normal enemy… A member of the Human Race with wandering dangerous thoughts.
Perhaps, Hilda might have gone down forever as a feud-loving brother hater and image destroyer, if Evans had not at last got into serious trouble with their University Authority for The Violent Cultist Activities on Campus.
Even, the Security Outfit of The University did not know at first that Evans Luther was a member of The Most Dreaded Fraternity in the school, let alone its Capo. Not until she had quizzed and pointedly tortured a handful member threatening them with police action, if they refused to finger their Ring Leader.
In the snapped picture of Evans his men showed The Chief Security, he was in the neatest of a three’ piece suit, watching the cameraman, a stylish hand clasp, his eyes A Quiet Triumph! One could have sworn much handsomer than a cherub and soon to access his own overdue wings, if he should place his deserved order for it…
Also, Evans teeth were flashing a brilliance, his cheeks of clever powdering: a splendidly lit face teaching Christmas Candles one or two things denied them.
“Oh! My God”, gasped three-ropes-wearing Chief Octavio and what he had was the Metallic Deception of Outward Appearance; man’s thousands of years’ misjudgment of its shadowiness.
Only last Thursday, the 18th September 2014, was there another bitter meeting between Long Knives and Leaking Buckets, once again plunging their Diamond Hostel and sister ones in chaos… And there he was - Evans Luther - not by half hyperactive, a wide perimeter reddening, one Skull cracking, a neck slitting and that Thursday blackening… Yes, Mobilizing an Army of Leaking Buckets which when they got the more perforated, drenched up the bodies of their enemies…
And it was one hell of a dry cleaning what was left.
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