Ikenga: Chapters 8–15

“I think if we gang up on him, he’ll lower the price,” Jide was saying. Jide, Hassan, and Ruff Diamond were about to accost the bun-seller for having the nerve to raise his prices this week.

“They kill your father in his own office, yet some shadow guy comes and takes out two of those criminals in two nights. He did in two days what your father couldn’t do in years! You come from weak stock, man.”

Bonny would probably have a heart attack if he ever crashed his car, Nnamdi thought. Of course, that wasn’t likely to happen today, as they'd just gotten stuck in a “go-slow.” Who knew how long they’d be in the congested traffic?

His mother let out another peal of laughter and Nnamdi squeezed her phone in anger.

She was a short, stocky woman with patchy fair brown skin and thick, bushy black eyebrows. His father had speculated that she colored them with coal to make herself look more intimidating.

She laughed heartily, her round belly vibrating.

He ran at her like a great lumbering black beast.

For the first time, Nnamdi really, truly, deeply understood why his father risked his life to get rid of people like this woman. Laughing like a wild animal as she takes people's hard-earned things. A surge of righteous fury flooded into Nnamdi and he felt as if he were dunked in hot water.

When he fell back down, she smiled triumphantly, slightly out of breath. “Temper, temper, young man. Resistance is futile.”

Nnamdi’s angry eyes fell on her blocky shoes and then on her smug, smirking face.

She contemplated him for another moment and reached into her pockets.

The alone time helped him get his head together and put on an indifferent face.

So his guise as the Man protected him from severe harm.

She always had the best ideas and knew how to put things into perspective, even when it was something he didn't necessarily want to hear.

“I'm just a humble businessman,” the Chief was saying in his professor-like voice to the woman interviewing him.

She waved a dismissive hand at him and made to go inside.

"To kill the snake, you cut off its head.” That’s what Nnamdi’s mother had said. For Kaleria, the Chief of Chiefs was the snake’s head. After being the Man for four weeks, Nnamdi finally felt he truly understood the root of the proverb.

He looked at his X-Men pencil case, inside which was the Ikenga, quiet and potent with strange power.

Two of the men wore expensive suits. The other man wore shabby rags and Nnamdi could smell him from where he stood—a mixture of feces, sweat, and hair oil.

He would subdue Never Die and make sure he was jailed, as Never Die should have been when he robbed and humiliated his mother weeks ago.

He felt mangled flesh there, and wetness, though he could not see blood due to his body's darkness.

The akara lady stared at him and lifted a tentative hand, either a greeting or signaling him to stop.

The crickets and katydids sounded like sirens.

There was a turkey in someone’s pen that was not sleeping soundly; he could hear it restlessly ruffling its feathers.

His veins heated with burning rage again and he bit down on his tongue to stifle a scream.

Nnamdi loped off into the night.

Nnamdi looked at the wall near the back, where the phrase He who is afraid of doing too much always does too little was engraved into the cement in ornate writing.

He would quickly thank her and be off before she could muster up the nerve to ask him any questions.

Nnamdi could not believe what he was doing. This was the riskiest, stupidest, most irrational thing he’d ever done.

Cars passed on the road, sending up plumes of dust.

Chioma tried unsuccessfully to bargain with the bathroom man and they ended up spending a sixth of their money to use the facilities.

What are you? Some sort of masquerade?

He could barely support Nnamdi. But it was better than nothing. Together, they lurched up the stairs.

She nodded vigorously. “You did it! And you brought everyone!”

He ran at the man from the computer store, seeing him in tunnel vision tinged with red.