Trinitatis

He who wants to pa.s.s from one world to the next will find it not a herculean task. It is as simple as dying and the transition of day into night.

The pa.s.sage into the dark world starts with the fall, the irrevocable action that will pitch your soul into the abyss of darkness, where you shall never see the light again, stranded forever in the wastelands of the dark side of the moon.

There are angels in the dark world. They are as human as you and I; they are not hideous beasts with black wings and fork like tails. They eat, sleep and defecate like you and I. But some of them were not angels before. They too fell from grace. Some had no choice; some had to become angels to save themselves from destruction.

I never would have thought that one- day, I too would become an angel. I have always loved the light, lived for the light and fought for the light. But what power on this earth can alter your destiny? When I fell, I fell like an eagle struck from the sky. The curtains of my soul were torn from top to bottom and the pillars of my heart shaken to its very foundation. The fall is the worst thing that can happen to a human being. It is worse than dying.

Some angels are good, some are bad and some do not know the difference. Some tread the thin line between good and evil, oscillating between the two sides like a pendulum.

I do walk that like but I know I cannot keep oscillating forever.

Ballaro Market, Palermo, Sicily

September, 2007

The event that irrevocably altered the course of my life occurred one dark, lonely Sunday night as my cousin Jide Offor and I went out for a drink. The market was quiet that evening, an unearthly stillness that frequently enveloped the area on Sundays since most of the traders were religious and were dutifully observing the day of rest. It was bitterly cold. Black clouds scuttled across the darkened sky and an icy wind rattled the wooden stalls.

I rubbed my palms for warmth as we strolled through the quiet streets. I yearned for a cigarette. Apart from my usual getup of an old white sweater, faded jeans and tattered sneakers, I also wore an extra large black jacket. It matched the black winter cap, pulled low over my head but it did not do much to prevent the cold from seeping into my body. However, it didn"t seem to bother my cousin Jide Offor. My cousin, apart from his own jeans and a pair of leather boots, had only a tight, powder-blue, wool turtleneck that showed off all his rippling muscles.

Tall, fair in complexion and hard as nails, he had those roguish good looks that reduced the opposite gender to whimpering wrecks. His devil may care att.i.tude made you feel he could get away with anything. He was everything I wanted to be. He and I were very close, right from when we were much younger. My parents felt he was a bad influence on me: we were always getting into trouble, I couldn"t care less. We were inseparable.

He had my back ever since we crossed the Sahara to Libya and had protected me when we came to the sh.o.r.es of Sicily with a hundred other migrants on a dingy boat. I would have never made it alive without him hovering over me like a guardian angel. He protected me like I was his own blood brother – I guess in a way we were brothers. He was the brother I never had since I had always been an only child. He had promised my parents back in Enugu, Nigeria that he would never let anything happen to me. They believed him.

Tonight, we met rather late after I had closed late from the grocery shop where I worked as a cleaner. The pay wasn"t much but it was adequate and the owner, a large boisterous Sicilian called Giovanni was nice to him. In return, I was obedient and did my job. I didn"t know exactly what Jide did. There were rumours that he was a hit man for a Nigerian gang called the Black Angels but I didn"t want to believe it since he had always been kind to me despite his ruthless, good looks.

Jide insisted that we go out for a stroll. We were trying to find any of the Muslim traders that would be open on Sundays but it seemed even they had refused to open on this dark, chilly night.

Finally, we saw a makeshift, wooden stall that was full of stuff like cigarettes, tinned food and beverages and it was open.

"You wan smoke?" my cousin asked, smiling in amus.e.m.e.nt as I continued to rub my hands.

"Nna, bros, I need am bad-bad," I replied enthusiastically. He strolled over to the stall to pick his purchases. I continued to stand shivering in the cold, as he conversed with the shabbily dressed youngster that manned the stall. I wanted him to hurry up so we could go back to the shanty we shared with like a dozen other guys like us. I didn"t feel like a night out again. I was getting a bit spooked. The cold was getting to me or maybe I was shivering for a different reason. I began to look around. One can sense evil in the air; can actually perceive it like leaking propane just before a spark sets it off.

At first I could not see anything that was out of the ordinary. The buildings nearby were submerged in darkness. They stood outlined in the purple-black sky like abandoned relics.

Jide bought the cigarettes and walked back to me. He pa.s.sed me one and lit it with his cheap, plastic lighter. He lit one for himself and started the car. Suddenly out of nowhere, they appeared. The angels of darkness had come for us.
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They were all dressed entirely in black. They surrounded us, all of them holding machetes. I could feel my heart hammering against my ribcage; my throat had turned dry, my tongue stuck in my mouth. I turned to look at my cousin and was shocked to the bones at what I saw.

I had always known Jide to be absolutely fearless. Right from when he was little he didn"t know the meaning of fear. But looking at his face, what I saw now was stark naked terror. That look scared me more than anything else did.

"Please …," I heard him begging. "Take me but spare him. He isn"t a systems man." I thought things couldn"t get any worse but they were. My cousin wasn"t begging for his life but for mine!

Then it occurred to me that this wasn"t just a routine armed robbery - it was a hit. Jide knew who these people were. He knew the angels had come for him and that there would be no mercy. The next scene that followed would burn itself in my memory forever and start my soul spiraling down into the void.

One of the attackers handed a scimitar over to their apparent leader. He took it and moved closer to my cousin who was on his knees and screaming for mercy. Right before my eyes, the leader swiftly swung the curved sword and decapitated Jide!

There was a loud singular chopping sound as the blade severed the vertebrae and his head flew off his body and another thunk as it landed on the pavement nearby. The headless body slumped forward, the arms and legs still flailing about.

Something was happening to me. At first I thought I was going into shock but it was something much more terrible. A cold gust of wind was blowing over my heart, freezing it solid.

"Make we waste am?" asked one of them. His voice was soaked with blood l.u.s.t.

"Make we pieces am," suggested another.

"No. He"s not on our list," said their leader. "Just f.u.c.k him up."

Eventually they were contended with beating me senseless and dumping me in the gutter. I was dragged out by the seller at the stall and rushed to the nearby hospital.

Three months later my body made a full recovery but not my soul. I would never be the same again. Someone new had arrived in the Dark World. I had fallen and now had a new life - The life of an Angel.