Memoir of an evil brother by Anthony madukwe

*Please read with a spoon of salt in hand*

The long way we’ve come, my friend. The dangers we’ve crossed. The blood we’ve shared (shed) and the bones we’ve crushed into powdered crumbs. The cruelty we’ve dealt;.....oh! all the evil we’ve mindlessly dealt. All these, brother, prick the peace of my sleep and keep me seeping out in nightmares. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t be. The memories, they come to me. They stand before my eyes and dare me to go to rest. I’m not strong enough to defy them…not anymore… I’ve lost my mettle; I’ve grown weak brother and have become, now, a slave to my sins. 

I miss you brother. I miss the devilish smile which you let dance on your face. I miss the handsomeness which you used as a mask for the darkness in your heart. I miss the swiftness with which you stabbed as you let out your signature high-pitched cackle. You remember the red-haired girl we cornered behind the school library; you remember how she raised her well manicured hands in defence and cried tears in protest as if it could have saved her from our blood-thirsty pen-knives. You remember the shock on her wrinkled face when she first saw the knives, how she begged and begged and promised us love; love she refused to give in the first place. I remember how you tickled her lifeless body with your bloodied fingers and wiped your knife on her flowered dress. You have no idea how much that made me respect you. The indifference with which you kill marvels me. I’ll be like you some day. I swear. I’ll kill like you some day. If it’s the last thing I do.

We did things brother. I know you remember. We did things many thought impossible. We killed my mother *laughs in a demented way*. Fuck motherly love. We defied all those marionette values of a deformed society and stabbed my mother to death in the back of her car. You remember how she kept saying ‘my children’ in that weak voice of hers even as we traced our blades through the thin skin of her throat. It really did look like she loved us…………….. but then, we loved blood more. That night, in that car, blood splattered all over us as veins squirted in all directions. You remember you were holding down her thrashing fat legs while I worked wonders with my knife. Oh! We made such a beautiful team.

I write you this letter from behind bars. 

The madness in this place is killing me, it strips me of my sanity and elevates me to somewhere between hell and Hades…Hades!…yes!...yes!... that’s the name of the prison where they’ve locked me up brother. The judge said it was for ‘devils’ like me who had gone beyond redemption. The judge, with his fat fleshy face looked at me like some sort of scum plastered on his immaculate white shirt and called me a ‘devil’…he didn’t care for my feelings. Of course, a devil I am…a devil I will be to him some day…very soon. They say I’m to be paroled before long for good behavior. In a few years I will be out. And then, on a day when the sun is down and the sky is as black as my heart, I will knock on his door and be a nice little ‘devil’ to him.

Brother, even though I am behind bars I have tried to keep making you proud. Two days ago, with a razor blade I carved your birth date on the ribs of an inmate here; a homosexual gay who, sadly, fell in love with me and my very innocent appearance. I still remember how he caressed my head and wished me well in my ‘doomed life’ praying I will die a peaceful death some day. I fell in love with him too…that’s why I did what I did. I watched him go and then I cackled like you…

I have also come to love God, brother….he talks to me every night and he tells me how happy he is for me and for who I have become. His voice is calm and soft like the feathers of those birds we used to slit open back then in kindergarten. I love him….but he does not help me when those voices come visiting. He does not help me.

Which is why I write you this day…

I hope you get this and I hope you read it…and I also hope you find a place in your heart to forgive me…if you don’t I’m doomed and no better than a devil as the judge said. I remember his words loud and clear like he repeats them to me now….stinging words fed out in that grave damning voice of his….

“A man who poisons his only brother, stabs him in the neck and then calmly sits to watch him die is to me, no more than a devil…fit only for places where evil congregates”

Forgive me….