A FOREST, BENIN KINGDOM, EDO STATE.
I took a deep breath as I entered the hut, face to face with an aging man, slim and literally suffocated with his cultural garbs.
He said no words as he simply looked at me and lighted the mixture of stems, grasses and roots that brought out a bluish smoke in the corner. The smoke slowly but surely covered the hut, and I was breathing it out.
“The questions I’m about to ask you should be answered with your free mind.” He said simply.
I nodded my head yet I was unsure if he saw me, for I couldn’t see him anymore, just a blank empty space.
Before long, the questioning rites in becoming a priest began.
‘Are the god’s real?’
The question if these beings who are devotedly worshipped everyday by us ‘mere humans’ are real, was not one of the questions I had prepped myself for in my hut before coming to take this exam. It wasn’t a question I had even considered could be asked in such an exam. Yet the more I stood silent, the more I could feel the heaviness of the question in my heart.
‘What should I say?’ I thought as the silence was well beyond uncomfortable and was now actually hurting.
‘Should I lie?’ Another thought which I quickly dismissed as a bad choice of action. How could I lie to the Ohen N’ Ukuni, the head of the chief priests, the one who is closest to the gods, the gods worldly messenger?
Yet how could I admit that I don’t fully believe in the existence of these gods, more so as someone whose father was a priest, someone who is well versed in the stories, the teachings and the rituals to appease these gods who we couldn’t do without.
I was now seeing and sensing things, blood everywhere and a foul odour even worse than the smell of the animal faeces my village use for compost in the compost pit.
I looked at the blood and a sharp unbearable pain from my gushing side made me realize that the blood was mine.
Surely a hallucination due to the incense that was wafting through the hut, yet with every passing moment, the pain and blood increases making me to panic at the thought that maybe I wasn’t dreaming.
‘Are the gods real?’
This time the voice sounded louder and with every syllable my new wound throbbed. This new found sensation made me realize that my time as up and I had to make a decision.
Do I lie, claiming my belief for a religion I’m only versed in, would I get found out and cursed by this man whose occult powers I have confirmed are real or do I say the truth, admitting to my lack of faith for gods I have only read about and heard tales of but have no belief in.
Time was ticking, I felt another pierce on my hand and another on my leg making me fall down on my knees.
“ARE THE GODS REAL?!”
“I don’t know!” I screamed out, unable to take the torture anymore, fear for my hand which I could no longer feel made me elaborate my claims.
“I don’t know if they are real, I don’t believe they are real. I’ve seen the texts and I’ve heard the stories. I’ve seen your powers you do in their name, yet I just don’t believe. I just can’t believe.” I breakdown after confessing these heinous acts of unfaithfulness to the greatest religious power I’ve known. Even more tears flow out after I realized that speaking such atrocities in the head shrine may have just been me signing my death warrant.
I cried hard as I waited for my verdict, after thirty minutes the tears stopped, fifteen minutes after that I raised up my head to see the supposedly empty shrine and my body and clothes in lack of any of the previous wounds and blood.
Two hours later I stood up and looked around, confirming I was truly alone in the hut, no signs of the Ohen N’ Ukuni anywhere.
Three hours later, I took the biggest leap of faith I had ever taken in my life and stepped out of the hut. In a flurry of emotions, I rushed back in and cried, cried out of fear, cried out of anger, cried out of pain and cried out of wrath.
I cried because outside laid the heads of my wife and only daughter, the coagulated blood pooled at their severed head were a sight I could see even with my eyes closed. The gods indeed had shown they were real, shown what they could do, shown that they were alive but not for long.
Author's Notes
After a lot of thinking and some encouragements from 
This would be a novel with at the moment of writing, I’ve made a mental skeletal outline of 20 chapters. (although I’ve written just 3 chapters skeleton) and completed chapter one which is the pilot chapter that you just read.
I don’t know how long this project would take and to be honest I’m not sure I’ll finish it, but I guess I’m hopeful ; )
P.S: The name is still a work in progress, its not the name of the full novel but i guess it can be the name of this chapter 😂
- Header Image gotten from Pixabay
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