Barrister Ezillo sits at the table, staring at his favourite meal. His family is busy munching away, but he is fiddling with his fork. The spaghetti looks as if something is moving under it.
He pokes at it, several times. Twirling it around his fork, he imagines the spaghetti as the intestines of the man burnt on the road, slithering up the fork, weaving its curly strings, like tapeworms, around his fingers, extending into his mouth, down his throat, down, down, then up, up, until his puke splashes out of his throat, over the table.
The fork clanks against the plate, to the floor, as it drops from his fingers.
Nkem and Ola raise their heads, looking at him through perplexed eyes.
"Sorry," Ezillo says.
He picks up the fork, places it on the table. Pours some water into a glass, and is about to drink from it, but he hesitates, and raises it high, gazing up at it in a strange sort of way. At last he takes a gulp, sets the glass down on the table.
As he extends his hand to pick up his fork, he sees the corned beef sauce as blood, red, red, and warm.
Ezillo suddenly feels sick, a bit strange. Resting his hands on the sides of the table, he pushes his chair back with his buttocks and stands up.
"I'll eat later," he manages to say, picking a napkin, dabbing the sides of his mouth.
He walks into the sitting room and falls into the couch with a sigh. He picks up the remote control, flips through channels, then pauses on the Network News broadcast.
Sitting back, he thrusts his legs apart. Ezillo hears the clatter of cutleries, Nkem telling Ola to send her plate to the sink, and wash her hands clean, because mummy doesn't want any stain on her dress.
Moments later, Ola skips into the sitting room, throwing her arms up and down. She stops as her eyes meet her father's. She drops on the other couch, opposite him. Ola then reaches for a pouf, which she lays on her lap. Soon Nkem comes in, too, and sits next to her husband. He takes her hand in his. Ola bounds towards them and tucks herself in between her parents.
"Daddy, are you angry?" Ola asks, staring up curiously at her father.
"Daddy is not angry, sweetheart," Ezillo says, riffles her hair, then tickles her nape as she breaks into giggles.
They watch the TV silently for a few moments. Ezillo notices that his daughter has started dozing, so he pulls out a pouf, lifts her head gently, then lays it down on the pouf.
"You look disturbed," Nkem observes and rests her head on his shoulder.
Some minutes elapse, before Ezillo says, "In all my life I've never seen such bloody justice."
"I don't understand," she says.
"Sometimes, I wonder why I took up this profession."
"You always wanted to fight for truth, remember?"
"Yes. But sometimes I see myself as living a farce. People no longer have faith in our Judiciary. How do you explain some citizens taking the law into their own hands, dispensing justice based on their whims?" He laces his fingers together, then unclasps them, and briefly strokes his wife across the cheek.
"This whole legal garb stinks like one mighty fart," he says, breathing hard. "Tell me, how do you justify the barbaric chopping off of heads by a group of vigilantes, like the Bakassi Boys…?"
Ezillo falls quiet, abruptly, fixing his eyes on the TV.
"…Chief Barjesus has been conferred with the National Merit Order of…" The newscaster is saying. The lucid photograph of a smiling, gap-toothed rotund man, a very influential political chieftain, appears on the screen, as he waves his hand to a swarming audience of men and women.
Nkem turns to her husband, a frown etched on her face. "I thought the government was going to probe him for embezzling the multi-million naira oil deal?" she asks.
"Damn rogue! He deserves to be –" Ezillo spits out, as the grisly image of the corpse sears his mind, unable to hold himself back from yanking the pouf from under his daughter's head and throwing it at the TV.
Uche Peter Umez, award winning Nigerian poet and short story writer, is widely published on the Internet, and author of Dark through the Delta (poems), Tears in her Eyes (stories), and Aridity of Feelings (chapbook published by tmpoetry.com). His stories have been broadcast on the radio and published in anthologies and on-line literary websites like Author-me, Fiction on the Web, Ragged Edge, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) and Literate Nubian.