The Blusher

"I killed a man,"
"I killed my husband, and I plead not guilty."

These were the exact words of Madame Agnes Bongo, General Bongo's contraband sweet heart, when she pleaded her case before the magistrate.

"General Bongo was a scumbag. A scallywag. A rascal."  the retired model opined.

"Madame Agnes Bongo, would you tell this honourable court what metamorphosed between you and General Bongo?" Barrister Aje said, he was representing the defense counsel.

Madame Agnes sighed, flushed by bittersweet emotions.

"He was the funniest and sweetest man I'd ever seen..." Madame Bongo started, and creased into a radiant smile.
***********

Sporadic gun shots could be heard from a distance not too far away. It was a ball of ArmaLite AR-15 rifles, Ak47s among many others. General Bongo could pick the sound of each gun from years of war. He was unfazed amidst the threat and this calmed his soldiers.
Then an explosion shook the forest. Birds took flight, abandoning their nests; even bats left their coven. The sky was saturated with fowls of the air, bats and birds alike; this, in itself was ill luck.

"Guns don't kill people..."  General Bongo said and puffed thick tobacco smoke into the air as though to reference the aves. His left hand and face were scarred from years of protecting his country. General Bongo was a man of the people; thrice he had surrendered his life to protect his country,  and thrice he'd miraculously missed the icy kiss of death.

"...Mofos kill people." he said coldly. His full hair grayed, and his moustache curled to the heavens at both ends. General Bongo wasn't the strongest of generals at his time, but he was every soldier's dream soldier. They all wanted to be in his brigade. They wanted to be led by a man whose witticism and luck had saved him thrice in the enemy camp.
His ideas and speech gave even the fiercest of foes goosebumps, hence the crescentic rise in his career.

General Bongo was a hard nut with glyphs of wrinkles carved on his cold face. He never smiles. A true African man is a hard man who buries his emotion in the abyss of thingamajig. Then an African man in the military is harder; dead to emotions. This was General Bongo, dead to emotions, and he carried this demeanour to his young wife at home every night.
**********

On the night of General Bongo's death things were as normal as they usually were. Miss Agnes was in the kitchen cooking her ass off to prepare General Bongo's favourite meal, Afang soup and foofoo.
The stress of pounding the vegetables, cutting and washing the periwinkles, preparing the foofoo among others was more than enough to keep Agnes away from the kitchen. She loathed cooking, which happens to be a prime mover  in her career choice. She thrived on junks as a model until she met General Bongo at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), some six years ago after a surgery.

The General was adorable, affable and amiable, and that was just the As. He was all she had ever wanted in an ideal man. He doled out jokes with such seriousness she almost returned for another surgery.
How can a man be this funny and not even laugh while saying it? She had thought. Her curiosity caused them to exchange numbers, and the rest they say is history.

History however would be made on the night of General Bongo's death as his black Honda Pilot pulled into the garage. He turned off the ignition and decided to take a quick smoke. He checked his pack of Benson Switch, he had four sticks left and resolved to taking two. The remainder he would enjoy before going to bed, little did he know there was no going to bed; that night, he was going to hell.

(To be continued)
©Angel MESSI