I wrote this today after church, after thinking of the foolishness of these insurgents to think they could bully Christians. And then, with anger and idk..wishfulness, I penned.
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“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty…casting down everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of GOD” – 1Cor 10:4-5
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Akin Prayed.
Lifting into the air in a push that shook the earth, he twisted his body in a half spin and barreled straight into his attacker, the bullets whizzing past his horizontal frame. The attacker fell. Without pausing, he pushed off the fallen man with his hands, using his speed to twist again to his left, his left foot connecting with the head of the attacker. The man fell.
Akin turned to the other two, his eyes blazing.
Both men dropped their rifles and turned to flee.
Not so fast.
He Prayed again.
Below the feet of the running men, the grass seemed to move, algal growth on the blades causing them to become slippery. Both men fell. Stretching his arms out, Akin closed his eyes and Believed. The men suddenly jerked backwards as though pulled by an invisible force. The Avenger grinned, his teeth the only white in the gloom of the forest. As the men sped towards his, their clothes fluttering in the speed, their cries loud in the stillness, Akin opened his eyes and leapt forward. His sleek form tore through the air, and as he passed their middle in mid-air, he turned, whipping his legs backwards, causing his arms to come forward and slapping their heads together with his palms.
The forest of Sambisa echoed with the crack of their skulls as they fell to the ground, several birds taking to the air in fright. The Avenger landed a half-second later, his flat, naked chest heaving, his anger still unsated.
*****
“We will soak the land with the blood of Christians”
GOD heard. GOD Answered.
*****
The Avenger picked himself out of his crouch. The men were still alive, very much so, but in so much pain. They could barely cry or pass out. Which is as it should be.
*****
A few hours ago, Akin had been in his house in Maryland, Lagos. The bible had been open, and he had been praying. The Boko Haram had just issued another threat against Christian students in other schools outside Chibok. The words had been simple in themselves.
“LORD, they have threatened Your name, they have poured scorn and insulted the name of the LORD, answer if you will oh LORD, the same GOD of Elijah, answer your call and answer with fire”
Then…”Use me Oh LORD”
Right from his little table, a crack ran across the wall to the roof, the sheets of asbestos in the ceiling shook and fell to the floor, the room vibrated with a Presence, in the kitchen the knives rattled in their shelves, all across the walls a blue light seemed to shimmer as a shortage blew out all the appliances.
“And you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you…”
*****
And he had known what he needed to do. It did not concern him that he wore only a pair of boxers and a singlet. The Power of GOD was at his disposal. A quick Prayer and he appeared at the mouth of the forest. The dark yawn beckoned him. Behind, he could see the perimeter formed by the Nigerian Soldiers. He considered going to them, but his Spirit rejected the thought, and so he walked in.
It hadn’t taken time for the quartet of militants to find him.
In the distance, a US Military Strategist with the UN stood with a Nigerian Colonel as he swept the forest with his binoculars. The strategist gasped.
“Wetin…what is it sir?” queried the Colonel, his hand flying to the pistol in his belt. He had been jumpy since getting this close to the forest, and calling the US Captain ‘sir’, seemed to be the least of his blunders at the moment.
Signing up at the NDA was probably top of the list.
“Oh nothing, for second I could almost swear I saw a twelve or thirteen year old boy walk into that forest shirtless,” said the US Captain.
“Oh,” replied the Colonel, his hand still on his well-polished Sig-Sauer. “It is probably one of all those children of the mammy-market sellers. Maybe he wants to sh…to defecate. I will send someone to drive him out.”
He bounded through the trees, running as fast as his legs could go – which was very fast, he leapt over fallen branches, weaving in and out of the trees without slowing. By now, the Army might have poured into the forest, the sounds of the gunshots having drawn them. He didn’t wonder what they will make of the bodies he left behind, he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was rescue those girls and punish the impudent.
*****
From the nest of branches in a tree, he saw something glint in the last of the evening sun that seeped through the dusky foliage. Akin focused and Believed. His vision sharpened and narrowed, giving the illusion of looking through a narrow tube with blurry edges. At the end, he saw the terrorist hidden behind the sniper rifle, a radio transmitter near his lips. Even with the distance, he could see the fear and surprise in the eyes hidden behind the kaffiyeh the terrorist wore to hide his face. Instinctively, Akin knew he must not let the terrorist use the radio. Only seconds remained. Too few for him to reach the trees in time, yet enough, while the terrorist remained frozen in shock. Without pausing in his race, his eyes still focused on the sniper, he scooped some stones from the ground into his hand.
“You come with bombs and killings and the terror of children and women and men. But I come with the Power of GOD!” he yelled as he flung the stones.
They shot upwards, miniature rockets, the first stone tore through the radio in the man’s hand, severing first the speaker-phone, then the entire circuitry. The others shredded the branches the terrorist perched on, the force of impact rendering them into splinters. The terrorist fell in a cloud of matchsticks and kindling.
Before he reached the ground, Akin was there. Catching him in mid-air, his tiny arms bearing the weight easily, he stopped the man’s descent momentarily, then turned and slammed him into the ground with so much force, the man’s vertebrae broke, paralyzing him forever. Beneath the body a spider-web of cracks ran across the forest floor in a small crater.
Akin kept running, the Praise never ceasing from his lips.
*****
The man who called himself Abubakar Shekau hadn’t always been crazy. Raised by his mother, he had learned his first Arithmetic and English in a Christian missionary school just outside Minna in Niger state. The circumstances that led to his crack and final descent down the slope into despotic insanity are not for this tale. That day however, he sat in his room, the wrap for his turban tied around his waist, his legs propped on the table as he used his Android phone to search the internet for ‘Hot sexy anal girls’.
The sudden eruption of gunfire in his camp shocked him out of his pornographic meditations. Slipping on a jalabia robe, he arranged the turban over his shaggy hair and made for the door, as it burst open in an explosion of splinters and gravel.
Akin landed in the camp in a frenzy of Prayers.
*****
On sighting the camp, he had increased his pace, putting on a burst of speed and at the last second Believed in a jump that sailed him over the wooden-stake fence and into the sentry post near the gatehouse. Two terrorists stood inside, gleaming machetes at their sides. They had seen him over the fence coming in, and had been expecting him. The first man took a swipe. Akin jumped over the attack, planting his feet into the man’s chest using the momentum generated to fly backwards into the second man. He extended his fingers, rigid rods of steel, and plunged into the eyes of the second man. The man let out a yelp as both of them fell, his eye sockets bleeding a mess 0of blood and vitrous humour. Akin turned to see the first man pick himself from the floor and lift a pistol. The man grinned.
Akin grinned.
The man’s grin faltered. But he shot anyway, the automatic pistol set at burst, his finger tight on the trigger. The first bullet missed Akin by a mile, slamming instead into a tree on the other side of the sentry post.
Akin Prayed on the Gospel of peace. His feet moved.
Sliding forward so fast, he seemed to be a flurry of figures, the half-naked boy weaved in between the bullet paths, their trajectories slow and obvious to him as he moved into the shooter’s space. He shoved the flat of his right hand upwards to knock out the spent pistol from the terrorist’s hand, the other hand slammed into the infidel’s solar plexus, shocking the air out of him and smashing him through the bamboo wall of the sentry post to the ground fifteen feet below.
Akin jumped into the camp, the Power of GOD radiating all around him.
*****
Shekau sped down the dirt road, the Jeep Wrangler screaming in protest under his ministrations. He had to get away. He was bleeding from a gash in his forehead, the injury resulting from a stone cutting into his head when the side of his room blew in from the impact of having an Armoured Personnel Carrier tossed into it. Tossed in a by a small child who probably weighed less than 50kg.
Jesus! He exclaimed in his mind, his shock overriding his awareness in the singular outburst, he needed to get away fast.
In the open-roofed Jeep, he heard a whine such as you hear when an object falls from a great height. Shekau looked up to see an object, the boy, fall out of the sky directly in front of him.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed outright.
You’re almost right, thought Akin the Christian, as he slammed feet first into the bonnet of the Jeep. The front tires imploded as the springs burst, forcing the front of the vehicle to collapse downwards so forcefully it flipped the back over the boy. Akin reached upwards and grabbed the terrorist leader as the Jeep flew over, his hand curling around the matted beard and yanking downwards. Shekau fell out of the Jeep, his yell cut short as he was yanked out unceremoniously. The Jeep somersaulted into a clump of trees and exploded, showering the air with shrapnel, none coming near them, but falling merely to the right and left in their thousands.
Shekau whimpered before the bloodstained boy, tears and mucus mixing with the blood on his face.
“Please…”
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I want to write that he was dismembered. That he had his toes cut, or his fingernails pulled out or a million other things that are painful and whatnot. But Jesus, wouldn’t I guess..so..idk..
Maybe when I type this I will or would not..idk..
Follow on Twitter @janus_aneni
GOD bless Nigeria.
All in this life's journey... 
LOOOOL.
Most hilarious post I’ve read this year so far…
“Maybe he wants to sh…to defecate…”
The action scenes read like the Hancock movie.
I wish something like this would happen…I really wish. But… 😦
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You said that about my last post..I don’t believe you. >_>
Bruh..the way I’m wishing this were possible..or happening..mehn…
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make i go pray… “use me lord” … grt write up
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LOOOOOOL..please..stop it.
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Amen.
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Ok, this got my mind really forming images, my imagination went into overdrive… Sweet write up… What is left is for an animation of this to be produced… Totally!!!
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Plix plix plix…abeg gimme Stan Lee’s number or one guy at EA abeg abeg..
Oshey. Thanks for reading..
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I like the plot, the idea of a religious (crazy) avenger out to (pardon me, ladies) fuck up religious terrorists. But I have a few reservations about its execution. I’m a perfectionist like that.
Mostly technical stuff sha.
1. Show, don’t tell. You told a lot, instead of showing what was happening.
2, And this is closely related to 1. The action scenes were too short. They were the meat of the story, you should have made them more prominent/descriptive. I know how hard this can be, this is why I avoid writing action scenes. Still…
3. DEATH TO ADVERBS!!!!
4. Tires explode, not implode.
5. The scene about the soldier and the US guy is unnecessary. I kept on searching the story, waiting for it to make an appearance in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t. It was a major distraction.
6. Avoid cliches.
“The first bullet missed Akin by a mile…”
“Akin turned to the other two, his eyes blazing…”
“The men suddenly jerked backwards as
though pulled by an invisible force….”
7. A few typos here and there. Not too much, but still…
Good story, overall. I’ve just finished editing a few stories, so my eyes are looking for errors. It’s me, not you.
Bravo.
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Oshey..a couple of things though.
The typos et al, blame on my rush to type up before the end of Sunday. The adverbs stuff, would search out and work on. And cliches are a damn..
The tires did implode however. That was on purpose. The impact was sufficient for that.
Story focused on Akin and Retribution, but it’s Sambisa so the bumbling of the Nigerian military must come to play.
But I wrote this passionately without consideration for scenery, may edit later.
Hehe..it’s me not you..
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Oga, na you oh.
Well – just one thing, Bablo. Point 5 might not necessarily be unnecessary (hehe.)
I like to call this technique a ‘forest glade’ technique, and I – and come to think of it, so have you – have seen it employed in countless cartoons/movies.
A fast-paced, ‘jiggity’ action scene and – swish! – the scene changes to a calmer one, perhaps a funny one (as Janus did here), and the viewer has temporary respite before all hell breaks loose again.
EXAMPLE:
Two people are fighting in a hotel room. Hard-and-fast action moves, etc. Camera takes us to another room. Couple having quirky sex. Next thing, fighting people break through the window, burst through the door and are on their way.
Quirky sex couple don’t necessarily have anything to do with the story. Take them out of it, and the story’s unchanged. It’s just a fun thing to do ^_^
(I like the ‘forest glade’ thingy, btw.)
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LOL! ‘Quirky sex’..thank you Vundie, you should have been here earlier..
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Bruh. It’s the way my email box is now set up. There are some notifications I don’t see until I go to the specific folders 😦
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I wish I could write action. 😦
This is something that can inspire kids and kids at heart, like book of bible stories. I’m just thinking of comics already. I think it’ll be awesome.
Wrath of God: Akin
Archangel Akin.
Idk.
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Its a great idea. I agree with Ranchos (though somebody needs to look into renaming his blog, Iwo tun no Ranchos? Margarine? Condom?)
Death to Adverbs and ‘his speed’.
Clean it up Janus and send it to a pulp fiction that lit mag. This might be the next Simon R. Green’s The Walking Man. (By the way look him up and his nightside series, you shan’t regret it). lol
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The way your mind works though…. That being said I do wish this would really happen. PS:
I had to read it again
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Rancho said most of it already.
Good writing. But a few mistakes can almost entirely ruin a good piece of work. Anyone who writes fiction about the Civil war and attributes major statements to Ojukwu which he didn’t say might ruin the work. Writing about the New World Order and attributing George Bush’s NWO quote to Bill Clinton will ruin the work. Over to Shekau.
“We will soak the land with the blood of Christians.”
How almost everyone have chosen to edit out or ignore the rest of the quote is very very powerful. “…and the Muslims who contradict Islam.” Contradict here meaning the Muslims who don’t support their pillaging and savagery.
Its very worrisome when most of the media and people choose to ignore the threats to a group of people in the society. A significant group at that.
Another. A fiction writer writes about Hitler and paints Hitler’s character to look like he hated art. That would ruin Hitler’s character completely considering the fact that he loved art and wanted to be an artist in his youth (another reason why parents shouldn’t shove careers down our throats). We know for sure that Shekau kidnapped our girls. We also know that the escaped girls have confirmed that they were raped. What we do not know, for now at least, is he’s a porn addict and the type of porn he likes for that matter (last time I checked, they hate homosexuals and consider anal sex to be the same as fagging). When we write about real life characters, we should try as much as possible to stick with known facts.
What people of tomorrow will know about to day is what we write or paint. Art is that important. Imagine how different history would look if those Renaissance guys had painted Jesus in his actual race (dark hair, brown eyes, probably brown or red skin, considering the geographical location of his country) and not the blonde blue eyed Master. Just imagine.
“Every people have been sent an author to tell their story.”
This is good writing again. Strikes the imagination and has this ghen ghen feel to it.
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i like it. descriptive. i saw everything. oh, i did.
and about cliches, no matter what we do, we cant seem to avoid them. cliches always pop up.
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Somehow, I agree with Rebellious XIV. I felt uneasy reading about Shekau surfing for porn. Anal porn for that matter. I know it looks like Shekau deserves none of our literary respect, but we (by we, I mean writers; I like to think I’m a writer lol) ought to show literature respect by ensuring our pens tow the path of creativity feeding from the foundation of a solid reality. Because this is not abstract fiction here; it is is the corollary of an already existing story.
With that said, sorry bros, but the cliches have to go. True what JeremyTargert said, but when the cliches start to many pass the story, you gatz whittle it down.
Somebody once told my friend when he first began writing: ‘cut down your adverbs.’ I’m re-echoing it, and re-echoing ‘Ranchos’ (like edgothboy sef talk am, wetin be ranchos?), try cut down on the adverbs.
We can ignore the typos. Bad typos always happen to good writers anyway, so I never use it to judge writing proficiency.
I still agree with ranchos, inspite of what you said, Teacher. The colonel and military strategist scene wasn’t needed. I did nothing for the story apart from make Justin just quote a line off it, and it broke your continuity. Check again. Immediately that scene ended, you started with ‘He…’ without immediately specifiying who ‘he’ was, when it could have been the military strategist, the colonel, or Akin (turns out it was Akin, but you get my point.)
Shekau’s shouting ‘Jesus’ was a ‘NO’ for me. It just makes it look like Shekau doesn’t have regard for his faith and is willing to call on the appellation he obviously has an axe to grind with when the road gets rough. You should probably read up on the man. Shekau has been injured in fights before, and he’s survived. He’s one mean son of a gun, If you had written this according him his due respect, perhaps everything for jell.
My comment don dey long. Lemme give a round up.
All in all, a great story. Action scenes, okay, if these things had been eliminated, but you were in a hurry. Frenzied writing is always evidenced by these things. I guess I’m just a ‘needy’ reader.
Thanks for sharing boss!!!
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Wow..wow..okay. Shebi we still realise I wrote this as a vent. I was pissed and wanted to hurt Mr Shekau but alas..he’s an International criminal and fugitive and slightly beyond my sphere of influence.
Except here..so I write.
Thanks for the corrections, I appreciate lots. Will def do better. I always learn.
However, I do not apologise for ‘insulting’ Shekau. Would have found a way to write in a homosexual angle if I had remembered. Or bestiality..or idk.
Lol..I’m not keen on giving explanations when corrected..hehe
Keep reading!
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Well. To each man his own, I guess. I was just giving my own outlook on the story. I’m not much for prose anyway, so I’m probably misguided in my pedantry.
And – of course I’ll keep reading. I’m loyal.
Prosper like Prospero!
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I see the point you guys are trying to make about the depiction of Shekau here, but other than the Jesus exclamation gaffe, I think I’ll agree with what Janus did with his characterisation.
This is a mockery of the man, his personality and most importantly, his cause. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking liberties to mock this murderous nutjob.
Case in point, see how Quentin Tarantino portrayed Adolf Hitler in Inglorious Basterds. Q.T portrayed him as a naive, hyperexcitable leader of the Third Reich, and in the end, he’s brutally murdered with more bullet holes than a squirrel could possibly hide its nuts, when he actually commited suicide in reality.
All in all, great story.
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“The circumstances that led to his crack and final descent down the slope into despotic insanity are not for this tale. ”
I like.
Only you would write a story such as this. *applause
I echo ranchos’point. I also feel like you were too eager to post this. It feels like you didn’t edit this at all. You probably wrote it in a state of heightened emotion and didn’t edit it at ground state. Too many typos for you. There were a lot of disjointed ideas. Many times I didn’t know what you were talking about our who “he” referred to.
Not one of your best but then there are always those days.
PS I had hoped that somewhere along the line some allusion might be made as to the source of extraordinary strength of this youngster but idk…idk. 🙂
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Nice one, i realy realy wish it or even sumfin worse could happen. Enuf of their rubbish already!!! A video or comic of this will be nice.
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