His house stood like an ugly painting among the flawless works of arts that was the landscape of the city sprawled all around him. It still maintained its old, stubborn aesthetic, flirting with memories of 50 or 60 years ago. Jamiu didn’t mind. Infact he deliberately kept it that way because he wanted no part of the rush into the future the town was pushing on its inhabitants.
As he walked towards the house in the early hours of 6am, returning from his morning jog, he subconsciously admired the markings of its 70 year old past proudly engraved on the outside walls. The inscriptions, drawings and embroidery that mirrored countless wisdom from an era of truth and integrity. The smoke from the cooking meat on his open fireplace drifted up from the make shift rafter on his right and he inhaled it satisfactorily. He still loved cooking meat like he was a hunter, a gatherer, a caveman. It was exhilarating and escapist but it also reminded him that he was first human before anything else and one day, he may be burnt and roasted over the unflinching fires of life that seemed more relentless now than ever before.
The reason itself was a juxtaposition.
He had the power to live forever but to tap into that power meant exposure to a very great evil. An evil that lived in the same town as him. An evil that disguised itself as a woman. A beautiful woman.
PRAKYA.
She ate the skin, bones and souls of men. Literally.
Ofcourse there has been an awareness going on in the last decade about her cursed Brothel and a lot of people may have stopped going there. That was good because Jamiu stopped having nightmares and stopped looking over his shoulders.
He squatted down over his cooking meat and poked it with a stick to gauge its tenderness. His brow furrowed in a thoughtful frown.
He was worried now. Getting worried. The nightmares were returning. They had come 3 times over the last 2 weeks and with each time, the intensity grew. The last one gave him a fever that lasted 4 hours. It meant PRAKYA was feeding again and she was growing stronger.
But who was stupid enough to go to that brothel after all that had been said about it?
He winced and stood up, looking into the distance in the direction of the town. No inhabitant of the town would dare go to that hotel. It had to be someone from outside or from the neighboring towns. It could possibly be someone from the new university built in the outskirts of the city, the one that had thousands of students enrolled each year. He always knew that university was a problem. Those children were as dumb as rocks and only lived to party and fool around.
His cooking meat hissed, signaling it was time for him to roll it over. He squatted down again and poked at the meat, flipping it with another stick and using the first to feel for any hard spots. In a few minutes, he would season it and let it cook for 10 more minutes.
He frowned deeper. He remembered one of the girls in the brothel had gone rogue. He couldn’t remember her name or the circumstances surrounding it but it didn’t matter to him. His priorities were the seeds and if PRAKYA was feeding again, it was only a matter of time before she became too strong and strong enough to leave that brothel and come into the town to find him.
He was human. He couldn’t fight the demon. The most he could do was summon the spirits of Ekudo but the ritual took 3 days to even awaken their consciousness. He could start summoning them now but if they appeared and fortified him and PRAKYA didn’t show up in 5 days, the powers dissipated and he had to perform another painstaking ritual to reawakening them again.
For now, his only hope was prayers. Prayers that not one more idiot ventured into that brothel again. Ever.
His meat hissed again. Louder this time and he hurried inside to get his seasoning box.
