Down she went from an unfathomable height. Her hands beat through warm air seeking for support. Her sense of reasoning far away to grasp the concept of her situation. All around her were darkness... Then light. Darkness and light again. It blinded her, consumed her to the deepest recess of her soul.

Then she sighted what looked like cloud, wrapped strangely around a reddish tongue of fire. The atmosphere turned yellowish, sending down spikes of red spears towards her. Terrified, she made to scream, only a gush of dry air made out of her mouth. She tried once more, this time succeeded at letting out a word; just one word that shook the grey cloud loose:

"Mum!"

As though tugged out from the belly of an ocean, she gasped. Her eyes flew open. At first she saw only whitish light, then it turned bright. With a blink an image stood before her vision.
Then laughter, everything gradually dissolved into one film dangling from the atmosphere.

What's happening?

She thought. She could feel a sense of dread, something foreboding at the back of her mind, but she couldn't quite grasp what it entails.

Testing her tongue, she said: "where am I?"

Nature might have decided to save her the stress, or maybe coincidence, for at that moment her trembling hand finally made it to her view. She took notice of the dried blood smeared on her palm, and everything came flooding back as one...

"Nooooooooo!"

******************************

Two weeks earlier:

Sweet laughter that sounded like the melody of an angel tore of her mouth as she ran into a semi-dark bush finding a place to conceal herself. Hide and seek; a game she liked to engage in on daily basis with her younger siblings. Soon she found a tree to hide behind, waited patiently with stifled giggles as her baby sister searched for her. Her little feet making loud noises on the brushes.

So much for seeking, Cheta mused now on the brink of breaking into a laugh that would give away her hiding spot. The laughter vanished when she heard a cry from her sister.

"Hmmm, is that your tactics to make me come out," she whispered.

Another scream from her sister. This time, more louder than the first.

She frowned. "Ebube?" She called. No response only more urgent screams.

She scrambled out of her hiding and made her way towards the sound. Suddenly, she felt an eminent pull backwards. A tug she couldn't control.

"Ah, ah, what's going on? Ebube!"

Another scream ensured, this time from behind her. A different voice. Without having to hear it twice, she knew the owner of that voice too well. "Mummy!"

***********

Her eyes snapped open. Looking around the darkened space, Cheta realized she had been dreaming. With a sigh, she turned towards the wall to go back to sleep, an unmistakable cry of her mother blended through the night. With a start, she jerked up from her mat, raced out of the room to their compound––halted when she took in the sight ahead of her. There, right in front of her parents room, her mother neck, held in a deadly hold around her father's fingers.

The cries of her mother were starting to get less audible. Her hands quivered as she struggled to get hold of that of her husband. Noticing that effort, he pressed harder.

Witnessing the horrific sight, Cheta bursted forward in a run. "Leg go of her, father!" She screamed at the top of her lung.

"Shut up! Get back to sleep. Now."

Surprised to have heard that words not from her father, but an older brother, she turned to look at him. He was standing beside his room. All but his eyes pierced at her through the darkness surrounding him.

Ignoring his command, she pushed forward towards her parent. Grabbing the bony hands holding her mother captive, she dragged as hard as her strength limits; which comparing sums that of a puppy to her father's.

"You are going to kill her!" She screamed in anger, giving his arm another tug that succeeded at redirecting it from it's original position.

Buried in his own fury, her father kept strangling her mother. Cheta, looked looked around. Her other siblings obviously woken up by the commotion, all watched from a safe distance. She turned to her mother who's eye balls were already rolling upward.

This isn't happening, Cheta helplessly tried to pull her mother free without success. "Are you all going to stand there gawking like idiots while, papa kill mama," she shouted.

Instead of rushing forward to intervene as she hoped, they all moved back into their perspective rooms. Doors slamming shut behind them.

Tears blinded, Cheta. Her father's left hand flew through the air, collided with her mother's cheeks. Her feet gave out under her, she landed on the ground. Her father sat atop The now almost motionless body of her mother, his fingers once more returned to her neck.

Cheta, in immense tears shoved him. Without budging, he pushed her right back. She fell on a clay pot. Oblivious to a tear at the back of her shoulder, she stood up. "You are very wicked. I hate you!" She yelled. Her body shook violently.

That stopped him.

As though sapped of all his strength by her utterance, he moved away from her mother. She burped, coughed and clutched her neck. Her once plumpy body that had shrunken by the years, shook.

For a minute, her father said nothing. His back to her. Then he faced her, without coming closer she saw the reek of something deadly glister in his eyes.

Breathing heavily from her own annoyance and exertion, she maliciously glared right back. It was one thing to be in an unhappy home, and entirely another to witness a father who is supposed to protect––harm a woman he promised to love and cherish.

"What. Did. You. Say?" he boomed.

Unwavering, Cheta stood her ground. "You are wicked__" she repeated, "__full of cruelty. I despise you for it..." Her cheek stung from a slap from her father. With a yelp, Cheta made to move out of his reach when he grabbed her by the hand. She struggled in his hold, and it earned her another slap more stronger than the first. Before she knew it, she felt an unmistakable lash of a belt on her head.

"Your stupid mother has failed to teach you manners." He striked her again. "How dare you talk to your father like that." Another blow.

Cheta, struggled to escape from him as a result, crashed on a plastic bucket. "Please, papa!" She cried.

Turning on deaf ears. He kept raining belts on every portion of her. Cheta, grabbed on the sand to stand up, realize her right leg was stuck between the broken plastic. "I am hurting!"

"Not when I am about starting!" Replied her father as he kept hitting her.

Frantically, Cheta narrowly casted a look in her mother's direction, but she wasn't there.

Years of having him as a father already told her to endure without struggling further. The more act of protest, the more the beating. Channeling her sloven mind to an imaginary end, she forced herself in place as he kept striking her all over. Just as predicted, he gave up a minute later. Gleam his bloodshot eyes at her twisted body with as much contempt as he could muster. Satisfied, he strode off into his room.

Cheta, wasn't sure how long she lay on the sandy ground. The ache all over her body grew between borderline of agony and numbness. Closing her eyes, she let the only thing perfectly functioning at that moment, deliver down her neck. The salty content slipped right over an open flesh below her collarbone, winced in pain as it stung her like the bite of a scorpion. More tears she knew not how to control, flooded.

"One more sound from you and I shall give you another reason to cry!" her father shouted from within the recess of his room.

Knowing him to carry out his every threat, Cheta, brushing a hand over her face, she inhaled for strength, exhaled for relief. Biting her lower lips so hard, she kicked off the plastic encompassing her leg. With an agonizing grunt, shakily erected herself to her feet.

This wasn't what she bargained for. If only she had watched from afar while he assaulted her mother; what peace is there to attain by doing nothing while her father strangle her mother to...

Cheta, shook the thought off. She very well knew what the outcome would be. Chose to risk it for the sake of her mother. An experience no child should ever witness. Her mother's terrified eyes flashed in her memory. With a slight, painful shake of her head, erased it from her memory.

She is still alive. That is what matters even though it came with a price not for her to pay but, Cheta.

Through the darkness embracing their home, Cheta walk-staggered to her room. Explicitly with a grunt lowered herself on the mat. Her entire body trembled from the effort. Every bit of her seek for a release far away from her reach.

She flattered her back, a cry escaped her lips as a pain she had never experienced sliced through her backbone. Without hesitation, she turned to her side. Grateful when it hurt less.

Images of the rather confusing scenario skittered through her sight. Why would her siblings do nothing about the maltreatment of their mother. Was she born differently, to ignore the danger involve for the sake of saving the woman who through her, they exist.

Concentrating beyond her current pain, she distantly listened for any sign of raised voices. No sound except the chirping of crickets. She was too weak to attend to her bruised body.

Resigned, she shut her eyes and mouthed a silent prayer. Soon, her eyelid grew heavy and she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Wake up!

Startled out of her drowsy sleep, she wondered what beget the raging voice she heard. What the dream was all about...

"Come out of that room now!" The voice drifted in, this time with more venom laced.

Now discerning it had indeed been in reality, she actuate her daily words before each day and forced herself up and out of the room with as much acuity as due a tortoise.

She emerged to the brightness of the morning to meet a glowering refractory man waiting for her in front of the door. Fear which she hadn't experienced the previous night snaked inside of her.

"G-g-good morning, father," she stammered losing her confidence.

"What is good about this morning?" he shouted.

Having no reply for that, because for the first time she totally agreed with him. There's nothing excitingly amazing about the day. She felt the looming machination even before it began.

"I said; what is good about the morning?" he repeated threateningly.

Swallowing dry saliva, she scratched the center of her head. Her face facing the floor, eyes staring at the lines her bare feet drew on the sand.

"I thought as much." He muttered shaking a finger at her. "You are as malicious as your mother. To have the courage to challenge me, your father. The fear that should have constantly be your companion has departed you. You showed me what a waste of a child you are. Right from when you were little, I suspected you are different. Oh, so badly different. From now on I will be watching you like a hawk. The food I fed you with from the day you were born till date, won't go for a waste. You are going to pay me all back when you find a man to overlook your pitiful life and marry your unfortunate self."

Cheta, hadn't realized she had been gasping in shock all through his sardonic speech. What has she ever done to earn such hurtful words from a man she knew to be her father. A man who should bless and direct her instead of curse her. A man who should love her as his child, instead of throw spiteful words at her.

"Father..." Words eluded her. She wiped a stray liquid sneaking on her cheek.

"Don't you dare call me that. If you respect me as a father, you wouldn't have disrespected me blatantly." His small red eyes sparkled. Biting his unnaturally black lips, he motioned for her elder brother who had been watching from under a guava tree.

Cheta, narrowed her eyes as she wondered what her father was all about.

"This act of defiance can't go unpunished. You need to be taught the way a woman is supposed to behave."

As her brother approached, the spite in his eyes gave her an inkling of what is about to unfold. Panicked, she looked frantically around for her mother. But she was nowhere in sight. She turned to the two men she had known all her life. Her eyes widened.

"I should have desplined you at the outset. Afam, punish her like a man would an insolent woman."

"No... Father..."

Next thing she knew, he flogged her trice at a go using a koboko, her father had acquired when she was four according to her mother.

Cheta, screamed in shock and pain. Where did he produce the Cane from? Had be been holding it all along waiting for an invitation to beat her up for disobeying him the night before.

At the process of trying to bolt off, she tripped on her oversize gown thereby falling facedown. That did not deter him from hitting her over and over again. Her fall fueled his zeal to punish her more. Yes, she should be afraid of him.

Women, according to his father––a man filled with so much wisdom way more than king Solomon––had always told him to teach the weaker sex on how to be submissive. Beat them if that is what it takes to make the world a perfect place as it should. His sister should not be an exception in getting the lesson required. Physical affliction doesn't hurt, instead teaches one on how to avoid recieving another.

With that valid remembrance, his vigor at carrying out his role as a man, intensified.

"Next time... When I tell you to do something... Do it without hesitation," He landed the Cane on her bare legs. "A woman is supposed to wake up at four to carry out all the chores around the house. You are yet to perform ablution. All the dishes from the night are dirty." The more he talked, the more the beating.

Maddened by the pain all over, Cheta, scrambled up. Bolted off before he blocked her exit.
Blinded by her own tears, she kept running. Her speed increased when she thought she heard running feets behind her.
Farther and more she kept distancing from their home. Anywhere, but there.

Turning a route, she knocked someone down, without looking behind to utter an apology, she continued on her escape to a destination she knew not until she collapsed on bed of pebblestones in a little compound.

"Cheta! What is wrong and why running like someone chased by a masquerade?"

Panting, Cheta, looked up at her childhood friend. For a full minute, she couldn't find her breath. When she finally did, she stood up on a shaky leg down a Woody bench beside her girlfriend.

"Ah, ah! Cheta, what is the matter?"

Cheta, shook her head in sadness.

Her friend's gaze zeroed in on a harsh bruise on her neck. "Who did that to you?"

Cheta, broke into a loud cry crossing her hand over her chest.

"Talk to me!"

Cheta, sniffed. Hiccuped. "My father and older brother... Ebere..."

Ebere, frowned. Her brows drew forming three lines at the center.

"Ebere, can you believe, Afam, beat me up like__"

"What did you do?" Ebere, interrupted.

Her vision obscured by tears, whimpering, Cheta veered her head to face, Ebere. A touch of disgust blended in her friend's voice surprised her. "What did I do?" she whispered in dismay. "Did you see my entire body? At the wounds?" Cheta, proceeded to unbutton the three first buttons of her shoulder to ankle satin gown till, Ebere, halted her process by shoving her working fingers off her cloth. "No. Let me show you."

"Will that answer my question?" Ebere, said.

"I did nothing to deserve the maltreatment."

Ebere, took a sudden intake of breath in what appeared to be shock. "Don't you say that again around here. They are your family! Family don't maltreatment each other."

"Then why cause me harm?"

Ebere, sighed. Her face softened like one would choose to when talking to a toddler. "A little retribution doesn't hurt no one."

Cheta, twisted her mouth to the side.

"Yes, Cheta. Woe betide an elder who watches a girl rot away in her youth without__"

"Without what!" Cheta, demanded furiously. Disbelieve written all over her face. This weren't the reply she expected when she confided in her. 

Ebere, clicked her tongue to the top of her teeth. "As a popular say goes: the truth is bitter. And as your one and only friend, I advice you listen to me. If you hadn't done something wrong, they wouldn't hit you. I know, Afam, your elder brother. He hardly hurt a fly. So what did you  do?"

Cheta, involuntarily reached for her height. "I know what you are trying to do. Support your dear, Afam. Your Johncross."

"Oh, c'mon, come off it. Even though I like your brother, it won't stop me from blaming him if he commits a crime. Support you if you are right." Ebere, grabbed, Cheta's hand to tug her back to the chair. Cheta, drew away from her. "Look, I won't bottle the truth because you are my friend and your feelings are at stake. True friends are meant to help and lead each other to the right part, not mislead. You are a woman, Cheta. Soon you will turn 18. Girls younger than you are already married and with children. Who knows, if you had been of good behaviour, you might have attracted a suitable man to pay your bride price."

Cheta's, nose flared. "You that has been of good manners, why ain't you married yet? Beside you are 18 already."

Ebere's, eyes widened. Her round face contorted into a magnitude of grieve. "Did you come here to insult me?" Tears rushed to her large eyes.

"Now you are playing victim."

"Playing... I can't believe this... Cheta..."

"You grew up without an older brother. Maybe if you had one as ruthless as mine––a father as wicked, you would have known how it hurts."

"May mother earth forgive you for spewing such abomination. Consider yourself lucky that I cherish our friendship, I would have revealed the atrocious thing you just said to the entire village. You know the consequences. You were created female to be beneath a man. That is our fate. Accept it and move on. You've been such a rebel from ten. It might end bad for you if you keep the pace."

"I should have known better than to come to you," Cheta, fired back.

"Well, unfortunately you didn't know better, because right behind you is your nemesis."

That was when, Cheta, heard the muffled thud behind her. She snapped around. 

******************************

GLOSSARY:

KOBOKO: Is a whip made from animal skin. Cow, goat to be precise. Commonly known and used in Nigeria, and some other parts of Africa.