Jaw’ed Angel

By Yazeed Dezele                                                                       Download pdf, epub, mobi

The day I started to know angels who laugh flashing all the thirty-two teeth in their mouths like zigzagged bush trap jaws, I was ten years old. That quiet Sunday evening, I was on my study desk in the living room, humming, and coating Man-eater’s shaggy fur. When I was done, its dog-like muzzle sparkled in jet black. The Man-eater stood there in my drawing paper, blank-starring at me, with honey-buttoned eyes, in all its brown spotted glory, camouflaged in a background of tall dry golden grass, flanked by two rustic red mahoganies on a bed of sand-colored earth, carpeted over by brown crisps of dead leaves.
I named it Hyena Park, and showed it to Mom J. Her milk-white cheeks flushed pink. She clapped her hands, eyes clouded in a mist of tears. She dubbed me Leo Davinchi of Africa, and asked what my inspiration was for the “magnificent masterpiece.” I chuckled, pulled at my nose and said, “I just like to laugh.” I didn’t tell her I’d painted it because I wanted to forget I was on top. I lived with Mom J on a hilltop, in a flower-hedged villa at the edge of Ginsum village, my hometown. I was on top, so I was alone.
Mom J framed Hyena Park and hung it on the living room wall, above the TV. She kept puffing her cheeks, cracking her red knuckles and rubbing her palms, as though she’d produced it herself. I’d wanted to keep it in my box, where I could retrieve and drink it like Fanta anytime I needed to escape. But I also wanted Mom J to keep flashing her white split-Pumpkin smile at me, and call me “Leo dear,” so I said nothing.
Mom J liked to lock my legs into her warm flabby thighs, and then tap gently at my back while humming “que cera cera,” her light breath fanning my forehead. I developed insomnia after Mom J adopted me. Sometimes I’d stay wide awake, pretending to sleep, peering up at the ceiling, or at the two heaving watermelon-sized tomatoes sagging from her chest, wondering whether I was lucky or unlucky for being fancied above every other child in my village. Mom J had even promised to take me to her home in Oyinboland. She called it Stadhampton, the name sounded like a man was standing and stamping his toe. True, I wanted to travel far, to see what Stand-stamp-toe looked like, but I hated to be on top.
That night, Mom J curdled me into her bosom. The soft warmness brought my sleeping-self collapsing into my body, and I sunk into deep blue sleep. But somehow, a gnawing feeling, like a tree lost in a forest, settled over me. I found myself disentangling my body from Mom J’s sumptuousness, muttering under my breath, and tiptoeing into the living room. The painting was mine and it wasn't meant for public consumption. I remembered what Teacher Amar once told us at the community school, about people from Oyinboland. I felt like I was rescuing my child from the slave dealing galleries in Stand-stamp-toe. I’d hide it, I thought, leave one window open and pretend a burglar took it. Fine idea, I grinned to myself.
In the living room, I switched on the lights, drew the center table closer to the wall, and climbed on it. My heart thumped against my chest, like a mother about to be re-united with her lost baby, I detached the picture from its hook and placed it on my chest, a warm umbilical embrace. Then, I heard a tiny, squelchy, tick-ticking sounds. I strained my ears but couldn’t make it out, until my inner ears filtered out the shimmering insect sounds of the night.
The brown spotted Man-eater was blinking its honey-buttoned eyes at me. I pressed the whole picture to my nose, to make sure it was not an illusion. The Man-eater sniffed at my face, and then it giggled. I’d barely recovered from the shock when it flashed out its white, gleaming, zigzagged, bush trap jaws at me, cracking out a torrent of laughter that filled the room like laughing gas, reverberating through the walls into my brain. Hyena Park dropped off my hands, smashing on the marble floor, cracked up in moon ray grooved lines. Fear scalded my tongue. There was no time to faint. Man-eater plunged out of the water color painting onto the marbled floor, a diving leap, like a dog hurdling over an opened window from outside.
I wanted to run, but my heart fixed me there like I was carrying a load that was too heavy to move with. A waft of rotten dead body smell followed. Man-eater pranced about in a circling ritual, sniffing and giggling at my legs as though inspecting me for meat. Once or twice its coarse fur brushed at my calf, pinching me with hair like pins stuck on a towel. I screamed, a spluttering cough of a scream.
Man-eater threw back its head and cackled an excited series of “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” Like a cat clearing its husky throat. I pulled my last strength and strangled out another scream. This time, the cough came out with a note like a suppressed chortle. Man-eater’s ears cocked up to this laughing fellowship and began a doggish lets-have-a-jolly-game dance, gamboling and wagging its tail with careless abandon. I interpreted this as friendship.
Its pet-like body language began to melt the ice cubes of fear in my stomach. Perhaps it was only acknowledging me as its real Master. I flashed out my teeth, and cackled in imitation, “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” Man-eater jumped at this, laid down on its belly and giggled; “Whuhuhuphuphu!” Emboldened, but still quivering inside like the severed tail of a lizard, I squatted down on my heels, my hand reaching out, as cautious as a tortoise’s head unpacking from its shell. I patted its head, stroked its mane, carefully, then briskly. Its fur now smelled of laughing sweat.
“Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” I greeted.
“Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” It replied.
I laughed like a madman until my ribs ached. The Man-eater laughed like a mad dog until its throat cracked. Laughing into my laughter, making me laugh the more. The uproar rose through the Hill top villa in a cloud of echoes.
Soft firm hands shook me, pulling me out of the underwater reef of unconscious laughter. I woke up with a start, my heart pounding, my body streaming cold sweat. Mom J placed her hands on my chest.
“Are you alright Leo?” she whispered. “You were chuckling in your sleep dear.”
“Good morning Mom J,” I stifled a yawn, stretched and thought of what to say. “It was a sweet dream . . .”
I told her about our marriage in the village square, me and her, naked and dancing before a cheering crowd . . . Mom J chuckled. She chuckles about everything. Her laugh reminded me of my sweet dream.
The window shutters were already stained with the golden bars of dawn. I dashed into the living room. The Man-eater stood motionless in Hyena Park, as though nothing had happened. Yet I could feel the air pregnant with its breath, the way I used to sense the presence of a mouse that plays dead and hides under a sack of grain in Mother’s kitchen.
I named her Lia, the Man-eater, because she reminded me of Lia, the clever lead hyena of Baban Kura’s pack. Baban Kura was the Hyena man, whose popular Hyena Circus show in the market square used to draw people from far and wide. It's where I had first met Mom J and showed her a pencil-sketch draft of Hyena Park in my drawing book.
Every evening before going to bed, I stowed away pieces of fresh meat that I stole from the fridge. At midnight, I fed Lia. She ate off my hand, her honey-buttoned eyes blinking like topaz, her jaws crunching and yipping, her paws stomping for more. In the morning, I found the meat still in the fridge, but I knew Lia had eaten its realness. Mom J made sausages and pie with this naked beef, but I said nothing. I wouldn’t give Lia away just like that, because she made me forget I was on top and alone. I, in turn, made her forget she was just an ordinary water color painting, satisfying the eye for a moment and then forgotten.
Lia got bored with being hand-fed, so I threw the beef at her to catch. This became one of her favorite games. She’d dash away to fetch the meat, sometimes launching out to clamp it in her jaws, mid air. I’d laugh and clap, she’d laugh and munch; “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” She was just an angel. I also discovered Lia could crush stone-hard bones as easily as I crushed fish bones. In fact, she preferred bony meat than ordinary beefy lumps, so I adjusted her diet accordingly.
Once, I wanted to know what her jaws felt like, so I dipped my hand into her mouth, the way some Animal-men do on T.V. She chomped it off in a single bite. I looked at the dripping blood, at the splintered phalanges, and I laughed. I presented the other hand, and she chomped it off too. We laughed. I woke up the next morning with mild aches around the wrists. Mom J thought I had slept over my hands and rubbed balm on to ease the pain. I said nothing.
Sometimes, when I was awake playing hide and seek with Mom J in the woods, or watching TV, I’d hear laughter, and it would jerk my body like an electric shock. I’d yelp. I once explained to Mom J it was a running stomach, she nodded her head and took me to the hospital. She believed anything.
Hacking off limbs soon became another of our favorite games. I loved it when she smacked me down and chomped off both my legs. I enjoyed the crunching and tearing sounds her jaws made as they sliced me. Lia would finish with her signature giggling yip and I’d look down at what was left; “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” Other times she’d go for my face so that I lay there laughing with only a skull. I’d wake up gelatinous, or temporarily paralyzed.
Mom J became suspicious. She asked if I liked Harry Porter. I said no. She stopped locking my legs into her thighs or humming cradle songs. She instead mumbled what sounded like prayers before she went to sleep. She started to sleep with her back turned to me.
I got apprehensive, and resumed feeding Lia with only beef. But Lia had lost appetite for four-legged meat. She either ate me or nothing. I became afraid that Mom J would leave me, go to Stand-stamp-toe and never return. I would certainly become the laughing stock of the village if she left and I returned back down below. They would whisper to each other, “He thought he was on top of us, but see how God catches him. Buhaaaa . . !”
I asked Mom J if she still loved me. She said yes. Her face was a white, smiling mask. She used my phobia for heights to suggest I might be better off with my own people after all –my heart sunk – but she added that it would depend on the report from the doctor at City Clinic. I didn’t tell her that the bald-headed spec wearing doctor was a fool. Many people are blind, they see nothing beyond what their naked eyes show them.
Every night I began to take cover in the heights before whistling for Lia, so she couldn’t catch me unawares. I tossed the meat for her from over the drawing desk or from atop the center table, from above the sofa, from the window sill, from above anything. I didn’t know how to explain to Lia my new need for height, didn’t know how to tell her I was tired of being hacked down and chewed like a runty rabbit in the wild. I didn’t know how to tell her that angels were not supposed to have jaws, especially when they were your own angel. And even when they had jaws they were not supposed to eat their own for fun all the time.
Lia started to jump out of the villa to go hunt by night. Her decision broke my heart in two; to let Lia keep eating my spirit and lose Mom J or to damn Mom J’s masquerade-smiling love and play with Lia in Neverland. I started to leave the window shutters open every night, hoping Lia would see my solidarity. The length of time she spent out in the woods varied. Sometimes, she’d return with the carcass of an antelope, cloud of flies trailing its wake like a machine puffing black smoke. She’d clean off everything; meat, bone, hair, hooves, horns. Everything. She’d take her time giggling and licking blood stains off the floor. Then she would leap back into Hyena Park. I would watch her as though I had just eaten the dead meat, but that it had turned into honey in my stomach. Other times, she’d remain outside until the golden bars of dawn stained the window shutters and I was already roused from sleep. During these times whenever I looked at the painting, I saw the hollow picture of a famished hyena.
One quiet Sunday afternoon, I laid down for a nap, my head resting on the warm soft laps of Mom J. I was drifting beneath the sea waves of sub-consciousness when I heard a growl from Hyena Park, which deepened into a lion-like snarl as she shot out of the wall. She charged at me, her fangs gleaming white, her eyes a mad red fire, her shaggy mane raised on the back of her neck like a row of razor blades, her fur bristling with electricity.
There was no time to take cover. She plunged her jaws and claws into my belly, ripping it off with a tearing squelch that spewed out my bowels.
I came awake with a wild pain screwing my head, screaming and leaping out of Mom J’s lap. She was frozen like a white marble sculpture. I gasped for breath, one hand clutching my belly, the other pointing at the painting as a flood of laughter rung through my inner ears.
Mom J whisked me to the foolish doctor. He ran tests, fingered his spectacles, peered into a jargon-filled piece of paper and said it was Saiko-something-something akin to madness. In my mind, I borrowed Lia’s jaws, and charged at the doctor, the way vampires do on TV. I saw his eyeballs dangling by white tissue connected to red hollowed sockets, blood streamed out like tears, he screaming, me laughing.
I felt heavy air sinking and lighter ones rising in the pit of my stomach when I saw Mom J packing her things, stashing them in suitcase. She didn’t even ask me to help. Her face remained blank but I knew she would drop me off at my parent’s compound on her way to the airport. Tears clouded my eyes. I sniffed with a running nose. She made me a good bye cake with LEO emblazoned on it.
The night before her departure, I fell asleep. A muffled “Uhee-hee-haw-haw,” broke out, too close to my ears; not in the usual floating, far-away manner. I traced it, like a mouse sniffing the smell of fish. My quest led me to one of the boxes Mom J had packed her things in. It vibrated like something in it was trying to get out. I touched it. Electricity shot through me. The box exploded in a flash of snarling jaws as Lia shoots into the air. I ran to Mom J’s dressing table, and climbed onto it. Mom J woke up to see what the commotion was all about. I wanted to wave at her, to warn her to remain in bed – to stay on top . . ! But I was transfixed, mannequin-like. She gaped, probably wondering how the Hyena had come out of the painting. Lia stood by the ripped box, her fangs gleaming in the dim bed lamp glow. Mom J stepped out of bed, and the world tumbled. A snarl accompanied by a squelchy rip of flesh, a crunch of bones, and a chocked yell of “Heeeeeelp!”
A few moments later, Lia was giggling, and licking the skull on the floor, cleaning off; flesh, guts, heart, bone, hair, clothes, everything. The floor covered in layered sheets of thick red.
I stepped down from the dressing table, the cloud of fear in my stomach having disappeared with Mom J into Lia’s jaws. I zombied up to Lia, squatted on my heels and began to pat her fox-head. Her hair bristled at my touch. Through her jaws I saw my own people eating the dead body of my fallen talent and laughing with me at the same time.
Dawn sneaked in and consciousness struck me like lightening. I flipped open my eyes to find I was in bed. Mom J lay stiff beside me, wood-like, her face a white mask of Mammy water. I striped her blanket and shook her, she did not budge. Her arms fell over like cooked vegetable stalks, her eyes remained half-shut, peering at me from the land of the dead. My heart pounded at my throat, seizing my breath. I made a call using her mobile phone; the number she’d taught me to dial in case of emergency.
The hilltop villa rotated roller-coaster-like with me in the center. I charged at Mom J’s luggage, with my bare hands, ripped open a box with an airplane symbol on it, and pulled out Hyena Park. With my inner eyes I saw Lia twinkling one eye at me, and giggling, her muzzle etched in a lop-sided grin; “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” I smashed the painting onto the floor. The glass cracked. I tore the painting off the frame and dashed into the kitchen. I fumbled for a match box, my heart darting like a field mouse collecting grain, my breath pumping out in jerky snorts. I soaked the picture in kerosene, struck a match. I watched, with a hunter’s relish, as orange and blue flames jumped merrily, devouring Hyena Park like the sea eating through a sun-bleached beach. I heard the jaw’ed angel laughing, calling me a traitor.
Just after it had died, I heard footsteps coming up from the bedroom. The kitchen door flung open.
“Are you alright Leo dear?” A soft voice said, from behind my back. I froze into stone.
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Yazeed Dezele, Born in Abuja, in 1991.  Yazeed Dezele is a social entrepreneur and has been an editor at 'The Crescent.'  His debut piece Afrinewsia has featured in Omenana.  He is currently working on a sci-fi novel.