Keywords: Everybody’s Man, Brostitute, African Folktales, Femi, Alero, Web Novel, Nigerian, A Fablingverse Story, Nigerian, Drama, Fabling, Pam, Free Short Stories
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who played hide and seek with his female friend. He searched around for the perfect hiding place as his friend counted down but he could not find one.
One day, while searching for the perfect hiding spot, his neighbour invited him into his house to hide and he hurried in. But while he looked around for the best corner to hide in, the neighbour closed the door.
A rain or fists and force to end the boy’s struggle and the neighbour took his innocence and his sanity.
The girl had put her all into searching for her friend and so she recognized his voice and his scream before his silence, she ran to the neighbour’s door and knocked on it, then banged, and eventually, her friend was escorted out by the neighbour.
Nobody would believe them, the neighbour was a pastor and an elder.
The boy tried to go on like nothing had happened and nothing had changed. But everything had changed.
The girl wondered if she could have saved him until the day she thought that she could.
One day she noticed a little boy being brought to the neighbour’s house by his parents, she noticed the parents leave without the boy, she noticed the mumbled sound that came from the house, and she noticed the confused look on the boy when his parents came for him.
She never took her eyes and ears away from the neighbour’s house, she waited until he became careless, and the day came she knew she could avenge her friend.
Once the mumbled sounds began, she called the attention of the other neighbours, the ones she knew would deliver justice.
They barged into the house and found the old man’s face between his butt cheeks.
They became outraged. They dragged the man and the boy down the road, they declared the man’s sin and they stoned him to death.
And the boy? He was evidence, and nothing more. They pushed him around as the tales of the sight he was found in was narrated and re-narrated. And as the scene continued, the girl began to see her friend in the boy.
She ran to get his clothes and handed them to the boy. He was about to wear it when an adult said. “Why you wan wear clothes now? Ashewo?” And so the boy stayed naked and as they continued.
Filled with shame and helplessness, he looked around for an escape and found one in a passing vehicle.
The old man was burnt to death and the little boy had escaped this life. But his dead body looked like her friend.
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