06/06/2025
Episode 2..
Title: If only you know what happened to the army man after slapping her...
The forest around Umuoji grew louder.
Not with birds or animals—but with the absence of them. No chirps. No rustles. Just the soft, steady hmmm of a world holding its breath.
Three days after Private Sulaiman vanished, the captain had only nine men left.
The others disappeared like smoke: one stepped away to p*e and never returned; another went into a dream and never woke up. The rest ran under cover of darkness, into the bush, into madness, into wherever the bees were not.
But Captain Gozie stayed.
Not out of courage.
Out of something else.
The slap… it had changed something in him too.
He began to dream of a hut in the woods, of bees crawling out of his own eyes, of an old woman with smoke behind her smile.
And each morning, he would wake up with a single sting somewhere new: his shoulder, his ankle, his thigh. He said nothing to the men.
He couldn't show weakness.
But on the fourth night, Mama Ekeoma came to him—in flesh.
He had stayed back while the others set up a perimeter. He sat by a lantern, polishing his gun again, when she appeared just across the flame, without warning, as if the darkness had spat her out.
“Still here,” she said softly, her voice like velvet soaked in venom.
He rose instantly, grabbing his rifle, leveling it at her chest. “Stay back.”
She smiled and leaned on her walking stick. “You think your gun scares me?”
He aimed for her head.
“I slapped you because you stood in the path,” he growled.
“No,” she said, eyes glinting. “You slapped me because your mother died young. Because your wife left you. Because you are angry, and you have no god.”
He blinked.
Just once.
And in that blink, she vanished.
But the bees did not.
They erupted from the trees like smoke with wings—thousands of them, glowing faintly in the dark, circling the fire in a slow spiral. The men screamed. One opened fire. Another fell to the ground, covering his ears, sobbing.
Captain Gozie shouted, “Hold your positions! Don’t panic!”
But the bees didn’t attack. Not yet.
They simply circled… waiting.
Watching.
In the shadows, Mama Ekeoma watched too, crouched behind a fallen tree, whispering into a calabash filled with black water. In it, Gozie’s face floated like oil.
She touched the surface gently, and the bees pulsed in the air, all at once.
This wasn’t just revenge anymore.
It was something deeper.
Years ago, Mama Ekeoma had been a healer. Her hut used to be full of herbs, not curses. But after her husband was lynched for being “a wizard,” after her only son was taken by soldiers in a government raid and never returned, something in her had shattered. The gods stopped answering her prayers. The bees started whispering to her. And in their language, she found justice.
Captain Gozie didn’t know this.
But he felt it.
He knew—somehow—that he had woken a storm that was not his to command.
That night, his dreams returned, but different. He saw himself as a boy, crying behind his mother’s hut, bees crawling over his arms, stinging him over and over. And a hand—her hand—gently brushing them away.
He woke with a start.
And a decision.
At dawn, while the others slept, he left the camp and walked into the village alone.
Straight to Mama Ekeoma’s compound.
The villagers p*ered from windows, holding their breath.
The woman stood outside, waiting for him, her white eye glowing faintly in the morning mist.
“I didn’t come to fight,” he said.
She tilted her head.
“I came to understand.”
She laughed—once, sharply. “Understanding is not enough. You must feel.”
Then the ground began to shake.
From beneath her hut, something massive stirred.
Not bees.
Not smoke.
Something older.
The bees were only her soldiers.
This… this was her god.
And it was waking.
The earth beneath Mama Ekeoma’s feet split slightly—just a crack—but from it came a deep, guttural hum that made the leaves on the trees curl and the air itself tremble. The villagers who had gathered at a distance scattered like dry corn in wind, calling on Jesus, on Amadioha, on anyone listening.
Captain Gozie didn’t run.
He stood still as the hum deepened into a growl. And from that crack, the god emerged.
It was not a beast. Not a man. It was formless, like a walking cloud of thick black dust and red light, pulsing with heartbeats that were not human. Eyes opened across its surface—hundreds of them. Some wept. Some stared. Some blinked in a rhythm that made the captain’s spine ache.
It stood behind Mama Ekeoma, towering over her like a cloak made of storm.
“You slapped me,” she said again, voice calm, quiet.
“You made me slap you,” Captain Gozie replied, eyes still locked on hers. “You waited for it.”
Her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.
“You summoned this,” he said, nodding toward the god. “But it’s not just for me, is it?”
She didn’t respond.
Instead, the thing behind her leaned forward. The bees buzzed louder, spiraling now in a vortex that lifted dust and leaves and screams into the air.
Captain Gozie dropped to one knee—not out of fear.
Out of memory.
He pulled something from his shirt. A locket.
Old. Rusted.
He opened it, held it up.
Inside was a photo.
A small boy.
And a young woman.
Mama Ekeoma’s face changed.
She staggered slightly, like the wind had shoved her.
“That boy,” she whispered.
“He was five when the soldiers came,” Gozie said. His voice was tight. “I was the one who found him. Alone. Crying. I didn’t know what they did to the village until later. I didn’t know he was your son.”
Her lips trembled. Her grip on the walking stick loosened.
“I raised him,” Gozie said. “Not well. Not like you would have. But he’s alive. He’s in Enugu. Teaching. He has a daughter now.”
The wind stopped.
Dead still.
Even the bees fell quiet.
The god behind her stopped moving.
She dropped her stick.
Her legs folded under her, and she fell to her knees. For the first time in decades, tears filled both eyes—the blind one too.
The bees landed all around them, silent.
The crack in the ground began to close.
The god shrank back into the earth like smoke pulled into a bottle.
Captain Gozie walked slowly to her, knelt, and placed the locket in her hand.
“You’re not a monster,” he said. “You were just left behind.”
She sobbed once—quietly.
Then again.
Then her shoulders shook, and she wailed, long and sharp, the kind of cry that cracks bone and lifts ghosts from the soil.
When it ended, she whispered, “They called me witch. I became one. But I was only… mother.”
The bees took flight.
Not in anger.
In farewell.
They rose like a golden wave, circled the sky, and vanished into the sun.
Mama Ekeoma never spoke again.
She stayed in her hut, never summoned another storm. Her garden began to grow again. Children walked past her compound without fear. Some even waved.
Captain Gozie returned to his base, silent, older somehow. He never spoke of Umuoji again. But every year, on a certain day, he sent a letter to a teacher in Enugu and a small tin of honey to the man’s daughter.
And deep beneath the village, in the roots of old trees, something slept.
Not dead.
Just… watching.
Waiting.
In case anyone ever forgot who Mama Ekeoma truly was.
The end.
Watch full video
https://youtu.be/lr_ZzN-JxPo?si=sCEHao4NXXY9nBgF
