“This country is fucked up. What shit are they celebrating?” Mbatu nods towards the noisy bunch of students who have occupied every table in this open-air bar. They are singing and dancing as if someone just won a million dollars in the lottery. These are the boys and girls who say they have ‘swag’. Girls in tight, revealing shorts, on heels as high as Caterpillars, lips glowing from all the lipstick shades in the world. Boys with trousers hanging below their bums, drinking straight from bottles and puffing cigarette smoke high into the air. They wear shiny ‘bling’ on their wrists, waists, ankles, noses, teeth, navels and tongues. They drink beer like water; our fathers taught us well.

Naked girls are shaking and pushing their plump behinds into the faces of excited boys at the far end of the bar.

“Boy,” Mbatu cries. “What is there to celebrate, apart from naked girls?”

“Youth Day, Mbatu. Youth Day for God’s sake!” Brenda shouts.

She has to shout. The blasting of music from gigantic speakers, the screaming of inebriated youth, of okadas skidding past – these have all come together to construct a clamour that is loud enough to win one of those stupid prizes on offer everywhere.

Youth Day indeed. We are celebrating our failures, the felonious gaffes of our fathers, the funeral of youth participation in nation building, our haunting frustrations. I pity the African youth, whom I believe in so much. We deserve better than cheap bottles of beer, high schools for universities, dusty roads, no water, no electricity, jobs that pay five hundred an hour. We do not deserve the lies and the insults. The insults!

We cannot afford to spend all our time complaining about the failures of the past. But we must! We must complain without fear. We must tell them that they failed both themselves and posterity. We must vehemently dispute the unending fib and slur, the intellectual fraudulence, the tributes paid to murderous mediocrity. We must ask them to bring back our money from Swiss bank accounts. But we must go further than grumbling. We must… I draw inspiration from my bottle.

Sitting around and fuming has never done any good to mankind. We have nine bottles on the table and I am beginning to feel uncomfortable. I signal to an idle waiter to clear up. The idiot ignores me and walks away dragging his feet on the floor. Brenda frowns and sighs.

“You’re fired!” she shouts after him. “Did you see that? I’d have him fired if this were my business. Isn’t that mean?”

Nobody replies.

“Shit.” She sighs. “Shit.” Brenda takes out a mirror and powder and begins to dab gently at her face.

Mbatu sneers. “Brenda, this is a bar. Can’t we just drink and forget about how ugly you look? You get older each time you add another layer of that stupid dust to your face.”

“Guys, let’s move,” I say quickly, to clear the air.

It is one o’ clock in the morning when we hit the Rocket, an underground club shaped like one. We make our way down the first staircase. There are mirrors, and posters of boys with six packs and sparkly girls at the foot of each staircase. Three such staircases lead into the ground where the rocket emanates.

As we descend, the cold air from above begins to give way to new exhilarating warmth: to the din of sweet music, the smell of smoke and alcohol, to the breath of sweaty humans and pungent perfume. Rocket has a dance floor that cannot be larger than ten square-metres, held up by four pillars around which a lot of things are happening.

The pillars carry loud speakers, flashing lights and mirrors. One can barely see those on the dance floor; they have been misplaced in a mist that is blowing across the hall. As the gas drifts away, they slowly begin to appear, like agitated ghosts in a cloud of white smoke.

The waitresses in their black and white skin-tight tops and miniskirts follow us to our table with Jack Daniels, Baileys, ice, olives, and Coke. Mbatu takes out his wallet and pays nonchalantly. We pour ourselves drinks and toast to the day – to this one moment when we can forget about all those who have worked so hard to put this country in shambles. We just want to have fun.

From the corner of my eye, I spot a girl dancing in a mirror and kids kissing in the VIP. There is smoke and lust in the air and I am glad we came. We are here for the good life, for a share of the sweet raw pleasures that only badly lit places like this can offer. The lights are flashing, the music is loud, the DJ is singing the praises of some guy who has gotten all the girls in the neighbourhood pregnant and the girls love it!

Mbatu keeps saying this is cool, this is cool. He pops the collar of his shirt, he smiles. He licks his thick lips. He looks around arrogantly. Mbatu is lust and arrogance. He gets up and approaches the girl in the mirror. He starts dancing with her. He is whispering into her ears. He sure knows how to dance and talk big around the ladies.

Brenda rises to her feet and draws me up. We find a space on the dance floor and begin to dance. Makossa from the good old days is playing and we are killing it on the dance floor.

Body temperatures rising, girls screaming, kids dancing and frolicking to raw music. Jack in my blood. Everything is coming together in a bad way. This is cool. There is a thing in my head: a maddening buzz like a feather-light spirit that consumes you and makes you high. I feel hot, elated, and gutsy.

I cannot recall clearly, but it must have taken me a while to realize that something was wrong. I remember noticing the guys on the other end of the hall moving aside and the girl in the mirror and other girls screaming their lungs out. The music stopped. The bouncers ran into the club and the bright lights were turned on.

Mbatu was lying on the floor. Then I saw his tongue, hanging out of his mouth like a big wet snake. I ran to him. Blood poured generously out of invisible taps – he must have been stabbed many times. I tried to stop it and was soon soaking in a red river of his blood. I think the bouncers and I dragged him out of the club, up the staircases and into the car, which a crying Brenda had driven to the entrance.

I remember Brenda thumping the horn and accelerator in mad fury as we charged away from the parking lot. She whizzed through the exit drive of the Rocket, towards the motorbike in front of us until we almost knocked it down. The rider gave way in perilous haste, fuming and cursing in disbelief. Mbatu lay fully stretched out on the back seat with his head on my knees. He was bleeding profusely and I tucked the cloth frantically around his wounds.

“Mbatu, please stay with us,” I pleaded.

His eyes rolled open for a while and he coughed a smile. It was a courageous smile meant to reassure us. Instead, I found the pain in my stomach solidifying. I felt all the emotions in my body coming together at a single point somewhere inside me and then dispersing throughout my body, slowly tearing me apart.

I looked out of the window but in the darkness and pain I barely noticed the dirty buildings and the mud walls flying past, the rubbish heap right at the centre of the road where street children with rashes all over their bodies and pigs wrestled for something to eat. The car swerved abruptly as Brenda struggled to dodge a lake that had appeared suddenly.

My throat itched. My heart was pumping as if I had just awoken from the most dreadful nightmare. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. The words dissolved before they could be spoken.

“Samba,” Brenda said. “Everything will be fine. Okay?”

I nodded.

“How is he now?”

“I think he is fine,” I said hastily, wanting it to be so. It had to be so. I wanted to tell Brenda that I could feel Mbatu’s spirit leaving us, but I feared that it would happen if I talked about it. I could see the determination burning in Brenda’s eyes.

“Samba,” Mbatu whispered weakly and smiled, but this time he did not open his eyes. His lips parted weakly, “Brenda, where is she?”

“Right here,” Brenda said with a finger on the horn. It had not stopped blaring since we drove onto the highway.

“Just drive on sweetheart. Everything will be fine. How long before we get to the hospital?”

“We’re almost there,” I murmured.

We left the Commercial Avenue and sped towards the Hospital Roundabout. A police checkpoint suddenly came into view at the next street light.

“Devils!” Brenda screamed. “They set up road blocks even in the centre of the city? This is senseless. This is insane.”

A cop stepped onto the road, holding up his right hand.

“Shit!” Brenda applied the brakes and the car squealed to a halt.

A blue police van was parked nearby with a number of police officers standing around. The cop, a bushy man with the stench of alcohol on his breath at three in the morning waved a flash light and put his chunky head through the car window. The urgency of the moment left me with no option but to develop an instant abhorrence for his existence.

“Vos papiers Madame,” he said in French. Greed and corruption were written all over his thick face.

“Officer, we don’t have time for this.” Brenda spat out the words like hot potatoes. “My friend is dying and we need to take him to the hospital now. We have everything. You will see them on our way back.”

“Really?” the black bulbous fool hissed as he stared through the window at the blood on my shirt. “Really?” he asked again with stonehearted indifference. His eyes glistened with immoral arrogance.

Brenda clutched at the wheel in a mad rage and I prayed that she would not do anything rash. One of the officers had pushed a barricade onto the road.

“Your papers, let me see them,” he smiled, revealing nasty brown choppers. His dirty uniform hung over his pot belly like the flag of shame.

“Don’t you see the blood?” Brenda yelled. “I said the man is dying!”

Mbatu shuddered.

“Your papers,” the officer ordered calmly.

Brenda searched around hoping to find them.

“Officer, I’m sorry,” I sputtered. “I’m afraid we don’t have them. Please. We need to get to the hospital.”

“Great! Great!” the officer said, unable to conceal his delight. “You tell me that you have papers, you even go ahead to shout at a commissioned officer and now you don’t have them anymore? You know what to do when you don’t have papers, don’t you?” he asked, his podgy fingers tapping gently at his cane.

“I don’t. Just do whatever you have to do and get out of the way, Mr. Officer,” Brenda said with raw sarcasm.

“No, no. It’s up to you young woman. You are old enough to know what is good for an officer. Aren’t you?” he beamed wickedly.

I was boiling over. I was about to detonate. Bubbles of rage had accumulated, burning at the tissues in my throat. I was thirsty. I had seen it before, many times before. This time however, I did not see it coming. That a skunk, a five star numbskull – would stop us and ask for a bribe so openly while Mbatu’s blood was pouring down my shirt – was … God! This was blatant, uncensored greed. Greed that could drive even Mephistopheles mad.

I wanted to reach out for the officer’s gun and put a bullet in his skull. I wanted to kill him. I had always believed nobody has the right to take another man’s life, but at that moment all I wanted to do was slaughter him. I wanted to peel his skin and lay bare the arteries and veins in his neck.

And yet I realized that it was not the man I really wanted to destroy. It was the greed. The culture of corruption and the perennial disrespect for the law. Even at the expense of the life of a good man. But what is a vice without a man? How could I do away with a vice without destroying the man in whom it had been introduced and nurtured and allowed to prosper?

Brenda began to search frantically in the glove compartment. Mbatu coughed and cleared his throat.

“No one is going to give a bribe here,’ he whispered painfully. ‘Not today guys.” His lips were twisted, his teeth prattled as he spoke. His face, however, was that of one who was at peace with himself.

I had heard that people do strange things when they are about to die and Mbatu’s words could not have been stranger.

“Mbatu, you are dying …” I reminded him.

“So be it,” he cut me off softly.

The numbness in my body gave way. I was taken captive by a new wave of desperation. Brenda had stopped talking. She was holding her head in her hands.

“Mbatu, I am sorry,” she said slowly, reaching for something in her hip pocket, “but we can’t let you die like this.”

“Brenda,” Mbatu whispered the name with a note of authority. His face contorted in pain. It was like he was summoning the spirits, gathering all that was left in him, all his strength and potency.

“Take my hand,” he ordered. Brenda took his hand and caressed it lovingly.

His voice was fading; we had to lean close to catch the waves of his whispers. “Do not defy the wish of a dying man.” He lay back and smiled kindly at us.

There was a long silence. An officer who had been standing close by came towards us.

“I think you should let them go,” he said to his colleague. “This is blood money man,” he said as he walked away.

The idiot contemplated for a moment before retreating unwillingly.

“Inspector Patrick,” Brenda said, reading from the badge on the officer’s shirt as we drove past. “You will hear from me if something happens to my friend, you rotten piece of shit!”

I was no longer a part of the world. Mbatu’s utterances had lifted me past the skies. I was floating nowhere in a state of wondrous adoration and reverence for him.

“Devils!” Brenda screeched as she steered the jeep to the centre of the road and raced all the way to the hospital.

Mbatu had passed out by the time we got there though the bleeding had slowed down. The place was teeming with sick people but doctors and paramedics were visibly absent. A boy helped us carry Mbatu through a sea of miserable eyes to the emergency room. A nurse was leaving the room as we came in.

I ran after her. “My friend is dying, someone has to attend to him now,” I said desperately.

She stopped in her tracks, looked me over and walked away without saying a word. I laughed, but it was not really a laugh. It could have been anything. I had become immune to shock. I ran back inside.

Mbatu had been placed on a bench. There was a woman with a rotten leg hanging painfully on crutches, and a kid who had lost both eyes in a fire, and six or seven people with unimaginable injuries lying on the bare floor.

“I think we are losing him,” I told Brenda. She nodded and kept on pacing up and down the room.

A long neck appeared at the door. She said a doctor was on the way and disappeared again. Brenda ran out, calling after her, but she would not stop. She shot forward and in a moment of madness grabbed the nurse roughly from behind and pinned her to the wall by her neck. I held my breath and waited. Somebody ran up to them and pulled Brenda away. The nurse rubbed her neck and hurried away as if nothing had happened.

I went back inside and waited. Brenda came back, swearing at the Devils and we went over to Mbatu and sat on the edge of the bench where he lay. We sat there wondering how a single doctor could attend to the score of critically injured people in the room. I sat there thinking about all the taxes that we had faithfully paid to Caesar. I sat there cursing the people for their inability to hold the Devils to account. We sat there for fifteen minutes, and then thirty minutes, and the doctor who was on his way still did not arrive. We sat there losing hope, pretending that everything was going to be fine.

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About the Author

Wise Ngasa Nzikie’s father introduced him to novels as a child. He would read a novel and think about the words in them for days. Words make noises in his head. They talk to him, so he writes them. As an activist and social entrepreneur, he writes against exploitation. He writes to provoke, to annoy, to insult, to change. He is 28 years old and holds a BSc. in Accountancy. He is currently undertaking a Masters in International Development at the Institute of Education of the University of London. He is the Founder of Action Foundation, a leading youth-development CSO in Africa. His Writivism Short Story Prize shortlisted story is ‘Devils’.