He wasn't an honest man. I was a killer, the legal kind, a government-sanctioned hit man. I did the bidding of the law, to guide those who have been condemned to death, my job isn’t to make the end of their life easy, instead, it was to make them feel the pain. I have seen how men behave at the end of their lives, those who cry and show repentance, those whose eyes don’t show any emotions, those who are hardened and would take death bravely in anticipation, the scared ones, who convulse, releasing the contents of their bladder. I have seen men at their lowest, and I have seen them at their highest, just before the light in their eyes dwindle. I have seen the dead come back to life without a heartbeat, only to die again, this time final.
Everything has its time. And there comes a time when your conscience begins to question the path you’ve chosen. You begin to ask questions about the ethics of what you’re doing. You start finding reasons to justify why you must end their lives. You go through the case files, you break the rules and attach yourself to the subject, and sometimes you expose your face, which lingers on them as they drift into eternity. Such was the case of Benjamin Kuye.
He was innocent, although he didn’t lead a responsible life. Born into a lowly family, Ben as everyone called him, was notorious. He had started a gang with his friends at the tender age of 10. No one seemed to care about what young Ben did, his father was a known drunkard who had as many children as he couldn’t count. His mother, on the other hand, was a money-sex practitioner who neither had the strength nor the emotions to become a mother. Leaving Ben to survive anyhow he deemed fit. By the time he was 16 he had been to jail, five times and been shot 3 times, with a long history of violence. The gang he had started, became a full-blown menace to the community. At 22 it became one of the deadliest gangs in the entire state, nothing bad happened, without its fingers all over it. Ben was untouchable. But the one thing that I found puzzling was that, 3 years later, at the age of 25 Ben, turned a new leaf. What happened, what changed him, no one could understand. They just saw that he had changed. A year later, at 26, he was arrested. The state governor was killed, and Ben was found at the scene with the murder weapon. How did that happen? Not even Ben could explain.
Ben only had one certainty, his innocence. Throughout the trial, he maintained his innocence. But his long history of violence had indicted him even before the trial. He was sentenced to death, by hanging. The ruling was easy, all of the evidence pointed at him.
I believe people change, for good or bad. But for someone to have changed for good and suddenly, they’re caught committing murder, looks fishy. My conscience had made me go deep and study the case and figure out what was missing, it wasn’t my duty or my business but I didn’t want to stain my conscience any further by killing an innocent man, damned by false evidence. Facts might lie, but the dead don’t lie, the more I dug the shadier the entire story proved.
It was obvious someone had set Ben up. So I took up courage and proceeded to interview Ben. He was unreceptive at first, he seemed to have resigned his fate, but the more we spoke the more he saw that I believed his innocence, and he began to open up to me more. He spoke to me telling me what made him change.
In his words, “One day I had an epiphany, I don’t know, what exactly happened but it just happened. I was in the bar drinking with my friends, and suddenly I felt disgusted, we were supposed to be happy, I was supposed to have been happy - - - yet, something in me felt broken, it was almost as if I could see myself and I hated what I saw. This was after the election, we had just conducted a successful rigging operation for the state governor—the now late man. The one I was accused of killing. He had paid us handsomely after he was announced the winner. So we were celebrating, but all of a sudden as I said, I felt the need to leave. To distance me from everything. So I stood up and left, I went home and I saw my partner, she was in a sober mood, I asked what happened and she told me she was pregnant. Then it made sense to me why I felt disgusted so suddenly. Years earlier I had promised myself to leave the thuggery life behind the moment I had kids. So I had to leave. We packed our bags, I had a few cash stashed and we left. I began living an honest life, as a plumber. Till I found myself at the crime scene.”
Now I understood why he had turned a new leaf, but I was still confused about the second part, how did he end up at the crime scene. The official story was that he had accused the governor of not paying him for the election rigging services, which led to a scuffle resulting in the governor’s death. But from his testimony, that was false. He had admitted to being paid. So even if they fought, it sure wasn’t about money. So, who was pulling the strings? It was quite obvious that whoever did was from the top. Every day I pondered on every scenario, but none made any sense.
His death was fast-tracked by the new governor and suddenly he was led to the gallows. I found myself face-to-face with him. For the first time in my entire career, I shivered. He was calm, it was as though we had switched roles, he the hangman and me the condemned. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, to kill an innocent man will send me to a state of agony, my conscience had reached its limit. I tied the noose around his neck and waited, for the signal
Heei🥺, he can't die yet o😭😭. This is a beautiful sad piece.