MELODIES OF WAR

The ex-marine brought out the M27 rifle from its case and with a machine’s cold efficiency checked its working parts.

His action was superfluous since the gun was always in pristine condition. He spent copious amounts of time on oiling and pampering it. But old habits die hard.

Booming music filtered into the room as he gave it a final once over.

As he marched out of the house with robotic purposefulness towards the party, his stare was distant and vacant.

Toby Fante’s 10th birthday was in full swing, and the evening air was thick with camaraderie.

The hollering of little children having fun mingled with the laughter of adults. There was an infinite offering of food and enough drinks to float a cruiser.

Here and there, islands of children huddled over games. There were also clusters of adults. The men drank as they discussed the latest football scores and the ladies regaled themselves with the latest fashion and reality show news.

But most of the crowd was singing and swinging to the booming music.

The gunshots started when Toby was about to cut his cake. The noise shredded the fabric of a glorious evening into bits.

Scythed down by a hail of bullets, humans crumpled like rag-dolls. The show of fun and laughter became a grim and gory affair as heads exploded and guts were cut to pieces.

Pandemonium reigned! Yet the booming music inexorably played on, impervious to the macabre scenes that reeled out under the dying evening sun.

Mrs Fante was astonished as the assailant emptied a clip into her.

“Leo…” she whispered. Disbelief suspended her head in the air for a few minutes before her eyes glazed over. Her face finally crashed to the ground and blood ran into the sands.

“Mum!” Toby shouted. He ran and embraced the bloodied form of his mother. When he looked up, tears were streaming down his eyes.

“Dad… why?” He asked, perplexed at the madness that was playing out before him.

The answer the celebrant received was another storm of bullets. The father emptied another clip into his son’s face, blowing it up into an unrecognizable pulp.

When Leo Fante stepped into the pool of his son’s blood, the fog of insanity lifted and his eyes flicked as awareness dawned.

“Toby… Sinda… what did I do?” He whispered, broken and despondent. He plopped down amid the carnage and cradled the heads of his wife and son on each thigh.

“What have I done?” Wondering at how he could have carried out such a senseless act, his body rocked back and forth in mortal anguish.

The nightmarish situation was beyond his comprehension. He looked around the field of death and shuddered.

Surely, he couldn’t have been the one that carried out the dastardly act. In the distance, sirens blared.

When the police got to the scene, they were all dead. Leo Fante committed suicide after decimating family and friends. As the police pondered and pored over the remains of the riotous evening, the music boomed on.

Newspapers and media houses went agog with the news. Amazingly, the news was not an isolated one.

There were many others of such, including suicidal cases, especially bizarre ones.

A groom during the reception party’s couple’s dance had kissed his bride and excused himself to make a quick dash to the gents.

A cleaner found him minutes later swimming in a pool of his blood from slit wrists.

In another incident, a young graduate had wildly taken an axe to his friends after a night of revelry across the clubs around town.

In other news across networks, the new band, Quitos, was still at the top of the charts for the second year running.

Several channels carried the faces of the band members, fresh-faced lads, giving interviews while eating ice cream. Their latest PR move was a donation of a massive library to a school in a dingy part of the city.

These guys were the latest rave and had colonized every available space, both on and offline.

Their popularity was such that their gazillion fans replaced the faces of the most famous popular heroes with theirs.

Hence, you will see Superman or Batman, cape and all donning the face of a member of Quitos.

Any merchandise emblazoned with something about the group, no matter how minute, sold out in no time.

A stadium had emptied during the most electrifying finals of a world cup ever because Quitos was in town coincidentally...

Melody King sat still during the service. Wringing her hands in between her thighs with tears pouring from her eyes, she made a disconsolate figure.

She was so visibly distraught that she couldn’t get up to mount the stage when it was her time to speak.

Melody could not believe that her grandpa was gone. They had shared a bond from the time he set eyes on her at the hospital after she was born.

Grandpa David was the one who christened her, Melody. He was also the one that made her fall in love with music.

During her growing-up years, they had spent hours doing acappella together. But what she enjoyed the most was when he accompanied her singing with his banjo.

This mattered a lot to her because being a shrinking violet, the only time she became so bold was when she sang.

She loved grandpa so much that she had left college immediately she got notification of his failing health.

The most agonizing thing about his death was that by the time she got into town, he had died. She hadn’t got a chance to say goodbye.

The morning after the funeral, eyes still bleary and red-tinged from too much crying and lack of sleep, she went for a jog to sweat out her lingering sorrow.

On her way back to the house, she saw a leather case that looked familiar and was immediately drawn to it.

It was her grandpa’s old banjo case. On opening it, she beheld the old, broken instrument.

Grandpa’s valuable belongings had been given away to charity, but this broken antiquity was of no use to anyone.

However, seeing it caused a squeeze in her heart and she started weeping again.

“Come here, Shabach (that was the name Grandpa gave the musical instrument). I am not leaving you behind, old one,” she said, face breaking out in a rueful smile.

When she walked into the house, her brother was having breakfast. His eyes opened in surprise when he saw the package in her hand.

“What are you doing with that fossil? More clutter to decorate your room with?” He asked.

She blew a raspberry at him and ran up the stairs. Getting to her room, she brought out the banjo and assessed it. The wood was chipped and only a string remained unbroken. Reverently, she replaced it inside the case.

Afterwards, she hurriedly cleaned up and carrying the case, left her room. Her brother was reading a business text when she got downstairs. His eyes cocked up in surprise again.

“No breakfast?” He asked.

“I am in a tearing hurry. I will eat when I get back.”

“Where are you going with that fossil?”

But she was already out of the door.

The Uber she had ordered dropped her off in front of a music store.

When the store owner saw the banjo, he started laughing.

“This is not a pawnshop,” he said, waving his hand round the shop filled with the latest instruments of music. “What do you want to do with this relic?”

“It has a story that makes it more valuable than this entire shop for me?” She replied curtly.

The Store owner, stung by her riposte, said, “I am not sure if I can bring it back to a working condition, but even if, it will surely burn holes in your pocket.”

Melody brought out her ATM card and waved it cheekily at him.

She was euphoric when the package containing the refurbished banjo came back.

Opening it, she fiddled with the strings and as of old; it released sweet melodies into the room.

The musical instrument still wasn’t a thing of beauty, but it was now functional.

Some days later, back in her dorm after an interminable day in school, she opened a can of orange juice and put on her telly to behold waves upon waves of grim news.

The latest, the work of an arsonist was an inferno in the country’s biggest refinery.  The universe was teetering on the edge of lunacy.

Fatigue and the torrent of unsavoury news bogged her spirit down. Bringing out Shabach, she put off the telly and started playing her grandfather’s favourite hymn.

Closing her eyes, her soul was soon immersed in the flow of soulful music and then, the incredible happened!

A cloak of fire wrapped itself around her. Engulfed, she shot out of the roof into the skies and when she beheld her reflection as she flew over a river, an ancient powerful armour which was also lighter than a feather covered her from the neck downwards.

There was a tiara of gold over her head and in the place of her old banjo was a golden harp buzzing with supernatural energy.

In seconds, Melody found herself over the inferno which had defied all fire-fighting remedies.

It surprised her that though the journey should have taken about three hours in an aircraft; she had done it in seconds.

Her head was full of unanswered questions, but a sense of destiny gripped her heart.

Looking at the inferno, she immediately knew what to do. She started playing the harp and heavy, dense and dark clouds formed over the conflagration.

Suddenly, the clouds tore up and heavy waterfalls akin to the Niagara poured on the blazing fire.

In no time at all, the voracious flames died without any further fuss.

As steam rose into the air, everyone was bemused, especially the firefighters. The most they saw was a comet-like figure that flew over the sky, leaving a trail of stars in its wake...

The concert had been a roaring success, and the party following it was even more rollicking.

There had been enough hard drugs, drinks and girls for everyone. Quitos had a reputation for off the hook parties and the concomitant mayhem that usually followed.

After the last one, a drunk fan had rammed his car into a truck, taking out four of his friends who were equally high on drugs.

When they got to their high-rise apartment on a private beach, they silently stripped and took an elevator to the dungeons below. 

A huge otherworldly space ship occupied most of the space. There were also a lot of strange machinery and pods connected to the walls and the ship.

Entering the different pods, they all emerged as muscular reptilian aliens.

Luminous skins decorated with scales, they all had forked tongues, pinpoint beady eyes, long tails and spoke in a sibilant foreign language.

Sitting at one machine, they connected to their base in the defence headquarters of their planet.

Their leader, who was purplish and hunkered above the rest started speaking into a greenish swampy looking screen.

“Watery world to Kalisss… watery world to Kalisss…”

The screen parted to reveal an older-looking species of their kind. Forked tongue darting, it spoke.

“What is happening Kaleo, your momentum has slowed down. Our planet is becoming drier by the minute and if we don’t take over earth quick enough, we will end up extinct. I also don’t have to tell you we have to maintain stealth since we cannot afford a long drawn out war that would result from a frontal attack.”

“Supreme Kahn, someone or something has been messing with us. Recently, some inexplicable force has been tempering the effect of our songs on the serotonin level and the other chemicals that have been causing humans to decimate themselves. Unfortunately, we could not locate the source.”

“Find the source, fool! And quickly too,” their leader hissed in rage. Find it quickly or the first people that will die will be your family and that won’t be from climatic causes! Find that source and end it, now!”

As the screen went off, Kaleo, enraged, let out a long scream that made the whole room shake. Bringing out his scimitar, he hacked a pod to pieces until he calmed down.

“I think I know how we can detect the problem, commander,” Sunta, the youngest but most intelligent reptile offered diffidently. Let’s monitor our sonic waves and find out where their effect least felt. That should give us an idea of where to concentrate our effort on.”

The rage in Kaleo’s eyes dimmed as he looked fondly at his subordinate. “You will get extra python flesh the next time we gorge. Beyond that, I will recommend you for promotion once we get back to Kalisss...

Melody woke up around 2 am and started playing Shabach. On getting submerged in the ocean of musical calmness that had become a way of life to her, she shot out of her room into a sky decorated with stars. Just then, her room went up in an explosion.

However, she rarely had time to dwell on her narrow escape because four creatures on noiseless strange looking gliders converged on her. They looked like flotsam from hell!

Fear surged in her heart as they circled her. Who were they? Where were they from? What did they want? At these thoughts, fear blossomed in her heart.

She engaged them with a nonchalance she wasn't feeling within.

“You must have missed your way demons. We don’t have the likes of you in these parts,” she said.

“For a wench, you have a large gob and I’ll shut it up for you permanently.

In Kalisss, girls should be like little children. Seen but not heard!” Kaleo replied as he drew out his massive blade..

“Where are your manners, demon? Hell must be prehistoric. I can’t abide guys who are not gentlemen.”

Weaving through their blades with incredible speed, she flew towards the peak of the highest building in her college, playing her harp-like her life depended on it and it did.

“Where are you running off to? Scaredy-cat?” Kaleo laughed, mocking her.

“Don’t bet on it.”

From their gliders, they shot some missiles at her, but a force-field formed around her suddenly and the projectiles exploded harmlessly.

The shield also took the force out of the bombs. Flames unexpectedly shot out of her harp and consumed one alien, burning him to a crisp.

He and his machine crashed to the ground.

The others went after him with Melody in pursuit.

Still strumming, she landed on her feet as the aliens retrieved their dead comrade from the wreckage.

This time, a forceful wind energized by Shabach threw a Mack truck at her foes. Another one got buried under the overturned vehicle.

Kaleo lashed out with his tail and caught her across the chest and she flew through a glass window into a departmental store, losing Shabach.

The pain slowly crushed the breath out of her. Losing her weapon meant that death was close by.

Fear crippled her senses as she tried to crawl to safety, which was a very laborious affair.

She started singing and inexplicably Shabach returned to her hand like a boomerang. When she grasped the instrument, her body started healing rapidly.

She got up and flew back into the skies. Kaleo was on his way to finish her while Terin, his second lieutenant, was attending to their fallen members.

They could not afford to leave any trace of their presence behind. He was surprised to still see her alive.

“You should have known that a woman’s ways are past finding out? It never bodes well for a man who can’t figure out women.”

She flung herself at  Kaleo and used Shabach to hit him with everything she had, everything! He soared, broke through a tool shed, landed hard on a saw and it severed his tail.

With X-ray super-vision, she made out Terin, though he was behind the truck. As she flew towards him, Kaleo gave a secret cry which meant that they should forget everything and return to base.

With impressive speed, Terin picked up Kaleo on his glider and they flew back to base with breakneck speed.

“Who is the scaredy-cat now? Melody called after them, laughing.

They got there ahead of Melody who was hot in pursuit but all the doors gave way before her harp until she got into the chilly chambers of their subterranean hive. The aliens were standing by their ship.

Kaleo snarled. At his wit's end now, he drew a gun and blasted away at her, but her harp deflected the blasts.

Gazing deep into the pits of their eyes, the evil that she saw lurking there repulsed her and she knew what must be done to rid the world of their malevolence once and for all .

“Go back to hell where you belong!”

She started playing furiously, and a time warp opened to suck up everything alien in the chamber.

“Nooooooo…”

The echoing screams of the aliens were the last thing she heard.

Leaving a burning building behind, hungry and tired, she flew back to school.

There sure was a new superhero in town… The Minstrel!

Ekpo Ezechinyere ©2020