Read 'Conmasters' by Ahmad Abdullah

Chief Kosoko and his wife peered down at each other across the dining table. The table could sit twenty people and by African standards, it was quite long. The story behind the table was an interesting one, for Chief bought the table to fill them with his children which he hadn’t had any for the past thirty years after trying with several women.

His youngest wife Clara, married him recently and hated his guts beyond measure, and Chief was well aware of this. She could be his illegitimate daughter for he had raped her mother a long time ago when she was his father’s maid.

The same stupidity that led him to do such a heinous act was the same that led him to attempt to marry the daughter. Although he felt she wasn’t his daughter based on the logic that her mother had allowed all the boys in the house to rape her, the truth was she looked as luscious as her mother without any form of his genes manifesting in the beautiful specimen she had become.

Also, he stupidly felt she couldn’t have known of his past misdemeanor with her mother. And so they peered down at each other on this particular day at the dining table, each harboring a secret that left them feeling quite elated.

Clara had been pregnant ten times and seems to make a sport of miscarrying them. The pain on Chief’s face when the doctor breaks the bad news to him was the most satisfying. She had made it a point of enjoyment to abort these babies just to satiate her hunger for revenge.

Chief had suspected this by the ninth pregnancy and confirmed on the tenth. He gazed at her wondering how a lady could do such to herself out of revenge. Clara could read his body language and knew as well that he suspected at the ninth and was quite well aware after the most recent abortion she had. They both were at the crossroad of what to do next with their lives.

It occurred to Chief that she was aware of her mother’s rape and wasn’t surprised now that her mother had told her. He had met her mother a virgin, the ordeal was quite a messy one as he recalled. He didn’t know what was more satisfying now; raping the mother or sleeping with the daughter who had the knowledge of him raping the mother. He peered down at his food, after taking the last morsel. Sweat dripped down his forehead.

‘How gullible am I,’ he thought to himself as he peered down at his exceedingly triumphant looking wife.

‘Don’t worry,’ Clara shouted with a furious flair, ‘I emptied the poison in your meal and you’ll be dying within minutes.’

‘This is my last supper eh!’ Chief shouted back with measured calmness. His stomach grumbled and he made an effort to fart but only ended up soiling his trousers with blood. He wasn’t alarmed. He had been diagnosed of having stage four colon cancer and hadn’t had the gut to kill himself.

He motioned towards his breast pocket and brought out a note and clutched it in his hand tightly. He tried to stand up and an excruciating pain shot up his spine towards his head. He splattered bloody vomitus across the floor and what shitting blood at the same time.

He made an effort to take another step before but he slipped on the floor. Clara hovered above him, excitedly vindicated. The only problem she had was her bastard husband was still smiling in death, dignified. He didn’t deserve that. She was about to smash his face with her pointed heels and stopped short when her husband contorted his mouth to speak.

‘I leave all my wealth to you,’ he whispered, then a glint appeared in his eye, ‘take care of our children!’ and he died.

Clara was puzzled and her heart pounded at the uncertainty that his statement has unleashed in her plans. She desperately wanted him to elaborate. She peered at the note in his hands and wriggled it from his clutched fingers.

‘Dear Clara,’ it read, ‘thank you for making my dreams come true. I’m elated to inform you that you have no womb and twenty beautiful eggs of yours have been inseminated successfully in well groomed surrogates. See you in hell!’

Ahmad Abdullah, AKA Ahmad Holderness is a medic and a writer who is about to be published. He is the director of Home Of Book foundations that seek to help Nigerian youths to read and write better. His writings can be viewed at and you can follow him on instagram at @home_of _books_foundation

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