SILENCING LISA

“I hope we understand each other now, John,” the girl said, her fingers spread out, the long painted artificial nails looking like talons. The claws somehow reminded John of a bird of prey. “You’re a popular prophet. Are you prepared to be called upon to be funny in a court?”
John Kalota, the self- proclaimed prophet, ran a nervous hand through the huge mass of his well-oiled black hair worn in an afro wig style. The number of titles he had bestowed on himself would have made even the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin get a heart attack with envy. John was also known as senior pastor, baba, brother of Jesus, elect of God, founder and general overseer of Miracles Church and other such flowery titles. Idi Amin also had a pile of titles.
The girl was placing him between a rock and a hard place. He did not really have any choice. Either way he was doomed. If he married her he would not only be disgraced but his ministry would be finished too. And his bread and butter came from the ministry. Without it, he would have no source of income. If he did not, she would go to court and the results would be the same.
What a position! He felt like a person with his back against the wall and a sharp knife pointed at his throat. He was indeed walking in a forest of dangerous beasts and he needed to walk warily.
He examined the options before him. Marrying the girl would automatically mean leaving the priesthood and divorcing his first wife. On the other hand, if he did not marry her she would go to court. Consequently, he would be dishonoured and his ministry would collapse like a pricked balloon.
John had done all he could to make her understand his position. For weeks he had reasoned with the obstinate young woman, but all in vain. She had declared passionately that he had promised to marry her, for one thing and that she could not afford to raise the baby alone, for the other. “It’s hard for a woman who has a child and no husband to support herself and the child,” she had insisted.
He understood her reasons. But to him survival came first. From being a minibus tout, by the hook or by the crook, he had crawled his way up from the tiny gathering under a mango tree in the stinking slums to the huge assembly that now gathered in the prestigious hall of the five star hotel. He was well known for his powerful sermons and his frock treated him like a god. But now his throne of power was tottering beneath him. There was no way he was going to let this ill-fated affair make all that go to waste. It was life and death that he must keep this unfortunate affair a secret.
He had tried to assure the girl that he would make arrangements that saw to it that she and the child received his full financial support. But she had made it clear that she would stop at nothing but marriage. Nothing more or less.
The pastor regarded the girl curled in the sofa before him. She was very beautiful and it was this beauty that had got him into this sticky mess. He had first met her about a year and a half ago. He had given her a lift in his car. As soon as he set his eyes on her, his heart skipped a beat. It was not that he was a man who fell for every attractive woman he saw. As a preacher he was always meeting beautiful women and he had learned to respect them. Above all he was already happily married to a lovely woman with whom he had three kids. But the girl was something else. She was a stunner. He had felt something pulling him to her the way a magnet attracts a piece of metal.
They had talked. Lisa. Lisa Njonda, that is what she said her name was. She told him she worked as a typist at the city’s water supply company. He had found himself telling her that he was a prophet and lying significantly that he was not married. Since the advent of prosperity prophets, he knew that women knew that such prophets were loaded with money. It was not any different from announcing yourself as a millionaire.
He had seen her look at him with respect. Not that he had not been looking the part. Like all typical Pentecostal prophets, he was always dressed to impress and the car he was driving was the latest Mercedes Benz. He could see love gleaming in her beautiful eyes.
He had seen her to her home on the other side of the town. They agreed to meet again. They met several times and the result of their meetings was a love affair. During their first meetings he always told himself it would be the last. However whenever he was in her company he became scatter-brained and realized later that he had promised to see her again. She quickly became his bad habit.
John, who had once been a faithful husband, found himself cheating on his wife. He lavished gifts on Lisa and took her out to have fun in hotels and places in a far-away city. He always made sure that no one who knew him should see him with her.
To his congregation, John had still been the same dedicated preacher. He still carried out his duties efficiently and repeatedly thundered out against sin. After all, if King David, the very anointed of God had sinned, who was he not to sin? Yet he forgot that sin begets more sins and David’s sin had ended in murder.
And so, the pay day came sooner than he expected. One day Lisa told him that she was in the family way and he was responsible for it. She also made it clear that she expected him to marry her.
It was then that he revealed that he was already married and as such he could not marry her because his church did not allow polygamy.
“You never told me that about that” she had countered. “What I know is that you’re single and you promised to marry me. You’ll have to fulfill your promise.”
“What is your decision, John?” Lisa’s voice jolted him out of his thoughts. “Please be reasonable. Marry me and everything will be alright.”
John wanted to scream that nothing would be alright. Where on earth would a married pastor impregnate a girl, marry her and expect his flock to accept that? It never worked that way. His calling as a man of God depended on his reputation. He was the anointed of God and his congregation expected him to behave like one.
“Let me think this thing over,” he replied at length.
Lisa shook her head. “I’ve already given you enough time. I can’t wait any more unless you mean to marry me.”
“Okay. Just give me a few more days. I’ll tell you my decision by the end of this week,” he assured her.
He left her and arrived at his house distraught with worry. Luckily for him his wife was away visiting her sick mother or she would have noticed that something was weighing heavily on him. He paced up and down the lounge like a caged animal.
Suddenly an idea crossed his mind. A smile flickered on his face as the idea took form in his mind. He was in trouble because Lisa was threatening to take him to court. What if she did not find that chance?
The following day he procured some rat poison from a shop. He dissolved it in water and put the water in a flask. Then he phoned Lisa and told her that he would take her out to some quite spot for their discussion the next day. “That’s fine with me,” she agreed.
The next afternoon he picked her up and they drove out of town. He made sure that no one saw her get into his car. The car came to a halt deep in a forest. It was a perfect spot for his sinister plan. It was quite and remote; far from the main road. She could scream her lungs out and nobody would come to her rescue. It would be days before her body would be discovered, that is if it was not devoured by the wild beasts that infested the forest.
“Remember to bring along the flask of cold water, honey,” he told Lisa as he was getting out of the car. “It’s so hot, we might need it.”
John walked away and sat down under the shade of a tree beside the road. He watched Lisa approach, the flask in her hands. Little did she know that she was carrying her own death in the flask.
She sat down beside him. John told her that he was going to marry her and would voluntarily be leaving the priesthood.
Lisa literally jumped with joy. “I knew you loved me and you’d marry me,” she gushed. “That’s why I insisted that you marry me, darling.” Then she added. “You were right to bring the water, I’m thirsty already.”
His scruples as a pastor momentarily returned. Scruples? He smiled to himself considering what he was about to do. He decided that he did not want to watch her drink the poison in case something would make him stop her. “I’m coming, honey,” he said getting to his feet. “You can finish all the water. I don’t think I’ll need any.”
He had hardly disappeared into the forest when Lisa screamed, “John, look out!”
He looked back. Lisa still had not opened the flask and was pointing at something to his left frantically. He swung around in time to see a bloodied animal with a mangy mottled hide leaping at him. Instinctively, he raised both hand to protect himself.
The animal crashed into him with a force that sent him measuring his length on the ground. Its snapping jaws tore at his left shoulder. He staggered to his feet and prepared to sell his life dearly as the animal backed off a little in preparation for another attack. The creature leapt at him again, sending him sprawling to the ground again. He desperately held it off by the neck as its jaws again and again snapped at the air, splaying him with flecks of blood and saliva from its mouth.
The prophet knew he could not hold off the brute for long. He was wounded and loosing blood and the hyaena was determined to make him its meal. All of a sudden some men joined the fight but the beast did not draw back. It caught on his right wrist and pulled hard at it. He fell forward, dragged by its grip. He knew that he was finished. But suddenly the hyena let go and backed off. It let out a piteous wail and fell back. Then it was still.
“We’ve been chasing this brute since dawn. It killed some of our goats. We speared it but it managed to get way,” one of the men said. So that explained why he had been able to fight the hyaena off. The animal had been injured otherwise it would have easily killed him in the struggle.
Lisa came over and bent over him. “Are you hurt, darling?” John tried to stand up but found out that he could not. His head was swimming and pain enveloped his whole body. He tried to speak out but no words came out. “Water,” is all he managed to say.
She disappeared momentarily and then reappeared carrying the flask of water in her hands. She poured some into a cup. “Here, drink some, dear.”
Immediately, John remembered the poison. Lisa did not know about it. She would give him the poisoned water. He found out that he could not speak. His tongue had turned to cotton wool. With the strength of mortal fear he suddenly shouted, “Water… poisoned!”
He knew he had lost. It would all be out soon. Everyone would know that he, Prophet John Kalota, had made a girl pregnant and then tried to murder her. He had finally fallen from the gates of heaven down through the open waiting gates of hell.
End