Wounded Roads | Ridwan Adédèjì | Short Story

He continued to nowhere, somewhere along wounded roads. And on he walked and walked and walked and walked and walked.

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Wounded Roads
Visualization of mental illness. Image Credit: Nsey Benajah on Unsplash.
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The morning is ushering out men in numbers into another floundering day of restlessness and dashing human mobility. It is vomiting from its dark abdomen an array of human landscape in their robotic inclinations to remain one thing, that is, human.

And except for a few instances of slothful dreamers who are resuming in the comfort of their beds despicably with another lap of drool and snores and floatation in the space men go when they sleep, everyone is going their way in pursuit of one thing or the other—the traders to their markets, school children into the waiting arms of their teachers, and even this story writer is dragging into his mind the sprawling human presence—all in for a ride on the stretching tongue of Joy Street.

Up in the overhead sky, the resplendent sun beams its omniscient rays on the earth, its inflections, and harried human occupants of which people on JS are a microcosm.

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Its complimentary opposite, the moon, insubstantial and overwhelmed by the daylight sourced from the sun, is fading into nothingness. It glares at the filled street, a diametric contrast of what it is in the dark.

The two heavenly bodies seem to be in the middle of a conversation they hold often anytime nature brings them to each other’s presence. They gossip in hushed voices. They tattle about a young man walking down the muddy pothole-punctuated street; a road that has in times recent become an altar of death.

The youth stops. They stop too. At a stretch, his legs creak. He steals a glance momentarily at the sky. In fear of discovery, the sun clamours for the clouds to be its cover and the moon for its evanescent plunge into the lake of forgetfulness. They both think he has found them out.

The young man, Bambi, years lost from the current and the brown pus road his protesting legs are taking him to, continues unconsciously, oblivious of the din and rush of human activities. He is numb and except for his expressionless pair of spectral eye sockets, and fatigued beanpole legs, could have been no different from a scarecrow. He is obviously ignorant that he is the topic the fairly glowing morning sun and the dull white moon spit words about.

With relief on their faces and confident he is not capable of comprehension, the ancient twin illuminations begin his story. They relate it with such confidence, convinced they are not within the earshot of any human.


The seemingly endless road took him two days before, then a new inmate in the dark cave of cluttered thoughts fettered by a slip of trigger. It has since wore him out in layers and gnawed his reasoning into decay.

There was a time he wasn’t like this; a time he too donned in childhood innocence and juvenile purity. A time he was not the desultory man caked in dust and dirt walking on and on with aching limbs.

Born of the Kayefi family, an only child, he used to be his father’s apple in the eyes and mother’s heartbeat. He was pampered with a lot of material niceties that someone from afar, oblivious of his modest background, might easily mistake his wooden spoon for a silver one. His father worked in the Ministry of Justice and mother was simply an activist for women equity and emancipation. They had their happy nights together. Bad nights crept upon him stealthily too though he was cajoled by misleading interpretations and the thought, when he later understood, that they held much significance.

These happy nights mumbled stories of romance into the growing ears of father’s apple in the eyes. Gentle cold breeze brushed whispers of the nights on the lotioned effulgent skin of mother’s heartbeat.

“When I saw your mother walk towards the tree on whose taut roots I sat,” his father began a night. “I felt the connection. The chemistry surged through my veins. I immediately knew she was the one. I needed no seer’s help to know I had found my missing rib.” He would jump dramatically at this point, “I jumped on to my feet and you are the result of the leap. You are the best gift this beautiful woman has ever given me.”

Mum blushed while his father continued. They had met in the university where the father was pursuing a degree in Law and the mother in Sociology. After crossing of ts and dotting on is, they “clicked” and found themselves in matrimony.

His father regurgitated this story of their union for more than a half decade of his formative years, that even as a child, Bambi could relate the story without having to fill needless gaps of omission.

Perhaps he was too embroiled in these very pleasant stories peppered with parental cuddling, play toys, childhood happiness of hangouts at amusement parks and zoological gardens or just too possessed with puerile innocence to have noticed Papa and Mama go at a game of interchangeable kicks, spats, and face-reddening touches of henna where father always won and mother always whimpered and shouted. Later, during the family evening devotion, those whimpering and shout were drowned by discs of sonorous hallelujahs. Then, silence, master of them all, sat on the throne. He was too engrossed in so many things that he didn’t notice these pranks his parents played.

He was void of understanding when he eventually discerned these physical brushings. Then, he had found them out when he walked into the master bedroom where his father was massaging a resonant mother in the face, tummy, shoulder with fists and legs. The duo was caught off guard and mounted a plausible defence.

“It’s nothing you can understand. But let me try and explain. What you saw your mother and I doing is called the Adults Game like there’re Ben 10 and Die Hard for the people of your age. Only adults play this game. You will understand better when you grow up,” his father assured him after his energy evaporated.

“Yes—yes. You can’t understand,” his mother affirmed with jerk of nods like a lizard when silence, the seal of words, left her and words came trooping into her world.

Bambi believed every of their words and even envied their playfulness. He wished in his infantile heart he could be drawn into their game somehow as an active participant. His discovery did not however stop them, rather it accentuated their playfulness.

Weeks after his discovery, what started as a few streaks of water tossed around on a flat flap of a cocoyam leaf by the brush of wind soon escalated into a pelting rain that deprived the leaf any further hold of drops. The masseur graduated from the bedroom where he did businesses with the chorister to the living room, a larger and overt ring, where Bambi needed not peep through the threshold or the door hole before he watched the two thespians directly.

After a bout of one of their numerous physical engagements played out right before his eyes, he saw his mother whimpering and went to her, repeating to her ears what she had told him: “Mama, ‘acting and playing prolong life’.” The latter recoiled in terror, shaking her head in self-pity.

He began to detect something was not right after all though a little later. His mother was on a television programme, one of the few she ever participated in. He was sitting next to his father in a two-seater cushion chair watching the programme. Strangely enough, she was ferocious with words and painstaking criticism of men who harassed their wives—he was befuddled as details of harassment were in consonance with his parents’ playfulness—with touches of bitterness and fearlessness. That day, she wasn’t her usual self; the mum he had grown up to know. She was bitter like a bitter leaf, fearless like a lioness and outspoken like a canary.

The programme was barely halfway when his father changed the television channel. Bambi protested. And instead of budging to his remonstration, Mr. Kayefi switched off the television set altogether.

The intense kicks and punches, swing of chairs and utensils, curses and shouts that greeted his mother’s welcome only confirmed his swaying suspicions further. There before his eyes was a real one-sided wrestling bout, a hell in the cell.

That was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Mrs. Kayefi appeared the next day with an enveloped document expressing her discontinued interest in the marriage. She wanted the marriage dissolved and demanded to be addressed by her maiden name!

“Are you alright?” the husband asked impassively trying to suppress his anger.

“Alright? I bet that is a question for you to answer,” the estranging woman curtly retorted.

“Tell me this is a joke,” the husband tried on a wry smile.

Bambi’s mother flared up in anger: “Do I look like one to you? See, I have had it all up to my neck. I cannot keep jumping fences. I am off, period!”

Bambi was prompted into the building by their raised voices from the backyard where he was shedding the chaffs of melon seeds. He peeped through the kitchen’s door hole and saw them go at it, only he now made meaning of their interlocution and saw with his two eyes the enactment of a heightened television version of his mother.

Mr. Kayefi made a lunge at his wife. But he stopped dead in his track when the expectant wife brandished a knife from her hand bag at him.

“Dare me!” Bambi’s mother insisted as she checkmated him with a lasting smirk.

His father dashed for upstairs in what Bambi thought a cover of his shame. The mother waited expectantly. Bambi tried to review the situation. He contemplated on whether he should join his mother or stay put until he was called. Deliberating in his head, he was jarred back to the present when a louder noise rent the air.

He wasn’t mistaken—that could not have been from a combative Hollywood movie. It was surely the sound of a gun. Bambi’s mother went down, her eyes turning bleak with lifelessness as the floor bloomed a field of red petals.

“Ma—” the helpless child called out, the other syllable hanging in the air. He saw a morose—or was it masochist?—father descend the stairs, looking first at the corpse—as if to ascertain its death—and then in the direction of the kitchen.

Immediately, Bambi took the backyard route outside the compound. Behind him he heard—or thought he heard—the gun trail off again, only he was miles away from the present and the future. He continued to nowhere, somewhere along wounded roads. And on he walked and walked and walked and walked and walked.

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