“Shut up you son of a gun!” The king boomed in a thunder-like voice with an effusion of explosive anger.

In a twinkle of an eye, the spirit of the man’s great grandfather, alongside with a heavenly host, flashed into sight, dazzling in seraphic and divine powers. How desperate he was to be saved, but something very strange happened.

The earth trembled and clouds of furious fire poured down as if from hell, devouring the Ndondotcha into nothing but mere ashes.

“Go back and live my dear great grandson,” the grandfather smile and bade him farewell.

Like an irony itself, the man found himself still enveloped in the winding-sheet and in that solitary confinement. He was in a tightly closed room without even a single molecule of oxygen to gasp. But he could sense himself being passed on from one side to another in the forward direction like on the pitch.

What? … No! He could not believe his ears.

“With friends on earth we meet in gladness, while swiftly the moments fly, yet ever the thought of sadness that we must say good-bye…” (Literally translated) Tikakhala ndi abwenzi mziko lathu lino posachedwa timalekana nao mwa chisoni.

It was a dirge with a sorrowful tune sung by a choir of women.

“No! This is the journey to the grave,” he freaked out and began banging and pummelling the walls of the cramped room with rapid strenuous brows though in a blur of daze. After a while he felt himself being taken down to the ground and to his bombshell. He saw a rough hand with some wrinkles opening a door of the tiny room in which he had been.

When he lifted his head high, he caught a glimpse of men and women in large numbers, all bracketed with a sad mood punctuated with crocodile tears on their hypocritical faces.

Sure I could have gone to my maker, he thought with a relieved heart as pallbearers helped him out of the coffin.

***

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