The ‘black sheep’ of the family was Faku. Mthetho considered her to be a disappointment to his reputation. The 23 year old had a large dry afro and half of her face was dark-green. Her right eye was also mysteriously pitch black.

Faku was the result of Mthetho having sex with a servant named Wendy who worked in his yard. Once Mthetho found out Wendy was pregnant, he knew he had to kill her. In Lazar there is a great punishment for having sexual relations with those you are not married to. Mthetho wanted Wendy to kill her baby but she refused. So one night Wendy was dragged to a grass hut by two brawny guards. She spat blood as she was yanked along the rocky ground. A great punishment awaited her for the crime she committed. Once inside, the guards tied her to a chair. Mthetho followed closely behind the guards. He tugged at a necklace dangling on his neck, which had a mini bottle latched onto it that contained a green liquid.

As he walked towards Wendy he popped the lid off the bottle. One of the guards pulled her jaws apart, Mthetho began pouring the liquid in her mouth.

“If you had done as requested, killed that thing inside of you, we wouldn’t be here,” he said.

As she started to get dizzy, the guards untied her from the chair and watched her shrivel to the ground.

“By morning she should be dead,” Mthetho said turning towards the exit with his guards.

What they had forced her to drink was a crocodile’s bile known to putrefy a person’s inside once consumed. Those who drank this bile were expected to die within hours. This form of punishment was reserved for those who committed the worst of crimes in Lazar.

After the men had left, some of the wives from the village came to help as they heard faint cries coming from the hut Wendy was in. Even though Wendy was in such bad shape, the women were still able to deliver the baby.

Once they had finished delivering the baby, the women noticed Wendy had stopped breathing.

One of the wives closed her eyes and said. “She must have been killed by pains and losing too much blood.”

When Mthetho examined Wendy’s body in the morning he realised the bile didn’t affect her.

“What could have gone wrong?” he asked himself.

Although he hated Faku from a young age, he couldn’t bring himself to kill her. For that mere reason he decided instead to make her life a living hell. Faku served as a slave in her own home. The fact that she couldn’t reward him with anything irritated Mthetho.

“How could I have given birth to such an ugly creature?” he would ask himself.

Whenever feeling hurt, Faku would run to the hut where she was born and there she received comfort.

***

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