STORIES OF THE DILAPIDATED HUMAN.

KIPTOO’S STORY.

By Brian Nzomo.

In the year 2012, I was posted as a teacher-in-practice at Londiani secondary school, together with my colleague Derrick Njenga. It was the moment we had waited for earnestly, as this was the final stride before graduation.

I was particularly exhilarated because many of my relatives had confided in me that they would help me find a suitable teaching job as soon as I was fully qualified.

Life in Londiani secondary school was a bromidic one. The students were few in number and the infrastructure was unappealing. The staffroom itself was disgraceful to say the least. It was too cramped, stuffy and disconscientous. But we were pleased by the submissive nature of the boys. They were easily controllable and the fear stoked in their hearts by their iron fist principal Mr. Ng’eng’o made them wither like deplorable cravens at the sight of canes, or merely, at the booming tone of a teacher’s voice.

I won’t lie to you. There was something fulfilling about brutalizing those boys and seeing them break. Njenga told me he did not like it sometimes, and that he would regret it afterwards. But I always told him, “Nonsense, surely, there is an enlivening air engulfing your spirit whenever you see a boy tremble at the sight of your power!”

He never agreed and I couldn’t understand why. It felt ethereal. And I made it my mission to inoculate brutality prevalently on those students, with an aim of feeding off my pleasure with their fear and their pain.

One evening, it became apparent that I was another being entirely. Njenga and I were on duty. We sat at the staffroom chatting while watching the small TV set on the cage above the wall at the corner.

Then two form one boys entered the staffroom. One of them was lodging a case against the other.

“He has stolen my cup and has refused to reinstate it to me!” The plaintiff said.

“This cup is mine. I have asked him for proof. He cannot ascribe any to convince me this cup is his. He might be as well lying!” The defendant interjected.

I was bored by the relentless interrogation Njenga gladly carried out. Why should two stupid boys waste our precious time? Then a gust of warm desire to inflict pain swoon over me.

I couldn’t resist the urge to supplant pain upon these two boys. I locked the staffroom door and picked up a bamboo cane.

“Now, the both of you should go down! Lie down!”

“Kiptoo!” Njenga was perplexed. “What are you doing? You can’t cane these boys?”

“Or can I?” I asked grinning. The boys’ were visibly in terror. I was craving for that. Terror. And now, I wanted more. To hear their cries of plea and agony.

“Drop your shorts!” I ordered them.

Njenga was stunned. But he was a weakling, I deduced. An unworthy discipliner. I would care less about what he would do or say. The boys subserviently but tearfully dropped their shorts and there lying before my eyes were their bare bums. Sojourning my strokes. (Cane strokes, not any other stroke your perverse mind may mill)

I can’t remember for how long I was caning them. I was a mad man for a moment. I rained terror on them, gleefully idolizing the lashlines my cane made. Njenga was shouting at me. Ordering me to stop. But to hell with him, I didn’t care about him.

When one of the boys stood up and attempted to run, I grabbed his small head and smashed it against the wall. The impact was fatal and he fell on the floor. The other boy on seeing his classmate possibly dead beside him, could take it no more and also struggled to get up and take flight.

I pleasurably kicked his nose till it bled. Njenga decided to restrain me but he was far less muscular than I was. I hurled him to the table and charged at my victim. The boy had no where else to escape. I discarded the cane and clenched my fists. One, two, left, right, left, right, right again. Till the boy was no more than a corpse. I had killed two students that night. And I felt nothing but satisfaction. I expected fear to nail me to horror. But nothing happened.

I was a new man. I felt relieved. Like something that was forever encaged in my heart had broken free and the tethered darkness had abounded inside me. Pervading me entirely.

Njenga and I got rid of the bodies of those two boys in an abandoned quarry somewhere at the rear fence leading out of the school. I had the untameable desire to do it again. Squelch out the life of another student. And feed of his terror as his life vaporized from within him. But Njenga made it impossible. He threatened to reveal everything should I repeat the mistake again.

Clearly, the police were a useless bunch. They promised to carry out investigations about the disappearance of the boys. But they never guessed their bodies are somewhere in a quarry just within the school premises. And the October rains had just began. The quarry would fill up and it would be months again before anyone ever finds those bodies. In short, Njenga and I escaped conviction in these murders.

Although it was seven years ago, much has happened between that time and now. I have taught in three schools as a fully registered teacher. And in each of these schools, I have killed over ten students. Six are girls, four boys. I have discarded their bodies in places the police would never dream of finding.

This is shocking, but there is an unrivaled pleasure in being the object of fear and horror. Like two of the girls I have done away with. How pleasurable it was to rape them and slit their throats thereafter. And again, wallow in the sexual pleasure of their bodies cold as slate.

Time is running out for me. The police would soon detect a pattern in these students’ disappearances. One man in four schools and ten students in these schools are nowhere to be found. Njenga taught in some school in Meru for two years before he finally commited suicide. He had emailed me a day before his death saying he can’t live with the memories of Londiani. Such a weak and feckless man!

I don’t intend to take my life. There are too many pleasures to be fulfilled. Too much darkness to be embraced. And too many a macabre endings to be harnessed.

Brian, I needed to rant to you about this. Because I need you to warn the world about my impending storm. A slit to the throat and a phallus to the holes. Aah, fulfilling.

I know they will one day catch me and kill me like a stray rabid dog. But I would enjoy seeing the rage flare at the account of my depraved pleasure.