Without clothes on, the corridor seemed abnormally long. Better walk while the lice suck you dry. Yes, better this way than imagine a million and two eyes watching your front searchingly. He walked on and passed into the lavatory, perhaps to give room for breathing. Nothing! He realised he had to do faster. He hurried on, his sweating feet leaving foot prints as if he had been bathing. He rubbed his sweating palms to dry the sweat away. He steadied himself as he entered the death chamber, as an automatic door opened on its own accord – his long shadow was enough to bring about the aforementioned. He murmured a word or two perhaps in prayer.

He had to face the truth. Now, not later, now. He knelt onto the cross like board and lay flat upon it as handcuffs pinned his limbs to form a plus. He winced and squirmed in pain as a boot cracked his ribs that had nearly lost all flesh since his day of arrest. Some lice dropped out of his aerated armpits, perhaps an outcome of the heavy boot. Plumb with blood, his blood, they scampered across the floor towards nowhere, a much needed exercise before they came back. Perhaps.

They tied his torso with a rubber strap onto the board. His body couldn’t move, bound onto the board, onto the cross. His teeth were bared in anticipation. The cane-man was taking too long. He was already feeling pain as the burly cane-man warmed up. A pool of sweat started forming as his muscles stiffened and relaxed.

Amadi steeled himself further against the pain to come for no mechanical destruction of the cane nor the injury of the cane-man’s hand was possible. All thought disappeared, and his mind cleared. The first stroke rang in his ears resounding in his blood as it cut across his bottom which was only covered with a piece of cloth soaked in brine. He felt as if a leopard had stuck its canines in his bottom before the pain spread. It spread from his toe nails, up his buttocks, lingered there for a while and shot straight to his brain to register the dimming of his eyes before closing them shut. He pressed his jaws together, the upper against the lower till they startled his chin. He could feel pain, excruciating pain that un-numbed every part of his body.