It was a normal Sunday – just like all the other ones since I have known Sundays. I woke up and though reluctant to go to church, I still went – as I did on all Sundays. Again, as usual, I went through the Christian motion together with all the others who were in the service with me. Between the lifting of hands during the adoration period and the last amen of the pastor, I was uncomfortable.
I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not right with God – the anger and rage in my heart were too much to be before the Lord with. Then the pastor’s sermon sounded like another remix of what he had been preaching since I’ve known him. Pay your tithe, give to support the work of God, honour your pastor through giving and God will bless you. I respected the pastor a lot especially how he could link any topic to these three themes.
Throughout the service, I kept asking myself why I went there every Sunday irrespective of the hellish feeling I go through every time. It was after the service when people started congratulating me and telling me what a great sermon it was the pastor preached that I got the answer to my question. The pastor is my daddy.
I went to church to save face. In fact, I did it to save my father’s face. Even more, I went in honour of my late mother who made me promise by her sick-bed that I would not abandon my father and the church.
There is no better way of describing the way I feel about my dad except to say I hate him with the last drop of blood in my vein. He is a hypocrite and a liar. How he is able to successfully alienate the façade he puts up in front his congregation from how he treats his family is admirable. It is very surprising the transformation my dad went through since he got the clerical around his neck.
When he broke the news of becoming an ordained minister to us, mother and I were happy for him. God had finally answered our prayers. Things were going to get better for us as a family. The irony rather came upon us!
When it started, mummy was very strong. She urged me to pray for daddy and ask God to return him to us. With time, the verve in her prayer diminished. Only sobs would come out of her mouth anytime she went before the Lord in prayer. I watched her one day as she lay on her stomach in the sitting room and cried for one hour asking God to forgive her for anything she had done to deserve such cruelty from her husband.
For the answer to her prayer, her husband of a pastor came out of his prayer closet and beat her up for insinuating to God that something could be wrong with him. According to him, he was dealing her God’s wrath for speaking foul of his anointed. The same man would kill anyone one who dared to mess with us was now a vampire who sucks us dry as the days go by.
Mummy gave up. She gave up on herself as she could not find the strength to fight anymore. She gave up on daddy by leaving him to deal with his own demons. But even more painfully, she gave up on me by leaving me here to deal with such a cruel man alone.
One would have thought that with the death of my mother, dad would change. While many cried on the day of her burial, he kept a straight face. I looked at him closely to see if there was any sadness in those piercing brown eyes of his. But no; his face was stone cold. He still had that look of disgust with which he molested mummy that day as she prayed for him. I prayed under my breath on that day that the Lord kills him. From that day, every day, I imagined a way through which death will deal him, equal measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, the wickedness he showered on my mother.
But here he was that Sunday morning; not dead; very much alive and still deceiving people. As I watched him smile at people, shake hands with them and kiss some of them, my anger for him got worse. Then, a young man of my age approached him. Seeing the way my father responded to him gave me an instantaneous headache!
Here was my dad, one who had no room to love me, showing love to someone just like me. It was a very difficult sight to behold, coupled with the excruciating pain of the headache, so I closed my eyes, tightly; hoping that that when I open them, the young man would have been gone and I would feel better.
The sight that met me when I opened my eyes was unexpected. I saw a creature. It was exactly like my dad. It had my dad’s body but hooves of a horse, ears of a rabbit, furs of a werewolf, horns of a cow and a tail. It was talking to the same young man my daddy was talking to.
Strangely, the creature was familiar; I had a flashback of almost all the events of my past. I kept seeing that same creature in each scene. It was there from the day my father put on the clerical, I saw it vividly that day my father molested my mother, even at her burial it was there. A certain coldness fell on me as if a bucket of ice cubes was poured on me. I began to cry.
The creature then turned to me and started mocking me. It called me unworthy of receiving love from my father.
That was it! I had had enough!
I don’t know where the strength came from but I reached for a metal rod that lying on the floor and charged at the creature.
I blacked out!
When I regained consciousness, I was sitting on my dad’s stomach, thrusting the metal rod into his chest over and over and cursing him and his demon. Some of the church folks tried to get me off him but for some inexplicable reason, I was stronger than them all combined. I cried while I stabbed him three more times. It was painful but somewhere deep within, it felt good.
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Until next time, it can only get better and we can only get better.
