LIVE OR LIVES ON

The chthonic monster submerged in pool red blood awaits on the street to nurture and breed to her taste, the kids that wander around her. She is inimical, brutal, yet accommodating. She is neither ephemeral nor evergreen, she just lives as time says. She is loved by none, but the street still reckons with her intimately.

Kemi was one of her victims, or perhaps, one of her adopted daughters that ventured onto her when all odds became even. She was a daughter of a Lawyer and an accountant, who not only enjoyed riches but maximum securities. She was the second child of her parents, the first was lost to sickle cell anaemia after a failed stem cell transplant. Consequently, she became the only child. But her parents on the other hand were workaholic, her father was keen on being a member of the inner chamber of the Nigeria Bar Association and her mother, was always on a professional trip. In lieu of this, their achievements left Kemi vulnerable to all sorts of insecurities. And sooner than they would suspect, she became wild, beyond imagination.

It would have been good being wild if she wasn't charged two times for murder at age of eighteen, She scaled through the first allegation with the endless blathers of his lawyer father in the court room, but the second charge, she was convicted even before trial, and fortunately she would have scaled through if the evidence wasn't concrete enough. She was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection cum hanging.

Before her pay day, she sought the attention of the media who would publish her story. "But what was there to publish in her story?" It was humorous yet terribly horrific as she blamed her predicament on her parents. She wrote thus
"Life is good when you have riches, but you need to learn when to stop the acquisition of more, for if you don't, you lose something, bigger than those riches. My parents were rich, and I enjoyed everything. But I lacked one thing, which consequently resulted into my present state.

While growing up, I faced some challenges, one I couldn't battle out myself, it was in my third year in high school, I encountered some sort of oppression and victimization from my peers, everyday at school was hell and it weighed tonnes on me, and I sunk to the deepest level in life where there wasn't any hope of living again. I needed someone to rejuvenate me, my parents weren't there to do that, or perhaps I was just that gallery they possessed and cherished intimately but couldn't spare time for it, not even for its upkeep, but could pay millions to someone else who would do it on their behalf. After donkey years, I found someone, she resuscitated me, and showed me love, care, concern and attention, everything that I needed. And she was the STREET. I succumbed to her affections and before I knew it, she had thrown me into the dungeon of moral decadence.
She portrayed life to me in two forms - live or lives on, for which the choice was mine. I had to survive, and against all odds I did some things unworthy of a being. At age fourteen, I lost my virginity willingly and smoke hard drugs like codeine. They weren't really hard, or perhaps I'm accustomed to it. Life was really despicable. There shouldn't be the type of my parents any longer who only are engrossed with professions, if we don't want the rest of the prospects to be lost in wilderness. Lastly , when I die, get me a note from sanctuary for I don't think the gates of heaven will be opened for me. "

Rather than Kemi to live, at the tender age of eighteen , She lives on in the memory of the STREET .