I have changed it from story to novel because it has been published. Enjoy...
Ah, Mr. Chukwudi, welcome." Mr. A****said invitingly. "Please have a seat." I declined. As much as I would have loved to sit down to camouflage the shaking of my knees, I was much too wary to sit. I could see Mr. A****'s ever present bodyguards, as clearly as I could see them that day. Mr. A**** himself was dressed in his usual native attire and a cap with many feathers on his head. I closed the Sight a little and saw he was actually donning a simple grey french suit and grey trousers. Even then his spirit guards were visible. I could only hazard a guess that their spirit pressure was so much that even a lay person would have gotten the shivers by getting close to him. I however, due to my abilities, was so engulfed in their aura that I had initially thought them to be real people. I could feel Chuks the stronger gearing up for a fight and the last thing he had told me about Nina was kept aside for now, I would dwell on it later. "I would rather stand, thank you." I said calmly. Mr. A***** studied me briefly, he gazed at my head and I knew he was wondering about the creature he put there. "Don't look too hard, it's gone." I said. "Obviously," he replied. "But how? Did any of those meddlesome pastors that come to hospital to preach pray for you? I have encountered some with real powers. Perhaps that was how you escaped." "No," I said. "I ripped it apart with my bare hands." "You?" he laughed gently to himself. "You don't have any power. Even now I'm talking to you I can see you trembling." "One might tremble out of indignation or anger or excitement." I said. "One does not always tremble out of fear." "We shall see," he promised and tried looking over my shoulder. "Have you attempted to free Nina? What did you make of my hypnosis spell? Wonderful, eh?" "Yes. Interesting." I said, noting his confident tone in thinking I had attempted to free her and failed. I didn't want to reveal anything yet, I wanted him to continue underestimating me. "Why did you do that to her? I thought you said you needed her free will." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat then and I noticed the dust swirl around his feet. This was actually the second time, I had noticed it earlier when he was looking for his lunacy creature and had attributed it to a gust of wind. But now I was beginning to feel it held a far more significant meaning. Like he was getting ready for battle. He sighed, looking very despondent all of a sudden. "I can't waste any more time. I need her to perform the pact with my son and align her destiny to my lineage. Do you know how rare it is to find someone of her caliber, someone with such a rich and powerful destiny? I tried to trace her parents; the real people taking care of her- that is, my cousin and his wife, are just her guardians. I suppose she has already told you this. I thought if I could find her parents, maybe I could suck out some of the power she inherited from them, but try as I might, spiritually and otherwise, I wasn't able to find them. And so I stuck with their daughter, tried to get her to marry my son, tried to get him to exchange blood with her so she would fall under my authority, but that hasn't worked either. I was actually coming with him to Lagos this time to observe them and see how they were getting along, to see if there was any hope of consummating the relationship with the pact soon, but then I saw you, a seer, lurking around her. I saw your flames of passion and deep love engulfing you and her, and I knew if I didn't act fast she would gather enough courage to leave him and come to be with you. I couldn't let that happen, not after making boasts in certain, er…spheres, that I was soon going to become more powerful than any of them! I had to get rid of you somehow, without drawing too much attention to myself. Hence the idea of driving you mad, like I have done to numerous people that have stood in my way. It has always worked before but then, I have never used my skills on a fellow seer before either. Since that didn't work, I guess I'm going to have to find another way to deal with you. Then I will work some more on Nina. If I cannot get her destiny to be mine, I'll do it in such a way that she will never shine, I will increase the fire in the chains I have already put around her, stifling her potentials! I will have her destiny or no one else will!" And then he made a sudden gesture with his hand and one of the demon guards rushed at me. What happened next, I cannot really explain. For a moment it was me, and then it wasn't me. The next thing I knew was I had the guard by the neck, lifted him off his feet and slammed him to the floor. I maintained my grip on him and then my hand caught fire and so did he. He screamed and writhed but I held firm and did not let go. and there was a fire burning in my chest and every fear and indignation, every anger and shame I had felt in the past few days in the hospital, at work, at home, went into that hand, and I squeezed harder and harder and the intensity of the flames in my hands became greater until the writhing stopped and all was quiet, the only physical acknowledgement of what had happened being a swirl of dust on the dirty floor. I looked up at Mr. A**** and saw his face register shock at what had happened. He looked on as his guard turned to ashes and disappeared. Then he looked back at me and for the first time I saw uncertainty in his eyes. I, on the other hand felt good, like I had relieved myself of some pressure or burden. I couldn't feel Chuks the stronger again and slowly it dawned on me, that I was Chuks the stronger. I felt free, alive, volatile. And I loved it. "Can I ask you something?" I said, breaking the silence and startling Mr. A**** a little. He stood up slowly from the chair and I watched as an ancient looking spear with a wooden handle and strange carvings formed in his right hand. I shook my head and raised my right hand and he hesitated. "Just one question before we continue" I requested again. "It's been really bugging my mind." "Go ahead." He said. "It's about the hospital admission and the phone calls," I replied. "You could have driven me mad, and then dropped me off at a remote location to leave me wandering about for the rest of my days, but you chose to keep me in a hospital. Then my parents, I am assuming you were the one that alerted them after searching through my contacts on my phone. You called them to come and then you changed my SIM card. I don't get that part." "Simple," he said and I saw him make a slight gesture and the spear increased in size and the tip slowly began to burn reddish gold. "I normally keep my victims admitted until I am sure they are properly labeled as mad, that way if they ever regain consciousness like you did, the drugs they will be placed on will keep them subdued and even if they refuse the drugs, the social stigma that goes with someone being officially certified as being crazy will stick with them forever. Their credibility will always be in question, and if they run across me any day and dare to raise an issue, I can always argue that their madness is beginning again." "Oh," I said. "I see." He smirked and continued, "I had a fellow like that who regained consciousness after some prayers by some overzealous Christians. He tried to confront me and I made a mockery of his statements in public, even offering to pay to have him re-incarcerated. He couldn't take the shame and committed suicide soon after. As for you, however, I wanted to see your parents. I don't know how or why some people will be gifted in having special children like you that are born with unique abilities while I had to toil for mine. It's not fair. And so I called your parents to size them out, and see if they had any special powers I could benefit from. However I didn't see much to impress me and so I planned on showing some money around, offering to take care of your finances with the hope that they would entrust you to my care and return to the village. I had plans of hypnotizing you and sending you there to kill them and then kill yourself on the way back. Everyone would weep at the tragedy of the young man who went mad from smoking Indian hemp and goodness knows what other drugs, only to return home to massacre his own parents and then kill himself So you wanted me to kill my parents." I said, the thought of it making me all the more angry. I could feel the fire spread from my hands up into my arms" "It would have given me the chance to test my new hypnosis spell." He said. "But I guess Nina made a good first subject." I watched as the manifested spear continued to burn, the fire in it increasing in intensity. "The spell you are working up takes a lot of time, doesn't it?" I said calmly. "Can I take up you offer to sit down while I wait?" He looked at me with hatred. He knew I was making a mockery of him and he didn't know where I was getting the confidence from. Honestly speaking neither did I. At that moment, I felt invincible, like nothing could harm me. I was soon to find out that I wasn't totally correct in that assumption. He declined answering my question and continued his speech. "I was confident my plan would work. But then I checked on you in the hospital and found that you had gone, that you were better, and that your file had even been closed as a case of misdiagnosis! I wanted to strangle the doctor! All the careful planning of calling your colleagues and getting them to believe you had travelled already had been punctured. So I made some adjustments and told them your parents who you said were sick were now better and you wanted to return to work. I was willing to let things go at that point. I felt you would be too scared to continue the issue and besides there was no way of you knowing that Nina was still in this Lagos and hadn't gone back home to marry my son. Imagine my surprise when my creatures came to alert me that you were in the house! I was greatly impressed. But now I have to tie up loose ends. I won't make the same mistakes with you again." He suddenly stabbed the other demon guard with the spear and it roared in pain but remained where it was. I watched as it increased in size and took on the shape of a large gorilla instead of a muscular man that had been there previously. I had an image of Marvel's "the hulk" and wondered if this is where the artist had gotten his inspiration from. Probably he had possessed the Sight as well… The Guard –now-Gorilla lunged at me. I stepped aside, keeping an eye on Mr. A**** but he did nothing to join in the fight. The gorilla guard turned and rushed me again and was able to get a hold of my arm. I felt myself being lifted bodily off the ground and then I went sailing through the air to crash on the ancient television. It made a popping and crashing sound as it broke and I felt pain as shards of glass tore through my shirt and into my back. Mr. A**** was laughing in the background. "So you just gathered some small energy and thought you could defeat me eh?" he chuckled. "Stand up my friend I felt good. I mean, it was painful, my back hurt like a bastard and the front of my shirt had been torn from the hurling through the air, but…but...I felt good. I wanted this, I wanted to fight. I wanted the exhilaration to last and last. And so I got up, dusted myself a bit and then said: "Do you always talk so much?" Mr. A**** was infuriated. He expected me to be cowering on the floor in fear and pain but here I was standing and then I started to advance. "I have never been much of a talker myself," I said, "Takes the fun out of all the action." The gorilla guard rushed at me again and I stepped back and stuck out my foot. It tripped clumsily and crashed to the floor and I went behind it and wrapped my arms around its large, sinewy neck, and squeezed, tighter, tighter, and it struggled and attempted to get up but I forced my knee down on its back and squeezed, shouting now, screaming, feeling salt in my mouth as I choked whatever animated its monstrous form out of it, until with a gurgling sound it finally lay still and I dropped its lifeless carcass on the floor. It lay there for a while and then it too vanished. I had gotten up and was standing over the creature when I heard a yell and running footsteps. I knew Mr A**** was rushing towards me and I waited a bit, timing it to the last minute then turned as he tried to run me through with the spear. I grabbed the spear by its shaft and it shone brightly and Mr. A**** gasped like he had been burned and let go, backing away slowly. "No…No! That is the spear of my forefathers! No one can hold it but me!" I held the spear in both hands, put it over my knee and broke it. Mr. A**** shouted out in alarm and the regalia of clothes he had been manifesting in, disappeared. "I just broke a noble spear because of you," I said, for I could feel the spear in my arms, its pride, its shame, its weeping. "You are the first person in your line to use your family gift for evil. You are a disgrace to yourself and your ancestors!" Mr. A**** cringed and cowered near the old sofa. He couldn't understand what had just happened.
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