Enter the Befuddlement

 

Shall we sympathise with the dead? No, we shall not. They need not our sympathy. Let us cast our sympathy on the living – on the hard surface of ageing flesh; let us fling it on the oasis of turbulent condemnation; dash it against the walls of tragedy; or, worse still, give it rein to linger within the bosom of infirmity.

Not to edge on the laxity of transgression, two plain-clothed men, swinging the batons of inquisition, titling themselves significant gunshoes, had volunteered to cast a pail into the well of mystery that enveloped the extinction of Boda Meko (this, of course, was a drudgery taken up from lack of any other venture to excite). The self-acclaimed sleuths had sacrificed a significant level of peregrination to the site of the misfortune, where the mangled remains of Boda Meko remained, and without much ado, had attempted to break down the venerable walls surrounding this erection of terror, albeit both mysterious and amazing. The understanding of this tragedy, whose thought had almost been allowed to dwindle into bleak oblivion, was aroused by the honest lamentations of witnesses whose fate had caused to behold such ghastly drama that resulted in Boda Meko’s inevitable expulsion from the shores of the breathing.

The tree of absurdity was later faithfully watered by the statements of the bystanders. Boda Meko had been knocked horizontal by a quadruple-wheeled Toyota. Since automobile mishaps were not an uncommon happenstance, there was not really supposed to be anything of the event to hoist the eyebrows aloft, but there was. The explanation for lack of logic is usually an illogical hypothesis. Indeed, Boda Meko had been crushed by a vehicle with disfunctional mechanism, everyone had sworn that the car was accelerating unnavigated. Quite simply, the vehicle had travelled itself without a driver and succeeded in flattening the suicidal Boda Meko. The deceased, shortly before his demise, had entertained the thought of yielding up his unromantic ideas to supplace them with others which eventually should coincide with those of a different gender.

Suicide was the north side of the triangle. By prior arrangement of circumstances preceding the central demise of the protagonist, Boda Meko himself had been spotted disregarding the observance of his cardinal point. He had found the four-route junction the right place to pitch a suicidal tent. With reasons later exposed to the presiding sleuths, the hopeless young man had perched himself – like a spider – in the middle of a web of adjoining roads. But because of his rather unimpressive sartorial presentation, pedestrians had assumed him to be one of those street gentlemen of unsoundness of minds. And truly, by observing the reality from the perspective of rationality, it would not take a process of psychological miracle to deduce, rather positively, that it would take the turbulence of thoughts and intelligence to nest oneself in the heart of a +-junction. It takes nothing to harbour suicidal tendencies, but it requires a great deal of senility to carry it out with grim determination. But in this regard, this unique determination was such a virtue that was lost on the man of twenty-something harmattans; for on spotting the oncoming Toyota with a familiar licence plate, the suicide reneged on his conviction. Little unlike a yoyo, Boda Meko sprang himself erect and attempted to dash to safety in protection of the little semblance of hope in his hopeless life. However, with a fate so unfortunate, and a situation so ironic, Boda Meka, in the struggle to escape death, ran himself – like a dislodged food particle – into the dentistry of the Grim Reaper. The driver-and-brake-deficient Toyota had climbed over him and moved on for a few metres until it was held to rest by a very solid concrete pole.

These revelations had caused the detectives to postulate their first theory of the mystery:

Although Boda Meko’s initial plan was to commit suicide, he was planning to inflict the mortality by his own hand, therefore waiting for a car to run him over. But the fact that he had run at the sight of an approaching car showed that he was not really ready to commit suicide. Thus, at the moment of impact between Boda Meko and the rogue car, there was a thin difference between suicide and homicide. If Boda Meko had run towards the car, it would have been suicide; but if the car had run towards Boda Meko, it would be termed homicide.

How could it be suicide when everyone saw that Boda Meko had attempted to run for his life? How could it be homicide when the vehicle had no driver?

A New Theory

Without any lengthy ceremony to visit the bystanding witnesses more frequently in future, the detectives left their midsts with hasty steps, lingering upon the tyre tracks to follow the origin of evidence well-disguised by the ridicule of the situation. They were inclined to prejudice themselves against the sneers of the onlookers about their hound-complex. And by devoted followership of the tributaries, they soon arrived at the big river. They indeed came to the divine understanding that the vehicle had not turned its own ignition; of course, the horse had been galloping uncontrollably until the riders jumped off its back. The deceased apprentice’s master had been cruising with his latest lover in the caravan of disaster when, at top acceleration, his foot pressed on the brakes, but the pedal had somehow been rendered useless. Anyone in the teeth of such predicament would always seek out a way of escaping from the looming mortality. The driver immediately detached his knuckles from the steering wheel, pushed his squealing passenger through the right door and took his own flight at the left exit. Although the couple had sustained a few bruises and cuts from the inflictions of the little stones on the roadsides, they had overlooked their wounds and were occupying their minds with the appreciation of the Supreme Being’s abundant grace. They were still in their thankful mien when the human hounds made a sudden debut appearance and tried to squeez out genuine information out of the worshippers’ mouths.

And so the rabbit of veracity poked a snout from the hole of mystery. The couple had been mortified to understand that the vehicle had hit Boda Meko. The master’s car had killed the servant. And what an irony of event it had been; an expert in vehicles had been caused to kiss mortality by the same machine in which he was an expert – quite far from being unlike a sparrow dying of flying.

The devoted gumshoes, from the recent illuminations, were forced to arrive at their second theory:

Even though the master was driving the car that killed Boda Meko, he wasn’t behind the wheel at the moment of impact; therefore, the driver could not be charged for homicide, for he didn’t know what harm the vehicle could cause when he was jumping out of it. He was simply running for his life. And so, logically, if the crime wasn’t murder, then it was suicide. We feel that the killing was too premeditated to be called an accident.

The Absolute Conclusion

The innocent driver had established his esteem deeply rooted into the earth of rationality as he launched his narratives, and so expressively detailed his befuddlement over the malfunctioned brake pedal. He strongly asserted that he had serviced the vehicle just the previous day, and he had particularly ensured that every part of the car was in impeccant state. Surely, someone must have put his fingers to work under the vehicle. And such suspicion, logically, birthed a graver inkling of foul-play which, however, bore the focus on motives – someone must have wanted the master and his mistress terminated.

The rainbow of absurdity was the evidence of the deluge of conspiracy that had already sufficed. And so the investigators had been forced to radically trace the origin of such scheme. There, lodged in the entrails of the condemned wheeler was a little mechanical tool that should have rested in Boda Meko’s box. Therefore, without further ado, the detectives caught the loose wire dangling from the oesophagus of the iron steed; a wire which should have rightly attached itself to the lone pedal. This became the revelation which demolished the solid conundrum that erected the mysterious house of cards.

Further disclosures maintained the symbol of some of the deadly sins: Lust, Envy and Wrath. Boda Meko had allowed himself be annointed by a drop of oil from the bottle of self-destruction; he had been overcome by a little complex of the famed Oedipus. As a matter of certainty, the young man had been smitten, unfortunately, by the seven common vice. With a testimony by the master’s mistress, the tree of deduction bore a final fruit.

Boda Meko had nursed a particular sickness as someone of high libido and constant gonadal twinges towards his master’s volumptous lover. He knew the dangerous path on which he was making an exodus of lust, but his affection assumed the role of a stubborn compass; he was so considerably blinded by lasciviousness towards the woman that he was willing to do anything to have a romp with her, even if it meant sacrificing his master. Where is the strength? How brave are we? What weapon do we use to defend ourselves – when the warrior of lust attacks?

Casting dignity to the winds of oblivion, Boda Meko engaged in a new venture of seduction, but the lady considered his advances as terribly revolting and abominable, and indeed cautiously sent the man with the raging hormones to Coventry. Depressed by the agony of unrequited lust, he succumbed himself to callous intentions birthed by raw jealousy. Possessed by blind rage for being turned down, he gave a firm vow that no human would do if he didn’t have the lady. Selfishly, he deftly assaulted the machanisms of his boss’ Toyota, having the prior knowledge of his master’s plan to take his paramour on a love cruise. So Boda Meko had had an insane expectation of later gazing at the obituaries of his master and his lover. Unfortunately, timing took an awkward route; Boda Meko had arrived at a rash conclusion that his boss would use the vehicle early the next day, but that was far from being the case.

At noon, when it was duly evident to him that his master and the lady had met their ends, Boda Meko found the world utterly unliveable, and so he acknowledged a suicidal mien. Surely, if he could not have the charming lady in this life, she would be his in the nether. Having this ridiculous theory firmly stamped in the depth of his damaged mind, he guided his own feet to the junction of doom.

In comparison of time, the detectives successfully determined that the time Boda Meko perched himself upon the hard floor of the tarred junction was the moment his master and the lady mounted the iron steed already doctored to crash and bake them alive. Thus the unravelling, or rather the un-unravelling, of the mystery casting a gloom on the extraordinary death of Boda Meko.

Right there, by the careful assessment of expositions, the sleuths melded their ideas and arrived at an absolute conclusion:

Boda Meko killed himself, but he did not do it directly; and the master killed his apprentice, but he did not do it directly, it was with the help of the same apprentice – Boda Meko himself.

The End

                             © Larry Sun, August 2016

                             larrysun4real@yahoo.com