From the time the cup was handed over to him, Sani knew he was the next to die. Like water in a clenched fist, his life was slipping fast through his hands.

Whiles lying in his room deeply absorbed in his thoughts, he noticed an eye peeking at him through a crack in his room door. He froze. “Who is there”? He managed to stammer. Silence answered him.

He hurried to the window to see who was behind the door before opening it. It was a goat. “A goat!” He voiced out his disbelief, chasing it off by hurling some vegetables on the kitchen sink at it.

Hardly had he returned to lie down when he saw an eye peeking at him again through the hole in the door. Scanning the room for a whip, he picked up a broom, and flung out of the room, ready to charge at and beat the hell out of the evil goat sent to haunt him that afternoon.

To his utter surprise, it was Bashiru his roommate. “What’s happening?” Bashiru asked, looking confused and scared. Sani was too paralyzed with fear to speak. He looked at Bashiru’s feet. They were human. His neck. No fur. He smelled him nervously. There was no goat scent about him. “Nothing,” Sani replied at last, walking away and leaving the room to Bashiru.

Bashiru walked in, scanning the room for clues. “Sani has been acting strange these few days,” Bashiru said to himself, suddenly realizing some odd occurrences in the past few days.

Sani and rings were like a devout moslem and pork. But recently, he noticed he’s been wearing a weird ring and he’s heard him mutter something while twisting the ring just before entering the room. “Vanity, wish me well…Black Jota…Maiden of Titiba…” Bashiru tried to remember the words once muttered by Sani and suddenly something moved in Sani’s closet.

Initially, it sounded like the movement of a mouse. He repeated the chant slowly, his heart skipping a beat in the process. He heard the movement again.

Earlier in the day, he went out to buy a locally-made powdered insecticide to kill some cockroaches that were tormenting them in the room. Their presence were a mystery. As he swept the room that morning, the various month-old leftovers of bread, fish and other rotten vegetables he and Sani felt too lazy to dispose of demystified everything.

But now, with the strange movement in Sani’s closet, it was clear that there were other things in that room apart from dirt, that needed to be swept out.Taking his broom and the powdered insecticide he went out to buy, he began sweeping the room again, pouring the insecticide behind bags, tables and other items, all along feeling too nervous to check what was moving in Sani’s closet at the chant of “Vanity, wish me well…”

Finally, he mustered some courage and decided to uncover the mystery. Peeping outside to be sure Sani was far off to wherever it was he was going, Bashiru securely locked the door and proceeded to bring out Sani’s clothes gingerly, one by one.

His hand felt something cold, like a reptile and he began shaking with fear. Suddenly, there was a loud knock on the door. His eyes dilated in horror. Instinctively, Bashiru stealthily climbed into the roof and covered the spot with the plywood that served as ceiling, peeking into the room from a little opening in the ceiling.

Sani broke the door and stormed in, evidently enraged. He first moved about in the centre of the room a couple of times, looked around and proceeded to his closet, as if on the orders of the powers of the infernal region.

He was just about bringing out the strange object in his closet when Bashiru, unable to withstand the strong scent of the powdered insecticide, sneezed. He still had a lump of the insecticide in a waste paper bag when he climbed into the roof.

Sani picked a knife from the kitchen, put two little tables in the room on top of each other and began climbing, scanning the ceiling with eyes burning with fury. With one powerful blow, Sani knocked off the piece of plywood right below Bashiru and grabbed Bashiru’s leg, ready to hurl him down to the floor.

Impulsively, Bashiru swept the lump of powdered insecticide off where it stood beside him, right into the face of Sani while screaming, “Holy Ghost fire! Holy Ghost fire!…” Bashiru slipped in the frenzy and fell from the roof. The insectide powder, now turned into Holy Ghost powder, burst into Sani’s face – into his mouth and nose – as he too came crushing onto the floor.

The deadly local concoction had a pepperish effect and soon blood oozed from Sani’s nose and mouth and ears. The insecticide powder turned Holy pepper had finally claimed its last victim in the form of the giant cockroach that now sprawled in blood.

The neighbours rushed in upon hearing screams of Holy Ghost fire from a room occupied by two moslems, completely taken aback by the scene that met their eyes and could hardly make head nor tail of the whole incident.

Either of them would have to recover to tell the story.