THE SKELETON OF THE JUNIOR STUDENT WHO WAS LOCKED INSIDE A LOCKER BY HIS SENIORS AS A PRANK AND FORGOTTEN:

Sometimes what breaks our heart isn’t because our loved ones have died, but the manner in which they did.

Year was 2001.

A junior student in a boarding school had gone to the school cafeteria, to get snacks during the routine break time.

He walks past a group of senior students and quietly gesticulates in greeting, he continues on his way and had only barely walked a few steps after this when he was ordered to come back.

“We are your mates now na, because you’re carrying a bottle of yoghurt and meat pie that’s why you can’t greet. Common submit those things before I daze you.”

One of the seniors commands.

And apprehensively he does.

“We would make sure we deal with you, such that anywhere you hear our footsteps you’d shiver with respect, idiot!”

Another threatened.

“But I greeted you all, I...”

And as he makes to speak his peace, his words are met with a loud smack to his face, shattering his recommended glasses, and sending a torrent of searing pain to his left cheek.

It was just a day before vacation for the third term — the longest of all school holidays.

One of the senior students would pull him by the scruff of the neck and the rest will follow cackling from behind.

They would take him to an old abandoned library in the southern side of the school, shove him into a locker big enough to contain a few students and lock it from the outside.

“Let’s leave him here till school closes today and we’d come back and release him.”

One amongst them would suggest.

“No, let’s leave him for a few minutes and let him out before break time ends.”

Another would opine.

“I agree to leaving him till the end of school, the boy is very disrespectful and should be taught a lesson.”

A third one would conclude.

They are still discussing when one of the school security men sights them from afar and shouts at them asking what they are doing, and immediately they hear his voice, they would scamper away afraid that he is coming at them.

They would all run and leave the boy locked still inside the locker.

They would run and forget he is still there, because they think the security man must have found him.

He is a random junior student and he couldn’t even tell their classes or their names if he tried.

The next day, school vacates and parents would come for their children.

It is 24 hours already.

Locked up in a tight and dark space.

Without food, without water, without enough clean air to breathe.

The seniors would have their parents come pick them.

They would leave already.

The parents of the junior boy would come and not find him, they would ask his classmates if they’ve seen him and his close friends, the few who are around at the time would say they hadn’t seen him since yesterday.

There’d be an alarm for a missing student/child, and the school would get busy with worry and concern.

Reports would be made to the police and they would assure the parents that everything would be done to find him.

The security man who almost stumbled on these students at the old library would also have vacated with the students already as that’s his contract.

There’d be a report for a missing child in the local papers.

Weeks would pass and nothing would be found.

Maybe he left the school compound and fell into wrong hands.

Maybe he snuck out of school and got into danger.

Many maybes.

School would resume after two months and four weeks into the new session, there’d be need to use the old library space for another construction structure.

And while taking out the lockers, an almost fading putrefacting smell would hit one of the workers and he’d open the locker and see the skeleton of a young child and an almost decaying piece of the school uniform.

And from the inside clawings on the non-existent locker handle and wall, and remnants of candles chewed on, maybe as food or whatever else it could be.

So now, imagine your child dying in this manner.

Imagine your own seed hitting at this locker till his strength could no longer allow him, till nobody could hear him.

Imagine becoming so hungry that he had to chew on candles found inside a locker.

Imagine struggling to breathe till the darkness wins and he eventually passes out.

A young pristine, puerile, innocent and defenseless soul.

©️ Noel Ijezie