Corpus Delicti

The motivation of all dream content is wish fulfillment - Sigmund Freud

*****

"Tell me your dreams", "Do tell me you must"!

The clanging of the bell which signified the end of the afternoon shift, suddenly jarred poor Tunde Salako awake from his troubled slumber. He'd woken up disoriented, but after a furtive survey of his environ, a cold feeling of dread washed over him. As an industrial machinist, complete concentration was demanded during working hours because, lack thereof was the main cause of accidents in any meat grinding mill. Sadly, he could no longer give his complete concentration because his once stable existence had gone on a drastic decline some weeks ago. And it had all began with the damn nightmares. The very same one he had last night.

The imagery of last night's nightmare had been no different. Only that this time, he'd finally gotten a glimpse of her haunted face. He'd woken up chilled to the bones and grasping for breathe as the all too familiar but almost forgotten feeling of claustrophobia threatened to derail his senses. He'd then shut his eyes, in a futile attempt at chasing the chilling and graphic imagery of the butchery, but it was to no avail. His fingers had been clawed up, the hairs on his nape had stood at all ends and his teeth had rhythmically clattered in terror as the peculiarity of his nightmares, like other nights, dared him to return to his troubled slumber.

When he'd first started having these nightmares, he hadn't been able to recognize her. Because apart from her skin complexion, the bloody murder weapon and the hands that repeatedly dealt the killer blows, hands that look distinctly like his, all other details of the nightmare had been fuzzy. Then he also recalled the despicable malevolence that had emanated from the unseen assailant; a malevolence that also bore a very uncanny similarity to what he'd felt for the women who'd spurned him over the years.

He'd been spurned because he'd always found himself unable to offer more than a few monosyllabic responses while on dates. More often than not, he'd been accused of being uppity and hebetudinous and thus blamed for the lengthy and embarrassing silence the dates suffered. So after recording several failed attempts, he decided to stop trying to communicate with the women folks. In his defense, he claimed that his failures stemmed from the fact that he lacked the emotional ingredients to attract a woman. But then, he wondered if repeated rejection and bitter resentment should justify such butchery he'd envisioned in his nightmares.

 When his nightmares kept recurring, he decided to visit his psychologist, Dr Okechukwu for help. After he described his nightmares to the doctor, Tunde broke down and wept like a man who was spiritually being hunted by his village witches. So to allay his fears, Dr Okechukwu proposed a diagnosis based on Sigmund Freud's theory of dreams. Dr Okechukwu had reached this conclusion because as a kid, Tunde had been treated for chronic claustrophobia and extreme nyctophobia, a problem the doctor had traced to the physical and psychological abuses Tunde's mother who had been a psychiatrist of some sort, had meted out on him.

Dr Okechukwu stated that Sigmund Freud had called this kind of dream, a manifest dream and that it is a dream as consciously perceived and subsequently remembered by the dreamer. He further stated that Freud discovered that behind a manifest dream, could be uncovered a number of latent thoughts, and these thoughts can be transformed by a process of dream work into a manifest dream. When the manifest dream is then analyzed by the method of free association, the dream representation could be understood as an attempt at the fulfillment of wishes of which the dreamer was not consciously aware of.

So the doctor recommended further therapy because Tunde's fractured psyche was now desperately trying to murder the bitter memories of his mother in his head. But despite several sessions, the nightmare became worse, Tunde's nerves became frayed and his usually exemplary work rate suffered heavily. He also became disillusioned with life and stopped visiting his doctor because if Sigmund Freud's theory was anything to go by, he'd seen no hope for his condition. But now that he'd finally caught a glimpse of her, it placed everything into a new perspective. Sadly, it also placed him in a tight corner because the face he'd glimpsed, belonged to one of the only two women who had ever offered him some form of comfort during his turbulent childhood.

*****

 Two days later, Tunde was yet again tormented by the same harrowing nightmare. Only that this time, he hadn't only seen her haunted face; he'd also perceived her feeling of pain, horror and betrayal. Her feelings had painstakingly been delineated with an exceptional vividness that, he'd woken up and stumbled towards his drawer, in search of his bottle of whiskey. A few minutes later, as he sat down shivering and waiting for the whiskey to steady his nerves, he caught the movement of his effervescent and unofficial housemate Ekute', and a fury bordering on mania overcame him. He usually accommodated Ekute's shenanigans because having it around made him feel less lonely and unloved. But his present predicament made him so raw on the nerves that he bolted up and gave chase.

When he finally cornered poor Ekute', he vehemently stamped on it with the sole of his feet till it was reduced to a squishy and gory mass of bloody flesh. By the time his fury was spent, an intense feeling of satisfaction had already blanketed him. Strangely, killing the mouse had calmed his jittery nerves, and had also offered him an inner tranquility he hadn't experienced in awhile. It was at that point he made up his mind; "He was no longer going to wait for the nightmares to go away. He was going to squash the nightmares away, once and for all.

So he dressed up quickly, locked his front door and hurried towards his car. Thirty minutes later, he arrived at her street in the Aguda area of Surulere and watched her house for a time. When he was sure she was home alone, he got down, walked to her door and knocked. After a few minutes, he heard her asking who it was, and when he responded, she opened the door surprised. But before she could ask him what he wanted at this time of the night, he shoved her back into the house and repeatedly struck her head with his car jack. Sometime during his frenzied attack, a feeling of déjà vu overcame him briefly, but he shrugged it aside as he gleefully continued to exorcise his demons forever.

Two hours later, Tunde lay sprawled on his bed in exhaustion. Then just before he embraced the beckoning tentacles of the long awaited sleep, he recalled the Latin phrase "Corpus delicti", and an evil chuckle escaped him. The phrase is a western jurisprudence term, which is translated to English as "Body of crime". Most importantly, it is a principle which states that a crime must first be proven to have occurred, before a person can be convicted of committing it.

His last mischievous thought before sleep finally took him, was how his very recently committed murder was ever going to be proven when by morning, the already craunched evidence would be canned and carted away to be stacked in thousands of stores all over the country.

About an hour later, the disturbing ring of his telephone tore through the very fiber of his subconscious. When he groggily picked up and asked who it was, the reply he got was; "Tell me your dreams", "Do tell me you must"!

That simple and somewhat harmless phrase triggered a host of physical changes in Tunde, as he immediately relaxed and stared into space. He was once again at the mercies of another's whim and for thirty minutes, he listened and responded to the hypnotizing voice that probed him from the end of the line.

*****

At the other end of the phone conversation, an evil smirk escaped her lips as she whispered the counter phrase that would release him from his hypnotic trance. When she finally dropped the line, she made a mental note never to eat or buy any brand of corned beef again, before she then began to bask in her triumph.

It was so ironic that what had started as a simple hypnotic remedy for extreme psychiatric and psychological conditions had blossomed into a complex masterstroke. It was also funny to note that, years ago she'd accidentally stumbled upon the connection between hypnotic suggestions and dream projections in one of the most unlikeliest of circumstances. Since her serendipitous finding, she'd discreetly used Tunde as her human guinea pig, until she'd perfected the procedure and tested it on more of her patients.

She really didn't consider herself an evil woman or mother for that matter. She also didn't consider what she'd subjected him to all these years as inhumane or unethical. She'd merely chalked it as one of the sacrifices one must pay for the advancement of humanity, even if the mental state of young boy had been the psychological equivalent of the military term, "Collateral damage".

As she made to go to bed, she remembered one last call she had to make, so she picked up her phone and dialed it for the second time that night. While she waited for the line to be answered, she giggled as she thought of what she was going to tell him this time. When the line was finally picked, she asked if she was speaking with Aliyu Suleiman, and when a heavily accentuated Hausa voice answered in the affirmative, she whispered; "Tell me your dreams", "Do tell me you must"!

*****

THE EKO HERALD

   

Missing person report

45 year old Dr Funsho Akinyele, who was reported missing from her home 72 hours ago, has still not turned up. The Nigerian police are now treating the disappearance as simply, a missing person case since there has been no ransom note or body to prove otherwise.

She was last seen by Chief Justice. Jonathan Okechukwu who had dropped her off at her home on the night she allegedly went missing. The Chief Justice, who suspects foul play, has pointed accusing fingers at his soon to be ex-wife, Dr Amaka Okechukwu. A woman who he is still embroiled with, in an ugly divorce settlement and child custody case.

Dr Funsho Akinyele, who had been Dr Okechukwu's friend and partner for years, was last month, forced to resign from the private practice they operated, when it became public knowledge that she was having an affair with her friend's husband. The police have questioned Dr Amaka Okechukwu about her whereabouts on the night, and she has since answered all their questions satisfactorily, while also providing an ironclad alibi to back her.

Please anyone with valuable information as to her whereabouts should contact the nearest police station or Chief Justice Okechukwu's chambers.

All hands on deck

In other news, the people's alliance party's presidential candidate, Senator Aliyu Suleiman who is in poll position to be the next civilian president of the federal republic of Nigeria, in a speech on Friday, spoke of the need for all Nigerians to be.......