“Hide inside this deep freezer. Your mummy is coming to beat you with a cane. Don’t come out until I open the door,” Aunty Chidera, the housemaid, whispered to Junior.

“God! Give me power!” Gloria screamed.

She did not care about the pain in her shoulder anymore.

She did not care if her arm broke. She only cared about one thing.

Junior.

She lifted the heavy 12.5kg gas cylinder high above her head. She looked like a mad woman.

GBAM!

She smashed it against the padlock.

The iron lock bent. But it did not open.

“Open! I said open!” she cried, hitting it again.

GBAM!

Finally.

The padlock shattered. The rusty iron hook snapped and fell to the floor.

But as the lock broke, the heavy cylinder slipped from Gloria’s sweaty hands.

It crashed onto the tiled floor. The brass valve hit the hard wall.

CRACK.

HSSSSSSSSSS.

A loud hissing sound started immediately. The gas was leaking.

But Gloria did not even hear it. She did not look at the cylinder. She kicked it away and rushed to the freezer.

She grabbed the handle and threw the lid open.

A cloud of white, freezing mist covered her face.

And then, she saw him.

Mrs. Gloria screamed. It was a scream that could tear the roof apart.

Little Junior was curled up inside the freezer. He was lying on top of the frozen turkey.

He was not moving.
His skin was pale white. His lips were dark blue. His eyelashes had white ice on them.

“Junior!”
She grabbed him.

He was stiff. He was as cold as a stone.
She pulled him out of the freezer and fell to the floor with him.

She wrapped her body around him. She opened her clothes and pressed him against her warm skin.

“No… no… Junior, don’t play with Mummy,” she begged, her hands shaking uncontrollably.

“Wake up now. I bought ice cream for you. Wake up.”

She rubbed his hands. They were frozen.
She slapped his feet. They were hard.

“God, please,” she whispered. “I am a sinner, but don’t punish me with my son. Take everything I have, but give him back.”

She pinched his nose. She put her mouth on his blue lips and blew air into his lungs.

“Breathe, Junior! Breathe!”

She pumped his small chest.
One. Two. Three.

She waited.

She watched his face. She waited for a cough. She waited for his eyes to open. She waited for him to cry “Mummy.”

But there was nothing.

The boy lay there like a doll. Lifeless. Silent.
Gloria’s heart stopped beating.

She placed her ear on his chest. She pressed hard, listening with her whole life.

She could hear no heart beat.

The gas was filling the room. The smell was everywhere. But Gloria did not even smell it.

She slowly lifted her head. She looked at the face of her only child.

Tears stopped falling from her eyes. She went numb.

“Junior?” she called him one last time, her voice broken.

He did not answer.

She held him tighter, burying her face in his cold neck. She rocked him back and forth on the kitchen floor, wailing a singing “It is well with my soul”

“You cannot go… you cannot go…”

She just sat there with her lifeless son.

TO BE CONTINUED…