TITLE: FORMLESS EXISTENCE – Nkeiru Okeke.
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“José Pedro, cadet of platoon seven a.k.a terror of terrorist, served with the Afghanistan battalion, where he led his platoon members who were saddled with reinforcing the local community security and also overseeing the whole battalion armoury, indeed a fine and well decorated soldier whose bravery and tactical intuition would be lacking greatly as we raise our berets to bid him farewell”
“José we understand you have come to the end of your service to the country and wish to bow out, we support your every decision, but just know you’d always have a family in us…….indeed you will be greatly missed” these were the words of José’s squad captain as they gathered to pay him final respects before he retired from the military.
He had reached a point where it’s either he retires from the military or the military retires him, a young 35 years old José reminisced as he glared at his medal of honours. The military was his poison, it consumed him, it was his life.
In those times when he was in the military, he lost his father to lung disease, his mother to her ovarian cysts and his only sister during childbirth and all those times starting from his father’s passing, his family begged him, his mom, his sister, they all begged him to come by the house sometime to visit but he was consumed, the military was his life, he ate it, he breathed it, he mated with it.
He had this unexplainable love for the military, even though till this day, it cursed him with indelible nightmares of children being blown apart, young untouched maidens being ripped open by burgeoning genitals. He saw horrors no human deemed fit to
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be living should see, those horrors rather awoke a glistering hunger to hunt and to be hunted.
He became a hunter, the war zone became his forest, the rebels the prey he hunted, his armoury his hunting spears. He replaced his human vision with the vision of a wild animal, the rebels were nothing but weaker animals he had to hunt and kill, just like a cheetah waiting for the right moment to pounce on an ever down-looking warthog.
When his platoon soldiers invaded some of the rebels and captured them, Jose raised his chest and head high up like an alpha male in a lion park which at that time amused his men, but little did they know that the fine line between José’s illusion and reality began to thin out, until both worlds became one.
That was when his military administration became worried, it started with some of the cadets insinuating that he made some sought of animalistic gestures before executing the rebels. One of the cadets sounded very concerned when he said that José made them circle round one of the rebels, before José proceeded to sniff them, as if he wanted to sniff out the worthiest person to execute the rebel.
José’s sniffing worked, in the sense that he sniffed out a rebel who disguised himself to be one of the soldiers and who tried attacking José when José made him execute the captured rebel which turned out to be the brother of the disguised rebel.
Before the disguised rebel could lift an arm to attack José, José had maimed him with a machete in a very gruesome way, it was a state of an overkill. His cadets had to hold him back, this worried the cadets, some of them mentioned that José started to roar like a lion and swerve his feet back and forth like a bull trying to launch at an ever-daunting red piece of cloth.
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He was crucial to their mission in fighting the rebels, so his superiors didn’t bother because he did it to the rebels anyways, not until the credence of his cruciality began to waver.
One certain time, José had gone to inspect and take stock of new weapons delivered to the armoury, one of the rebels who hid by the side brushes launched to attack José to make way with some of the weapons.
José was so gutted by the mere temerity of the rebel, that he tore the rebel apart with his bare hands……José had literally tore the rebel’s eyes from his eye sockets and began to dig his fingers into the temple of the rebel, when the rebel had given up his spirit and his carcass laid lifeless, José settled in like a lion knowing that its prey had surrendered, began gnawing at his scrotum down to the other parts, he devoured the rebel like a sumptuous meal.
In José’s mind, he had overpowered his prey, so he had the right to feast on his hard work….…. which was the rebel.
When his superior who had been waiting for José’s armoury report didn’t see him, the soldier went to check himself. What he saw was so impactful that the soldier himself retired due to mental health issues. His superior never recovered from what he saw that day.
José was asked to retire since he refused to be committed to the military psychiatric zone, José didn’t think anything was wrong with him. In his mind everyone is an animal, the earth is the hunting ground, the stronger person overpowers the weaker person, whatever the stronger person wishes to do with the remains of the weaker animal is totally up to him/her.
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Lower animals choose to eat theirs, while humans choose to bury theirs…… however the end decision lies with the slayer, José chose to eat his, why then was he being persecuted.
When he took his superiors through his thought process, they were more worried than ever, they knew retiring José was even more dangerous which is why they had to commit him to a compulsory one-year psychiatric care before they released him to the outside world.
It had been over 2months since José had been released into society, to the normal comings and goings of civilians, he couldn’t cope. The world couldn’t understand him, he was far gone.
There was this time when he caught a petty thief who crafted a perfect tool for his exertions gotten from an iron hanger which he straightened to serve as an extension of his hand, so as to reach places his hands couldn’t.
Unknown to the thief, José’s nightmares were so bad that it kept him half asleep; the footsteps of a tiny spider could wake him up.
As the thief hooked José’s wallet with his tool and meticulously tried gliding it through the window, José saw the whole process but wanted to give the thief the benefit of doubt “probably he threw something into his room by mistake and wanted to gently take it out, but soon he would realise that the wallet isn’t his and drop it back”.
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José gave a thousand reasons as to why the thief might not want to go through with the theft…..but before his very eyes, José could see the thief surreptitiously sliding his wallet.
José prayed that the thief would abort his operation, but he then realised that wasn’t going to happen, before the hunter mode was activated and everything became red.
Next he could remember, 10 men from the vigilante group were holding him down from sniffing out the remaining life left in the thief. The whole villagers looked at him like he was the thief, he couldn’t understand why they weren’t grateful to him for saving them from subsequent theft.
The head of the vigilante group wanted to speak to José, to try and make him understand how things were done but José was immediately put off and retired to his small room which his uncle let him stay in.
Right there and then, that crippling fear came over José, that fear of not being wanted anywhere, of not belonging anywhere, of not being able to fit in, he was scared because he had nowhere or who to go to.
He thought the village would be the best place after he spent 2days in the city. The noise in the city was terrible, the men were vile, the women behaved like men, and the children were born as adults……it was too much for him. Everywhere was too much for him, except the military but they didn’t want him.
As his door quietly opened to reveal the frail figure of his uncle Padim who came in to talk to him concerning the theft incident.
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José, who was a man of little words, went on to justify his actions “Padim…..that man quite alright wanted to steal just my wallet but that was what he wanted to do for today, he could have wanted to kill me or burn me, we would never know. The point is that he is capable of doing either of those things but he chose to steal from me………. I had my own options just like him and I chose to beat the life out of him….. help me understand again….why is it I’m being judged for that??”
“I mustn’t choose the same option as him, must I? Is it when he chooses the option to kill me that a fair game would have been struck…..everyman should bear the consequences of his actions’ ‘ José talked with so much anger.
Padim, his uncle was flabbergasted, he didn’t know where to start from, he just turned and left José’s room.
In the morning as they sat and ate breakfast in dead silence, Padim managed to blurt out words that had been on his mind and been pushing to be let out “Ehmmm…….the bamboo house I and your father built when we used to go hunt in the forest, you can have it. It might need a little work to be done but I’m sure the work is not beyond you, it’s no rush but you can take your time to make it liveable before you move in there”.
“That won’t be necessary, I will leave before dawn” José replied his uncle as they continued to eat in silence.
José understood his uncle’s situation and the pressures he was already getting from the host community to get rid of him, so, he wasn’t going to make it hard for his uncle. Moreover, in the forest he could be a proper hunter on top of the food chain and not to be queried over his reasoning.
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): ): ):
That night, he cleared a portion of the bamboo house where he could lay his head to sleep and display his honorary medals in full view.
When he woke up in the morning, it was like he was reborn and completely infused with the blood of a newborn…. his senses were sharp and his vision clean…. he hadn’t slept that well in decades and that excited his body.
He suddenly had this tingly sensation, he needed to hold something soft very closely. He had been soo oblivious of his sexual urges for a long time that it slowly faded away until it became non-existent, but now it was back, and he was clueless of how he could pacify himself.
He reached for the side pockets of his duffle bag to reveal a picture of what seemed like a standing nude woman with nothing but pearls down her neck and on the back of it was the picture of an exposed woman’s genitals, vividly captured to expose all the layers and definitions in a beautifully hideous way.
He quickly squeezed the paper back into the duffle bag and proceeded to rebuild his bamboo abode; “I control my sexual urge, it doesn’t control me…..my phallus would obey me and not ridicule me into doing what degenerates do” those were the propelling thoughts that jerked him out of the feelings caused by long hours of good sleep.
He maimed, cut, decapitated, minced, divided, slashed, lacerated, slit, severed, clipped, chopped and did all sorts to the unwanted grasses just round his house…..he entertained himself by imagining it was his battle field while the trees and grasses where his unlucky victims that he had to kill.
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He felt good and he had a good feeling about his newfound home. As he stacked his handwork, which were durable wooden sticks and some fruits to head back to his house, he saw the most beautiful strand of grass…..he just didn’t understand how a grass could be so beautiful, so he plucked it, which he was going to use to add aesthetics to his home.
When he got home, he found this vase which he added soil into and stuck the grass before he proceeded to help himself with the fruits he plucked from the forests.
As he laid down to rest and stared at the ceiling of his bamboo house, his eyes became heavy, the melody of the chirping crickets and croaking toads served as a perfect lullaby to ease him to sleep.
He woke up the next morning to a very bright cloud and burgeoning genitals that had needs that were very insistent, he got up to urinate and then proceeded to completely ignore his rebellious body part. As he got back in, he noticed that something was off in his room…..his senses heightened at that point and he noticed the grass was no more, he took his position and in military style he scouted the house for any intruder.
When he was convinced that the house was free from intruders he slouched back into his bamboo bed, as he gazed at his bamboo ceiling, he realised that an extra bamboo stick was stuck to the fourth one by the right making it five. The recently added one was obvious…..it was beautiful and clean…it was the most beautiful bamboo stick he had ever seen in his life and he noticed that no nails were used to hold it.
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It was strange to him, he gently unattached it and placed it where his clothes were. He knew he still had some lingering hallucinations every now and then…..so he prayed that his hallucinations were not coming back.
He went to hunt and look for food, this time he wanted meat not fruits or vegetables, so he took his gun. The real hunting was harder than he expected, fortunately for him when he was about to give up he saw two deers , a small and big one. He fired a clean shot and he got the small deer…. a shiver flushed through him…..a feeling of being the superior animal.
As he launched to claim his kill, he realised that the big deer got hit as well, on the leg and it couldn’t run “can my day get any better….whoooohiiii!!” screamed an exited José.
He tied up the leg of the wounded deer to avoid it from bleeding to death and reassured himself that he definitely had meat to last him a while because he was going to keep the deer alive as long as he could.
As he settled down to have his sumptuous meal after his shower, the wind seemed a bit cooler than usual so he reached for his shirt before he realised that the bamboo stick which he kept by the stack of clothes was missing…….José began to fret, he thought it was his hallucination again but he then realised it wasn’t when he saw an identical shirt just like the one he was about to wear, but in this case it didn’t belong to him….the shirt was as good as new, it gleamed and glittered. He smacked his head, but the image remained clear.
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He was tired and hungry, but most importantly it was just a shirt, so he wasn’t going to stress about it, he was just going to eat and sleep. As he was about to go to bed, he felt uneasy about the new shirt which made him pick it up and leave it just beside the big deer that was still alive and tied outside his house.
And he drifted away.
He woke up that morning feeling like a civil engineer and wanted to do some major changes to the house so he was going to use some of the bamboo sticks he got from the trees he cut down. As he cut them into shapes and sizes to achieve his idea, he suddenly remembered he hadn’t given the deer food to eat and he needed it to stay alive while he feasts on the small deer.
He took a handful of grass to go and feed the deer, on getting there he realised that there were two deers, the other deer stood and stared at him calmly.
José slapped himself vigorously…he needed his hallucinations to stop. He went closer to the deers and the wounded deer just remained lying on the floor while the other looked like a deer from heaven…..it was so beautiful and he noticed that it was female.
The gods of the forest have decided to bless me by multiplying my produce, who I’m I to complain” José thought
He tied up the other deer and went back to his construction work, when he was done and on his way back he saw this very gigantic watermelon which he took home and kept beside the angelic deer.
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Before dawn, José went to feed the deers one last time for the day when he realised that they were now two watermelons instead of two deers and one watermelon.
The whole situation was so perplexing to José that he ended up laughing, he couldn’t understand what was happening and he was so unstable that he wasn’t sure whether it was his shattered mind playing games or it was reality.
That very evening, José took the new watermelon and put it right beside a gallon he used for storing water and before his very eyes the watermelon became a gallon.
He couldn’t really explain how it happened but he knew that it surreptitiously evolved into a gallon…..José having seen the craziest thing in the world during his war days, casually accepted he had captured an inanimate living thing.
In the course of a week, the gallon had turned into six different forms, both living and nonliving. The whole panorama now became more amusing than fretful to José, and he also understood that the formless creature is female in nature, because it always turned into forms with a female angle to it and assumed the female characteristics of the form including thinking and behaviour.
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When he woke up on a cold morning, his light sheets weren’t doing the work of keeping him warm any longer…..the weather was getting cooler by day.
The cool weather and the longer peaceful hours of sleep weren’t helping to tame his needs attached to a human man….he was bored, well rested and well fed…his body needed the cherry on the cake to feel good. He was so turgid that if he mistakenly slided his hands across it, he would erupt with 10 years of stored-up child making cells….but that act was beneath him, he felt.
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He turned and looked at the formless creature which was now the form of a pineapple that he kept beside it. He thought of something silly, but as silly as it was, it became glaring that he was going to go through with it.
His body needed a woman in this lonely forest, a normal woman couldn’t understand or tolerate him, so he was going to build himself a woman.
And for days he stood close to the formless creature while it mirrored the female version of him, when it was finally formed, it was without breast and vagina because the human form was really complex for the creature to mimic, it needed more materials to work it.
José then remembered his dishevelled picture of a woman’s parts and brought it up for the creature to mimic.
Just like Frankenstein, he had created a human being but this time it was beautiful……. extremely beautiful. When the mirroring was complete including down to the brain and thinking……it automatically understood it was the female and assumed what José thought a woman should be…a homemaker, to cook, to care, to nurture, to support and respect.
It went on its knees to pledge its loyalty to José and got up only when he told it to. That made José’s heart swell magnanimously towards it……José was already in love. “What are you?” José asked
It looked at José with sharp tilts sideways “What are you” it repeated after José. José didn’t know his heart could warm up towards anything, he gently brushed his fingers on its cheek “from today your name shall be Formless” José finally named it.
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And it repeated after José, as if to reinforce that name in its head “Form…less, Fo-rm-less, Formless” then it smiled, it spoke distorted words, because the language was still new to it.
José had never seen a smile so beautiful, it was perfection….it looked and blinked with the longest lashes on a human being “and -you- are?” it asked
José was mesmerised by its intelligence and its ability to catch up “Me….I’m José, Jo-se, like Ho-se” José told it , then it laid it’s head on José’s chest, before it looked up and told José “Me…yours and yours….me”
José replied with an astounding “Yes”. This newfound warmth made him fiery over the creature, he couldn’t imagine anyone aside him being close to it, so it was better it understood the union already.
José throughout the remaining day took it round the forest and gently Formless became used to patterns and human activities.
It cooked, cleaned, washed, and helped in other things José needed it to do, José didn’t over labour it, he just gave it the right amount of work he would give an actual woman.
): ): ):
José couldn’t still bring himself to do what he majorly formed it for, he was so out of touch that he didn’t know how to instigate it without feeling terribly ashamed; what would he tell it, how would it react, how about if it rebels, would it like coitus?????
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One day as he instructed it to shower, it came out stark naked with a dead snake in its hand, part of its hand had already started to mirror the snake, José quickly snapped the snake out of its hand and held Formless’s half formed snake hand tightly so it could mirror back into a human’s hand.
Formless held José’s face and noticed a streak of worry on his face “José….you sad…..no sad….hand back….hand back like José’s…..see” and she raised her other hand to completely cup his face close to her face.
Playfully it rubbed the tip of its nose on José’s nose, now all the repressed hormones mixed with intense love took control, for the first time in a very long while he allowed his emotions to take control.
He gave it a hungry kiss, Formless didn’t understand, so it pulled back before José reassured it “José, no hurt you….José play with you….just play….no hurt”. José needed it to understand quickly, because he was on serious heat, he needed her.
“Play?……first time José play with me” she giggled and ran by the corner of the room “José…play…catch me”. José was frustrated that it didn’t understand the kind of play he meant, his burgeoning self was stiff enough to hold a kg dumbbell.
He ran to it, and it ran again “Formless can you not run, please” a sexually frustrated José pleaded with Formless.
“Play José…you catch…..I run or no?, okay come …..me not run again….come” it urged José to come to it and he obeyed like a good boy “me here…you here…what play José want?…mouth on mouth?” Formless asked as it worried it wasn’t playing the way José wanted it to play.
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José held it gently “Yes…mouth on mouth, skin to skin, body to body” before planting another hungry kiss on it, this time it didn’t pull back.
Brain and body reflexes were synchronising, and it understood on a superficial level what José wanted and that was all José needed to carry on.
He kissed, caressed, touched and thrusted until he had his fill, it was perfect. It knew how to move, when to move, when to stop and just stare into his soul. It had sealed the love José had for it, he was out of control in love with it. How can a thing be so perfect for him?” José thought.
They had grown to become a couple, he brought her to town a couple of times and the host community wondered the deranged woman that agreed to couple with this psychotic man…..indeed it is deranged…..it is a formless extension of myself, as psychotic as me”; José thought in his mind
As time went on, they noticed that the same woman seen with José had grown to have a bulging belly. It was pregnant for José and he was happy, he wasn’t bothered about how the child would turn out to be, he had a family and that’s what mattered, he found where he could fit aside the warzone and it was with Formless.
His once hardened heart had melted ridiculously for Formless. After a night of passion as it laid its head on José’s chest listening to his heartbeat, it knew it had finally found its true existence…. with José, and José knew this was it, his forever with Formless……….
Crickets chirped… toads croaked, and they drifted away in their thoughts…. 17
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Nkeiru Okeke is a polymath artist, blending poetry, sci-fi writing, surreal theatre, and forensic accounting into an artistic loop. Her poetry delves into human complexities, exploring themes of identity and social justice with emotive depth. Through speculative narratives, she transports readers to futuristic worlds, intertwining technology and humanity with creativity and insight. As a surreal Thespian, her performances challenge conventions, inviting audiences into dreamlike realms where reality and imagination merge.
Nkeiru is a forensic accountant, applying analytical skills to unravel financial mysteries. Her expertise informs her creative process, adding depth to her understanding of the human condition. Nkeiru also shares her thoughts and ideas on Medium, providing a platform to engage with her writings and perspectives. Through her diverse talents and passions, Nkeiru Okeke invites audiences to explore the vast landscape of human experience, where imagination knows no bounds.
