Title: "The King Who Ate His People"
He made us eat from the same bowl he used to wash his dead enemies’ bones.
My name is Chijioke. I come from a small village in Eastern Nigeria. I have never told anyone this story before. Maybe people won’t believe me. But I have to say it. The truth has lived in my chest for too long. I was just fourteen when it happened.
We had a king. His name was Igwe Mbakwe. He wasn’t always wicked. At first, people liked him. He gave gifts, settled land problems, and made sure we had food. But after his third wife died in the market — her head smashed by a falling palm tree — he changed. People said the gods cursed him. Some said he cursed himself.
He stopped talking to anyone. Then, after one year of silence, he came out with new laws.
The first law: No one could leave the village without his blessing.
The second: Every family must send one child every month to the palace “for the gods.”
The third: Anyone who questioned him must be taken to “the dark room.”
My younger sister, Adaeze, was chosen in the third month. My mother cried until she fainted. My father just stood there like a tree. We never saw her again.
Some people started to run away at night. But the king’s guards — tall, quiet men with long black cloth tied over their faces — always found them. I remember when they brought back one man named Obinna. They cut off his lips. The king said, “Let him taste silence.”
One night, I was taken. Two guards grabbed me while I was fetching water. I fought. I bit one. But they beat me until everything went dark.
When I woke up, I was in a stone room. It smelled like burnt hair and something worse — like something dead had been there too long. They didn’t speak to me. Just pointed to a wooden bowl. Inside it was soup, thick and black. Bones floated in it. Not animal bones. Human ones. I swear.
A man walked in. Not a guard. Older. His teeth were yellow. He looked at me and said, “The king eats this every night. You will eat too. If you don't, you go to the dark room.”
I tried to run. They caught me again.
They took me to the dark room.
I will never forget what I saw. I can’t describe it all. There were people tied to the walls. Some still breathing. Some not. In the corner, a boy my age was singing to himself, chewing on his own finger.
I don’t know how I escaped. A fire started in the palace. Some say lightning struck. I crawled out through a hole in the wall. I ran and ran. I didn’t stop until I reached another village.
When I told them, they said I was mad. They said there’s no king like that in our land. No one even remembers Igwe Mbakwe. It’s like he was wiped from history.
But I know what I saw. And every time I eat, I remember the taste of that black soup, the smell of that room.
Some nights, I still hear Adaeze calling my name.
Please don’t go looking for my village. Some things are meant to stay buried.
