How I died: My experience With Hitler's Gas Chamber

'You still lying, I knew when you were in your fathers nutsack. You mean you died in this?'

'Okay, fine. You are right. Let's not argue again. I wasn't around when world war1 was fought but I can swear on my beardless face that I have seen it all in a little boys stomach. They say dead men tell no tales, but I heard one speak ones and it wasn't funny at all. Grab a coffee, tea, whatever, just grab something cause what I'm about to tell you, you can only hear it from my mouth.'

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Today wasn't just going to be a good day at all. I should have feign sick so my aunt would let me stay back at home, but I was no prophet to tell what await me that day. Rewind your time machine to a cold morning in August 1823. Oh no, I mean 1983.

I just woke up from my bed, rushed outside to check the distant of the rising sun from me and with that I could tell am quite late for school. I quickly had my bath, I'll have to skipped breakfast today.
Oh, not beans and plantain again.
I could have easily skipped that one even without been late but the lateness now gave me a polite way to do same without getting twenty questions from Aunt Eno.

Am here standing by the road side in my hot-bottle ironed navy blue short and white shirt (you folks from London won't know that in those days we would filled a bottle with hot water and roll it over our clothes to iron them, genius!! You will say until you try holding the bottle and you will know why you should never be slapped by a laundry man in the '70s).

The crumble #50 note in my hand looked as though it had been used as a carpet in a Texas night club.
A blue and yellow coloured taxi, which looked as though it's just out of Lagos slum garbage dump, stopped beside me. The driver howled in a deep rumbling voice
“Anuakacha”? “Jump in”

Like seriously, it was worse than this only that it got for tyres and this one doesn't.

But Oh well! Seems like I wasn't in much luck this morning, so I gave him my beloved #50 making sure my face expressed my disgust with his car. He snatched it from my hand like a kite would snatched a chicken from the mother hen only that I was not quacking.

He turned on the ignition, the car coughed and shook like an old nun but the fire died just as quickly as it came. A few more trials and we knew what it means, we had to give it a little push cause once you have handed your money to those taxi drivers, it's easier to get a tooth from a live crocodile than to get your money back.

Well, I knew as a nine year old school boy, I wasn't going to join in pushing the car <or so I thought, poor me> until I heard a chorus from the other passengers

“Nso afo asinne do anam so, blah blah, anie ido ayen ufok mfo. Adadamma blah blah blah, some more blah blah blah”

It's quite a long translation but it literally means ‘fuck you’

So, I had to joined them in pushing the old rickety cab.

In my mind, I wish I was in America so I could file for child abuse/child labour but this is Nigeria even the judge could laugh at that and told you he used to push two hundred horse a day and plowed fifteen hectares of farmland daily to pay his school fees right from when he was in the womb

Well, forget about that. What was I talking about, Oh! How I got killed in a Nazi gas chamber. So, back to the story. I quickly rolled the sleeve of my shirt and joined the others in pushing the car. I wondered how much force my 9year old arms could exert on the car but after a few pumps and kicks, the engine coughed some more and roared to life. All of a sudden, the air filled with white smoke swallowing us up as the skies of China during the industrial revolution. I'm sure you thought this is it, I'm going to suffocate and die. That would have been quite easy but fate held something far worse for me that day. So I survived.

The car had broken down a thousand and five more times before I got to school and each time the rituals could be repeated. I inhaled way more smoke in a 30mins journey than my old grandpa had inhaled in his sixties years of smoking pipes. You are disappointed that I haven't died just yet. Hold your peace, it's not your dying. I'll do it my way.

Anyway, I got to school alive but super late, so late that if there was a trophy for lateness, I would have received double gold just for that day. I was just in time to join the rest of the boys at the assembly hall in watching the school drama club present a stage play. There was no available seat in sight but I quickly found a boy who had all seats around him empty. I should have sensed something was off but my desperation must have switched off oxygen supply to my brain so I totally ignored the warning and sat right next to him.

Just as the play was about to start, the young boy turned to me and smiled, extended his right hand to shake mine and said

‘Good morning, my name is..... ’

Boom!!🌌 Boom⚡!! Bang ⚡⚡, I passed out. Someone must have opened a tank of ammonia, the horrid smell was so thick and cloying that they seem to permeate my clothes and skin. I tried to shallow my breathe and took a ragged breathe through my mouth. That was a terrible mistake as it hit the back of my throat like a thousand knives, I began to gagged.

I looked at his mouth, it seemed he wasn't planning on stopping talking anytime soon.

‘You got a dead fish in there’?

I asked pointing to his stomach. He probably swallowed his grandpa's dirty socks cause what came out was worse than the mustard gas that Hitler used in WW11. I died...

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Edits: if you want me to write about some certain kind of death. Just mention it in the comments. Example, death by Yoruba stew.