Hello, I am Barr. Inyene John and am very excited about this contest by @zizymena. God bless you dear.
Susan always makes Raymond tell her stories whenever they traverse the school at night. Raymond will grumble but he grumbled only because he likes when Susan begs him in that baby voice of hers that made him feel manly and powerful. Tonight he told her how they met.
'I didn't know what I was doing at the Faculty when you came down the stairs. Your dress, saddled with gold-like decorations, made your beauty glow as you descended like a priestess of a goddess of the sun. You know how it is in the movies when a hot lady enters a scene and her would-be man becomes awe-struck like in James Bond's Die Another Day when Halle Berry emerged out of the water dripping wet in a hot bikini? I felt like Bond. I sought your eyes with mine to will you to talk to me but you did not look at me. I wanted to talk to you but I was frightened; a mixture of fear and excitement.
You collected a pen from a girl and went back upstairs. I followed you upstairs, not to talk to you but to feel that strange excitement again, to feel again the pleasure of beholding your face. You didn't hear me when I said hi so I raised my voice a little before you turned around. I knew you were a new student but I had to ask because there was nothing else to ask after asking your name. When you said for me to give you my number promising to call, I did not trust you would. It was when you called the next day asking me to meet you at your Faculty that I knew I had made a catch. It surprised me the way you hugged me the first night we went out. You were so easy to talk to. And from the way you lingered on my body when we hugged goodnight I suspect you hated to part.
'I excitedly awaited the next night. When you kissed my neck after saying goodnight I felt something had been thrown open that made me not feel as my old self. I became something someone wanted. That was why I pulled you back and held your face. Were you protesting, those silent mutters you made before we kissed? I didn't hear you. I felt like a man emerging from a dream or gliding into one.
'The next night as we sat on the tarred road, me behind you, inhaling the delicious smell of your hair, the thought of kissing you again glowed in my heart. I will never forget the way you moaned as we kissed. Everyday I laugh when I remember how you kept pulling away when a car drove past us with their unwanted light.'
Susan and Raymond stayed together deep into the night and dreamt of many things; getting married and children. Raymond wanted a girl first. He will call her Nneka he said. He had been struck by the philosophy behind the name after reading Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
Their relationship was so firm so that even those who didn't know Raymond or Susan, knew about their relationship. People said of them, those two who were always together, like a man and his shadow.
It was raining outside and flashes of lightning chased away the night then retired so that the night returned again. Susan was lying in her bed constantly checking her phone and pretending to read. Her roommates wanted to turn off the lights and sleep but Susan won't let them. She said she has a test the next day and needed to read. Jamila, a second year student, lying on the lower bunk opposite Susan's, said something about a serious first class student. It was supposed to be a joke but Susan was in no mood for jokes. She snapped at Jamila.
'Yes. First class. And why not? Some of us aspire to become more than second wives to one Alhaji!'
From the silence that followed Susan heard all the unspoken rebuke. She wished she had not spoken to Jamila so. To show she was sorry, Susan got off her bed and turned off the lights. Nobody said anything still. Clearly turning off the lights was not enough atonement.
More than their unspoken contempt, Susan feared her roommates could guess rightly what the matter was. She feared that, in their hearts, they were laughing at her.
Raymond's behavior had gone beyond strange for a while now. Tonight he didn't reply her text more than 45 minutes after he read it. Susan knew he read it because the D that means 'delivered' before the message had turned to R which means 'read'. When he finally replied, it was to say he was busy somewhere writing his Literature Review and he would call her as soon as he gets back to his room. Susan felt her heart ache. The thought that it took Raymond whole 45 minutes to reply her message! Vexation mixed with fear in her heart so that she was unsure what her feeling was exactly. Raymond did not call as he promised.
'No! He still loves me!' Susan whispered to counter her thought that suggested otherwise.
But more than anybody Susan knew that was untrue. Raymond no longer
texted her before he goes to bed or send her those good-morning-beautiful text before she woke. He no longer came to see. The unreturned missed calls. The short, impatient conversations when they meet in school and the way he was eager to get off the phone whenever he managed to answer her phone call. Susan refused to see all these. For what will life be without Raymond? He is everything to her. Without him there can be no life.
He had said to her that nobody will ever take her place in his heart, that he will keep her safe. When then did things go wrong? Was there something she did or did not do? If it was something she did, she was sorry and she will do anything to atone for it, he only need say what she should do to make it up to him and she will do it. Anything!
She opened her whatsapp to check when last Raymond came online. Her heart gave one mighty beat when she saw that he was online. She changed her display picture to a photo of her wearing his t-shirt, the one he gave her when they were going home for break. He said she will look sexy in it, especially if she wore it without an underwear. Just as Raymond prescribed, when Susan got home, alone in her room, she wore it with nothing underneath, took a selfie and sent it to Raymond. He loved the picture and, he told Susan, it made him long for her that whole night and throughout the break. Immediately school resumed, the couple stole away to the tarred road close to Engineering department and there, both discarding their clothing from waist down—Susan wearing the t-shirt—and blanketed by a moonless, starless night, Susan sat legs astride Raymond's outstretched thighs supporting herself by encircling her hands around his neck, she gyrated her waist, encouraged by Raymond's groans.
Now the photo of her wearing Raymond's shirt or the memories they made with the shirt did not make Raymond text her. As a rule girls do not text guys first. Susan's desperation made her discard the code. She reasoned it was better to lose her pride for the one she loves than to lose the one she loves for her pride.
'Hello Baby.'
He read it and replied with a cold hello. Susan felt a hot ball of tear roll down her left check. She brushed it away quickly. So its come to this? What happened to all the fancy names he used to call her? He had so many beautiful and ridiculous but sweet names for her. She loved all those names, even those whose meaning she did not know. One time he sent her a handwritten letter with I love you Susan written in fifty world languages. He had used Google Translator of course but that he thought and took his time to do such an exhausting task for her made Susan feel special. Yet now, he wants to take all that away.
Susan knew she had to put the matter plainly. It was no use continuing to pretend that things have not changed. She suspect the reply she will get, if she gets any at all, will cause her immeasurable pain but is it not immeasurable pain that she suffers right now and every morning when she wakes up and every night before she goes to sleep? The best thing to do was to go head on, unlike the foolish man she saw on a Youtube video who had meekly allowed himself to be slaughtered like a ram, somewhere in Iraq. Each time she remembers it, the scene always galls Susan because of what she felt was the man's folly. What, she had asked indignantly, will a man on the verge of being slaughtered be afraid to lose? Surely it is not his life or anything else. So, with nothing to lose, why didn't he fight? She will fight.
'You're changing Raymond. Do you still love me?'
'What kind of question is that? I don't hate you.'
'Look dude, don't play stupid games with me! Do you still love me or not?!'
Raymond took what seem to Susan like a long time before he replied. He told her he will come see her the next day so they can talk. And without waiting for her reply or saying goodnight, he went offline.
The next day Susan's nerves were all rattled because she feared Raymond may not come see her as he promised. Her roommates were still not talking to her. And Susan needed to talk to someone badly.
When she saw clouds gathering in north as evening came, Susan cursed God. The rain came down like the speech of a stammerer. It would stop clean then continue to fall angrily again as if to mock Susan who longs to feel Raymond's reassuring embrace. Her soul hungers for the love and the safety Raymond, and only Raymond, could give her.
Time struck 9pm yet nothing. There was nothing to do now but to force the matter. Susan dug out her hoodie from her bag, removed her flashlight from the socket on the wall where it was charging, and made out of the room.
'Susan!' Jamila ran after her to the Common Room, 'Susan wait!'
Susan stopped and turned around to face Jamila.
'Please Susan,' Jamila was trying to catch her breath, 'where are you going by this time and in this rain?'
Susan saw in Jamila's big eyes that Jamila knows the answer to the question. Susan would have been angry because it appeared at first as though Jamila was only prying to mock her but she saw that Jamila was genuinely concerned. Jamila's hair was seldom seen even by her room mates. She said it was an abominable thing in her Islamic tradition yet, for Susan's sake, Jamila had ran out with her hair uncovered.
'I have to see him. I feel like I will die if I don't.' Susan was struggling to check her tears.
Jamila stared knowingly at Susan. Her eyes too were beginning to water. She knows what it feels like, this burning restlessness. Jamila was indignant of the whole business of how love that was supposed to be a good thing, reduced people to behaving like drug addicts who, come what may, must get a sniff of the powder or a shot of the syringe, and quicken their own destruction. She too had suffered a similar misadventure in her first year but here was not the place or now the time to tell Susan the story.
'Boys never like when girls chase them Susan. Trust me. You may end up hurting yourself. Let us go back to the room and talk. You're beautiful and very young. Allah! So many opportunities await you in future. Men with greater potentials and finer features and even money. Lots of it. Let's go back inside.'
Jamila's accent was musical and Susan likes when she talks at length. Perhaps what Jamila said is true but Susan insisted on seeing Raymond one last time, to quench this longing that burns her heart more than fire. Maybe after that, maybe after tonight she will do her best to forget him but tonight she must see him, and nothing will stop her, not Jamila or even God with His rain.
Susan was drenched with rain water when after fifteen minutes walk she got to the boys' hostel Common Room. She signed in and was allowed entry by an old security man who stared at her through wrinkled face, made even more wrinkled by the disgust of seeing a girl so young bringing herself so cheaply to the boys' hostel, in spite of the rain, to be fucked.
The door was slightly ajar when Susan got to Raymond's room. Still Susan would have knocked if the sound of people having sex had not struck her. She knew it was sex because the lights was turned off, plus she was all too familiar with Raymond's moan.
'Who?' Raymond shouted as Susan let herself in.
Susan's hands trembled as she groped for the switch on the wall of the room. She found the switch and turned on the lights. A naked girl, with her legs wide apart was on the floor and Raymond,naked too, was suspended between the girl's legs. Susan made out of the room, out of the hostel. She ran and not heed the shrill voice of the old security man behind her shouting, young lady come back and sign out.
The rain now poured in torrents and lightening kept tearing the sky and striking the darkness temporarily away. As she ran Susan knew she was running away from the heart-wrenching sight of the boy she loves so much who does not love her. But what was she running to? She never wondered about the purpose of her life till she met Raymond and decided her purpose was to be happy with him. Now that he has ejected himself from her life, what was left but this hollowness filled only with night and thunder and rain? Susan wished it was possible to become water and be licked clear forever from the face of the earth by the sun that will surely shine tomorrow. But such a thing was impossible. For a man or woman who feels out of place in the world and seeks out, there was only one way.
When Jamila woke her up the next day, she didn't know Susan was dead till she saw empty packets of several drugs laying close to Susan's beautiful hair.
