Thank you @zizymena for this contest, due to the stress of my Masters program I couldn't have an earlier time to write this, hope I stand a chance.
Cheers !!
My temperature rose like a broken thermometer and my heart palpitated with a convulsive rhythm. I sat on the edge of the bathtub, the door firmly locked, and drenched my low-cut hair, repeatedly, under the shower like an endless spring of reviving water, trying to make me feel alright or just comfortable enough with the dread that awaited me behind the door.
“Sandra,” John’s voice clashed against the white ceramic tiles that lined the wall, before taking an aim at my eardrums that were busy being caressed by the chorus of water from the shower.
“Is everything ok?” my ears somehow caught that.
“Is everything ok?” I asked myself in an inaudible mutter and turned off the shower.
I looked at my beautiful feet and tried to count how many steps it took to have come so far.
He knocked gently at the door again. I didn’t answer. My mind’s eye caught a frustrated figure of him in the chill air conditioned room with hot blood racing down his veins. Men, they can’t keep calm when they hit rock bottom. I kind of understood how he felt at the peak of his emotions but I don’t think he understood how I felt. I wanted a man; a husband. Although I hadn’t had sex before, I didn’t dread it; we ladies may shy from it but we kind of… you know. I could give it to him every day, every time, anywhere and anyhow but I wanted it to be within the cuffs of rings and the boundaries of marital vows, till death do us part but I was thirty-five and this was my second serious relationship in almost seven years.
I smiled briefly, before my face returned to a default pale: the thought of how I met John had flashed across my mind.
It was on a warm evening at the Lagos Bar beach - precisely a year ago.
The blue sea, like a restless warrior raced with the blows of persistent tidal waves, crashing heavily in an uproar against the giant rocks of demarcation by the seashore that stood its ground, unperturbed, like a stubborn last line of defense. A small dark cloud, the size of a football field hung a little way above the seas with a promise of rain, as the sea breeze blew on lifting away everything light enough. I walked down the stretch of the shore till I got to a small tent constructed with palm fronds. Although I hate to admit it, the frustration of seeing my colleagues get married was getting at me and I had to concede to Taiwo’s advice to visit this prophet of hers.
“Welcome my daughter,” a small looking figure in blue garment said to me with a coarse voice.
“Good eve -,”
“Abomination! Off your shoe.” He cut my greeting short, rebuking me firmly as my right foot in a black leather strap low heel cover shoe had crossed the entrance of his shrine when I bent over to enter.
“Sorry prophet.” I replied frantically. Shrunken by scare, I pulled off my shoes and stood awaiting my next ordeal.
He turned to face me, and then smiled at me, his large black lips parted to reveal his big brown front teeth – humorously the size of a cow’s. His front head was a shiny bald, illuminated by golden rays of the evening sun that seem to perforate the thatch overhead. His beards were full and unkempt; plaited in three dirty small locks. His stomach was the look of a water pot. When he walked up to me, I spotted his large toes with damaged dark nails on his small feet.
“Omo mi, kneel down let me pray for you.” He said to me.
At that moment, he stood before me, my knees fully planted in the cold white sands of the seashore. He spoke in unknown tongues, mentioning the names of a dozen angels. His breath was bad; took my breath away. I chokingly endured his presence in front of me, holding my breath intermittently. My ears, however, I left wide open, twitching like those of a hunts dog; this time, hunting for a name, place or date – anything identical to finding my own husband.
“Aahh, Aahh,” he exclaimed giving me that fright of confidence that perhaps the angels he called on had finally revealed someone or something peculiar to the answers I sought, but it was more than I expected, or so to say, pathetic.
“I can hear them cry. Why? My daughter, the voices of the three babies you aborted for that man, they are crying out for vengeance.”
I felt cheated, ‘another fake prophet’ – I concluded. I had come this far so I decided to answer him,
“Sorry prophet, I have never slept with any man. So, how could I have aborted babies when I have never been pregnant?”
He caught a shocking look but quickly tried to string me in a box of confusion bolted with lies.
“Are you calling angel Michael a liar?” He asked sternly, I was uncomfortable and frustrated by the sheer fact he was a fake. I shrugged.
“Baba, Prophet or –“
“Shut up, shut up, and shut up!” He halted my speech. “The Angels are talking to me.”
I kept quiet. Removed my white handkerchief from my purse, and wiped the droplet of saliva that he rained like baptism by sprinkling, on my forehead and face. One had landed on my lower lip, I felt it irritatingly so I spat. All the while he stood with his eyes closed and his head bent sideways, pretending to hear whispers from the realm of the spirit, to which he nodded and mumbled words inaudible for me to grasp. He suddenly began to dance on one leg, hobbling around the small shrine. I shifted to the thatched walls to prevent him colliding with me. Then he resumed his tongue speaking with singing.
“Oribababababababa. Angel Micheal, Uriel. Shibababababa…”
My patience, frustrated, had boiled over into a stream of anger that flowed across my squeezed face. I got up angrily and left him to his madness. With my purse angrily and tightly placed under my armpit, I held my shoes in my right hand, hissing and swinging them angrily as though they were to blame for bringing me there. In my hurt, my ears picked the sounds of hasty foots behind my back, so I turned, low and behold; it was the prophet gaining at me. I guess he held something in his hand, like a small knife, or so my eyes conceived but I took to my heels and screamed down the shore, no one really cared, Lagos as usual, the few persons I passed just minded their business until I ran into John.
“Hello, Sandra, come on.” John’s voice resounded in a sober manner.
The door handles moved before my eyes, he was trying his hands on them – Poor John.
“Step back John, give me a minute.”
“How many more can I give you, you’ve been locked in there for almost a day.” He replied. His exaggeration revealed his tensions and frustration.
I didn’t know what to do. Maybe I should not have come in the first place, to his place. We have been dating for so long and I had broken my rule not to show up at his apartment until we were officially engaged. Although I allowed him access to my place, I had things under control and besides, he always exercised such composure and sense of maturity which, today, had all evaporated to God knows island.
“Ok Sandra, I’ll do nothing. Ok? Please come out let go out.”
I didn’t know if I could trust him but I left the bathtub and sat on the toilet sit with jaw clasped in my hands and my fingers covering my face. I finally pulled down my pant and tried to relief myself of the tension which had developed into a pool of urea. I knew I could not hang in there forever so I got up to open the door.
No sooner had I opened the door and stood with my back against it, he approached me. I was unspeakable, tongue-tied to his advances like a soul knocked down in a ghastly motor accident. The scent of his love consumed me like morphine; I fell into a trance, a coma of love so red; one I didn't know how to wake up from. He wheeled me to his private theatre, placed me on the oxygen of his warm embrace, the coldness of his caressing arms against my goose bumped skin were like warm air in the corridors of my lungs. He dissected my heart with the most skillful instruments of his sharp piercing words.
“I love you Sandra, you know I do and I want to marry you…”
He pecked me on my cheeks causing my ear lobes to tingle in sudden excitement; the drums in my ears sent a sweetening vibration down my spine. His body, ever so close to mine, was like a suction machine; my blood felt drained. I was light and lifeless in his aura; blown away by the wind of his passion.
He was a skilled surgeon. Only God knows how many of me he had operated on. His hands were quick, it was amazing how he had began working on my heart before putting me on the theatre bed, before advancing to take my clothes off.
Then, the bright lamps lit – I regained myself. A beam of light flashed in my brain, a million memories flashed before my eyes, and my life scrolled gradually back into my body. I grabbed his hands and said,
'No, No! You must wait John!'
I saw the shock that filled his eyes behind his thick recommended glasses. I heard his heartbeat decelerate and felt his major instrument as it deflated against my body. He let me go and I walked out of his room.
If he so loved me, why was he more concerned about my body than he was about my heart? He must have been very theatrical and I need no such Love Surgery.
“Now, you’ve heard my story and that’s why I am not going to see your place” Sandra said to Kunle who smiled at her across the table, in the eatery where they sat to eat and talk.
“That’s alright, I’m not John but maybe I should avoid his temptation. I’m for real. ”
They both smiled.
“Come on, let’s go and watch a movie at the Cinema. You don’t need a heart surgery. Do you?” Kunle asked.
“Of cos not, I don’t have a heart disease.”
They laughed and left the eatery.
This is my story of love mixed with obsession.
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