Hush!

 

 Chimezie’s eyes were devoid of emotion, reminding Ify an experience buried in her little mind. Still holding Ify’s gaze, he sprang from the king-sized bed and dashed towards the door. 

 Her folded arms became more tightened, her body twisting in a manner suggestive of disapproval while her back still leaned against the closed wooden door. 

Recoiling with fear as she rolled her 10 yr old body into a ball defensively, she pleaded with Chimezie; the next door neighbor. 

“Please don't hurt me,” she sobbed, “You told me you will not do it again,” she continued, a stream of tears coursed down her cheeks. Dragging her up, he loosened her folded arms and held her hands.

 

“Okay listen, this will be the last,” he said, lowering his voice into a whisper. “And I promise you, it won’t hurt this time.” The stony grip she felt, reminded her of her resolution to grow 

 

into adulthood as soon as possible so that her soft and tender hand would grow stronger.  

She knew that if she could fill the drum in her mother’s kitchen with water every morning, scrub her father’s Volvo car to sparkling white, read and write on her own, then Chimezie’s feet would have no reason whatsoever to stand in her parent’s room begging her, on behalf of his penis, to walk into her panties. 

In one move, he swept her feet off the ground and swooped her up with his sturdy arms. The room rang with her scream but most of it got swallowed by the squeaky spinning ceiling fan. Hurriedly, he threw her into the squashed mattress, sprawling. In milliseconds, her eyes wandered off from the sleek ceiling to the gigantic photograph of her parent’s hung on the greasy walls and then to the clock. 

The clock said it was 11:30am. Whatever that means, she knew that her mother would only be home when the short hand points to 5 and the long arm with a range of 3 to 6.Leering at her, he pulled off his yellow shirt and his three-quarter jean. His appearance on his birthday suit caused her to coil her legs and then turned her back on him. The thing in-between his legs wasn’t same as Emmy’s –his own, she had seen those times they played in the rain. But what she saw was big; with size and shape of a hot dog sausage.

Viciously, he forced her into a spread-eagle position, after he had pulled up her white gown. Pinning down her arms with his left hand; with his right, he fastened his monstrosity into the narrow passage, and gradually forced himself into her. 

His thrusts, gentle at first but paced up with a renewed surge of desire to satiate. And each thrust caused her more heart throb, more whimper and more tears. 

Her weary eyes wandered off the door when she heard a slight creak. Her eyes lit up with joy when she saw her mother tiptoeing towards the bed, wielding a pestle. The room was still ringing with his moans when the pestle danced through the air to deck his head. 

Without a sound, he fell from his back to the marble floor with a thud. Pulling her daughter off the bed, with her face and her chest covered in blood, Ifeoma wrapped her arms around her child burying her tiny body into her warm embrace. 

“Don’t cry my child, mum is here,” she said, sobbing.  Ify stared at Chimezie's body, as blood quickly pooled around his head. She then turned to her mother, 

 

 

“Is he dead?”                                                 

Staring into Ify’s eyes, she replied                                                                                   

 “No. He is not dead,” then her eyes strayed to the body lying very still on the floor, almost lifeless, “But he will not forget today in a hurry.”                                                         by Aninze Chukwuebuka Harrison                                                                         #CHA_writes xx

 

 

 

 

Remarkable Night

The story began the night she died. 

"You really need to hear my story, right?", she asked, "alright, here it comes". 

It drizzled that night. With a slight prod, the wooden door creaked open. The room was dimly lit by the bedside lamp. It took me few brisk steps to get to where she laid while avoiding the yellow vomit pooled on the wooden floor. The chemist had assured me that the drug would stabilize her condition for some time. But what he didn’t tell me was where and how I could scrounge around for the surgery he spoke of. I scooped small water into a calabash and tapped her to wake. 

Her legs were cold to my touch and her teeth had stopped chattering from the cold. I put my ears to her chest. No heart beat . Then, I knew mother was gone without a goodbye. That night, I cried until my eyes were dried of all the tears.

The next day, I was standing by the side of a mound of loamy soil. Tears rolling down my cheeks filled my chattering mouth. There was no shoulder to share my burden. I watched her corpse, wreathed in white sackcloth, as it descended down to the belly of the grave. 

My uncle took me in. But each passing night in his house came with a fresh pain and agony. 

Was it the pain of my loss? 

He came in every night with a rim of wrapper tied to his chubby waist. He would tell me that no one should know of it. He actually called it “Our little secret.” He threatened to kill me the day I would leak the secret and warned that this secret must follow both of us to our graves and I would wonder how many of such secrets had followed mother to her grave, because mother had shed a lot of tears on his account. Those nights, I would beg him in between sobs, but he would set a deaf ears.

“You are my Uncle. Please don’t do this,” I told him the first night he came.

“This is one of the good gifts uncles can give to their nieces,” was the reply. 

He would crawl into the bed, rip off my panties and would push himself inside me. In futility, I had tried to nudge him aside with my tiny muscles. Tears would pull down my eyelids, while he moaned with each thrust. I would feel a sharp pain running through my spines as his monstrous penis rammed my young vagina. 

Then, came a night –the night that would birth my freedom, the night that would change my story. He ambled in and walked into the bed. His eyes shone lustfully. He patted my legs and I didn’t bother to stop him as usual. I needed to keep him happy, because I knew that the happiest point of a man was his weakest. The moans and erotic air he breathed must have so blinded him that he didn’t see the knife shimmered as I tugged it out of the pillow. I gently sank the blade deep into his neck and immediately gagged down the wails with the pillow. I held to the position as I watched him writhe in pain, until he dropped still. My blouse drenched in his blood. 

“So, how did you find yourself in the prison?” one of the inmates asked. 

I submitted myself to the law. 

 

 #CHA_writes

by  Chukwuebuka Harrison Aninze