Chapter Twenty Four

SonOfMan was thinking there he hunched over his table, if Mister Ill-fate didn’t actually know him by name. It was a commonplace that sometimes Mister Ill-fate would knock on your door and wait for you to tell it there’s no seat left for you—then it would say, don’t worry, I’ve brought my own stool; but in his case, never anytime like ‘sometimes’. It swept in without knocking, and never forgot to unlawfully visit with the devastating stool.

SonOfMan however had decided to stay-up with his writing this slow night. He was going to open his door to allow better ventilation when the situation became telepathic. As if he was teleoperating the door, the handle was coming down and the door was opening. But it was following somebody’s operation at the other side, because someone was standing there the next moment. And that person closed the door and shoved herself inside with a colossal nerve.

The warrior who loses his head in battle doesn’t return home to tell story, they said—but the case was different here.

“WyiWorri,” MyAngel called out.

He wasn’t easy on her. He put his hands on her soft chest and shoved her across the room—in short, back to the door, slamming her unto it—and she stood there saddened, as if she didn’t expect what was happening. She said; “WyWorri, why this?”

“You asked me that?” He grinned, but the grin was cruel by nature. Hell, it was over! Now he was even sure of the very last detail. “You asked me that?” He repeated darkly. “Then what were you thinking when you came back here?”

She pressed her hand around her shoulder, feeling it “Maybe I was thinking things that go like the family’s not a club you can easily relinquish your membership of.”

SonOfMan took his time. He watched her abandoned state, but instead she looked desirable. The room had even smelled of her fresh powder. “Like I promised you, Dumebi, they’ve all known what happened. Double-Chief, Prince Williams, Chrisette, Chinonso, Betty… everybody now has proper conviction; it’s over!”

MyAngel seemed to have realized why there was that feral action; he watched her as she trembled. She wouldn’t have power to move again, he thought and continued; “You thought I shouldn’t have fought you; but I should rightly. Yeah, I should rightly love and leave you with this pang of good radiance.” He watched her lips get dry, and she tried to lick them—but it didn’t help her any. “I must have scared the hell out of you, as I pushed the panic button over your pregnancy that day you called to announce it. You know, I made a big mistake myself in thinking I’d get away with it. It’s not good spreading the net when the bird you want to catch is watching you. You knew something was screwball when it didn’t piss me off that you chose to keep the baby… when I rather sucked it up and started making fatherly plan for an arrival of the baby I condemned to death. You actually knew I wondered how you suddenly went broody… and of course knew that I must have seen some questionable pills in your purse. Uh-huh; the baby was the key. As long as it stayed and be born, the heat stayed on you and be revealed. Anyway, you made sure it didn’t stay and be born.

“I’m going to make a guess, let’s see how close I come. WyiWorri was a sucker; two people successfully made him that… and it was seen in his sitting-duck life.” He made a moment face of disgust. “He must have been if the silent love of Chrisette, and henpecked ideas of Princewill, could throw some crippling submission unto him so badly, that when he even squawked around, they towered over him, demanding for him to shut up and cowardly pull in his horn. But WyWorri was a trained student of the world of eve, and graduated with a lot of experience, so he had a reason to be dumb. Let’s say he lost all his experience where it counted, and in blind love he had none left. You know it’s not hard for a woman to fool a man who’s in love with her, especially if this man that loves this woman suddenly becomes this blind in a careless way.”

Now SonOfMan saw MyAngel give out an in-breath that could betray her.

“So he’d questioned the time you took in, then became cagey, waiting to see what you’re up to, but you didn’t wait. You picked out a good handy vulnerable victim, and waited until you made his secreted intention beyond reach.

“That was an easy shot too. WyiWorri should have known the trick right there. You didn’t leave the evidence of your ailment, the blood, in the toilet seat, and he was counting a concerned brave lady of clingy love… seeing a big shot similar to Juliet of Shakespeare. He should have been counting a brave crook, who knows so little about clingy love, and how to hold chastity and make fidelity.

“One of the marks of maturity is the ability to disagree without becoming disagreeable, he wasn’t trying to work with a cool head and suck it up… so it must have been pretty easy for you to keep successful check on him. Then there was the little psycho-episode in his room, but you traced him to that tavern with so much unbelievable tolerance that kept him guessing.

“Chrisette… she was inspiration. She was another strength that could have backed the prophetic prognoses formidably, if she’d taken the chances of unmasking her true self for his love. Of course, you didn’t know she was fighting against some cheapening love she’d developed for him, but he did. She didn’t play benevolent honest broker out there that evening… no; she was rather trying to bridle his advances.

“Dumebi, you should have left this game of love to the true players like Chrisette. They’re much more chaste at it… and that was why she was messing up the prophetic divination in her hurry bid to get a rightful distance from him. She quickly found collaboration in Prince Williams’ relationship with you, because she actually thought that WyiWorri’s occasional pathetic need for her love attention was the real problem between him and you. She just didn’t know that those melting callouts had nothing to do with anything, except give him preventive alert to lay caution against your shoddy love. She surely came up with some choice morsel after that error.”

Some smiles rudely came across MyAngel’s face. Damn it, the bitch was catching fun! She was there laughing at him, hardly moping, much more retaining fear. SonOfMan fought a choke—a damn choke—and tried to continue. He would surely rip her inside out.

“Let’s not forget Prince William, the great fixer, here. He might be right with his sermon about love, but I think he weighed the dubious scenario at one time there; just that he was a spent-force to do anything about it. He was full of nuts about your physical charm in a slight case of love triangle here. It had a lot of information about his henpecked approach. Damn, I say it actually had a lot of things to tell.”

SonOfMan breathed in soundly and held it a moment, waiting to hear her protest against that new allegation. But she didn’t mind—and that he never stopped wondering why she wouldn’t dare get afraid or at least upset.

“Offhand, I’d say Prince Williams completely fell under your spell and craved for your romances in his fantasies, hoping that WyiWorri would think he was Godsend while he protected promises taken in God’s presence. But Dumebi you flagrantly betrayed on those promises with your fake reality… and that gave Prince Williams blind reason to condemn him. He didn’t care about what substance WyiWorri was made of, or what pointing issue WyWorri was talking about there.”

MyAngel was smiling again, and SonOfMan knew why she was smiling when she should be pleading. She had been expecting this conclusion, and this conclusion had no space to cast her away in respect to what he had taken her to do in the presence of God.

“Your vow, it wasn’t inviolable even though expected to be. Your matrimonial-kind of union can be sacrosanct or cannot. Lately Prince Williams was able to say a kind of if the vow that instituted the union is violated, the union itself is expected susceptible to be attacked, because it’s now a dead letter. It won’t be a sacrilege.

“And WyiWorri was able to tell God how he tried to caution you with the information He Himself had tried to give him in each dream.”

SonOfMan had made MyAngel know that he had even convinced God on his rescinding mission, like open and shut case, so her soul was going to crawl in the mud invariably. He went on talking; “You’re a damn crook of pit of hell… maybe that’s what best to tell you. Everybody was ready to count WyiWorri wrong; you steered them to see him as a basket-case. But, trust me, no matter how many spirits plotting a man’s death, it’d come to nothing unless his personal god took a hand in the plotting. It was a pity for someone to see him in fools-paradise there, because he understood what the situation was like early enough… and he knew you were evil femme fatale.”

Now MyAngel was blinking her eyes, perspiration was breaking out on her forehead. She moved away from the door and dropped into his chair, speaking to him in a low voice, looking down. “I know you understood what the situation was like… maybe early enough… but I know you didn’t any time think that I was close to evil of femme fatal, because you actually told your inner self the truth that I wasn’t what it seemed.”

Did she hit a point there—a point on something subconsciously undertow about his being a self-styled poodle all along? SonOfMan’s head was frenzy of scrimmage shutting back and forth, too suspicious right now to settle with that smart point she was using like a soothing liquid to mitigate her heinous callous crime.

“I know there were things you had salvaging thoughts, but your hot pursuing inkling was too fast to allow you settle with the inner truth,” MyAngel said again. “If Double-Chief wanted to be the one who married me, and a certain intolerable height of infidelity case surfaced to shake the relationship me and you were having… firstly, seeing a fed-up plaintive message from you, which was so bust-up and couldn’t pass any information other than you were at the brink of freezing out, and secondly having you lost your common sense in a hot bid to revenge… he’d certainly take advantage of that situation; don’t you think? He could change status and twist stories following them, and you wouldn’t know. A hungry lion will make friend with a hyena; he might have even planned to kidnap and possibly kill you, but he saw your honest credulity and thought otherwise.

“After all it’d be gainful to keep you out of the race, under his crafty disinformation and chicanery. It was such a profitable scheme that a monkey which goes out to grow horns returns with ears cut off; he mouthed out and lost out. When you think of it, that one wasn’t a good partner, but a worst rival a contender can have.”

Now this was too much for SonOfMan; could it mean that all his suspicion was without foundation—and gave a jolt to the theories he had begun to put together, which threw them into new and interesting outline? He dropped his head in his hands, pressing the hands against his face. Aye, when a vulture goes to funeral it sheds tears of joy—that was what he forgot.

“Now if you’ve accomplished all you planned for yourself on this, you’ve probably not planned enough. Like you needed me all this while, I’ll give you every chance to realize I needed you too.” She pulled off her clothes and stood brazen naked. “Please, take off your clothes.”

SonOfMan looked at her unbelievably; she meant it. She spread her hands in the air as an indication of total offering, and then put them down.

“Double-Chief had a fiancée he’d planned to marry soon when we met, but it didn’t stop him from being my friend,” MyAngel continued. “He was good and helpful and earned my good rapport, which I extended to this lady too. They became my confidant and close pal.”

SonOfMan watched that story; often he wondered why his cranky caller took the pains, and how she even laid hand on such sensitive stories that should have been rigid secrets.

MyAngel knew what he was thinking, she said; “It tells about your cranky caller and her wondrous sacrifice to help a stranger. Of course, it explains that gossip packaged for your eventual visit.”

MyAngel wouldn’t be anything but right here—

Yeah, the pieces came flying back together. They were all there and not making much sense; but there were enough of them, so she would expect him to have it all someday.

Little bits of jagged information. Things like the way the cranky caller was getting uptight. It didn’t tell of someone who wanted to help another, but someone who wanted another to help her.

Things like the way the cranky caller fell for his charm. It didn’t tell of a lonely lady, but a jealousy lover that sought to redress the balance.

Things like the way MyAngel went indefinitely mad about his ‘danger’ reference to her lovemaking—of all his brazen accusations.

“Now I’ll tell you why I bottled up my sexual feelings for you, WyiWorri, and even left that way I did that morning.” MyAngel’s voice came from a long way off. “I had to maintain that costly claim to at least keep the dregs of my value… the dregs of my merit… the dregs of my significance to you. I made my most sacrifice, accepting its pains of suffering, allowing cases of sexual harassments, to keep that you said was infected for you and for you alone. I continued to put a smiling face to Double-chief because I knew he wasn’t going to present our case the way it was, if he got to know you. I was never part of his twisted stories. You told me that my pregnancy for you was a bent of nature, and I saw your rejection of your baby, the product of our love, in your feral behaviours. I actually thought you didn’t mean anything with your pre-nuptial vow, because having a baby and a wife was what you’d all along dreamed. You’d wanted me to abort the baby and later had some scurrilous dreams that rather showed your disinclination on the engagement… and you wouldn’t say why you chose to distant me in your lovemaking. It was a long time… in fact, this time this case has all bust open this shameful way, before I found out they presented every frustration you’d ever saved up.

“I know Chinonso tried to come between us, and I tried so much to resent her. When she started making mistrustful jokes about my body, I had reason to feel bad, but I let it go. I even let her get me some pills to take along with, in case we need them; but in your place I didn’t make use of them on a second thought that this was a broody opportunity to have your baby. And that was the pills you saw in my purse.

“You see, at the height of your blind suspicion, I’d asked Double-Chief privately to be a shoulder to lean on, and told him enough about us, so that he’d have an idea of what I was looking from him. He was hooked to Cyndi in the meantime like I said, but he started pestering me and dwindling his love for her. I knew you were doing the same to Chrisette, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating my choice of you.

“He didn’t see your message himself, I showed it to him. Then when I didn’t show up back to my place in Lagos early enough, he thought I’d finally left for you and picked you up on phone. But he got the knowledge that I hadn’t even gone for you yet, and his desperate heart gave him a choice… kill him and shove him away from the way, or maybe hoodwink him into finally severing his love for her. He didn’t know you’d planned to let go any hope of me becoming your wife already.

“I did it, WyiWorri; I’m not sorry for inducing the bloody relationship. All the same, I didn’t get any pregnant for him, and never was reckless with his relationship. It’s just that darkness is so great that it gives horns to a dog. I didn’t yield to his proposal, and never had an engagement with him. The day he saw my people was the day we went with his car for a burial ceremony down here in Umuahia. We only branched off to check on my mother. I heard he came back later, but that was his damned business. The night I told you I went to Ngookpala it was his place, and I went to pick a quarrel with his people against such move. During this time I found out your distrust of me strengthened rather, and your love was a desperate shallow thing that just needed revenge.” She swallowed some hard saliva and continued; “You know little wonder we have a rare coincidence here. Cyndi told you a Richard, who’s my ex… and this man I met that helped me on my journey home was Richard, but another Richard.

“Actually, Prince Williams you said was your friend had some harmful brazen love for me… without atom of regard for the trust you had for him. While you think he was a Godsend to protect our dear love, he was actually there harassing me for a messy love. But it’d have to be over my dead body, because I knew his shameful case was a cheap cause I’d put an easy rout.”

SonOfMan watched her like ‘Prince Williams did that?’, but said unflappably. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I know,” she said. “I kept it secret without mouthing it out to you for two things. One, I know his love was too treacherous to even consider he could succeed in having me. Another, it was good you didn’t hear me say it since your claim he was a protector of this love somehow guaranteed your sustenance of this love.” Now she moved to him, took his hand, and then closed her hands on it. “I miss your love… your touch, WyWorri. Like you said you know what the situation was like early enough, you know it was much better than it seemed; make love to me for the last time.” She let those hands go around his waist—as he just stood there. “Love me the last time for you wouldn’t be my lover anymore. You know it; I can be your sister henceforth, but I’ll not be able to be your wife anymore.”

Aye, SonOfMan knew it, and he had let her know it, but slowly he began to discard his night robe. “Yeah, I don’t think I was such a patsy,” he said; “I know quite well you weren’t a bolshie evil femme fatale… I know you were better than you seemed.”

Only the soil knows when the son of mouse is sick—she held him close again. “It was just a case of living in cloud-cuckoo-land.”

“Yeah… cloud-cuckoo-land, but with costly blindsides,” he concluded.