Broken Mirrors – Episode 7a Awazi did not return to the room for an hour. What killed Derin the most while he waited was that he had to guess at what she was doing by listening to the sounds. As if to torture him with more uncertainty, she slotted a Bob Marley greatest hits album in and turned the volume up so that the music drowned every other sound in the flat, effectively removing his auditory eyes. When she came in, she stood at the edge of the bed, and looked him in the eyes for minutes. He could see she had been crying, her eyes were puffy even in the dim light. He opened his mouth to say something but even as he did, her right hand which had been behind her back came into view. The light reflected sharply on the object she was holding and it only took an instant for comprehension to hit him. His wife had returned into the bedroom where he was tied to the bedposts, immobile, with a huge kitchen knife. He tried to say something, but the music was so loud it drowned his voice. He tried to scream but a lump formed in his throat. If he screamed, to what effect? The house door was probably locked and no one could gain access, save for having powerful tools to break through the burglary proof and door. And even if they did, did he want them to see him like this? And in all that time, she would have done whatever she had in mind to do anyway. He knew, realized in that instant that he was fully at her mercy. What gripped his heart the most was the look in her eyes as she looked down at him. They did not hold hate or love, or any emotions for that matter. They were blank, empty eyes. ********************************************************* Ope had had a good day. She had long gotten past the beating herself for letting him go phase with Derin. She truly had tried to love other men, but it just hadn’t been the same, the relationships with them never measured up to what she had experienced in those magical years with him. She would have all the fun possible and do either of two things – marry a very rich oil block owning dude when she was almost forty or just have a baby and focus on her child. She had tried to get pregnant for Derin the last time they were together when his wife left him, but somehow, fate hadn’t smiled on her. He had gone back to his wife, and she hadn’t gotten pregnant. She had fallen into a mild depression. She shifted those thoughts away from her as she sifted the information she had been able to gather since her meeting with Derin earlier in the day. First was that she was up against a formidable opponent. She had found out that Omega Hospital’s lawyer was the respected warhorse Rasheed Sanda, and an oooooooooooold SAN. She couldn’t have drawn worse from the fates. She wondered if Derin would be up to the dogfight she envisaged this would devolve into. She had randomly googled Hakeem Ajanaku, and had seen that he was on Facebook. His profile had listed that he had worked in a hospital in the U.S and she decided to research his career there. When she googled using his name and the hospital’s name combined as keywords, the first and second pages of the results were majorly adverts and links to the hospital. But she struck paydirt on the third page – the never-forgetting internet threw up a series of news reports. She spent the next one hour scrounging every detail of the story, flitting from each news story back to his Facebook page. She established the timeline for his move back to Nigeria and smiled. This was good. She settled down to write the demand to the medical association. She decided to write the statement of claim simultaneously, as she was sure she would not get the response from them anyway. ************************************************************** Derin watched as Awazi rounded the bed to stand on the side, big kitchen knife in hand. She was still as naked as she had been when she left, and in spite of himself, he became erect, his body betraying his mind. Tears had begun to flow from her eyes, silent, quiet tears. The loud voice of Bob Marley came over the home theatre “is this love, is this love…” She leaned over and put her lips beside his ears. “Why would you do this to me, Derin, why?” and then without waiting for a reply, she cut the ties that held his hands and sat back on the ground. Relief flooded through Derin, numbing him momentarily. His hands were finally free. He quickly undid the leg restraints and jumped to his feet. The sudden rush of blood to his feet made it feel like he was walking on miniature needles as his feet hit the ground. The first thing he did was to race to the living room to turn off that now maddening Bob Marley jam. As if the hours of inactivity had confined his movements to short races, he sprinted back into the room and stood in front of Awazi who was now sitting on the edge of the bed and shouted “What the hell was that about? Tying me up and scaring me like that! What exactly were you planning on doing?” Episode 7b follows
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:25:58 +0000
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