We died together.

It was on a Saturday, wrapped into each other when the building came down. We had just made up from a week long fight, talked long into the night, and he proposed. No ring,no fancy dinner or talk. It was on the bed, in his dingy bedroom on the tiny 3rd floor apartment.

"Let's just get married. We are as good as married anyway." He said matter-of-factly.

"I'm Yoruba. Your mother hates Yorubas. You're broke. You earn thirty thousand naira a month. You won't take money from me. I can reel out a hundred reasons.

"I was trying to stall, I had seen the glint in his eyes, one that meant he wasn't going to change his mind.

He just snorted, and with one bullish arm swung me to his chest. "We'll get married,tomorrow if possible. " I almost choked on the laughter, as I gurgled in delight.

So we started to iron out the tiny details, over stale sliced bread and margarine. I watched him nibble at the bread with the slight sneer that said he was only eating it because he had to fill his belly, my Somto never liked bread. I still remember his bearded face that night.

He agreed to move into my apartment. To allow me fund the wedding, things his alpha male ego wouldn't normally allow him agree to. He just wanted to be married. Like he had a premonition.

We must have been asleep only an hour when the deep rumble of concrete giving way started. I heard it, somewhere in the deep of my fuzzy sleepy mind, but I didn't wake up. I must have thought it was rain and thunder. Somto must have too, but we died together,under the rubble of the collapsed building.

My body was revived, but my spirit had gone with Somto. They said he protected me even in death. My limp body was retrieved from the embrace of his corpse under the rubble.

Six years later, I am married, with two kids but I died with Somto, that Saturday morning.I'm just this dull woman who rarely laughs and whose smiles never touch the eyes.

One morning I see him, Somto with a pronounced limp, his hair plaited in neat corn rows and a thin scar running down the left side of his head. He looks much bigger too, not fatty bigger, muscle bigger. Biceps bulging and visible beneath his blue shirt. His beards were gone, a smooth jaw in its place.

My skin sprouts goose pimples, my head seems to grow bigger. I have no idea what I am seeing. Has Somto become an 'akudaya'? Or is it just creepy resemblance?


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