Chapter one

You get a better perspective of your Mother, your Murderer, when you are dead.

Dead men, or in my case - dead girls, tell no tales but here I am floating in ether and eager to wag my tongues, to paint a picture. I want you to feel my nothingness and kiss me with sympathy, if you can spare one.

No, I want you to die with me and feel my loneliness.

I will begin now. I have begun

Mother can be beautiful only when she is with a younger man.

She is lithe. Her eyes has the feral intelligence of a lynx and essentially ensnares the souls of young hot-blood studs in them. Her latest stud , a tall broad shouldered twenty-something with a face to rival Lucifer's beauty, was the very reason, She became a fine daughter killer.

I did not get to see my father. I was told he died barely three months after I was born. I was told he was a handsome man, rich , a Church builder but with a rare penchant for fiddling with underage girls' undies. Mother said he had loads of them, these undies, stacked in his dresser. And in periods of extreme stress, would take them out , line them up and sniffed them like a cocaine addict straddling a line.

There are times, I would think Mother made up those stories about him. Once, I took a sepia picture frame of him on the central desk of his study and ask Mother if Dad was really a bad man, if he would go to hell.

I was a Sixteen going on seventeen gal at the time. With hormonal surges to boot.

"Your Dad did what he had to do to get by. He has needs. " Mother said slowly, leveling her eyes on me , " Needs that I cant provide for him".

" Whether he is in hell or not, is certainly not what you should preoccupy yourself with"

Mother finished off with that air of impatience that often signals the end of a discussion between us.

But I pressed on.

"How did He get to have those undies. Did you , ehm, help him to get that"

That came out with a sharp intake of breath. Words often tumble out of my mouth without a second thought. Mother had always pointed out that it will definitely affect my chances of getting married to a sensible Man.

The question threw Mother off her usually prim composure. I saw how her well appointed chest heaved sharply and her succulent lips, first rounded in a shocked "O" before succinctly withdrawn into a tight snarl.

" You're not an idiot, Chisom. You are not"

We glared at each other, wrestlers awaiting the signal of the referee to charge at each other. Mother's eyes was all poison, mine was daggers. The air in the room was sulphur. Its hard to forget that day, really.

Every girl wants to have a father figure she can build memories around, however segmented.