IN THE ARMS OF MIDNIGHT is a collection of ten thrilling stories. Below are excerpts from two of these stories.


Story Title: THE NIGERIAN GIGOLO

I MULLED OVER Ifeanyi’s offer for a couple of days – repeatedly centering on the amount I stood to make per sex session – if I chose to join that line of business. The financial mire, I was neck-deep in, thickened daily. Some debtors were already demanding for their money. Two or three of them had even threatened to call the police. The house rent was seven months overdue – and the landlord was no longer interested in my appeals. None of my extended family members was willing to offer any substantial help. Admittedly, they had lent quite a hand, financially, during both my father’s prolonged illness and my parents’ funerals.
Overwhelmed by my nuclear family’s noxious circumstances, and already enticed by what I soon convinced myself was an easy way of making good money, I accepted my friend’s offer.
After all, it’s just sex…nothing more, I thought. I figured there was no hurt in having fun, and earning cool cash while doing so. And moreover, it beats selling my kidney, or some other organ, hands down.

*****

Ifeanyi took me to Saint Francis – a private hospital, located at Surulere, in Lagos – for a thorough medical examination. Fortunately, I tested clean on every point.
With that out of the way, he and I went to see his contact. Our destination was an underground strip club/LovePeddler house, situated on Victoria Island. For the life of me, I never knew such a hedonic place existed in Nigeria. I had to pinch myself to ascertain my current reality.
Where on earth am I? This has to be the gateway to hell.
All the girls – with various alluring shapes, sizes, and colours – I saw there were either partly or totally nude. In fact I saw more of the latter.
Ifeanyi’s love-vendor – a dark, short, stocky and bald-headed guy in his mid-forties – met with us in his backroom office.
He co-owned the pleasure joint in question.
We had to wait for several minutes before speaking with him, because a tall, light-skinned, attractive, and bosomy girl, whose sole piece of clothing was a thong, was seriously busy performing an act of MouthAction on him, in a corner of the expansive office – about five meters from where my friend and I sat patiently. Man, the voluptuous girl was blow-jobbing the love-vendor like her life depended on it! And the way she was deftly working her hands, tongue, and entire mouth around this guy’s balls and boner…I figured she would make a fine porn actress.
Unlike me Ifeanyi was quite comfortable, as he settled back in his seat, reading a skin magazine he had picked up from a side-table. I could see he was already used to the salacious affair nearby.
When the oral activity was over, the love-vendor and the girl cleaned themselves up. Then the love-vendor made a sex-soaked joke, before sending the girl out of the room with an affectionate spank on her bulbous buttocks.
The girl, who seemed to be in her early twenties, squealed delightedly…wiggling her rounded bums and jiggling her exposed, enormous breasts. Then, without offering me or my friend a single glance, she sashayed out of the office. For the first time in my life I felt literally as invisible as a ghost.
The love-vendor, Aruma by name, now zippered, took a seat opposite us. There was a brief exchange of pleasantries. Ifeanyi did the introductions and explained why we were there – although I learned he had already told his love-vendor about me. While my friend was talking, further building a relationship bridge, Aruma was examining me in much the same way as a devoted scientist would do a fascinating species.
His beady eyes repeatedly travelled up and down the length of my body – with particular focus on my crotch region, each time. And each time, he licked his wide lips – like he couldn’t wait to see, and perhaps taste, what lay behind my underpants.
I’d never had a man look at me that way before. It was... unsettling.
Oh, God, I hope he’s not bisexual or something.
When Ifeanyi was done talking he handed Aruma the result of my medical test.
Taking his time, he went over the details carefully. “This is excellent,” he said, finally, quite satisfied with the medical document.
Locking eyes with me, now, he asked Ifeanyi to excuse the two of us.
It was time for a private, one on one, conversation with the neophyte.
I was alarmed, so alarmed, that the love-vendor’s twisted imaginations might suddenly get the best of him and prompt him to ask me to continue where the light-skinned girl, with the large boobs, and big buttocks, had left off.
But Ifeanyi squeezed my hand, lightly, as he gave me a reassuring look. Rising to his feet, he walked out of the office, without a backward glance.
Wait! Please don’t go! I nearly cried out. Don’t leave me here alone with him. He might go sexually berserk and decide to rape me! Please come back!

*****

The minute the door closed behind my friend, Aruma asked me to stand up.
O, Lord, it all begins
I rose slowly to my feet.
“Take off your clothes,” Aruma said, in a silky-smooth voice.
What?! Take off my clothes? Your father must be very mad! There’s no way in hell I’m doing that! I’m keeping my clothes on, thank you very much.
“Excuse me?”
Seeing the questioning look on my face, Aruma said, “Listen Ben…that’s how it works in this business. I need to assess you, closely, before linking you with the women or men who will require your services...”




Story Title: A STEP INTO DARKNESS

THE RECTANGULAR STEEL top felt cold against my naked flesh. My hands and feet were bound, securely, with leather straps, to four, thick, shiny, and elliptical, metal poles – with intricate, primordial carvings along the length of each one – positioned at the four corners of the surface on which I was stretched out. The poles were about two meters high. And the head of each one was cupped widely – with a blue-red fire burning in all the cups.
Another leather strap ran across my brow, holding my head forcibly in place on the steel table. I lay, spread out, pretty much like Leonardo da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man. With the exception of my eyes, I couldn’t move a muscle. I didn’t know if I was paralyzed by fear, shock or something worse. My wrists and ankles, bruised raw, throbbed with pain.
The room I found myself in was lit by a series of strategically arranged candles. It looked like a temple from the medieval era. It was roughly round and cavernous. Supported by colossal columns, forged of gray granite, the ceiling soared an astonishing one hundred and fifty feet overhead. The room’s walls bore complex patterns of what appeared to be ancient symbols. Directly above me, on the ornate ceiling, was a huge, blood red, conjurer’s pentagram.
Encircling me, about three meters away, was an assembly of at least twenty people. And, from what I could see, it appeared they were all men. They all had roughly the same height and build – tall and stocky. And they were clad in black tunics and hoods – with their odd faces well-hidden behind the latter.
The strange gathering was quietly humming a weird tune. The men rocked back and forth, slowly, as if they were in some sort of trance.
My heart began to pound.
Where the hell am I?
No matter how much I tasked my memory, scouring the farthest recesses of my mind, I couldn’t quite remember how I got to this peculiar room in the first place; neither did I know why I was stretched out, utterly nude, on a surface I now realized was a metallic altar. At this point, something clicked in my mind, and the second puzzle fell precisely into place: I was about to be used as a human sacrifice in some bizarre ritual. My heart thundered faster.
O God save me!
A section of the human circle parted, just then, and a small-statured, frail-looking figure walked leisurely through. Unlike the rest of the men, he was clad in a brown habit, and wore no hood.
As the new comer – a wizened man – approached the altar, the rest of the assembly bowed their heads slightly and, in unison, said, ‘Welcome, High Master! Welcome!’ They said this thrice, their now loud voices echoing around the yawning circular space, before resuming humming the strange tune.
The bald old man gradually drew near, his decisive steps bringing him my way, and eventually stood beside me... a few inches away. The fetid smell that erupted from his small frame could kill an entire city. He looked to be in his late eighties. A massive pulsating vein ran from behind his right ear, stopping just above his right eyebrow. Both ash-coloured eyebrows were long and bushy, and their tapered ends oddly curved upwards. He had protruding ears like those of an elf. His nose was large and flat. His white beard and moustache were wild and thick. His eyes, at first glance, seemed soft and warm. But a closer look revealed a startling, fiendish glow in them. They were hard, black and cold. He looked like the sort of man who would laugh genially with you one moment, and savagely rip your heart out the next moment; a man without a modicum of mercy.
Deep down, a terror-filled voice told me that this man, this old and fragile-appearing man, was not your usual cold-blooded murderer; no, he was different; twisted and different; yes, this man, this evil man, was a no-blooded killer.
The hammering in my heart shot up another notch – crushing so intensely…so painfully against my sternum I thought it would break.
Taking his time, the octogenarian looked me over slowly – starting from my head, to my toes, and then back up. Then, riveting his eyes on mine, he smiled devilishly, displaying rust-coloured teeth. “Do you know why you’re here, Matthew?” His hoarse voice dripped with icy resentment.
I tried to open my mouth, tried to speak, but my lips remained inexplicably sealed like doors secured with lock and key.
“You’re here to die,” the man continued with unmeasured contempt.
I was scared to my scalp...not just by what he said, but also by the way he said it – like he was conducting a simple business transaction. I felt as if my heart literally wanted to explode.
The old man tilted his hairless head upward, to the left and, slowly, stroked his beard. “The gods of our beloved land are thirsty,” he said indifferently. “They require your blood, you know. Few must die to preserve many. It is a fact of life. It keeps nature balanced. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Yin and Yang principle...you know, male and female; good and evil; and life and death. You should consider yourself fortunate to have been chosen. Life runs on the wheels of sacrifice. And true sacrifice is written in blood...yes, blood. Even the Holy Book agrees that, life is in the blood. You, my condemned friend, are the perfect votive offering for the redemption of myriad.”



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