(Based on a flash-fiction contest prompt suggested by OkadaBooks, the foremost literary E-Book publisher in Nigeria, on the 5th of September, 2018. This story of mine did not make it as one of the entries because I did not meet the deadline for submission. However, I feel it would be interesting I share this with you.)

★★★

TWO days after the proposal, she found a card at her door step, written in a messy handwriting: ‘‘DO NOT MARRY HIM.’’

There was something about this handwriting— something familiar.

Phoebe stood transfixed, gazing at the card with the warning words scribbled with red pen. Her hands trembled with the fear of the unknown, and her mind swirled from many thoughts raging for any possible clue.

Who could have written this? She thought.

Just two days ago, the neatly-bearded Douglas proposed to her at Cupid Hotel and Suites, just off Unizik Temporary Junction, Awka, under the warm glow of red lights at the bar. She remembered it all. Everything was still vivid, still fresh in his memory: how Douglas had inserted a golden heart-shaped ring in her left middle finger, after asking her expectantly if she would marry him; how her eyes had glowed with the spark of the jewelry that would ‘forever’ define their marital union; how she had said, ‘‘Yes. Yes. I will marry you,’’ and had plunged her light body into his waiting arms.

Just two days ago. Two days ago. And now her joy of finally seeing a man of her dreams had been cut short by this mystic card that bore a foreboding.

Who must have written this? She thought again. She knew that Douglas was a very handsome man, and a young engineer working at the Ministry of Works and Urban Planning at that. She equally knew that Douglas must have a bevy of girlfriends at his beck and call (though she had never seen him with any), but she never thought about the possibility of threat from any of those girls.

As she inserted the key into the keyhole, she wondered what the inscription on the card meant. Was it a life threat or an advice to stay away from an Angel who might turn out to be a Devil after all?

‘‘Why at this moment?’’ She sighed, closing the wooden door gently behind her.

The harmattan breeze whipped at her face and her body as she stepped into the balcony. Instead of the normal soothing that this late November weather carries with it, the dry breeze aggravated her worries. This year, 1997, would have been wrapped up in a grand style: hers and Douglas’s wedding card bearing the words, ‘ PHOE-DOUGY CLASSIC 1997.’

Now, looking at the mystic card once again, it was as if it had taken the place of their proposed wedding cards, carrying away with it the joy and ecstasy of a newly-married couple, and supplanting it with worries and foreboding.

‘‘Who wrote this?’’ she said it out loud now, as she was seated on the mattress in her dimly-lit room. There was something familiar about that handwriting, but her doubts made her not suspect anybody. She couldn’t even figure out anything. She needed somebody to advise her now, somebody to comfort her, somebody to help her get rid of her worries off her twirling brain.

Amarachi. Her sister. Yes! Phoebe knew her younger sister was a good counsellor, and that she would surely help her to get rid of these worries and chase away this premonition hovering around her head.

Without wasting time, she picked her Versace handbag and stormed out of the room.

★★★

When Phoebe pushed the iron gate that led to her sister’s apartment in Awada, Onitsha, she was surprised to see Douglas’ blue 504 Peugeot parked beside the dwarf orange tree in the compound.

What is Douglas’ car doing in my sister’s apartment? She wondered.

Without wasting time, she stealthily walked inside, tiptoeing on the black-patterned-tiled floor. Then, she heard raised voices obviously coming from the room at the end of the hallway.

‘‘So you still have the heart to date my sister, after sleeping with me and deceiving me all these years?’’ Amarachi’s voice hollered.

‘‘You know I love you, baby, not your sister.’’

Phoebe heard Douglas tell her sister. Her heart sank in her stomach, and she felt an instant, strange nausea in her throat, threatening to make her throw up.

‘‘God!’’ Amarachi exclaimed. ‘‘Just listen to yourself! My sister is living under the illusion that you love her. I suffered the same delusion. What do you take us for? As harlots you can use and dump at will?’’

Phoebe froze in her tracks. She nearly collapsed from heartbreak. Now it dawned on her that it was her sister that left that mystic card at her doorstep. But why did she choose to write to her secretly, instead of calling her and letting the cat out of the bag. Now, the whole thing was even complicated.

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