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BEAUTIFUL COLORS OF SIN 2

I woke up the second day to the drone of Cindy’s big radio. Some people huddled around the gadget like lottery players waiting to hear the results that would make them millionaires. I yawned and stretched my neck which ached due to the awkward angle I had slept. The presenter on the radio was saying something and Sandra motioned for me to listen and I did.
It was reported that seven undergraduates of University of Lagos were murdered in cold blood in their sleep and that the dastardly attack was perpetrated by some secret cult members from outside the campus. The culprits were suspected to have come from the neighboring Lagos City Polytechnic.
At the mention of our school the other girls looked at me with something in their eyes which I couldn’t place. My mind went straight to Austin. Could that be where Austin went when he said he was traveling? I leaned back dejectedly, regretting the day I met Austin at the café. The newscaster continued but my mind was somewhere else. I became afraid of telling Austin off. It would have been easy if he was just a cult member but he was the captain. Who would have thought I would end up in that position? Someone turned the radio off and Bimbo asked me what I was going to do. I told her that I would give him his keys and start avoiding him until he gets tired and forgets about me.
We dressed up and went for lectures. Austin’s friends asked me if I had seen him or if he was back. I just walked away from them before anybody would see us and link them to me. I received my lectures and went back to the hostel. I cooked and ate even though the food tasted like sawdust and sat heavily in my tummy like lead, I finished it. At least it drove the thought of Austin off my mind for a while.
The other girls joined me later and asked if Austin was back and I said no. Some other friends came to visit but I just sat at a corner and listened to their conversations. The news was all over campus that the suspected cult attack was from our school. Another girl said two of the guys were caught by the vigilante group and one of the culprits claimed that the Rector of the institution was aiding and abetting cultists on the campus.
During this gossip, a lady came in and told us to turn our radio on. She said that someone said that Austin, the Black Crow was one of the two guys arrested. My heart missed a beat. I scampered off the bed and switched on the radio only to get the last bit of the closing music. I hissed and turned the radio off. I silently hoped and prayed that it was true. I decided to catch the evening news on radio or go to the Potters’ lodge to watch it on television.

My walk to the lodge was fast and I was furious all the way there. Everybody looked at me with suspicious eyes and nudged themselves as I walked past them. I felt uneasy. The television had just been turned on when I got to the lodge and the few people there looked at me with those stupid eyes. I ignored them and concentrated on the screen instead.
When I saw Austin in handcuffs, my heart leaped for joy and gladness. Now I didn’t have to face him to say anything. It was all in the open. It reduced my fear. The reporter was saying something about the Rector being arrested. The man appeared on the screen and denied the allegation of his involvement in the activities of the cult group. I got up and walked back to the hostel, more relaxed and happier. The suspicious glances, low whispers and small talks were all what I could handle with the help of my friends. I didn’t let it bother me. I knew it would soon be over and it did.

I didn’t run into any of Austin’s friends for weeks and it was like they had all disappeared. I was invited to the SAO to explain my relationship with Austin. I admitted he was my friend but I didn’t know he had anything to do with cultism. The senior student affairs officer said I knew he was a cultist but decided not to say anything. I was therefore given a week suspension from lectures. I showed the letter to my friends when I got to the hostel and cried my eyes out. What will I tell my aunt when I get home? What will Sean say? These were the questions on my mind.
I gathered a few clothes and walked out of the campus. My aunt was full of understanding. I told her that I had learn my lesson and promised to be more careful. I was glad she didn’t take it too seriously. It would have been terrible for me if she had.

When I got back to the campus after one week, the first person I saw was Austin. He called me as I passed through the gate but I ignored him and went to the hostel. There was nobody in our room when I got there. I unpacked my luggage and cooked some rice, Sandra came later. She told me that her dad died the third day I left and had since been buried at Nsukka, a town in the Eastern part of the country. She said she came back from Nsukka two days ago and that her uncle threw them out of the house when her mum refused to relocate to the village as they had suggested.
Sandra told me how her dad’s family had accused her mum of witchcraft. They even said she was the one that killed her husband.
“They said she had to drink the water that was used in bathing the corpse of my father in order to prove her innocence and when she declined, they sent her packing and labeled her an outcast and a witch,” Sandra said and tears started to fall from her eyes in spite of her effort not to cry. She said her mum had since rented a small room on a street close to their former house.

I was baffled, I knew the Ibos were very traditional and crude but I was amazed that it was as bad as Sandra had described it. I went to Sandra and hugged her until she stopped crying. She pulled back and wiped her tears.
“Cindy will kill me if she sees me crying like this,” Sandra said and smiled. We joked about that for a while.
When I saw that she was in a lighter mood I asked how lectures were and what I had missed. I told Sandra my encounter with Austin and to my surprise she told me Austin was released the third day he was arrested. She said the judge had said there was no evidence strong enough to convict him as charged.
“Austin came back into school with a car, Alice. A guy arrested for murder came back into the campus with a brand new car. Can you beat that?” Sandra concluded and hissed. I asked if he had come for his key and.... READ FULL: https://ugobestiky.com/beautiful-colors-sin-2/

PROLOGUE 

Alice handed Sonia the tapes and smiled. There were five of them.
“It has to be perfect,” she said and turned to leave. Sonia stared at the tapes for a while then she took them inside the house. It was night and it seemed like she was the only sane person still awake.




She made sure that all lights were off and then made for her bedroom. She went straight to the table and inserted the tape into a recorder and after setting the volume right, she inserted her ear-piece and then she pressed play.

The words sipped into Sonia’s ears through the ear-piece like a torrent of rain. Alice had a very beautiful voice. She could get paid big money for doing radio jingles. Sonia listened for thirty minutes before she removed the ear-piece from her ears, her neck had begun to ache.

She adjusted the table–lamp to fall directly on her notepad. The light cast tall shadows on the walls as she reduced the gleam of the light. She cracked her fingers and took hold of her pen and stared at the blank paper, with her hand suspended in the air.

Sonia knew what she wanted to write, it was all in her head but she didn’t know how to start. She dropped the pen and looked up at the ceiling; flashes of memories came bubbling in her head: of faces, names, places, numbers, things; all in one confused blur.

Her fiancée turned on his back and his snoring reduced. Sonia turned to look at him and he looked darker in the shadows of light. She wished she had her camera there in the room; she would have recorded the sound of his snores. It would be fun to see his reactions, she recalled nights of funny arguments on the truth of his snores.

Sonia smiled finally and allowed her gaze to shift to the photo frames on the table; they showed Alice’s pretty grin, Seann’s boyish smile, Brenda’s beautiful face, my fiancée’s smug look and my cute one. Alice wanted this story to be perfect. She was ecstatic when Sonia told her of the intention she had to write the story. She was there all along in the shadow of things as they unfolded. It was to be in two parts, one was Alice’s life account and the others as told by her brother, Sean.

Sonia knew it was a story she needed to tell and there she was trying to focus on how best to do it. She closed her eyes. She heard her fiancée sneeze and when she opened her eyes she saw him throw the blanket on the floor. Sonia walked up to the bed to cover him up with the discarded blanket. She smiled as he continued snoring, lost to everything around him.

Sonia walked back to her table and drank a little water before she picked up her pen again. She shook her head, adjusted her seat and started to write.




CHAPTER 1

I am Alice Adeola Bryn, the eldest child in a family of four; my dad, mum, myself and my younger brother, Sean. Back when we were young, people said I looked a lot like my Yoruba dad but did things like my mum. This was something that always left me wondering whether it was a compliment or not. They however claimed that Sean was more like my mum in physical resemblance which also baffled me as mum was a very petite American and Sean was a lanky boy with little freckles.

I grew up with my parents on a quiet street in a suburb town somewhere in western Nigeria called Ibadan. It was a street where everybody minded their own businesses even though we were the only mixed-race children there. The street had rows and rows of buildings so identical that the owners often confused their houses with someone else’s. Lawns and fences, barbed wire and bamboo sticks, shrubs and hedges; all in a neat row like soldiers on parade just to identify which was whose.

Growing up with my parent was fun. Even though we were not rich, our parent did everything they could to make us comfortable and happy. We often traveled to Queens-New York to visit my maternal uncles, it was safe to say we had all we wanted. We attended the best school in the town and our parents showed us great love and affection. We didn’t really care how rich or poor we were because as long as we asked and were given, we were happy.

Everybody on our street addressed themselves as Mr. A or Mrs. B. They went about their various activities with........ READ FULL CHAPTER1: https://ugobestiky.com/beautiful-colors-sin-1/